Baltimore Heritage

Baltimore is a city filled with a wide range of architectural treasures. Some of the city's most beloved treasures are its historic school buildings, from the castle-like City College to the modernist Patterson Park High. The best architects in the city competed to design these impressive and important public buildings.

Leading this architectural adventure is Meg Fairfax Fielding, a past-president of BAF. 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 PigtownDesign.

Lake Clifton was Baltimore's crown jewel of a massive school building effort. What happened? This presentation will outline the history of Baltimore’s Lake Clifton High School. Completed in 1971 as the crown jewel of a massive school-building effort, the sprawling and state-of-the-art campus was expected to stimulate racial integration and ease school overcrowding. However, white students immediately rejected the school and the campus’ huge capacity was never filled. Lake Clifton developed a poor reputation around the city, and recently closed for good after years of restructuring and physical dilapidation. The campus is likely to soon be acquired and demolished by Morgan State University; thus, now is an ideal time to examine and commemorate Lake Clifton’s role in a tumultuous period of Baltimore’s history.

Early Black Architects have been practicing in Baltimore and Maryland since at least 1901. This rare presentation will feature the Early Black Architects whom practiced prior to 1970 in Baltimore. Participants will discover the unique heritage of Early Black Architects whom helped shape Baltimore, influenced the early generation of Black Architects and established early Black architectural firms.

Preserve the Baltimore Uprising began as a digital repository designed to preserve and make accessible original content captured and created by individual community members, grassroots organizations, and witnesses to the protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015. It is a people’s archive. For the people. By the people. Owned by all.

Public Historians strive to be both responsible and responsive. As scholars, we are responsible for upholding the highest standards of intellectual inquiry. As public servants, we are committed to responding to the needs, interests, and desires of our audiences and stakeholders. Sometimes it is difficult to balance these two demands. In this talk, Dr. Denise Meringolo, Professor and Director of Public History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, describes the processes, values, and ethical considerations underlying the creation of Preserve the Baltimore Uprising, a crowd-sourced digital collection.