Historic Baltimore By Bus Tour: Celebrating 50 Years of Saving Historic Places

Step back into 1960 Baltimore:  Charles Center was just underway (with Mies van der Rohe’s One Charles Center two years from completion); Baltimore’s population had dropped by 10,000 people, down to 940,000; city planners had begun crafting highway plans to run through Fell’s Point, Mount Vernon, and West Baltimore; and Baltimore Heritage was founded to preserve historic places in Baltimore City.  To help celebrate our 50th anniversary, we are recreating a bus tour of historic sites in central Baltimore that launched our organization and the historic preservation movement in Baltimore City.  Please join us on this two-hour bus trip with our tour guides, local historians Wayne Schaumburg and Marsha Wise, as we connect the dots of historic preservation and city development between the Baltimore of 1960 and the Baltimore of today.

Tour Information

Date:     Sunday, October 3, 2010
Time:     Two tours (sign up for only one)
10:00 a.m. to noon
1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Cost:      $25
Place:    Meet at the Peale Museum (225 North Holliday Street, Baltimore 21202)
Free parking on the street

Note: The tour is by bus (school bus, to be exact) and will last two hours.  We will get off the bus a few times to examine historic places up close and stretch our legs.

Click Here to Register.
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2010 Preservation Awards: McDowell Building

McDowell Building, Image courtesy Brasher Design

Anchoring the historic Charles Street retail corridor for decades, the McDowell Building at 339 North Charles Street is a solid 4-story historic building that now houses 12 market rate apartments and retail space on the first floor. The preservation and renovation of the building strikingly revealed that there were actually two, not one, original entrances. The project team faithfully brought this dual-entry system back, along with recreating original millwork and saving the leaded glass transoms. With historic rehabilitation tax credits to help, the building once again is a great asset to historic Charles Street. The Adaptive Reuse and Compatible Design Award went to architect Brasher Design and contractors John E. Day Associates.

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Thank you for your support for Baltimore’s Hebrew Orphan Asylum

This Place Matters: Baltimore's Hebrew Orphan Asylum

The results of the This Place Matters Community Challenge are in and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum landed in the top 10! With 1563 votes we came in 9th place out of 108 contenders nationwide. Congratulations to the winner–the Historic Paramount Theatre in Austin, TX–and thank you to everyone who voted in support of the building.

Special thanks to the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Coppin Heights CDC, and Coppin State University for joining us in this effort. We also appreciated the great stories from Tim Tooten at WBAL (video), Jacques Kelly at the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Jewish Times, as well as posts on Baltimore Brew and the Baltidome Blog. Friends and neighbors–including the Alliance of Rosemont Community Organizations, the Baltimore National Heritage Area, the Baltimore Red Line, the Evergreen Protective Association, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Temple Oheb Shalom, and Preservation Maryland–generously helped to spread the word across the city.

Although we did not win the $25,000 prize, your support for Baltimore’s Hebrew Orphan Asylum has affirmed our shared commitment to continue the hard work ahead, to preserve the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and restore the building to its historic role as an asset to the community. In the next few weeks, we will follow up with everyone who voted to offer a few suggestions on how you may be able to stay involved with the work to preserve this rare Baltimore landmark.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Bars and Brothels of Fell’s Point

Eighteenth-century visitor John David declared Fell’s Point “a place remarkable for its commerce of various kinds, for here ships land their cargoes and their crews wait not even for the twilight to fly to the polluted arms of the harlot.” Please join us and architectural historian Ms. Sherri Marsh Johns on a short walking tour of some of the notorious bars and brothels (and other possibly more reputable places) of historic Fell’s Point.

Tour Information

Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Time: 5:30 to 6:30 PM (or a tad later)
Place: Meet in front of 1629-31 Aliceanna Street, about ½ block west of Broadway
This is the old Captain’s Hotel. Park at meters on the street.
Cost: $10
Registration: Click Here to Register.
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Baltimore Building of the Week: George C. Wilkins House

This week’s edition of the Baltimore Building of the Week series is the George C. Wilkins House, built in 1876 at the corner of St. Paul Street and Biddle Street,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Although the Victorian Gothic style, with all its spikey verticality and asymmetry, did not lend itself to the rowhouse, this attached house in Mount Vernon displays all these attributes. It was designed by the architect J. Appleton Wilson in 1876.