MHS Library - Baltimore Architecture

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Baltimore Architecture:
Then and Now

Saint Peter's R.C. Church, 16 West Saratoga Street

image info

In 1764 the land on which this building stands was Lot #164 in Baltimore Town, and was purchased by Father George Hunter, the superior of the members of the Society of Jesus in British America, as the site for Baltimore's first Catholic Church. In 1770 St. Peter's R.C. Church, described as a high-gabled, two-story red brick house indistinguishable from any other two-story residence then under construction in the town, was completed. In 1784 an addition to the north end lengthened the structure, which five years later became St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, when Father John Carroll (1763-1815) was consecrated the first Catholic bishop in North America.

Carroll's dearest wish was to erect a suitable cathedral for his new archdiocese. While he set the current Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on neighboring Cathedral Street under construction, Carroll never lived to occupy the site. Both he and his immediate successor, Archbishop Leonard Neale (1746-1817), governed America's Catholic community from tiny St. Peter's, which as late as 1880 lacked even a cupola to proclaim its function. In 1821, when the new basilica finally opened, there was considerable pressure to close St. Peter's but in fact it remained a Catholic church until 1841, when it finally closed and was offered to a Catholic teaching order, the Brothers of the Christian Schools, as a site for their first academy in Baltimore. In 1843 they replaced the old church building with "Calvert Hall" and opened their St. Joseph's College, which gradually assumed the name of its headquarters. Not until 1890 did Calvert Hall move to its second home at the southwest corner of Cathedral and Mulberry Streets, at which time the old schoolhouse was sold to the Southern Homeopathic Medical College, which operated from this site until 1900.

After the 1904 Baltimore Fire the vacant structure briefly was occupied by displaced businesses; then it was sold to the adjacent "Brown's Arcade," which opened on Charles Street in 1906 and served as the Arcade's rear annex for many years before being demolished for the present parking garage.

Image information:
left: Site of Saint Peter's R.C. Church. Saratoga Street (16 West).
right: Current View of a Parking Garage
(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 "Ever Green"

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