Baltimore & Boston: Frame Suburbs and Rowhomes (Virtual Talk)
2023-02-10 13:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Virtual, MD, United States
The center of Boston, with skyscrapers and row houses, looks like Baltimore. But 99% of Boston’s neighborhoods look really different. To find out why, Charlie Duff, former BAF President and author of The North Atlantic Cities, shows how the building cultures of the two cities came to be what they are – and how two “Men with a Mission” succeeded, and failed, to change the way the people of their cultures built houses.

About the Presenter:
Charles Duff is a planner, teacher, developer, and historian. Since 1987, Mr. Duff has been President of Jubilee Baltimore, a non-profit group that has planned some of Baltimore’s most successful neighborhoods and built or rebuilt more than 300 buildings. A graduate of Gilman, Amherst, and Harvard, he has been President of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation. His book The North Atlantic Cities was published in the UK in 2019.
Upon registering, you will receive an email confirmation to request a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact Meghan Hudson (mhudson@aiabalt.com). If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

Baltimore's Early Trade with China (Virtual Talk)
2023-02-24 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
John O’Donnell initiated trade between Canton, China and Baltimore in 1785, operating his own merchant sailing vessels. While the Baltimore-China trade was short-lived, it involved many of our early Founding Fathers. On February 24, join John Danz to learn how the trade propelled Baltimore’s development as a major East Coast port.
About the Speaker:
John Danz, Jr., is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in European history. John has lectured widely on the subject of America’s early trade with China based on more than three years of research. His focus has been on Maryland’s experiences in the China trade from the viewpoint of both the decorative arts and economics. Mr. Danz served as Vice President of Towson University’s Asian Arts & Culture Center for more than fifteen years and currently serves as Vice President of the State of Maryland’s Sister States program for Anhui Province, China.

Upon registering, you will receive an email confirmation to request a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact Meghan Hudson (mhudson@aiabalt.com). If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

Being Literate, Being Free (Virtual Talk)
2023-03-10 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
Despite the harshness and cruelty that slavery inflicted on people of color, whether they were enslaved or free, these people derived creative methods to learn to read and write as an essential first step toward freedom.
Frederick Douglass said that it was through reading that he first heard “the silver trump of freedom.” Thus, it was literacy, the ability to read, write, and understand information, that showed Douglass and countless other blacks the pathway from slavery to freedom.
Through her Virtual Histories webinar Being Literate, Being Free, Dr. Joanne Martin will highlight historical personalities for whom literacy was the key to a future of freedom and hope for a people who were coming to understand that “If you would keep a people enslaved, refuse to teach them to read”.

Meet the Speaker
Drs. Elmer and Joanne Martin founded The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum in Baltimore, over thirty years ago.
The Museum is the nation’s first wax museum concentrating on black history, life and culture. It is a national attraction and has been featured on major television networks (CNN, NBC,BET, etc.); magazines (Jet, Essence, Black Enterprise, etc.); and newspapers (The Washington Post, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc.).
Dr. Joanne Martin received a BA from Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida; MA degrees from Atlanta University, Atlanta Georgia and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio: and her PhD from Howard University, Washington, DC.
A noted historian, educator and researcher, she performs most of the Museum’s curatorial duties and has laid the groundwork for both architectural and exhibition design for the expanded Museum. Her principal role is to ensure the intellectual integrity of all interpretive materials and approaches, particularly relating to exhibition concepts, storyline, and texts. She also provides guidance and direction to the Museum Educator in identifying curriculum-appropriate educational programming for k-12 students and alignment with U.S. and State of Maryland curriculum standards.
Upon registering, you should recieve an email confirmation with a link to request the Zoom link. If you have any questions, please contact Meghan Hudson at mhudson@aiabalt.com at least one hour before the start of the event.

Ghost Signs of Baltimore
2023-03-24 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
Have you ever noticed the fading signs painted on buildings all around Baltimore and wondered what they used to say or why they were on a certain building? They are called ghost signs and photographer Lashelle Bynum has been meticulously researching and documenting them over the last few decades. She has photographed nearly 300 ghost signs in Baltimore to date. Please join us to hear Lashelle talk about her quest to discover and uncover the history of Baltimore’s ghost signs.
Meet the Speaker
Lifelong Baltimorean Lashelle Bynum is a photographer and researcher of her city’s ghost signs and Black history. She is also a board member of Baltimore Heritage and has contributed as a guest in several of the organization’s Five Minute Histories videos.
Upon registering, you will receive an email confirmation to request a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact Meghan Hudson (mhudson@aiabalt.com). If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

Baltimore's Road Wars (Virtual Talk)
2023-04-28 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
On April 28, join historian and author Ev Paull as he discusses his book, Stop the Road, an up-close-and-personal account of Baltimore’s epic 40-year battle over expressway plans. Meet the unsung heroes, a ragtag band of neighborhood activists, preservationists, and environmentalists who saved Baltimore from its own leadership, thereby protecting Baltimore’s historic waterfront communities of Federal Hill, Fell’s Point, and Canton. But that glorious and unlikely win must be tempered with the equally compelling but inglorious story behind the disastrous Highway to Nowhere. This is Baltimore unmasked and laid threadbare for the most momentous decisions since the building of the B&O Railroad.

Meet the Speaker
Northwest Baltimore resident E. Evans Paull spent 45 years as a city planner working in Baltimore and nationally on urban redevelopment issues. He began his career in the Baltimore City Department of Planning as a generalist planner before specializing in the redevelopment of brownfields. After starting and managing Baltimore’s Brownfields Initiative, he tackled these same issues at a national level, working first for Northeast-Midwest Institute before becoming director of the National Brownfields Coalition and finally running his consulting business, Redevelopment Economics. Although now retired, many of his published articles and papers still appear on the Redevelopment Economics website.

Upon registering, you will receive an email confirmation to request a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact Meghan Hudson (mhudson@aiabalt.com). If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

LGBT Activism in Charles Village (Virtual Talk)
2023-05-12 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
Charles Village, adjacent to Johns Hopkins University and long the home of civically and politically active residents, was also the home of many of the earliest LGBT activists during the 1970s and 1980s. On Friday May 12 at 1:00 p.m. join Baltimore Heritage volunteer Richard Oloizia on a virtual tour through Charles Village to learn about early efforts in Baltimore to build a more open LGBT community.

Meet the Speaker
Richard Oloizia is a historian, a former Enoch Pratt Free Library employee, and an LGBT leader in Baltimore. He has lead LGBT heritage walking tours for Baltimore Heritage for over a decade.

Upon registering, you will receive an email confirmation to request a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact Meghan Hudson (mhudson@aiabalt.com). If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

Baltimore’s Municipal Buildings with Meg Fairfax Fielding
2023-05-21 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
Baltimore is a city filled with a wide range of architectural treasures. For this in-person lecture, Meg Fielding will show us a variety of Baltimore’s municipal buildings like pumping stations, fire houses, and beautiful government buildings that house the infrastructure and people that keep Baltimore going. We hope you’ll join Baltimore Heritage and Baltimore Architecture Foundation at the Garrett Jacobs Mansion for this fascinating talk!
Meg Fielding is a past-president of Baltimore Architecture Foundation. Meg loves to explore Baltimore and the surrounding areas. By day, she is the head of the History of Maryland Medicine at MedChi, which was founded in 1799, but on weekends, you might find her on a lonely road on the Eastern Shore searching for a small, ancient church. Follow her on Instagram at Pigtown Design.

Coming to Baltimore: Immigrants Old and New (Virtual Talk)
2023-07-14 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
It is a little known fact of our history that Baltimore served as America’s third largest port of entry during the Great Wave of Immigration from 1830 to 1924, when 1.5 million immigrants first set foot on American soil in our city. They included people from all over Europe, including Germans, Irish, Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs and Italians, who established neighborhoods, as well as churches, schools, cultural and philanthropic societies, which eased the transition from their old country. Ethnic savings and loans extended mortgages to their compatriots, enabling them to purchase modest rowhouses, with percentages of homeownership as high as 75% for some groups. In the 1920s, Congress passed restrictive immigration laws, prompting the Great Migration. Thousands of people from the rural South and Appalachians, both Black and white, journeyed to Baltimore to find work in Baltimore’s industries. In 1965, Congress liberalized our immigration laws, and immigrants from Latin America and Asia settled in our country and in our region. The Baltimore Immigration Museum, located in a building which was an immigrant boarding house in Locust Point, celebrates the rich diversity of those who made the lengthy journey to our region.
Meet the Speaker
Nicholas Fessenden earned a B.A. in History at Yale, and an M.A. and Ph.D in 1972 from Columbia University, also in History. He taught History in the Upper School at Friends School of Baltimore (1972 – 2010), as well as History at Maryland Institute of Art (1981 – 2000) as an adjunct. Since retirement in 2010, he has taught at CCBC/Owings Mills and at the Osher Institute at Towson University. He serves on the board of the Baltimore Immigration Memorial, which opened a museum in Locust Point two years ago, chronicling Baltimore’s immigration history. We at the museum have welcomed visitors from the public at large, as well as from schools, colleges, universities, retirement communities and genealogical societies.

Upon registering, you will receive an email confirmation to request a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact Meghan Hudson (mhudson@aiabalt.com). If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

Bmore Historic 2023
2023-09-22 08:30 - 15:30 | Baltimore Museum of Industry, 1415 Key Hwy, Baltimore, MD, 21230, United States
Baltimore’s annual unconference on people, places, and the past will be at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Friday, September 22, 2023! Students are free this year.
What is Bmore Historic?
Bmore Historic is a participant-led unconference for people who care about public history and historic preservation in and around Baltimore. Learn more about Bmore Historic or read our introduction to unconferences.
What do we do at Bmore Historic?
Past, in-person unconferences have been structured around four session blocks: two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We usually have between four to six sessions in each of the time blocks for a total of twenty sessions throughout the day.

Doors Open Baltimore Kickoff Lecture: Jessica Henkin
2023-10-05 18:00 - 20:30 | Central Branch – Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
Join the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and Baltimore Heritage for the Doors Open Baltimore 10th Anniversary kick-off with guest Jessica Henkin, Co-Founder, Producer, and Host of “Stoop Story Telling.” The Stoop’s motto is “Everyone has a story. What’s yours?”

The Baltimore Architecture Foundation believes that, not only does everyone have a story, but every building has a story too and that, by opening doors and connecting people, we can inspire creativity, foster inclusivity, and contribute to the continued growth and success of Baltimore’s artistic and cultural landscape.

Doors Open Baltimore is an annual event that celebrates Baltimore’s diverse cultural tapestry by highlighting its vibrant neighborhoods, captivating architecture, and distinctive spaces, both grand and intimate, that contribute to the city’s exceptional charm. In this 10th anniversary year, Doors Open Baltimore invites you to be a tourist in your own backyard, exploring new areas, meeting different people, and finding out what goes on inside some of Baltimore’s most interesting buildings.

About the Speaker
Jessica Henkin co-created the Stoop Storytelling Series with her friend Laura Wexler in 2006. The Stoop is a Baltimore-based live show and podcast that has featured the tales of more than 3000 people onstage. It’s featured weekly on WYPR, 88.1.
She is a first-generation college student and has a Masters in Education from Johns Hopkins University, allowing for a robust career in special education that has ultimately allowed her to become the Coordinator for Baltimore City Public School’s Office of Early Learning Program.
Jessica moved to Baltimore in 2004 and became a founding member of the Baltimore Improv Group. She’s passionate about her family (husband Aaron Henkin and children Charlie and Abby), special education, Baltimore City, storytelling, keeping her house clean, rescuing strays (both animal and human), and finding most things funny.

Lecture Schedule:
Doors Open at 5:30pm, Wheeler Auditorium – Enoch Pratt Free Library – Central Library – 400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201
6:00, Guest speaker, Jessica Henkin
7:30pm, Reception at Pratt Hall, First Unitarian Church, 12 W. Franklin Street

Can Baltimore Save the Planet?: A Talk by Charlie Duff
2023-11-12 14:00 - 15:00 | Garrett-Jacobs Mansion, 11 W. Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
Have you ever thought about how people like us in Baltimore can help to reverse climate change and species extinction? After decades of thinking and writing about how cities function, most recently with his book, The North Atlantic Cities, historian and author Charlie Duff will tackle these and other daunting questions. Charlie is optimistic about Baltimore:
We were a mid-sized city when we invented the railroad and the clipper ship, a mid-sized city when we created the first modern university and turned medicine into a science, a mid-sized city when we created America’s first great urban waterfront.
What will Baltimore do next to help our planet’s most pressing issues? In this one hour talk, Mr. Duff will share the insights he’s reached with a seriousness of global purpose as it relates to Baltimore.

About the Speaker
Charles Duff is a planner, teacher, developer, and historian. Since 1987, as President of Jubilee Baltimore, he has led the revival of several dozen Baltimore neighborhoods and built or rebuilt more than 300 buildings. Known as an expert in historic architecture and urban history, he has also pioneered in the development of residential and commercial buildings for artists and arts organizations.
A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard University, he studied at St. Andrews University in Scotland and has walked every city and neighborhood to which he refers. He is a past President of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and has served on the boards of many community and professional organizations. He lectures widely and has taught at Johns Hopkins and Morgan State Universities.

Baltimore Turning the Century: A Talk by Historian Jack Burkert
2024-04-28 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
The 19th century had been good to Baltimore. The port, shipbuilding, needle trades and food processing were bigger than ever. Business was booming! Immigrants continued to arrive in the city. But disaster came early as the Great Baltimore Fire had consumed the city center. Rebuilding the city became the task of the decade. Women’s suffrage, slum housing, sweatshops, racial discrimination, public health, and child labor were to be addressed. Despite the challenges, Baltimoreans enjoyed electrified amusement parks, attendance at vaudeville theaters, and neighborhood life. Join Baltimore Historian Jack Burkert to learn about this story of challenges, new beginnings and better living at turn of the century Baltimore.

Baltimore, President-Making City: A Talk by Author Stan Haynes
2024-05-05 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
Baltimore was once the primary American city for hosting presidential nominating conventions. Six presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson, were nominated here. With the 2024 conventions on the horizon, join Baltimore Heritage and the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion for an informative discussion, presented by Stan Haynes, of the intrigue, hoopla, and drama of the Baltimore conventions.
The author of three books about the history of presidential nominating conventions, Mr. Haynes has been called by The New Yorker “the most exhaustive chronicler of the conventions.” He has spoken about his books at presidential sites and has been interviewed about them by several major media outlets

Doors Open Baltimore 2024 Kick Off Event
2024-10-02 18:00 - 19:00 | MD
Baltimore Architecture Foundation and Baltimore Heritage are shaking up the Doors Open kick-off event. Join us for a casual evening of storytelling showcasing a variety of voices, perspectives, and special places in Baltimore as we take our letter writing campaign to the stage in the inaugural Love Letters Live!
Hosted by the Hotel Ulysses in their new event space, Swann House, the event will include light fare and wine.
RSVPs appreciated but not required! RSVP here.
Speakers will be listed soon!

Baltimore Mid-Century: A Talk by Jack Burkert
2025-03-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
On March 30, join historian Jack Burkert to discover how the 1950’s made lasting changes to the way people lived, how they moved in and around the region, and where they found employment. From the early “crisis” in absorbing returning veterans and new families, to the way those new families would seek entertainment and recreation, Baltimore would be a far different place in 1959 than it was in 1950. Automobiles and the highways they rode on took over. The “Red Scare” went local, labor strikes begat unintended consequences while hula hoops, poodle skirts and fast food became modern trends. A decade many recall, but few realize how much of Baltimore’s 21st century had roots in the 1950’s.

Below Baltimore: An Archaeology of Charm City by Adam Fracchia
2025-04-06 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
Join us on April 6 to hear archaeologist Adam Fracchia discuss his work in Baltimore and his new book, Below Baltimore: An Archaeology of Charm City. Join Dr. Fracchia to explore the layers of the city’s material record from the late seventeenth century to the recent past by focusing on major themes around Baltimore’s growth into a mercantile port city, the city’s diverse immigrant populations and the history of their foodways, and the ways industries—including railroads, glass factories, sugar refineries, and breweries—structured the city’s landscape.

Sites of the Baltimore Slave Trade: A Talk by Richard Messick
2025-05-18 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
Join us on May 18 to hear Richard Messick discuss the growth of the domestic slave trade in Baltimore, the various methods and locations of sale, and some of the more notorious traders in the business of selling people. After its incorporation in the late 18th century, the population of Baltimore grew very quickly along with the expansion of the new country. The market for the sale of people that grew up in the Mid-Atlantic region was also extensive. Although many of the associated buildings no longer exist, Richard Messick’s research and mapping project show the deeply interwoven relationship between the trade of human beings and our streets of Baltimore.

Building Baltimore: A Talk on Immigration and Opportunity by Jack Burkert
2026-03-01 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
For almost two million people, Baltimore was the destination that promised a new life, hope and opportunity. Beginning in earnest in the 18th century, accelerating through the 19th, immigrants provided the labor force necessary for Baltimore to become an industrial powerhouse. Early arrivals endured often tortuous Atlantic crossings under sail. Later steam powered ships sped the trip, but steerage accommodation offered little improvement to time spent at sea. Who were these people? Where were they from? Why did they abandon their homes? On March 1, join Baltimore historian Jack Burkert to explore immigration into Baltimore.

Above: Immigrants at Locust Point, 1904 (Image courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture)

Heritage Happy Hour at the Back Yard
2026-04-08 17:00 - 18:00 | The Back Yard, 131 S Schroeder St, Baltimore, Maryland, 21223
Join Baltimore Heritage for our next Heritage Happy Hour at the Back Yard, formerly Patrick’s of Pratt Street—which was the longest-running family-owned Irish bar in America before it was sold, and connect with fellow history lovers, preservation enthusiasts, and friends of Baltimore’s past. It’s the perfect setting to discuss Pigtown’s and Hollins Market’s neighborhood heritage. We’ll briefly hear from Sammie Samuels of the Irish Railroad Workers Museum, which is right around the corner, to speak on local Irish history. Drop in, share a drink, and meet others who care about celebrating and preserving our City’s stories at this casual get-together. This is a free event, but we ask that you register ahead of time.

American Revolution and the Fate of the World: A Talk by Dr. Richard Bell
2026-04-12 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
The American Revolution was not only the colonies’ triumphant liberation from the rule of an overbearing England; it was also a cataclysm that pulled in participants from around the globe and threw the entire world order into chaos. The “War of Independence” manifests itself as a sprawling struggle that upended the lives of millions of people on every continent and fundamentally transformed the way the world works, disrupting trade, restructuring penal systems, stirring famine, and creating the first global refugee crisis. On April 12, join acclaimed University of Maryland history professor Dr. Richard Bell as he upends much of what we thought we knew about the American Revolution.

The Making of America’s Greatest Classical Architect: A Talk by Charlie Duff
2026-05-24 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineers Club / Garrett Jacobs Mansion, 11 West Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
John Russell Pope designed the National Gallery, the National Archives, the Jefferson Memorial, and dozens of other buildings of national importance. He was arguably the greatest master of classical architecture in American history. So how did this New Yorker get his start in Baltimore? He wasn’t from here. He didn’t go to school here. But it was a Baltimorean who gave him his first independent commission, and it was Baltimoreans who gave him the chance to build his first museum. On May 24, join Baltimore historian and architecture buff Charlie Duff to investigate Pope’s work in Baltimore and his lasting impact on America.
