A Brief Introduction
"Baltimore Town" was officially created by an act of the Maryland Colonial
Assembly in 1729, including an area of 60 acres surveyed in 1730. In 2004,
very little remains of the pre-1800 town. At the beginning of the 19th
century, wealthy merchants built elegant country houses such as Homewood,
owned by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Montebello, built by
General Samuel Smith. It was during this period that great architects
such as Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Maximillian Godefroy designed buildings
in the city. With immigration and economic growth, the population of Baltimore
grew in both numbers and wealth. It was also at this time the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad was founded, linking the city with the rich farmlands
to the west.
With the advent of the horse-drawn street railway, major changes
were made in the living habits of Baltimoreans and garden suburbs emerged.
Suburbs such as Roland Park, Forrest Park, and Eden Terrace were developed
as the city expanded its boundaries. The great landscape architect, Fredrick
Law Olmstead Jr., designed several of these communities, leaving his imprint
on the Baltimore scene.
As a great port, the shores of the
inner-harbor were lined with piers and warehouses. Ships destined for
Baltimore came from around the world, along with regional shipping throughout
the rivers of Maryland and Virginia, contributing to the economic growth
of the city. In the 20th century, as the automobile became the dominant
means of transportation, the boundaries of the city expanded again.
During these periods, the architecture of Baltimore reflected the popularity
of various historic styles (e.g., Neo-Classical).
In 1904, the great Baltimore
fire erased many of the downtown buildings from the imprint of the city,
presenting an opportunity for new expressions in architecture. In the
1930s the tallest building in the city, The Baltimore Trust Building
(in 2001 named "Bank of America"), was erected in the Art Deco style.
The city continued to grow with the influx of people who came
to Baltimore to work in ship building and in aircraft manufacturing
during World War II.
With the arrival of the 21st
century, the metropolitan area of the city has shown great growth, but
the city of Baltimore declines in population. It is fortunate that the
city retains many of its18th and 19th century structures. This website
displays a few examples of 19th- and 20th-century commercial and residential
building which are either standing as originally designed or have been
replaced by later structures. In most examples, the original use of
the buildings has changed to reflect the demands of 2004.
- John Riggs Orrick, AIA
Baltimoreans past and present have endowed their "Monumental
City" with a priceless "built heritage," but each generation diminishes
its patrimony of buildings and monuments as readily - sometimes even
more readily - than it adds to its list of bequests. The documentation
of this process of simultaneous addition and subtraction in Baltimore
always has been part of the mission of the Maryland Historical Society,
and it has been made easier by the advent of new technologies like the
one on which you are reading this.
A computer allows an image
of, say, the 19th century country seat called "Calverton" to be linked
for a researcher to an image of the Baltimore County Almshouse, and
for both of them to be tied to images of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the
West Baltimore General Hospital, and the Lutheran Hospital in a way
which highlights the fact that each of these successively occupied the
same site in west Baltimore. At the same time, it allows the Maryland
Historical Society's library staff and volunteers-the creators of this
Web site-to more thoroughly tap the Society's past so as to comprehensively
document not only structures we all know and love, but others which
have been forgotten for decades or even centuries. The computer can
cheaply bind the warp of written words to the woof of images so as to
create-in many cases for the first time-a tapestry of fact on an age
which is passing away for an age which could not need it more.
- Francis O'Neill, Senior Reference Librarian, MdHS
Library
Site Contents
1 Masonic
Building, 223-225 North Charles Street
2 Enoch Pratt House, 201 West
Monument Street
3 Denny & Mitchell Building,
718 North Charles Street
4 American Brewery, 1700 North
Gay Street
5 Belvedere Hotel, 1-5
East Chase Street
6 Camden Station,
301-331 Camden Street
7 Alex Brown Building,
135 East Baltimore Street
8 Williams-Small House,
10 West Centre Street
9 Timanus Mill, 2700
Block Falls Road
10 The Pembroke Apartments,
847 Park Avenue
11 Merchant's Exchange,
40 South Gay Street
12 Old B and O Building,
120-134 Baltimore Street
13 Hughes and Denny Building,
200 West North Avenue
14 Guardian Trust Building,
14-18 South Calvert Street
15 Old Post Office Building,
101-125 North Calvert Street
16 Washington Hose Company
Firehouse, 200 West Barre Street
17 The Maryland Casualty
Building, 220-230 East Baltimore Street;
18 Church of the Redeemer
Building, 5601-5603 North Charles Street
19 The Popplein Mansion/Marlborough
Apts., 1701 Eutaw Place
20 Dr. William Osler Mansion,
1 West Franklin Street
21 Dr. Alexander C. Robinson
Mansion, 230 North Charles and Saratoga Streets
22 Saint Peter's R.C. Church,
16 West Saratoga Street
23 Baltimore Humane Impartial
Society Building, 1400-1408 West Lexington
Street
24 Baltimore & Susquehanna
Railroad Calvert Station, 200 West North Avenue
25 Richmond Market Building,
301-317 West Read Street
26 Dr. Charles Howard "Belvedere"
Mansion & Mount Vernon Methodist Episcopal Church, 2
- 6 West Mount Vernon Place
27 Stephen Broadbent "Glen
Mary" Evergreen Mansion, 4545 North Charles
Street
Resources for Architectural Research in
Maryland
Website Credits
