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Baltimore Architecture: Then and Now The Richmond Market Building Site, 301-317 West Read Street image info Architect: 1831, 1853 and Frank E. Davis (1872) Richmond Market, named after its location at the west end of Richmond (now West Read Street) dates back to 1831, when the rapidly-expanding city of Baltimore successfully petitioned the Maryland Legislature for permission to erect a market house to serve what then was the city's northwestern suburbs. The first market house probably was little more than a roof on poles, with space around it for wagoners to hawk their produce, and its successor, the 1853 Richmond Market, was a larger version of the original house, a roof on columns running northwest to southeast along the south side of what then was West Biddle Street. Not until the Fifth Regiment of the Maryland National Guard was promised the upper floors of a proposed 1868 market house did the enterprise really take off. Architect Frank E. Davis re-oriented the building so that its long side stretched along Howard rather than Biddle Street, and he built upper floors, two on the north side and three on the south to house the offices and drill hall of the 'Dandy Fifth,' a social elite. The Fifth Regiment's armory was awash in the marble, bronze and mahogany that its soldiers were accustomed to in their own homes, and like it the market beneath bustled with the residents of Mount Vernon and Bolton Hill and their servants. In the wake of the Spanish-American War, the Fifth Regiment, later incorporated into the National Guard's 29th Division, shifted many of its activities to a newer, larger and altogether more businesslike armory on West Hoffman Street, but Guard activity on the upper floors of Richmond Market continued until the 1950s. By that time municipal markets had been overshadowed by "supermarkets" and the neighborhoods around Richmond Market were shadowed by urban plight which was about to give way to urban renewal. In 1955 the few remaining vendors were served with eviction notices by the city, which in 1970 sold the old building to the neighboring Maryland General Hospital. Maryland General remodeled the building for its own uses, connecting it to its main building by means of an elevated walkway above Armory Place, and turned it into the professional space it remains today. Image information: left: View of Richmond Market from the First Presbyterian Church (1873). center: View of the Richmond Market Site. Read Street (301-317 West). right: Lateral View of the Richmond Market Site (Next to Md General Hospital). (CC3009, MdHS/BCLM Photograph Collection). Photos courtesy of John Orrick, 2002. Previous Next 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 Site at Mount Vernon Place M.E. Church 27 The Stephen Broadbent Mansion "Ever Green"

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