The West Side of downtown was in the spotlight last week as the focus of a five-day study by a panel from the national Urban Land Institute (see Saturday’s Baltimore Sun article) convened by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to provide guidance for the area’s ongoing revitalization. The panel presented preliminary recommendations to the Mayor last Friday and emphasized the importance of historic buildings as vital assets for the West Side’s future. Please continue to follow our blog over the next two weeks, as we share a series of posts explaining the history of the West Side preservation and redevelopment effort and a few of the ways this area matters to many people in Baltimore. This series kicks off with a free lunch time walking tour this Thursday, December 16 at 12:15 pm.
Lexington Market, 1903 | courtesy LOC
If you are curious about the history of Baltimore’s West Side and its future, please join us on an informal tour beginning at the east entrance to Lexington Market (Lexington & Eutaw Streets). We’ll look at the “Superblock,” historic department stores, cast-iron buildings, and more. It’s likely going to be as cold as all get out, but we’ll walk fast and won’t stay out too long.
West Side Lunchtime Walking Tour | East Entrance to Lexington Market (Lexington & Eutaw Streets)
This week’s Baltimore Building from the Week from Dr. John Breihan is the iconic Bromo Seltzer Tower. After you learn a bit about the building, you can see it in person and pick up a few holiday gifts at The Shop at Bromo selling an assorted collection of original arts and crafts by local artisans from now through Saturday, January 8, 2011.
Image courtesy Jack Breihan
Baltimore’s favorite Beaux-Arts building is modeled on the tower of the fortified medieval Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, begun in 1299. Just over six hundred years later, Captain Isaac E. Emerson, a Baltimore pharmacist, visited Florence and determined to bring a bit of it back to his home town. He had the means to do so because of the success of Bromo-Seltzer, a fizzy cure for various forms of overindulgence. In 1911, he commissioned a replica tower, 20 feet shorter than the original, to be attached to the six-story plant of the Emerson Chemical Co. Unlike the tower in Florence, this was of modern steel-framed construction and equipped with an elevator; its wall were pierced by numerous windows, giving Bromo-Seltzer executives sweeping views over downtown Baltimore.
In 1936, the revolving 30-foot Bromo-Seltzer bottle atop the building (another deviation from the Florentine original) was removed due to structural cracks. In the 1970s, the old selzer plant was demolished and replaced by a brutalist fire station but the huge Bromo Selzer clock still remains and, in 2007, the tower was remodeled for artists’ studios. In its uniqueness and varied history the Bromo Tower symbolizes the successes of historic preservation in Baltimore.
Two major fires last night in Downtown Baltimore and in Mount Vernon displaced many businesses & workers and have severely damaged several historic buildings. Thanks to the hard work of the Baltimore City Fire Department and other firefighters from across the region, the fires were contained and there have been no serious injuries reported. The buildings affected by the fires include a small row of theaters built following the 1904 Fire and an 1850s former residence that served as the final home of Baltimore Sun founder, A.S. Abell.
400 block of E. Baltimore Street in 1905, courtesy MHS
The four damaged buildings from the Downtown fire are located on the north side of the 400 block of East Baltimore Street, including several contributing buildings within the National Register designated Business and Government Historic District. In the late 19th century, these included the German Bank of Baltimore and several commercial buildings which remained up until their destruction by the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. The building at the corner of Baltimore and Holiday Streets was rebuilt in 1908 by Pearce & Schenck as The Grand Theater. Next door, Philadelphia film producer Sidney Lubin established the Lubins Theater which later became the Plaza and, more recently, Gayety Show World.
Mount Vernon looking west down Monument Street, courtesy LOC/Detroit Publishing Co.
The two damaged buildings in Mount Vernon on the west side of the 800 block of North Charles Street are contributing buildings within the Mount Vernon local and National Register designated historic district and date from the early 1850s. The four-story building located at the northwest corner of Charles and Madison Streets is particularly significant as the former residence of A.S. Abell, the founder of the Baltimore Sun. Abell purchased the building from the Kremelberg estate in 1883 and remained in the home up until his death on April 19, 1888. A 1912 description of the home noted, “The house is a four-story marble and brick building, which included about twenty-five rooms, and a magnificent winding staircase in the center of the dwelling, which towers to the roof, and in itself gives an idea of the elaborateness of the structure.” (More.)
For us at Baltimore Heritage, we are particularly saddened by the damage to the offices of noted preservation architects Murphy & Dittenhafer, located at the top floor of the former A.S. Abell residence, and specifically for our board member Matthew Compton who is an architect with this firm. As Downtown and Mount Vernon work to recover from these fires, we plan to support efforts to preserve and restore the damaged buildings.
This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week could go by many different names. It began as the Baltimore Trust Company but was later known as the Maryland National Bank, Nations Bank and at the present the Bank of America Building–
Image courtesy Jack Breihan
Besides college campuses, the Beaux-Arts combination of the historical Gothic style and modern technology was very popular for skyscrapers. Some, like the Woolworth Building in New York or the Chicago Tribune tower, were directly modeled on medieval precedent – just enormously taller. Other early 20th-century skyscrapers combined Gothic verticality with streamlined decorations derived from the new airplane and automobile industries. New York’s Chrysler Building is a prime example. Its contemporary in Baltimore, originally the Baltimore Trust Co., leans more to Gothic than to Art Deco, especially in its cavernous banking floor. At 34 stories and 509 feet, it was Baltimore’s tallest building for a generation before being edged out by I.M. Pei’s USF&G tower, 529 feet. Baltimore Trust went bankrupt in the Great Depression, but a succession of banks have maintained this crowning spire of the Baltimore skyline.
This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan, the Hansa Haus at Redwood and Charles Streets, is right next door to last week’s building– the Savings Bank of Baltimore. The Hansa Haus reflects both Baltimore’s rich German heritage and the history of immigration into Locust Point as the former Baltimore office of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company–
Image courtesy Jack Breihan
A favorite Beaux-Arts era historical-revival building housed the Baltimore offices of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, a decidedly up-to-date modern enterprise when this building was erected in 1912. Its site, adjacent to the Baltimore Savings Bank (see last week) testified to the importance of German immigration to Baltimore in the early 20th century. To prevent said immigrants from being too homesick, Hansa Haus resembled a half-timbered 16th-century German Rathaus, perhaps the Zwicken in Halberstadt. Originally coats of arms of the cities in the Hanseatic League decorated the upper floor. Since the departure of the steamship line, Hansa Haus has had a variety of uses; it remains a challenge to sympathetic re-use.
