MdHS Home | Annual Fund
Civil War Museum
Calendar of Events
Current Exhibitions | Directions
Education | Girl Scout Programs
Image Reproduction | Hours
Internships | Job Opportunities
Library | Library Collections
Museum | Museum Collections | Press
Catalog of Books | School Programs
Teachers' Resources | Volunteer

Contact Us
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

Camden Station, 301-331 Camden Street
image info

Architects:
1855-1867  Niernsee and Neilson, Joseph F. Kemp
1992  Cho, Wilks and Benn

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad completed the purchase of this tract in 1852 as a site for its new downtown Baltimore terminal.  The architectural firm of Niernsee and Neilson drew up plans for a nine-part Italianate headhouse. As it happened, the partnership broke up during construction and it was James C. Neilson’s protégé, Joseph F. Kemp (1815-1866), who received the credit for the building when its central section opened in 1856. The entire structure was not completed until 1867, and soon after that the appearance of cracks in the upper portion of the central section served notice to the railroad that the 185-foot central tower - which Kemp had designed to be higher than the Washington Monument, making the station the city’s tallest manmade structure - was too heavy for its structural foundations. The tower was drastically shortened, although in the 1990s a lighter replica of it went back in place during station restorations.

The building was added to throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, stabilized between the World Wars, and then began to contract. The most noticeable changes came in 1952, when the stump of the central tower was removed and the train sheds that had stretched to the south of the headhouse came down. In 1971 the B and O vacated what by then was America’s oldest big city train terminal in continuous use in favor of a railcar office on the site of the former trainsheds. The headhouse was sold to the Maryland Stadium Authority. Determined to integrate the historic structure into the new Camden Yards baseball stadium, the MSA commissioned the firm of Cho, Wilks and  Benn at a cost of $2.2 million to restore the facade to its 1867 appearance, although the Authority had no definite plans for the use of the headhouse. Today the structure stands restored but empty, perhaps to become a museum of baseball history.

Image information
left: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad - Camden Station, 1868 (MdHS Subject Vertical File Photograph Collection).
right: Photo by John Orrick, 2000.

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's Site and Mount Vernon Place M.E. Church
27  The Stephen Broadbent Mansion "The Glen Mary"