Tag: Mount Vernon

Side by side images of a painted synagogue with columns in front and an ornate brick synagoe with arched windows.

Historic Synagogues and Mount Vernon Love Stories: Upcoming Talks & Tours in February

Hang on to your hats and fight back the February “blahs” by coming out for one of our upcoming talks and tours. On Sunday, February 10, we’re teaming up with the Jewish Museum of Maryland to offer a ”two-fer” tour of historic synagogues. We’ll start with a walk through the 174-year-old Lloyd Street Synagogue (the third oldest synagogue in the country!) and then head down the block to visit the ornately-detailed B’Nai Israel which maintained the Jewish community presence in East Baltimore since the 1870s.

On Sunday, February 17, we’re bringing back Jamie Hunt’s popular Mount Vernon Love Stories walking tours. Starting at the Marburg Mansion on Mount Vernon Place, this walk covers two centuries of celebrity gossip, intrigue, and off-beat love lives from John Eager Howard in the 1780s to Jada Pinkett Smith in the 1990. We are offering the same tour in the morning at 11:00 am and the afternoon at 1:00 pm so sign up for the time that works for you.

On Sunday, February 3, we’re planning a warm welcome at the Engineers Club for everyone who wants to hear historian Wayne Schaumburg tell the story of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. And, finally, we still have a few tickets left for our Saturday, February 9 tour of legacy businesses and catacombs  at Lexington Market.

To borrow from the endlessly popular World War II-era British slogan Keep Calm and Carry On, we’ll end by saying, Keep Warm and Tour On!

The wreckage of downtown following the Great Baltimore Fire

Warm up this winter with talks & tours on the Great Baltimore Fire and Lexington Market

After being briefly buried under snow on Sunday, we’ve all been thinking warm thoughts—but at Baltimore Heritage we’re thinking hot—like the 2500-degree fire that burned through downtown Baltimore 114 years ago next month. We hope you can join local historian Wayne Schaumburg at the cozy Garrett-Jacobs Mansion on Mount Vernon Place on Sunday, February 3 to learn more about the Great Baltimore Fire. In his talk, A Hot Time in the Old Town, Wayne will share how hot the fire burned (yes, up to 2500 degrees) and how the event fundamentally shaped the Baltimore we know today.

Mosaic sign reading Lexington MarketOn Saturday, February 9, we are excited to bring back our monthly tours of Lexington Market showcasing historic vendors and exploring the catacombs below the west building. Lexington Market boasts three legacy businesses that have been around for a hundred years or more: Faidley’s Seafood, Konstant’s Candies and Peanuts, and Mary Mervis Delicatessen. Throughout the year, you can expect more tours of legacy business as part of our effort to document and highlight the city’s long-lasting and well-loved business institutions.

Finally, I want to say a very sincere thank you to everybody who joined or renewed their membership in 2018. Nearly two hundred people joined or renewed their membership in the last two weeks of December, bringing our total to nearly seven hundred supporters for the year. We’ve said it before, but we never get tired of repeating it—we are a small organization and your gifts make all of our work possible. Thank you!

All people are welcome in our community

We at Baltimore Heritage are deeply saddened by the recent racist and anti-Semitic attacks in Kentucky and Pittsburgh, and we stand in solidarity with those most impacted by last week’s horrific attacks. As we work to build community around historic places here in Baltimore, we want to affirm that people of all backgrounds and identities are welcome at Baltimore Heritage events and continue to ensure that our programs celebrate the diversity of people and cultures that make our city’s heritage so rich.

We also hope that you can continue to come out for this fall’s tours and talks to spend time with neighbors learning about our shared past—and helping us all grow together.

Join us for tours exploring immigration, horseradish, and Mount Vernon pride

Our next tour is this Saturday November 3, and we are exploring hundreds of years of immigration into Baltimore by biking (and sampling!) at a number of East Baltimore bakeries and delis. The next day, we hope to see you at the talk by historian Jack Burkert on the city’s early industry: Iron, Oysters and Railroads: Baltimore Enters the Industrial Age.

Leon’s of Baltimore. Baltimore Heritage (CC0)

The following week, we’ve got more great events celebrating the city’s history and diversity. If you’ve ever wondered how Baltimore’s Tulkoffs horseradish factory makes its divinely spicy sauces, join us for a tour on Friday November 9: Tulkoff Factory Tour: Making Horseradish in Baltimore for Three Generations. And on Saturday, November 10, we will explore LGBT heritage with Mount Vernon Pride: LGBTQ Heritage Walking Tour. Did you know that some of Baltimore’s LGBTQ pioneers helped launch the Johns Hopkins Medical School, helped make Mt. Vernon Place the gem that it is today, and helped create one of the greatest collections of Impressionist artwork in the country at the Baltimore Museum of Art?

We wish you a healthy and happy fall and we hope you can join us soon.

Black-and-white photo of three people holding bottles of Tulkoff's flaming hot horseradish.

Walking, Biking, and Eating Baltimore History this Fall

Whether walking, peddling, or listening to talks suits you best, have we got some great events for you!

On Saturday, November 3, we’re back with our popular bike tour, Food from Home: Immigration, Bakeries, and Delis by Bike, where we ride and sample our way through East Baltimore and while talking about how immigration has shaped Baltimore over the centuries.

If you grew up smelling horseradish and garlic from Tulkoff’s horseradish plant or if you’re curious to sniff out the history of this third generation Baltimore business, join us on Friday, November 9 for a factory tour of Tulkoff Food Products, including samples!

Form-stone covered three-story commercial buildings with a sign resembling a horseradish bottle.
Tulkoff”s Lombard Street location, 1963. Courtesy Jewish Museum of Maryland, JMM 2007.29.1

The next day, Saturday November 10, we’ll take a walk through Mount Vernon’s LGBTQ history with stories from the founding of Johns Hopkins medical school, the city’s first LGBT-oriented church, and contributions to the fight for civil rights. We also continuing our Baltimore history lecture series in partnership with the Garrett Jacobs Mansion. On Sunday, November 4, historian Jack Burkert will talk on “Iron, Oysters and Railroads: Baltimore Enters the Industrial Age.”

And finally, our Lexington Market Catacombs tours continue on Saturday, October 13 at 10:30 a.m., and our Sunday morning Monumental City tours continue with Historic Jonestown and the Shot Tower at 9:30 on October 14.

We hope you can get out and enjoy the fall in Baltimore.

Print showing a parade of Black men in uniform past Mount Vernon Place. The central image is surrounded by portraits and vignettes of Black life, illustrating rights granted by the 15th Amendment.

Enjoy the fall weather with our September talks & tours

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.

A gouache and pen and ink painting of a large stone Gothic building with a complex roof set in a pastoral landscape.
Sheppard Asylum. Illustration by Calvert Vaux, c. 1860. National Library of Medicine.

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!

Members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Marine Design Center assist the crew of the commercial cargo vessel Merwedegracht offload the Philadelphia District’s new hydrographic survey vessel HR Spies at the Port of Baltimore in Baltimore.
Port of Baltimore, April 20, 2017. Photo by Alfred Barraza. ACE-IT NAB.