MHS Library - Baltimore Architecture

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Baltimore Architecture:
Then and Now

The Church of the Redeemer Building, 5601-5603 North Charles Street
image info

Architects:
1857 R. Snowden Andrews
1878: Daniel Crummer
1958: Pietro Belluschi

The land on which the Church of the Redeemer stands today was in the early 19th century part of the "Homeland" estate of David Maulden Perine (1796-1882). In 1856 Perine offered the trustees of the newly-organized Episcopal congregation their choice of one of three parcels of his land. They chose this one and commissioned Richard Snowden Andrews (1830-1903), a local architect, to design a house of worship for them. Snowden's building, complete with a small bell-tower at its southwest corner, was occupied by the congregation early in 1858, but by 1878 it was felt to be too small. Another architect, Daniel Crummer, was brought in to add a chancel and a higher spire, both of which have survived to the present day.

By the 1950s the fields which had originally covered most of north Baltimore had given way almost entirely to houses, and many of the houses were those of members of the Church of the Redeemer. A clutter of temporary buildings, erected to house various parochial activities, surrounded the church and its adjacent parsonage until they were swept away in 1958 for a new church connected by a classroom wing to the 1858 church, which was preserved as a chapel. The eminent Italian architect Pietro Belluschi designed the new church and its wing to complement the older chapel building using stone, much of it recovered from the old parsonage, from the same quarry.

The new church, which stands on the site of the old parsonage, is largely invisible from the Charles Street side of the complex, but it flows simply and naturally into the older church building when the two are seen from the north, or on the Melrose Avenue side.

Image information:
left: View of Rear of the Building.
right: View of the Front Facade at Charles St. (North 5601 -5603)
(CC3009, MdHS/BCLM Photograph Collection).
Photos courtesy of John Orrick, 2002.

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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"

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