The Life and Work of Architect Poldi Hirsch (Virtual Talk)
2022-08-19 13:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Virtual, MD, United States
This presentation will examine the life and work of Harford County architect Poldi Hirsch, AIA, looking at her career as a female architect in Maryland during the 1960s, her design philosophy and influences, and her principal works. Born in Germany in 1926, Poldi Hirsch was one of several European-born or trained architects who practiced in Maryland during the postwar period. Educated in Israel and Switzerland, Hirsch immigrated to the U.S. with her husband and children in 1953, eventually settling in Havre de Grace, where she established an architectural practice. Hirsch focused on residential design, including multi-family apartment buildings and single-family dwellings, and her work in Havre de Grace reflects West Coast and European approaches to modernism tempered with an awareness of the social dimension of residential design. The biography of Poldi Hirsch, who struggled to establish her career in Havre de Grace despite her talent and European architectural training, is a testament to the perseverance of women architects, and illustrates the progress made by women for greater gender equality during the twentieth century.
The presentation will focus particularly on the Hirsch Family Residence in Havre de Grace, which was designed by Poldi Hirsch and constructed in 1969-1970. The Hirsch Residence is one of the significant modernist residences designed by Poldi Hirsch in Havre de Grace during the 1960s that embodies the core tenets of the Modern Movement. Hirsch, and her physician husband, Gunther Hirsch, sought to provide a healthier living environment for families through a merger of public health and design, and her residential designs feature ample natural daylighting, spatial organization attuned to the needs of working families, and a merger of the indoor and outdoor experience. The Hirsch Residence displays all of these characteristics, and its sleek modernist lines, exterior of California Redwood and locally quarried stone, and non-traditional fenestration stand apart from other houses in Havre de Grace constructed during the same period. This presentation will highlight the research and documentation undertaken by EHT Traceries during the preparation of a National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Hirsch Residence. The documentation, prepared through the Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grant program awarded to BAF by the Maryland Historical Trust, builds upon the Multiple Property Documentation Form Women in Maryland Architecture, 1920-1970, presented in Session 1.

About the presenter
John Gentry is Senior Architectural Historian at EHT Traceries, Inc., a historic preservation consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from DePaul University and a Masters in Historic Preservation from the University of Maryland, College Park. As an architectural historian and cultural resource management professional, John is experienced in researching, documenting, and assessing historic buildings and landscapes. He has successfully listed individual properties and districts in the National Register of Historic Places and local landmark registries in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, and several other U.S. states. In addition, he has completed numerous compliance-driven survey and documentation projects for government agencies, architects, and developers. John is a member of the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and the D.C. Preservation League.

About this event
This program is hosted on Zoom. Upon registering you will receive an email confirmation and a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact mstella@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation (BAF) and Baltimore Heritage present the Virtual Histories Series: 30 minute live virtual tours and presentations focusing on Baltimore architecture, preservation and history. Hosted every Friday at 1:00 pm EST.
Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support BAF and Baltimore Heritage. Your support helps us make up for lost tour and program revenue from COVID-19 and create more virtual programs like this.

The Evolution of the Hopkins Retrospective (Virtual Talk)
2022-09-09 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
Public historian and archivist Allison Seyler will detail the evolution of the Hopkins Retrospective Program at Johns Hopkins University. This initiative, created by President Ronald J. Daniels in 2013 was intended to draw lessons from past experiences to look forward to the university’s collective future. It was also an attempt to bring together historians and archivists from the institution’s different repositories to work on collaborative projects and efforts, ones that might illuminate marginalized or underrepresented groups throughout the university and health system’s histories. Over the last 9 years, the program has grown and includes many different components: historical research, oral history interviews, student fellowships, online exhibitions, public programming, and archival processing. Allison will discuss different aspects of this work, elaborate on current projects underway, and talk about the work ahead.

About the presenter
Allison Seyler is an archivist and public historian with roots in and a commitment to Baltimore City. She currently serves as the Hopkins Retrospective Program Manager at Johns Hopkins University. Her research as a graduate student at UMBC, archivist on the Legacy of Slavery team at the Maryland State Archives, and now asks how historians can illuminate ordinary peoples’ experiences using archival records. Taking it a step further, she investigates how we make these stories relevant and accessible to public audiences, while directly confronting issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the field. Allison served on the board of the Baltimore City Historical Society from 2018 to 2022 and volunteers for the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter.

About this event
This program is hosted on Zoom. Upon registering you will receive an email confirmation and a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact mstella@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation (BAF) and Baltimore Heritage present the Virtual Histories Series: 30 minute live virtual tours and presentations focusing on Baltimore architecture, preservation and history. Hosted every Friday at 1:00 pm EST.
Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support BAF and Baltimore Heritage. Your support helps us make up for lost tour and program revenue from COVID-19 and create more virtual programs like this.

Fall Lecture: Preservation for the People with Dr. Nicole King
2022-09-29 18:00 - 19:00 | MICA Brown Center/ Falvey Hall, 1300 Mt. Royal Ave, Baltimore, MD, United States
Join us for our annual Fall Lecture and Doors Open Baltimore’s kickoff lecture with Nicole King, Ph.D!
After an 18-year fight to save her home from condemnation by Baltimore City, Sonia Eaddy won. The historic Sarah Ann Street alley houses will be preserved and offered for homeownership after being rehabbed by Shelley Halstead of Black Women Build. However, the story of redevelopment in Poppleton illustrates how Baltimore City failed to see and hear the people of this historically Black neighborhood along the Highway to Nowhere. Working with residents on research, public programming, and organizing to amplify the stories of legacy residents fighting for development without displacement, we were able to achieve a reset on a misguided redevelopment project underway since 2004. The City’s stance is that we cannot change the past and must move forward in good faith. As a cultural historian and preservationist, I argue we must honor and remember the past and how we got here in order to do the hard work to repair and make amends for the damage done to Black neighborhoods and people in Baltimore. We need real change on how development works in Baltimore and cities like it.

About the Speaker
Nicole King, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of American Studies and director of the Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community, and Culture at UMBC. Her research focuses on issues of place, power, and economic development. She co-founded the Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition public humanities project where students work with local partners to research historic neighborhoods and complete cultural documentation projects. She is an editor of the book Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City (Rutgers University Press, 2019).

Idlewylde: A Community on the City Line (Virtual Talk)
2022-10-07 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
Idlewylde, a community of more than 700 homes situated on the Chinquapin Run and Herring Run-B watershed, is the oldest of the suburban neighborhoods of South Towson. The community has a mix of housing styles characteristic of the development of suburban neighborhoods during the time of its growth, ranging from 1920s bungalows and small Cape Cods to brick Colonials and Mid-Century Modern designs. Its development differed greatly from that of its younger neighbors, Anneslie and Stoneleigh, chiefly owing to the development of The Alameda as an arterial road terminating in Idlewylde and to the northward extension of Baltimore City in 1918 to Idlewylde’s southern border.
The Idlewylde neighborhood partially occupies land that was once Beulah, the estate of Joshua Regester (1816-1906), a Baltimore brassfounder whose bells graced Baltimore City Hall and other buildings of note. Beulah once extended north to Stevenson’s Woods (now the Country Club of Maryland golf course), south almost to today’s City-County line, west to the Birckhead estate (“Anneslie”) and the Brown estate (“Stoneleigh”) and east to the Herring Run tributary. The family’s farmstead and summer home, built in 1853, is the oldest building standing in south Towson. It and the Idlewylde United Methodist Church from 1917, the oldest house of worship in the area, are listed on the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties.
This special program is hosted in partnership with the Friends of Maryland’s Olmsted Parks & Landscapes as part of their Olmsted 200 programming, a nationwide celebration of the firm’s work and influence, on the Bicentennial Anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted’s birth. In 1928 the developer contacted the Olmsted Brothers, the renowned landscape architects responsible for designing the City neighborhoods of Roland Park and Homeland, to commission a street layout for the undeveloped northern section contoured by the ravines of Herring Run, but the project was nipped in the bud by the stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression. However, Idlewylde turns out to have an unexpected connection to Frederick Law Olmsted.
Come learn of this as well as celebrate the heritage of this unique community as shared by two Idlewylde community members who will be available to answer participants’ questions after the presentation.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:
Paul Romney is a longtime resident of the Idlewylde Community and serves as the newsletter editor and secretary of the Community Association. He is a professional historian specializing in the history of Canada.
Bryan Fisher, AIA, NCARB, is a registered architect and a historic preservation specialist. He has contributed significantly to numerous important architectural projects including work for the U.S. Capitol, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, dozens of National Park Service sites throughout the U.S., the GSA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, NAVFAC, Washington College, and the Maryland Historical Society. In his spare time he enjoys sailing, exploring Idlewylde, and working on his Mid-Century Modern home.

ABOUT THIS SERIES:
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation and Baltimore Heritage, Inc. have been hosting this Friday Virtual Histories Series of live lunchtime presentations and virtual tours since the start of the pandemic as a way to share an understanding of architecture, preservation, and history of the Baltimore region with the public. Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support these organizations to help make up for lost tour and program revenue from the pandemic and create more virtual programs like this.
Upon registering you will receive an email confirmation and a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact mhudson@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.
Hope you can join us!

The Evolution of Windy Gates Estate and its Olmsted Gardens (Virtual Talk)
2022-10-21 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
The Windy Gates country estate of the Jenkins family from 1882 to 1981 was the centerpiece of a much larger property that in its heyday, lolled down the rolling hills stretching along Lake Avenue from Roland Avenue to Falls Road. On the heels of their work on the Roland Park neighborhood to the south, the Olmsted Brothers were employed from 1902 through 1906, to do extensive landscaping design for the property, producing a detailed plan for the estate and specifications for approximately 150 different planting beds.
When the heirs wished to sell the unique 20-acre property forty years ago, they offered a unique contest awarded to the developer presenting the most inspired and pleasing plan. Based on designs prepared by Peterson and Brickbauer Architects, the Azola Company was selected to redevelop the site into the Devon Hill Residential Community. They saved much of the historic landscaping, converted the historic Queen Anne-style country house and its carriage house and barns into condominium units and residential homes, and added additional residential buildings in keeping with the scale and historic character of the site.
This presentation by Thom Rinker will draw on the extensive material, vintage drawings, and photographs found in the records of the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens, the Jenkins family archives, and the surveying firm of S.J. Martenet & Company. He will share unique insights into this Baltimore County treasure that still retains a quiet serenity and gentility over the landscape.
This special program is hosted in partnership with the Maryland Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects in celebration of their 50th anniversary and the Friends of Maryland’s Olmsted Parks & Landscapes (FMOPL) as part of their Olmsted 200 programming, a nationwide celebration of the firm’s work and influence, on the Bicentennial Anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted’s birth.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:
Thom Rinker and his wife lived in Devon Hill for over 15 years and is the author of a recently released three-volume book set entitled Devon Hill: The Pleasure of Living in an Historic Landscape. The books present a detailed narrative of the evolution of the landscape and architectural history of the property as it has evolved over its 175 years. Volume I covers the 100-year period the Jenkins family and its decients owned Windy Gates, Volume II covers the subsequent period after 1983 when the Devon Hill community has maintained and enhanced the property, and Volume III contains a review of the correspondence, field notes, and landscape plans in the Olmsted Brothers’ project files.

ABOUT THIS SERIES:
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation and Baltimore Heritage, Inc. have been hosting this Friday Virtual Histories Series of live lunchtime presentations and virtual tours since the start of the pandemic as a way to share an understanding of architecture, preservation, and history of the Baltimore region with the public. Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support these organizations to help make up for lost tour and program revenue from the pandemic and create more virtual programs like this.
Upon registering you will receive an email confirmation and a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact mhudson@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.
Hope you can join us!

No Ball Playing: Baltimore Kids Playing in Streets and Hanging on Corners (Virtual Talk)
2022-11-04 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
Before the early 1900s, families in Baltimore never had to tell a kid to “watch out for cars”. However, as the number of cars in the city grew during the early 20th century, playing in the street became increasingly dangerous and even illegal. Criminalizing children at play has a long history in Baltimore from complaints in the Sun about young “baseball maniacs” breaking windows in the 1870s to a 1898 police order designed to “disperse” children from gathering on newly “smoothly paved streets to play.” In 1910, the Children’s Playground Association of Baltimore formed a “Guild of Play” to host supervised street play at locations around the city and started working to keep children safe through building more playgrounds. Despite their efforts and others, more than one in three East Baltimore youth surveyed in 2017 said they didn’t have or didn’t know of any safe place to play in their neighborhood.
Join planner and historian Eli Pousson for a lunch-time talk on the history of street play and the policing of children in public space from the 19th century through the present-day.

About the speaker
Eli Pousson is a local historian, former Baltimore Heritage staff member, Bikemore board member, and INSPIRE Planner for the Baltimore City Department of Planning (since June 2022). Eli is also a parent of three busy kids that give him plenty of opportunities to visit playgrounds, play in the street, and shout “watch out for cars”.
Please see your email confirmation for instructions on how to get the Zoom Link for this program. If you have any questions, please email mhudson@aiabalt.com.

Frederick Douglass, the Canton Company, and Canton History
2022-11-18 13:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, MD, United States
What started out as a volunteer effort to clean up trash on Canton’s waterfront led Dr. Raymond Bahr on a path of research that has brought to light where Frederick Douglass escaped from his enslavement, how the Canton Company shaped Baltimore, and the national impact that Canton’s industries had on the growth of America. Join Dr. Bahr as he shares his research and findings on this under-told part of our history

About this event

Please see your email confirmation for instructions on how to get the Zoom Link for this program. If you have any questions, please email mhudson@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation (BAF) and Baltimore Heritage present the Virtual Histories Series: 30 minute live virtual tours and presentations focusing on Baltimore architecture, preservation and history. Hosted every Friday at 1:00 pm EST.
Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support BAF and Baltimore Heritage. Your support helps us make up for lost tour and program revenue from COVID-19 and create more virtual programs like this.

Examining Forced Labor at the Northampton Iron Furnace through Archaeology (Virtual Talk)
2022-12-16 13:00 - 13:30 | Baltimore, MD, United States
From the 1760s to the 1820s, convicts, indentured servants, and enslaved peoples worked and died producing and forging iron at the Ridgely family’s Northampton Iron Furnace outside of Baltimore. The iron was crucial to the growth of the British Empire, the American Revolution, and the building of the town of Baltimore. By using and controlling people who were marginalized in society, the Ridgely family was able to exploit their labor and lives to generate considerable wealth and political power. Archaeologist Adam Fracchia will present the findings of his archaeological work at the furnace and discuss the structure of labor relations and the experience of workers at the furnace.
Please see your email confirmation for instructions on how to get the Zoom Link for this program. If you have any questions, please email mhudson@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation (BAF) and Baltimore Heritage present the Virtual Histories Series: 30 minute live virtual tours and presentations focusing on Baltimore architecture, preservation and history. Hosted every Friday at 1:00 pm EST.
Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support BAF and Baltimore Heritage. Your support helps us make up for lost tour and program revenue from COVID-19 and create more virtual programs like this.

Baltimore & Boston: Frame Suburbs and Rowhomes (Virtual Talk)
2023-02-10 13:00 - 13:30 | 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)

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.
