Tag: Central Baltimore

Baltimore Building of the Week: Cemetery Gates

This week is a bit darker than usual with a set of three historic cemetery gates in Baltimore, including the Westminster Burying Ground, Greenmount Cemetery, and the Baltimore Cemetery on North Avenue.

Greenmount Cemetery, courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore’s explosive growth in the late 18th and early 19th century soon created a demand for burial sites. The Presbyterian burial ground on West Fayette Street was established in 1786 and is the final resting place of many eminent early Baltimoreans, including Edgar Allen Poe. The Egyptian-style gate was probably added during the eclectic period in American architecture in the 1840s. Later, still larger cemeteries turned to the Gothic Revival style. Robert Cary Long, Jr., designed the elaborate gatehouse for Green Mount Cemetery in the mid 1840s; the less well known gatehouse for Baltimore Cemetery seems to be from about the same era. It stands at the eastern end of North Avenue.

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Baltimore Building of the Week: Family and Children’s Services

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is a Gothic cottage used by Family and Children’s Services of Central Maryland.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The early Gothic Revival style did not lend itself to rowhouse design, but steep-gabled cottages, sometimes with bargeboarding or “gingerbread” moldings often appear along older road and turnpike routes out of Baltimore. A particularly pretty example, on Lanvale Street in Bolton Hill, has long been used and maintained by the Family and Children’s Services of Central Maryland. Originally designed by Robert Cary Long, Jr., in 1848, it also features bay windows added by Edmund G. Lind in 1862 and a side porch by Lawrence Hall Fowler in 1915.

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Town Theater

The only theater in Baltimore (perhaps the entire country) to go from a theater to a parking garage and then back to a theater, the historic Town Theater has a long and colorful history with burlesque, vaudeville, and cinema. Work has just begun for its newest life as the future home of the Everyman Theatre, which is moving from its location on Charles Street. Please join us and Everyman director Vincent Lancisi for a tour of the historic Town Theater midway through its transformation.

Image courtesy Baltimore Sun/Amy Davis, 2009

Tour Information

Date: Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Time: 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Place: 315 West Fayette Street
(Between Howard and Eutaw, one block from the Hippodrome)
Parking is available in nearby lots, or better yet, take the Light Rail!
Cost: $10
Registration: Click Here to Register

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Baltimore Building of the Week: Gothic Revival Churches

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan are two Gothic Revival churches from architect Robert Cary Long, Jr.– the St. Alphonsus Catholic Church and New Unity Church Ministries, historically known as as the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church.

St.Alphonsus/Image courtesy Jack Breihan

At the same time as he was designing Greek Revival temples for immigrant Catholic and Jewish worshipers, the eclectic architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., also worked in the Gothic Revival. At St. Alphonsus Catholic Church (1845) and the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church (1847 – now New Unity Church Ministries), Long’s Gothic designs were more assured than Godefroy’s seminary chapel four decades earlier. St. Alphonsus, intended for Baltimore’s German Catholics, was based on medieval German hall churches; Franklin Street Presbyterian on Tudor-era architecture in England. In both cases, the church walls were originally coated in gray stucco intended to look like stone. Removing the stucco reveals pleasing pastel bricks, but also exposes them to deterioration that may threaten the long-term integrity of these fine churches.

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Behind the Scenes Tour of Wilson House B&B

President Woodrow Wilson has a number of connections to Baltimore, including the roots of his presidency that trace to a series of back-room deals made in a Mount Royal Terrace mansion during the 1912 Democratic National Convention here in Baltimore. Please join us for a tour of this mansion, now called the Wilson House, a 10,000 square foot wonderfully restored Victorian complete with castle-like turrets and curved balconies.

Tour Information

Date: Thursday, April 22, 2010
Time: 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. — Wine and Cheese
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. — Tour
Place: Wilson House B&B, 2100 Mount Royal Terrace (Baltimore, MD 21217)
Parking: Parking is available on the street nearby
Cost: $15 (includes wine and cheese reception)
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