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Maryland Historical Society
Library of Maryland History
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Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-685-3750
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Baltimore Architecture:
Then and Now

Belvedere Hotel, 1-5  East Chase Street
image info

Architect:
1903  Parker and Thomas

Two substantial houses - #1029 and #1031 North Charles Street - and  their outbuildings covered this site from ca. 1875 to ca. 1900,  when they were demolished by a syndicate of Baltimore investors who projected a large modern hotel for the Mount Vernon neighborhood and hired the Boston architectural firm of Parker and Thomas to design it  for them. The sixteen-story, U-shaped structure - the U opens to the south - was patterned after McKim, Mead, and White's Plaza Hotel in New York City, which had opened in 1890. When it opened in December 1903 as the Belvedere Hotel - the name commemorates John Eager Howard's house, Belvedere, which stood until 1875 slightly east of the hotel's site - its 320 rooms made it the largest hotel in Baltimore and its Mount Vernon location made it the highest man-made structure in the city.

The establishment's socially prominent backers worked hard to make it the focus of activity for the city's "400" and the hotel received an early boost from the destruction of so many of its downtown competitors in the 1904 Baltimore Fire. Emphasis on the quality rather than the quantity of the Belvedere's guests, however, made it something less than a gold mine for its owners, of which it already had had five by the time it was sold to Col. Charles H. Consolvo of Virginia in 1917. The Colonel ran it as part of  his chain of hotels until 1935, after which it passed to his creditors. Thereafter, its longest owner was the Sheraton Corporation, which purchased it in 1946 and ran it for 22 years as the Sheraton-Belvedere. Between 1968 and 1976 a large part of it was rented out as dormitory space to local colleges; only after its serendipitous purchase in 1976 by local businessman Victor Frenkil did it again operate as a true hotel, and then only until 1992. Since then, it has been run as an apartment condominium, although its most popular features, like its top floor cocktail lounge and its famous "Owl Bar," continue in operation.

The building plan is configured in a shallow "U" shape, with the opening to the south. The structure is slightly asymmetrical with the west wing (Charles Street side) being fifteen feet broader than the east wing. The main entry lobby is on Chase Street, centrally located. The exterior facades are constructed using a warm mellow brownish pink masonry with quoins and other embellishment of terra cotta. There is a cornice at the third floor level and a heavy two-floor cornice below a thirty-five foot high mansard roof covered with slate. Very ornate dormer windows project from the mansard roof.

Image information
left: Baltimore, Hotels, Inns, and Taverns, Belvedere Hotel, ca. 1904 (PP71.28, Henry Rinn Collection, MdHS). 
right: Photo by John Orrick, 2000.

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Baltimore Architecture - Homepage
 

Site Contents
1  Masonic Building
2  Enoch Pratt House
3  Graham-Hughes House
4  American Brewery
5  Belvedere Hotel
6  Camden Station
7  Alex Brown Building
8  Williams-Small House
9  Timanus Mill
10  The Pembroke Apartments
11  Merchant's Exchange
12  Old B and O Building
13  Denny & Mitchell Building
14  Guardian Trust Building
15  Old Post Office Building
16  St. Joseph's R.C. Church & Washington Firehouse
17  The Maryland Casualty Building
18  Church of the Redeemer Building
19  The Popplein Family Mansion/Marlborough Apartments
20  Samuel Hoffman, later the Dr. William Osler Mansion
21  Cohen Brothers, later the Dr. Robinson Building
22  Saint Peter's Catholic Church 1770
23  The Baltimore Humane Impartial Society Building
24  Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad Calvert Station
25  The Richmond Market Building Site
26  Dr. Charles Howard's Site and Mount Vernon Place M.E. Church
27  The Stephen Broadbent Mansion "The Glen Mary"