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.
When the Scottish Rite Masons set out to build a new building in the 1920s, they dreamt big. They hired the nationally prominent architect John Russell Pope as a consultant (Pope designed the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Baltimore Museum of Art around the corner) and the ground breaking ceremony on May 1, 1930 included officiating with the gavel used by President George Washington at the Masonic groundbreaking of the U.S. Capitol building. The Italian Renaissance temple at the corner of Charles and 39th Streets includes an exterior of Indiana limestone with 10 columns 34 feet high, solid bronze doors that measure 14 by 18 feet, and an interior with gray marble wainscot and a black marble base. The Great Depression that had begun six months before unfortunately put a crimp on some of the grandest plans, but the 1100-seat auditorium that sits under a 60-ft. domed ceiling still could boast to be the largest auditorium south of New York when it was built. Please join us on a tour of the building and its Masonic elements.
Inherited from the great Baltimore historian Wayne Schaumburg, join Baltimore Heritage to tour Baltimore’s historic Green Mount Cemetery.
Opened in 1839, Green Mount is an early example of an urban-rural cemetery, that is, a cemetery with a park-like setting located close to the countryside. Green Mount is the final resting place of some of Maryland’s most famous, and infamous, figures including Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, William and Henry Walters, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, Betsy Patterson, A.S. Abell, John H. B. Latrobe, John Wilkes Booth, and Elijah Bond, who patented the Ouija Board!
Accessibility: Although there are some paved pathways, we will be walking over mostly uneven grassy terrain and cobblestones.
Baltimore's Seton Hill neighborhood, once known as the city's French Quarter, has a rich nineteenth-century history. On this walking tour through the beautiful old streets of Seton Hill, we will explore the surviving traces and look for the ghosts of the Victorian city. Come join historian Emma Katherine Bilski to step off the beaten path and hear stories of this neighborhood, including Baltimore's Black Catholic history, student "pranks and misdemeanors," the real history of Baltimore's asylums, and the human history of America's oldest Gothic Revival masterpiece.
Accessibility: We will be walking over some uneven grassy terrain and paving stones in addition to city sidewalks, and the tour will cover approximately 1.5 miles.
