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,
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.
This week’s edition of the Baltimore Building of the Week takes us to North Baltimore at the edge of Roland Park to appreciate an autumn photo of the Greenaway Cottages designed by architect Charles E. Cassell (ca 1838-1916) in 1874.
These three cottages along 40th Street epitomize the Victorian Gothic style: polychrome stone and tile, steeply gabled roofs, deliberately asymmetric plan. Originally identical, the three cottages have each been altered over the years in different ways. They were built in 1874 as summer retreats for various branches of the wealthy Greenaway family – who made their way north when they wished to flee from the heat of their mansion on Mount Vernon Place. The cottages are currently owned and well maintained by Roland Park Place.
This edition of the Baltimore Building of the Week series features two Victorian Gothic Churches that should be familiar to Baltimore Heritage members from our Mt. Vernon Open Houses during our 50th Anniversary Celebration and our February Behind the Scenes Tour of First and Franklin.
These highly visible churches represent another Victorian style originating in Europe, known here as Victorian Gothic. Like the contemporary Second Empire style, the Victorian Gothic shows off modern industrial materials like polished marble, encaustic tiles, and structural iron. Unlike the Second Empire, Victorian Gothic buildings tend to be deliberately asymmetrical in plan. Completed in 1872, the Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church marked a change in style for Methodists, who had previously worshiped in simple, classical buildings. Not so here! The polychrome exterior combines brown sandstone with a greenish “serpentine” stone and polished marble. At about the same time and only a few blocks away on West Madison Street, First Presbyterian (now merged with the congregation of the Franklin Street Presbyterian) added a radically asymmetric pair of steeples to a pretty antebellum Gothic Revival sanctuary. The steeples, built mostly of iron, are hard-edged and dramatic–anything but pretty.
This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan serves double duty as the first in a new series highlighting the 2010 Baltimore Heritage Preservation Award Winners! The American Brewery Building at 1701 North Gay Street might be the most “Baltimore” of all buildings in the city. It is in the style of High Victorian architecture, as so much of our city was built and it is just plain quirky. Since 1973, the 1887 J.F. Weisner and Sons brewery building (later known as the American Brewery) stood as a hulking shell lording over a distressed neighborhood. Its restoration is a noteworthy symbol of optimism for the historic building the surrounding community. The conversion of the brewery into a health care and community center for Humanim more than fits the organization’s motto: “To identify those in greatest need and provide uncompromising human services.” We are thankful that they chose this grand building in Baltimore to carry out that mission. A 2010 Baltimore Heritage Preservation Award in the Adaptive Reuse and Compatible Design category goes to owner Humanim, Inc., architects Cho Benn Holback + Associates, and contractor Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse.
On a prominent ridge-top site in East Baltimore, this flamboyant Second Empire extravaganza was actually a working industrial complex between 1887 and 1973 (with a break for Prohibition). Perhaps John Frederick Weissner, who presided over the American Brewery, hoped that its towering turrets and Mansard roof, visible over much of the city, would generate a profitable thirstiness for his product. After years of vacancy and decay, the brewery buildings have been restored to life by Humanim, a community-service nonprofit active in the impoverished neighborhood around the brewery.
This week’s featured Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is the stylish Second Empire Rowhouse,
St. Paul Street is particularly rich in rowhouses in the Second Empire style. Note the elaborate window moldings and of course the crowning Mansard roof. These houses were probably constructed in the 1870s, the heyday of the style. The grandest of the Second Empire city houses was the mansion of Enoch Pratt on Monument Street, an 1870s-era remodeling of an original Greek Revival house of 1847. The house has been preserved by the Maryland Historical Society.
