Category: Tours

Open House at the G. Krug & Son Ironworks and Museum this Saturday

G. Krug & Son is an institution on Downtown’s West Side with over 200 years of history in forging and restoring ironwork across the City of Baltimore. We’re excited to share the news that the shop has now opened a museum to share their rich history launching with a free open house this Saturday!

This is a business that literally built Baltimore into the city it is today and the pieces of the jobs worked on in the shop’s 202-year history can still be found inside. Artfully done drawings, photographs, and job files containing the names of some of the city’s most influential people and institutions are all featured in the new museum. Peter Krug started the museum to showcase a history of Baltimore and a family owned company that has been there for much of that time and share their unique perspective on the historic port city that supported a fledgling country. G. Krug & Son employees will lead tours from 11:00am to 2:00pm and offer demonstrations of the blacksmithing process.

Open House at G. Krug & Son Ironworks and Museum

G. Krug & Son – 415 W. Saratoga Street
Saturday, November 10, 2012, 11:00am to 2:00pm
Parking – On-street or off-street at surface lot at 112 N. Eutaw Street or garage at 208 N. Paca Street. Transit – The shop is a short walk from the Lexington Market Metro Station or Lexington Market Light Rails stop.

See the city through H.L. Mencken’s eyes with Baltimore by Bike on November 11

Our last Baltimore by Bike ride of the year offers a chance to see the city through the eyes of Baltimore’s own H.L. Mencken – one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. H.L. Mencken grew up and spent most of his life in a handsome brick rowhouse on Union Square but he never hesitated to explore the city he loved (and loved to skewer) as he walked, reported, and even rode a bike through Baltimore neighborhoods from Mount Vernon to Bolton Hill and beyond.

Mencken’s Baltimore by Bike

Sunday, November 11, 9:30am to 12:00pm
Meet at Union Square Park, Hollins Street and South Stricker Street
RSVP online today! $15 per person.

Photo courtesy the The Smart Set.

Join us for a easy fall ride through H.L. Mencken’s Baltimore. The eldest son of August Mencken, a successful local cigar manufacturer, Mencken grew from roaming the alleys and vacant lots with gangs of West Baltimore boys to become one of the youngest reporters at the Baltimore Herald, launching a career in journalism and writing that endured for nearly 50 years.

We’ll ride along the streets that Mencken knew best as we discover the site of Little Joe’s Bike Shop where Mencken learned to ride a bicycle in the 1890s, imagine the fine meals Mencken enjoyed with friends at Marconi’s on Cathedral Street, stop by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s home in Bolton Hill and stop by the Poe House, just around the corner from Mencken’s birthplace on Lexington Street. Our tour ends with a chance to tour the H.L. Mencken House and enjoy light refreshments.

This tour is presented in partnership with the Friends of the H.L. Mencken House and proceeds help to support their ongoing efforts to restore and re-open the H.L. Mencken House. Learn more about events around West Baltimore neighborhoods from the Friends of West Baltimore Squares.

Boo! Greenmount and New Cathedral Cemetery tours for Halloween

Who’s Who in Baltimore: Greenmount Cemetery and Famous Marylanders Lunch, Talk and Tour

Saturday, October 27, 2012, 12:00 pm to 2:30 pm
RSVP today!  $40 per person (includes lunch)
Tour begins with lunch and a talk at the Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School, 1600 Guilford Avenue

Greenmount Cemetery, image courtesy Jack Breihan

From elites like William and Henry Walters, Johns Hopkins, and Enoch Pratt, to extraordinary slaves like Patty Atavis, and even the infamous assassin John Wilkes Booth, the dead at Greenmount Cemetery tell a rich and fascinating story of the growth of Baltimore. For this tour, we’re pleased to be partnering with the Maryland Historical Society and Greenmount Cemetery tour guide Wayne Schaumburg.

The program will begin with lunch and a discussion of some of the Marylanders buried at Greenmount led by curators at the Maryland Historical Society using items in the Society’s collections. After lunch, we’ll drive over to the cemetery to join Baltimore historian and Greenmount guide Wayne Schaumburg for a tour of the cemetery, its ornate grave stones, and its notable inhabitants. Space is limited!

Behind the Scenes at New Cathedral Cemetery

Saturday, November 10, 2012, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
RSVP today! $10 per person
Meet at the Cemetery’s main entrance  – 4300 Old Frederick Road, 21229

New Cathedral Cemetery, courtesy jomiwi/Flickr.

Covering 125 acres in West Baltimore and with its origins dating to St. Peter’s Kirkyard at Saratoga and Cathedral Streets in the 1770s, New Cathedral Cemetery is a historic gem that is surprisingly hidden. Among other things, it is the resting place of more Hall of Fame baseball players than any other cemetery in the country, including Orioles greats from the 1890s Ned Hanlon, Joe Kelley, and John McGraw. It is also the resting place of Baltimore mayors Solomon Hillen, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., and Clarence (du) Burns, entrepreneur and philanthropist Reginald F. Lewis, and Mother Mary Lange, founder of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first ever congregation of women religious of African descent. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was originally buried here until he was reinterred at Doughoregan, the family estate in Howard County, but the cemetery still claims at least two other Carroll family members: Charles Carroll of Homewood and Governor John Lee Carroll.

With three centuries of wonderful headstones and statuary, the cemetery is also rich with sculpture and art, and of course stories about Baltimore. Please join us and cemetery historian Susan Schmidt on this trip through Baltimore history as told through New Cathedral Cemetery.

Photo walk & tour of Jewish Landmarks on the West Side this Saturday!

Baltimore residents of all backgrounds remember the bustling shops of Howard and Lexington Streets but a handful of Jewish-owned businesses – Hutzler’s, Hecht’s, and Read’s Drug Store just to name a few – stand out in stories and memories from the history of downtown’s west side. Bring your camera and join Baltimore Heritage for a free photo walk and tour exploring the history of Jewish entrepreneurs and workers – making clothes, selling furniture, and more – who made Howard and Lexington a place to remember.

West Side Photo Walk & Tour

October 27, 2012, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
RSVP today or sign up on Facebook! Free thanks to Free Fall Baltimore.
Meet at the east entrance to Lexington Market – Eutaw and Lexington Streets

This tour is presented in partnership with the Jewish Museum of Maryland for the Jewish Landmarks Photo Competition. Special thanks to The Baltimore Sun for featuring our tour on the Darkroom blog.

We deeply appreciate the support of our donors who make Free Fall Baltimore possible.  Special thanks goes to Susquehanna Bank, The Abell Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support provided by American Trading and Production Corporation, William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, and the Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation.

Explore Colonial Grandeur at the Perry Hall Mansion

Join us in exploring one of Baltimore County’s most historic places, Perry Hall Mansion, home of the Gaugh Family. We’re pleased to host this event with our partners, the Friends of the Perry Hall Mansion and the Preservation Alliance for Baltimore County.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Perry Hall Mansion

Wednesday September 19, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
3930 Perry Hall Rd, Perry Hall, MD 21128
RSVP today! $15 per person.

Erected high on a hill above the Gunpowder River Valley, Perry Hall Mansion dominated life in northeastern Baltimore County in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Built in the 1770s by Harry Dorsey Gaugh, Perry Hall was named after the family castle near Birmingham England. The 16-room home, the seat of a vast plantation, soon became one of the leading houses in colonial Maryland. The mansion, considered a “sister” house to Hampton Mansion not very far away, turned from a house of raucous parties to a place of more reserved pleasure as Gaugh and his wife, Prudence, became ardent supporters of the early Methodist movement that had strong roots in Maryland.

Gaugh became a distinguished planter, a member of Maryland’s House of Delegates, and on the board of one of Maryland’s first orphanages. After Gaugh’s death in 1808, the mansion remained in the family for nearly 50 years. It was sold to a group of investors in 1852 that carved the plantation into lots for houses, many of which went to German immigrants. By 2001, the estate had dwindled to four acres and the house was sold to Baltimore County for use as a museum and community center. The County completed a first stage of restoration in 2004, and exterior restoration won an award from the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County as an “outstanding public project.” The Friends are continuing with the restoration of this stately home.