Category: Tours

Historic Baltimore by Bus Redux: Celebrating 50 Years of Saving Historic Places

Last October, we hosted a bus tour of central Baltimore to commemorate Baltimore Heritage’s 50th anniversary. In response to your kind comments and continued interest in this trip, we are repeating the bus tour and hope you can join us if you didn’t make it the first time around. So…

Step back into 1960 Baltimore: Charles Center was just underway (with Mies van der Rohe’s One Charles Center two years from completion); Baltimore’s population had dropped by 10,000 people, down to 940,000; city planners had begun crafting highway plans to run through Fell’s Point, Mount Vernon, and West Baltimore; and Baltimore Heritage was founded to preserve historic places in Baltimore City. We are recreating a bus tour of historic sites in central Baltimore that launched our organization and the historic preservation movement in Baltimore City. Please join us on this two-hour bus trip with our tour guides, local historians Wayne Schaumburg and Marsha Wise, as we connect the dots of historic preservation and city development between the Baltimore of 1960 and the Baltimore of today.

Tour Information

Sunday, March 27, 2011 | 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM or 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
$25 | Register today!

Meet at the Peale Museum (225 North Holliday Street, Baltimore 21202). Free street parking is available. The tour is by bus (school bus, to be exact) and will last two hours. We will get off the bus a few times to examine historic places up close and stretch our legs.
Read more

Behind the Scenes Tour of Ships Out of Water

This winter, the USS Constellation and USS Submarine Torsk were towed from the Inner Harbor and put in dry dock at the Sparrows Point Shipyard for much-needed repairs. The historic vessels are scheduled to return to the water in a few weeks, but before they do we have a chance to visit them and learn about the boats and how historic ships are repaired. Please join us and our tour guide, Mr. Christopher Rowsom, executive director of Historic Ships of Baltimore (which owns these and other historic vessels), on a tour to see the Constellation and Torsk in a way that not many do: from the underside up!

Sparrow’s Point Shipyard, 600 Shipyard Road, Edgemere, MD 21219

Saturday, March 5, 2011 | 9:30 to 11:00 AM
$10 for members; $20 for non-members
Register online today!

The tour is at the shipyard in Edgemere, about ½ hour from downtown. The Sparrows Point Shipyard is not open to the public and we will have to be escorted in through the main gate promptly at 9:30 AM.
Read more

Behind the Scenes Tour of MICA’s Brown Center

MICA Brown Center, Image courtesy MICA

New buildings in historic districts don’t have to be bland or drag down the historic and aesthetic character of the area. The Brown Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art offers a striking example of where first-class modern architecture can add a bold new design while bringing out the best in existing historic buildings. Please join us on a tour of the Brown Center to explore this modern architectural landmark and its relation to MICA’s historic campus.

MICA’s Brown Center | 1301 Mt. Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217

Thursday, February 10, 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM
$10 for members; $20 for non-members
Register today!

Read more

Join us for a second West Side Walking Tour on January 20!

Read's Drug Store in 1934, courtesy Baltimore Sun

We’re returning to the Superblock this week for a second lunchtime walking tour on why historic buildings matter to the future of a revitalized West Side and how the proposal for the Superblock threatens to demolish that future. The tour takes place on the 50th Anniversary of the 1955 sit-in at the Read’s Drug Store at Howard & Lexington Streets, so we’ll be sharing a few stories about how black and white civil rights advocates fought to provide African Americans with equal rights to shop, work, and eat on Downtown’s West Side. From the Afro American’s Orchid & Onion 1945 campaign against downtown stores that discriminated against African American customers (“Onions” discriminated against black shoppers and “Orchids” did not) to the 1955 sit-in by the Baltimore Committee on Racial Equality and the students and faculty of Morgan State, Baltimore’s Civil Rights heritage can be found throughout the historic buildings of Downtown’s West Side.

West Side Lunchtime Walking Tour | East Entrance to Lexington Market (Lexington & Eutaw Streets)

Please also join us on February 9 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum for a public forum on Preserving Baltimore’s Civil Rights Heritage. We’ll begin the forum with short presentations by Dr. Helena Hicks, a participant in the 1955 Reads Drug Store sit-in, Dr. Gabriel Tenabe on restoring the home of long-time Baltimore NAACP President Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson, Ms. Tanya Bowers from the National Trust for Historic Preservation on the proposed National Civil Rights Heritage Trail, and more. We’ll follow the presentations with an opportunity for attendees to share their own questions and comments on how we can preserve the stories, buildings and neighborhoods tied to Baltimore’s long civil rights fight.  Stay tuned for further details on our February 9 program!

Behind the Scenes Tour of Baltimore City College

We all know the “Castle on the Hill.”  Many of us spent a good part of our young lives there. Now please join us in walking through and learning the quintessential Baltimore history of this much beloved city landmark. And, yes, Poly grads are welcome too!

Baltimore City College | 3220 The Alameda, Baltimore, MD 21218

  • Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
  • Park in the school lot that is accessed from The Alameda
  • Register online today! $10 for members; $20 for non-members (please join!)

Read more