Fall is just around the corner, and we’re looking forward to walking tour weather! We hope you can join us on Saturday, September 8 with a tour by our own Eli Pousson sharing stories of slavery and emancipation in Mount Vernon together with a guided tour of the recently updated Civil War exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society.
The following weekend on Saturday, September 15, historian and radio personality Lisa Simeone will walk us around Charles Village showing off the neighborhood’s fascinating history and eclectic architecture. And, on Wednesday, September 26, our hosts at Sheppard Pratt are leading a tour of their historic campus that has been the home of pioneering health care for over a century.
Next month, we are kicking off our Baltimore history lecture series in partnership with the Garrett Jacobs Mansion Endowment Fund. On Sunday, September 23, local historian Jack Burkert is delivering an afternoon talk entitled: The Port of Baltimore: Shaping the City Over the Ages. Monthly through the fall and winter, we’ll offer talks by Wayne Schaumburg, Ric Cottam, and Antero Pietila. Find the full list of upcoming talks on our calendar.
Enjoy the start of fall as you learn a little more about Baltimore on a tour or talk next month!
Port of Baltimore, April 20, 2017. Photo by Alfred Barraza. ACE-IT NAB.
One hundred years ago, newly-wed couple Louis and Esther Rheb started making fudge and taffy out of their house on Wilkens Avenue. Join us on an August 8 tour to discover the story of Rheb’s candies and tour the family house and garage where a fourth generation still carries on this legacy business and long-time Baltimore favorite sweet spot.
Mark your calendar for a tour on Saturday, September 8 where we will visit the Maryland Historical Society’s newly updated exhibit “Divided Voices: Maryland in the Civil War,” then walk around Mount Vernon Place with our own Eli Pousson, and hear the neighborhood’s stories of slavery and emancipation. The following weekend, on Saturday, September 15, radio host, architectural historian, and Charles Village resident Lisa Simeone will lead a walking tour covering the colorful history of this rowhouse neighborhood.
We’re also pleased to announce a new lecture series in partnership with the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion. About once a month from September until March 2019, we’ll feature a different speaker on Baltimore history. The first speaker is historian Jack Burkert talking about the Port of Baltimore on Sunday, September 23. Other speakers include Wayne Schaumburg, Antero Pietilla, and Ric Cottom. Come to one or come to all!
We hope you are staying cool this summer and can stay tuned as we line up our fall tours, talks, and events.
The Neighborhood Design Center and Baltimore Heritage are searching for an experienced architect, engineer, or contractor who can help assess the condition of one of the original six branches of the Enoch Pratt Free Library—a building that now houses the nonprofit Village Learning Place. If you join our team, we need your help in preparing a condition assessment of this St. Paul Street landmark that the Village Learning Place staff and board members can use to prioritize their rehabilitation and preservation projects.
The Village Learning Place is an independent library that houses educational programs, enrichment opportunities, and informational resources for residents in Charles Village and throughout Baltimore City. Over 7,000 Baltimore City residents hold VLP library cards and, at this small brick building, they can find and borrow any of nearly 20,000 circulating books including an excellent collection of children’s literature.
How do you sign up to volunteer?
NDC welcomes volunteers from a range of backgrounds and experiences but this opportunity is best suited to an architect or engineer with previous experience making visual assessments of existing buildings and recommending possible treatments.
If you are already registeredas a volunteer with NDC, log in to your account then apply for “Village Learning Place Assessment – Senior Designer” on NDC’s list of volunteer opportunities.
If you have never volunteered with NDC before, please take two minutes to complete a volunteer application and select “Senior Designer [BaltimoreVillage Learning Place Assessment]” under “Project Sign-Up”.
Please sign up ASAP! Anyone interested in this opportunity can expect to hear back from the Neighborhood Design Center by late January. For questions, please contact Laura Wheaton at lwheaton@ndc-md.org or Eli Pousson at pousson@baltimoreheritage.org.
Together with the Baltimore City Historical Society, we are excited to present two upcoming programs on Baltimore’s LGBT history with a talk by historian John Wood on Thursday, June 20 and a walking tour of Charles Village with Richard Oloizia, Louis Hughes and many more special guests on Saturday, June 22.
The Baltimore Gay Community: The Early Years
Thursday, June 20, 2013, Reception at 7:00 PM, lecture at 7:30 PM
2521 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
Mayor Kurt Schmoke at Gay Pride after Gay Rights Bill passed, 1988
The Baltimore City Historical Society & Village Learning Place are hosting the final spring Baltimore History Evening with a presentation by John Wood, a local historian and teacher at the McDonogh School on the early history of Baltimore’s gay community. Wood will share how members of the city’s LGBT community organized and fought for civil rights from 1975 up through the passage of the city’s landmark gay and lesbian civil-rights bill in 1988. The period was shaped by the growth of pride in gay and lesbian identity, tensions between gay men and lesbians, the impact of AIDS, and the professionalization of the equal rights campaign during the 1980s. The program will include special guest Jody Landers, a City Council member at the time the bill passed, talking about the impact that negative opposition testimony during the bill’s hearing had upon his vote.
Charles Village Pride! LGBT Heritage Walking Tour
Saturday, June 22, 2013, 10:00 AM through 12:00 PM
Meet at Normal’s Books & Records, 425 East 31st Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 Sign up online today! Tickets are $10 for Baltimore Heritage members, $15 for non-members
Gay Pride in Wyman Park, June 1988
Although Charles Village is better known for its colorful “painted ladies,” the neighborhood was home to many of the activists and institutions at the heart of the city’s LGBT community in the 1970s and 1980s. Historian Richard Oloizia and activists Shirley Parry and Louis Hughes will take us on a walk past local landmarks from the original home of the Gay Community Center of Baltimore, now the GLCCB, to the St. Paul Street church that supported the growth of the Metropolitan Community Church, Baltimore’s oldest LGBT religious organization, and the radical feminist publishers, writers and activists that gave a voice to lesbian authors who might not otherwise have been read. Whether you lived this history or are learning it for the first time, this tour is a unique opportunity to explore the places that shaped the growth of Baltimore’s LGBT community and civil rights movement.
