The Pratt Central Library achieved second place in BAF's Architecture Madness tournament of Baltimore’s best buildings built between 1870 and today and hosted in celebration of AIA Baltimore’s 150th anniversary. In today’s Virtual History, we'll explore what makes this library so special and how it served as a national model for libraries that followed.
Amy Menzer discusses the design and development of WWI Era Historic Dundalk! The Bethlehem Steel Mill at Sparrows Point launched an effort to create a Garden City-style town in 1917 just before the US entered WWI. At the same time, the Federal Government began housing production for war workers. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (FLO Jr.) headed the Town Planning division of the new United States Housing Corporation. Several colleagues in the nascent profession of city planning who had worked with FLO Jr. on Roland Park and Forest Hills Gardens were all directly involved in designing Dundalk, including Baltimore architect Edward Palmer, Roland Park Company leader Edward Bouton, and architects Grosvenor Atterbury and Charles Wellford Leavitt. Their plans were inspired by their designs for more affluent areas, including curvilinear streets, separation of uses, green spaces, and restrictive covenants. We will explore how these plans created a new community for workers and managers, but was segregated by race.
For a tiny neighborhood squeezed between the University of Maryland and Camden Yards, Ridgely’s Delight contains an oversized history. George Washington slept here and Babe Ruth was born here! Join us to walk the preserved, picturesque streets of one of the earliest neighborhoods in Baltimore while we look back at the stories of both its famous visitors and the ordinary Baltimoreans who worked and raised their families here.
Baltimore is a city filled with a wide range of architectural treasures. Meg Fielding will take us on a virtual tour of Baltimore’s municipal buildings like pumping stations, fire houses, and beautiful government buildings that house the infrastructure and people that keep Baltimore going.
