Category: Tours

Behind the Scenes at Locust Point's Immigrant House

Come on a tour this summer in Locust Point or Station North!

After last week’s 2014 Awards Celebration, I want to again congratulate everyone who won an award and share my sincere thanks with everyone came out and helped make the evening a success. Take a look at our list of 2014 award recipients and you are sure to share our excitement about the future of preservation and revitalization in Baltimore. As we head into July, we have an exciting line up of new tours and returning favorites.

Don’t miss our tour of the “Immigrant House” – a new museum in the making in Locust Point! We are glad to share a fun event from the Archdiocese of Baltimore as it celebrates its 215th Anniversary with a day of open houses of Catholic heritage sites downtown. Finally, if you have family in town this month, we have plenty of cheap and free tours to show off our city’s historic landmarks including Looking Up Downtown and free Station North by Foot tours at Artscape!

Photograph from Book of the Royal Blue, 1904.

Happy Birthday, Green Mount Cemetery! Take a tour with Wayne Schaumburg

Green Mount Cemetery, sometimes known as Baltimore’s “Valhalla,” is turning 175 years old this July and we are celebrating with a walking tour with cemetery guru and eminent Baltimore historian Wayne Schaumburg! With notables that include Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt, William and Henry Walters, and Betsy Patterson, it is no wonder the cemetery has earned the moniker “where Baltimore’s best were laid to rest.”

You can also combine fresh produce and fresh history on our latest Looking Up Downtown tour leaving from the Baltimore Farmer’s Market this Sunday, June 1. And don’t forget to sign up soon for our 2014 Awards Celebration on June 19 at the new Baltimore Design School – tickets are going fast!

News: Tour hours expanding for historic Phoenix Shot Tower

Tour hours expanding for historic Phoenix Shot Tower: Preservationists and city hope to restore, draw visitors to structure built in 1828, Alison Knezevich, The Baltimore Sun, April 18, 2014.

In one of the city’s first historic preservation battles, Baltimore residents paid $17,000 in 1924 to save the soaring Phoenix Shot Tower from a wrecking ball and a future as a Union Oil Company gas station.

Today, preservationists are again rallying around the Shot Tower. While it is no longer in danger — the city has abandoned a 2012 proposal to consider selling more than a dozen historic properties, including the tower — they say more needs to be done to showcase the attraction and to fully restore what was once the nation’s tallest building.

The nonprofit Carroll Museums, which manages the Shot Tower and the nearby historic Carroll Mansion, plans to open the tower for drop-in visitors next month. And starting Sunday, the nonprofit Baltimore Heritage is adding a tour of the historic Jonestown neighborhood that includes the Shot Tower.

Baltimore Museum of Industry Inside & Out

Nice weather and new tours? Get outside with Looking Up Downtown and our new Museum of Industry tour

It finally feels as if spring is finally here, and not just on paper. Take off your jacket and come out for one of our exciting new tours or bike rides this spring! We’re especially excited to announce that our Looking Up Downtown tours return to the Baltimore Farmer’s Market this Saturday. This year, we’re also launching a new partnership with Carroll Museums, Inc. to add a tour of historic Jonestown and the inside of the Phoenix Shot Tower on the third Sunday of every month.

Join us at the Baltimore Museum of Industry as we explore the museum’s history, architecture and recent restoration inside and out! Restoration architect Carol Quigley of Frens and Frens Architects will share her knowledge on a tour of the outside and Roland H. Woodward, BMI’s director, will give us a true behind the scenes look at the making of the exhibits and the redesigned interior.

Finally, please save the date for our 2014 Preservation Awards Celebration on June 19, 2014 at the award-winning home of the Baltimore Design School. I hope you can join us!

Featured photograph by Marc Siegel, 2012. Courtesy the Baltimore Museum of Industry.

Put a spring in your step! Baltimore by Foot is back

Happy first day of spring! We’re celebrating the long-awaited return of sunny days with today’s announcement for our 2014 Baltimore by Foot neighborhood walking tours. I hope you can join us on one (or all!) of these leisurely strolls through five fantastic neighborhoods.

I love Patterson Park? We dig Hampstead Hill! Our archeological investigation in Patterson Park starts next week with a high-tech remote sensing survey using ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, and more to find what might be hidden under the hill. Stop by the park on March 27 for a high-tech show and tell discussion with Dr. Tim Horsely and Dr. John Bedell.

Finally, whether you’re Irish or not, you might enjoy our our latest Baltimore 1814 update on the St. Patrick’s Day “Divine Service” held in Fell’s Point on March 17, 1814. We even shared found a few Irish toasts that reveal how Baltimore perservered “while English drums rattle at our doors.” Enjoy and please subscribe to receive our weekly Baltimore 1814 updates in your inbox.

Photograph of Barclay & East 20th Street, courtesy Jennifer A. Ferretti, March 3, 2014.