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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
Alex Brown Building, 135 East Baltimore Street
image infoArchitects:In 1860 the private banking and investment firm of Alex. Brown and Sons opened a brick Victorian building on the southwest corner of Baltimore and Calvert Streets which housed both their offices and - in the basement - the main Baltimore office of the Western Union Telegraph Company. This structure stood until 1901, when Western Union moved out and Alex. Brown commissioned the Boston architects Parker and Thomas to design a new headquarters for them on the same site.
1901 Parker and Thomas
1905 Beecher, Friz and Gregg
1998 SMDA, Walter SchamuThe Bostonians came up with a low two-story building, whose marble galleries surrounded a central dome structure. The granite-and-brick facade allowed it to survive the 1904 Baltimore fire, thereby inaugurating a Baltimore vogue for low, brick banks.
In 1905 Beecher, Friz and Gregg remodeled the interior, and also added three bays along Calvert Street to the building's south end. Otherwise, the exterior has remained more or less the same since its completion in 1901. In 1998, Alex. Brown moved out and the building was taken over as a Baltimore branch office of the Chevy Chase Bank, which again renovated the interior, but without doing major violence to its traditional appearance.
Image information
left: Baltimore - Banks and Banking - Alexander Brown Building, [ca. 1908] (MdHS Subject Vertical File Photograph Collection).
right: Photo by John Orrick, 2000.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"
