Baltimore Schuetzen-Park

More Than Meets the Eye: History of Maryland Through Prints, 1750-1900
Room 1: Immigrants in Maryland

Maryland Historical Society
Library of Maryland History
201 W. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-685-3750
Fax: 410-385-2105
E-mail: library @mdhs.org

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Maryland History In Prints: 1752-1900
by Laura Rice

Baltimore Schuetzen-Park

E. Sachse & Co.,
Baltimore, ca. 1867

Lithograph, printed in colors

German immigrants to Baltimore established a Schuetzen Verein, or shooting club, in the 1850s. This early view depicts one of several parks created by the Schuetzen Verein where members hosted shooting matches, picnics, outdoor concerts, and holiday celebrations. Shooting matches were often held between local and visiting individuals and teams, whose records of marksmanship were carefully preserved. In addition to a target range, the park's facilities included bowling alleys, a dining hall, ballroom, bar, billiard tables, and summertime accommodations for member families and their guests. Outdoors, the forty-five-acre park featured formal and informal gardens. On one occasion, a target festival held here attracted some 60,000 visitors over a three-day-period. They "crowded the pleasure grounds" to see the "variegated array of pavilions, huge and diminutive tents, and all kinds of arrangements for popular sports and amusements."

The horse drawn streetcar in the foreground is approaching the Belair Road (now Gay Street) entrance to the park. Just blocks away, breweries like Weissner, Rost's, and Bauernschmidt provided refreshments to the Schuetzen Park and featured their own beer gardens and music pavilions. The large house seen through the trees at upper left may be Starmont, formerly the home of Henry Rodewald, a maker of pipe organs.

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Room 1: Immigrants in Maryland
Room 2: Evangelical Religion and Reform
Room 3: Rowdies and Riots
Room 4: Changes in the Land
Exhibit Home Page
CONTENTS for Room 1
1. Baltimore Schuetzen-Park
2. The Great Fight, between Tom Hyer & Yankee Sullivan, for $10,000
3. Asking if I would ever dare to be 'sassy' to the Sisters again
4. Isaac McKim's Free School
5. [Little Joker Smoking Tobacco]
6. The Oddfellow's March
7. Masquerade Ball of Harmony Circle
8. Church of St. John the Evangelist