Tag: Downtown

Fires damage historic buildings in Downtown & Mount Vernon

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

See also a 1987 photo & a 2001 photo of the 400 block of East Baltimore Street.

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.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Baltimore Trust Company

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.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Hansa Haus

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.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Savings Bank of Baltimore

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week is unfortunately really last week’s Baltimore Building of the Week as we play a bit of catch up. The Savings Bank of Baltimore is a classic bank building at the very heart of downtown–

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The Beaux-Arts movement of cloaking modern steel-framed buildings with historical architectural styles appears again. This time the style is drawn from ancient Greece. Built in 1907, this elaborate white marble Ionic temple sits atop three underground of parking and vaults. It was built for the Savings Bank of Baltimore, the city’s oldest bank.

Appropriately, the site is the corner of Charles and Baltimore Streets (from which all Baltimore street numbers are calculated). Catty-corner to it is the headquarters of the B&O Railroad, a more conventional Beaux-Arts skyscraper. Both were built in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. It currently houses offices.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Equitable Bank Building

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week is our first introduction to Baltimore’s tremendous historic skyscrapers, such as the 1891 Equitable Bank Building that survived the Great Baltimore Fire,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Another uniquely American style of the late 19th century originated in Chicago, where Louis Sullivan gave the new steel-framed “skyscrapers” unified facades of multistory arches. The former headquarters of Equitable Bank (shown here before exterior restoration) is Baltimore’s best version of the Sullivan/skyscraper style. Designed by Joseph Evans Sperry in 1891, it was gutted in the Great Baltimore Fire, but the frame and façade survived. After nearly a century’s service as an office building, it has been converted to residential use.