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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

Baltimore Architecture:
Then and Now

Old Post Office Building, 101-125 North Calvert Street
image info

Architects:
1883  James Green Hill
1930-1932  James A. Wetmore

Beginning ca. 1810 “Monument Square,” which consisted of the houses fronting on Maximilian Godefroy’s Battle Monument, became the city’s most fashionable address. In 1840 John Guy opened a hotel on the north-east corner of Calvert and Fayette Streets.  As time passed, he added one after another of the four-story-and-a-dormer houses along the east side of the square to his “Monument House.” His son William Guy assumed control of “Guy’s Monument House” ca.1856, and its basement oyster bar became renowned throughout the English-speaking world for its “enchanted” juleps, after visits by Dickens and Thackeray.

In 1871, another legendary hotelier, Robert Rennert, opened his first “Rennert House” on the north side of the 200 block of East Fayette Street, just around the corner from Guy’s.  The two hostelries were locked in life-and-death combat - with Rennert generally acknowledged to have the upper hand - when the Federal government blew the whistle on them in 1880 by condemning both properties for a new post office it had been persuaded to build. Rennert simply transferred his operations to a now-better-remembered base at the southeast corner of Saratoga and Liberty Streets, but Guy’s Monument House soon was only a pleasant memory. 

After the usual delays and cost overruns, an exuberantly Romanesque Revival post office opened on the site in 1889, replacing the previous facility that had long occupied much of Benjamin Latrobe’s Merchants’ Exchange. The new post office boasted eight purely decorative four-story towers, two to a facade, and a ninth equally functionless six-story spire over the front (Calvert Street) door, but only four usable floors of space, counting the basement. Considered enormous when it opened, it was quickly outgrown, and many Baltimoreans were disappointed that it was spared by the 1904 Baltimore Fire. Not until 1930 was the Post Office Department willing to replace it, however, and then form followed function completely.

The building that replaced the old “birthday cake” covered twice the area (i.e., the whole block bounded by Calvert, Fayette, and Lexington Streets and Guilford Avenue) rather than merely the eastern half, and it had five uncrannied floors of offices and Federal courtrooms sharing space with the post office. Nobody ever won the resulting battle for space: in 1972 the Post office moved its main Baltimore workplace to Old Town just at the moment the Federal courts moved to Charles Center. The old building was turned over to the Baltimore city courts and today, as their “Courthouse East,” continues to serve the public.

Image information
left: Courtesy of John Orrick.
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"