One of Maryland’s most famous ice cream brands: Hendlers Creamery. Moses Advertising: Hendlers sign, Hughes Studio, 1955, PP30-225F-55, MdHS.

July in Maryland can be truly miserable. The temperature sizzles at over 100 degrees for days on end. Humidity weighs down the most ardent of breezes. Luckily for the sweaty masses, July is also National Ice Cream Month. So in honor of the vaunted occasion, here’s the scoop on the history of the frosty treat in Maryland.

Ice cream has always been a favorite summertime treat for Marylanders. Ice cream companies grew out of dairy businesses located across the state, and the country’s first ice cream factory was opened in Baltimore in 1851 by Jacob Fussell.

Fussell peddled dairy products in the city, but often found himself left with a surplus of cream.  Instead of letting the leftovers go to waste, he decided to make ice cream with it. He began to sell ice cream for 25 cents per quart, and Baltimoreans gobbled up his decadent yet inexpensive product. Ever the enterprising businessman, Fussell’s success inspired him to produce the sweet stuff on a commercial level. He founded the very first production facility at the intersection of Hillen and Exeter Streets in Baltimore and Maryland’s ice cream industry was born.*

One of Maryland’s most famous ice cream scions, Lionel Manuel Hendler, seized upon a similar opportunity when he founded Hendler Creamery Company in Baltimore. Hendler learned the dairy business from his father Isaac by working at the family-owned dairy store in East Baltimore, where he saw firsthand the popularity of ice cream. In 1905, at the young age of twenty, he decided to go into the ice cream business on his own and teamed with Louis Miller. The partners made the ice cream in the basement of Miller’s home and sold it to local stores. The product was a hit, and they soon moved production out of Miller’s house to a larger facility on Lloyd Street in East Baltimore. The business relationship between Hendler and Miller eventually fizzled, and in 1907, Hendler bought out Miller.

Hendler Creamery Co. building at 1100 East Baltimore Street. American Sugar Refinery, Domino Sugar tank truck, Hughes Company, 1955, PP30-144-51, MdHS.

Under Hendler’s tutelage, the ice cream company quickly outgrew the production capability at the Lloyd Street plant. In 1912, Hendler purchased a grand brick building at 1100 East Baltimore Street to serve as the company’s new headquarters. The Richardsonian Romanesque building, built in 1891, located near Baltimore’s Shot Tower, had many other lives before being converted into an ice cream factory. It had first been home to a powerhouse for the Baltimore City Passenger Railway Company, the oldest streetcar system in the city. When the streetcar company joined with the United Railways and Electric Company, it continued to operate as a powerhouse and trouble station.

The streetcar company eventually sold the building to the American Amusement Company, when the cable and pulley system that operated the streetcars was replaced with electricity. Architect Jackson C. Gott transformed the building into a lavish theater that could seat 2,000 people. The Convention Hall, as it came to be called, ran a variety of entertainments, including exhibitions, vaudeville acts, and theatrical performances. Carl Hagenbeck’s circus performed for a period of time at the Hall, spurring his rival Frank Bostock to bring his own show to the city as well.

The building changed hands several times over the next few years, though it remained a theater, operating under the names the Bijou Theatre, Baltimore Theatre, and the Princess Theatre. Vaudeville, operas, theatrical plays, silent films were all played and performed at the location. Its years as a Yiddish language theater, appealing to East Baltimore’s significant and growing Jewish population, proved the most successful, but even that was short lived. Only the Hendlers Creamery would stay in the building for more than just a few years. In fact, it served as an ice cream production plant until the 1980’s.

From its new headquarters on Baltimore Street, Hendlers ice cream grew into an iconic brand. Horse-drawn wagons delivered the frosty confection for many years until they were replaced by a fleet of trucks. After the switch, some of the horses remained loyal employees. Hendler’s son, Albert, recalled the return of one such horse, “We had sold some of our horses to Western Maryland Dairy. One afternoon in comes one of them pulling a wagon loaded with milk. It had come home. (1)”

Ice cream truck drawn by horse–Hendler Creamery, Hughes Company, 1941, PP30-54226, MdHS

Refrigerated delivery trucks further expanded the business. The trucks could be spotted crisscrossing the state, delivering ice cream to more and more stores. They were emblazoned with the slogans: “The Velvet Kind” and “Take home a brick.” The angelic, little kewpie became the symbol of the brand, and advertisements featured the chubby cherub enjoying a bowl of Hendler’s ice cream. The ice cream was virtually everywhere in Maryland, as it was distributed to over 400 stores at the company’s peak, which kept the production lines humming. The factory ran six days a week with vanilla ice cream being made almost everyday.

Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry were production mainstays, but the creamery dabbled in more exotic flavors as well. Hutzler’s department store sold several varieties, including ginger and peppermint. For the Southern Hotel, Hendlers supplied a tomato sorbet which was served as a side dish rather than dessert. The eggnog ice cream produced each year at Christmastime, which  Hendler made with real rum, was a major hit. The factory also cranked out other holiday-themed products, such as an Independence Day treat made with vanilla, strawberry, and blueberry ice creams and a Mother’s Day cake topped with a silk screen of James McNeill Whistler’s portrait of his mother.

With all of the inventive flavors being churned out at his company, one would have expected Hendler himself to be a great lover of ice cream. But, this wasn’t the case, as his son Albert recounted: “As a child I remember Dad bringing home each day a couple of pints of ice cream of different flavors….Since he wasn’t a big ice cream eater, we’d do the tasting for him, and if a flavor wasn’t up to par we’d let him know in no uncertain terms. Someone was sure to catch hell the next day.(2)”

Hendler’s true passion lay in innovating and improving sanitation in the food production industry. The factory at Baltimore Street was fully automated. He invented and patented several machines that limited human contact with the product and developed one of the first air conditioning systems to keep the building cool. The delivery horses and their stable brought unwanted pests into the factory which forced him to close off the building. This caused the plant to be too hot in the summer, so he devised a system that cooled the place by pushing air through ducts, thus creating rudimentary air conditioning. He also used only tuberculosis-free or pasteurized milk from the earliest days of the business to prevent the passage of bovine tuberculosis through his product, which at the time was an uncommon practice.

Hendler discovered that success has a price when he and his family became a target of criminals. Several extortion attempts were made to scare Hendler out of some of his fortune. On one occasion he received a note which threatened, “We will not try to kidnap you or your son; a few bullets from a passing automobile into your or your son’s car is one way of paying our unsatisfactory business debts. It will also serve as an example in our remaining business matters with our clients in Baltimore and Washington….(3)”

Most of these attempts were thwarted, but in 1932 three men succeeded in kidnapping young Albert. The kidnappers planned to extort $30,000 for his safe return. Hyman Goldfinger, Samuel Max Lipsizt, and Harry Surasky snatched Albert after a school dance at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a junior. Albert was blindfolded and driven to a house in Anne Arundel County, where the kidnappers questioned him about the possibility of securing a ransom for his release. Albert’s noncommittal answers gave the men cause for worry that they would not get any money after all. They began to argue about their next move. Goldfinger suggested that they kill the young man, convinced that their identities had been compromised, but the others didn’t want to escalate the situation. Surasky recalled the event at his trial: “[Goldfinger] insisted at first on choking him and then he took out his gun and wanted to blow his brains out. He already had his gun right near Hendler’s temple.”(4) They eventually decided to free Albert, so they dropped him off at the Hanover Street bridge. They took all the money he had in his pockets, but then reconsidered and gave him back a dollar for cab fare to get home.

Albert returned home shaken but relatively unharmed. He decided against reporting the incident to the police or his family. The kidnappers could have stopped there, but they decided to push their luck once again. Lipstiz sent a note demanding that Hendler send $7,500 to an address in New York City. Hendler agreed to do so but could not wire the cash, because of the Good Friday holiday. A second letter arrived with same stipulation, but the police were already on the case. He was apprehended, which led to arrest of his cohorts, all of which were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.

These events did not derail the Hendler family or the ice cream business. The Hendler Creamery Company continued to grow, and in 1929, the Borden Company purchased the company. It continued to operate under the Hendlers Creamery name until the late 1960′s. Hendlers, and later Borden’s, ice cream became household staples, known for its thick and creamy texture and wide variety of flavors.

*Some suggest that Fussell actually founded the first ice cream factory in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania. This does not appear to be true, because the York County town did not yet exist when Fussell began his business. He purchased milk from the local dairy farmers, which he had shipped to Baltimore via railroad. Fussell did own some land in the area, but he never built on the site.

Sources and Further Reading:

(1), (2): Albert Hendler and Amalie Ascher, “Ice Cream Days: Even Before Albert Hendler Started Working at the Plant, He Got a Taste of the Business at Home,” Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1981.

(3): Frederick M. Rasmussen, “Exhibit recalls Hendler kidnapping of 1933: Hopkins student and son of Baltimore creamery owner was freed unharmed after a day,” Baltimore Sun, June 20, 2013.

(4): “Suraksy Found Guilty in Hendler Plot,” Baltimore Sun, May 23, 1933.

Mary Bellis, “The History of Streetcars-Cable Cars.”

Edward N. Dodge, ed., “Hendler, L. Manuel,” in Encyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. XXXIII (New York: The American Historical Company, Inc., 1965), 403-405.

Charles Glatfelter, “Seven Valleys ice cream claims melt under scrutiny,” York Daily Record/York Sunday News, August 17, 2012.

Robert K. Headley, Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2006), 247-248.

Brennan Jensen, “I Scream, You Scream,” City Paper, April 29, 1998.

Jewish Museum of Maryland, Hendler’s Creamery Collection, MS 147.

Maryland Historical Trust, Hendler Creamery.

Gilbert Sandler, “Hendler’s: The Man, the Legend, the Ice Cream,” in Jewish Baltimore (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 87-89.

The Regent Theater, circa 1948, MdHS, SVF.

The theaters, night clubs, and restaurants that once made Pennsylvania Avenue Baltimore’s center for African-American entertainment  are today a receding memory. In the segregated Baltimore of the early to mid twentieth century, the Avenue was where African-Americans went to see the latest films, have a drink at one of the many nightclubs and bars, and hear the jazz of Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday, and Cab Calloway, the comedy of Redd Fox and Slappy White, and the funk of James Brown. Most of the establishments were gone by the end of the 1970s, either occupied by new businesses, laying vacant, or demolished. A few soldiered on—the Sphinx Club, one of the last to go, closed its doors in 1992. The most famous venue on the Avenue, the Royal Theater, was one of the premier stops on the “chitlin’ circuit,” the chain of clubs and theaters running through the eastern and southern states featuring African-American entertainers. While the Royal may have been the best known theater on the Avenue, it wasn’t the largest—that designation would have to go to the Regent Theater.

The Regent Theater was from the start a family operation. On Jun 9, 1916, Louis Hornstein and his two sons, Simon and Isaac, opened the theater on the former site of a coal yard at 1629 Pennsylvania Avenue. Advertised as the “largest, coolest, best ventilated house in the city,” the theater was located in a one-story brick building designed by Baltimore architectural firm Sparklin & Childs. (1) For the next 50 years the Hornstein family owned and operated the Regent. The family later acquired the Lenox and the Diane theaters, also on Pennsylvania Avenue.

At the time of its opening, the Regent was the largest movie house in Baltimore, with a seating capacity of 500 and its own orchestra. The theater specialized in “high class-photo plays and Vaudeville.”(2) John W. Cooper, the first African-American ventriloquist on the largely white vaudeville circuit, was a bonus attraction on opening night. Billed as “the only colored ventriloquist in the world,” the “Black Napoleon of Ventriloquists,” and the “Polite Ventriloquist,” Cooper’s most famous routine, a barbershop skit, incorporated multiple dummies operated with the use of foot pedals and fishing line.

Auditorium, The Regent Theater, September 1948, Paul Henderson, MdHS, HEN.00.B1-033.

In 1920, the Hornsteins expanded the Regent’s auditorium with the purchase of lots south, extending the theater to 1619 Pennsylvania Avenue. The original building at 1629 was retained as the entrance. The theater now had a seating capacity of 2,250, with additional balcony seating.

Although the patrons of the establishments that lined Pennsylvania Avenue were predominantly African-American, the ownership of these businesses was almost entirely white. Within Baltimore’s African-American community, the Hornsteins were particularly well respected and the Regent was renowned for its “high class attractions and low prices.” Following the 1920 renovations, a reviewer for the Afro-American newspaper called the newly expanded theater a “legitimate playhouse where colored patrons would not be humiliated by the odious presence of … ’Mister James Crow.’”(3)

In 1925, Isaac Hornstein cancelled the planned exhibition of a series of films featuring heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey, after the champ made disparaging remarks about African-American contenders for his title and “proposed to prevent any colored contender from having a ‘look see’ at the heavyweight diadem.” Hornstein told a reporter from the Afro that the Regent played “to colored patrons, and I would certainly be insulting them should I play a picture featuring a man having the sentiment as expressed by Dempsey in the press. I stand unalterably by my original refusal, and you may say for me that this picture or no other that in any way offends our patrons will ever be flashed from this screen.” Other theaters in the city soon followed the Regent’s example.(4)

The Hornsteins set high standards for their theater, and expected their patrons do the same. Louis Hornstein was known to send movie goers home to change their clothes if they were not suitably attired. They also kept up with the latest advancements in film technology. In 1928 the Regent made the transition from silent to sound film when it became the second movie house in Baltimore, and the only African-American theater, to be equipped with the new Vitaphone sound system. An article in the Afro-American enthused that the Regent was “the only local house open to race trade that has contracted for this last word in motion picture entertainment.”(5) In 1953 the theater was equipped with both 3-D and the recently invented Cinemascope.

While the more celebrated Royal Theater was often the first and only stop in Baltimore for many of the top African-American entertainers of the era, the Regent—although primarily a movie theater—attracted its share of live performers, including Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and Sidney Poitier. Baltimore’s own Cab Calloway and Eubie Blake (along with his songwriting partner Noble Sissle) performed at the Regent. Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, gave a boxing exhibition at the theater.

Lobby, The Regent Theater, 1948, Paul Henderson, MdHS, HEN.00.B1-030.

In 1964, Henry Hornstein, the grandson of the original owner, leased the Regent and the family’s other theatrical properties to Jack Fruchtman, a Washington D.C. film exhibitor. Fruchtman’s company, JF Theatres, would eventually control some 50 movie theaters in Baltimore and the surrounding suburbs. If you name a theater in Baltimore, chances are that at one time or another, it was operated by Fruchtman. From now-departed theaters the Royal, the Avalon, the Mayfair, and the Rex to still operating movie houses like the Charles (formerly The Times) and the Rotunda Theater (which Fruchtman opened in 1967), Fruchtman left a large fingerprint on the city’s theatrical history.

Through the remainder of the 1960s and the early 1970s Fruchtman continued the operation of the Regent to apparent success. Film historian Robert Headley, in his 1974 book, Exit: A History of Movies in Baltimore, wrote that the Regent “was still going strong, and hopefully will be with us for many years to come.” But with the end of segregation in the 1960s, the era of Pennsylvania Avenue as Baltimore’s African-American entertainment mecca was coming to a close. Citywide, the neighborhood theater industry that had been entertaining film goers for over 60 years was dying a slow death, the result of white flight, escalating overhead costs, and the proliferation of suburban theaters. The unrest that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968 also kept many theater going patrons from the downtown area. According to Robert Headley, although actual physical damage to city theaters was minimal, the “psychic damage to the theater going public was terrible.” By the end of the 1970s, 114 Baltimore theaters had been closed down.(6)

Fruchtman began closing some of the least viable of his large fold of theaters earlier in the decade. In December of 1974 the Regent turned its lights on for the last time. At the time of its closing, the Regent was still the second largest movie theater in the city. For the remainder of the decade the property remained unoccupied, and in 1980 the theater was razed, joining the Royal, which had met the same fate three years earlier.

But the site at which one of Baltimore’s premier African-American theaters once stood remained tied to its entertainment past. In 1982, former Baltimore Colts wide receiver Glenn Doughty opened the Shake and Bake Family Fun Center on the former site of the Regent. Doughty—known in his playing days as “Shake and Bake,” based on his pregame mantra that the Colts were going to “shake up and cook” their opponents—purchased the vacant lot from the City for $1.00. With the backing of Mayor William Donald Shaefer, Doughty and his partners secured a nearly 5 million dollar loan from the city to build what the former Colt—who never reached the NFL championship game—called his “Super Bowl.”(7)

Shake & Bake Family Fun Center, 1601 Pennsylvania Avenue, former site of the Regent Theater, 2013. Photograph by Google.

When the center first opened in 1982, it was an immediate success. In the first year over 10,000 people a week were enjoying themselves at the 70,000 square foot complex which housed a 40 lane bowling alley, a 22,000 square foot roller rink, a video game room, and a sporting goods store. One patron said that the center “was a really big change for the community… it keeps people from hanging on the street corners.” The complex also housed an automated bank teller, an advertising firm, and two fast food restaurants. Almost entirely under African-American ownership—the Afro called it “the first major black owned and operated facility of its kind in the country”—the complex proved to be a model for other cities, with mayors visiting it for inspiration on inner city revitalization projects.(8)

Within two years though, the center was struggling financially, unable to attract people from outside the neighborhood.  In 1985, Doughty and his partners defaulted on their loan and the City took over the management of the center. Although the center has gone through tough times since then—in 1987, a former manager plead guilty to a charge that he stole nearly $80,000 while employed at the center—it is still in operation 30 years after first opening. The center continues to offer bowling, roller skating, and family fun. It also hosts practice sessions for the Harm City Homicides, Maryland’s first men’s Roller Derby team. The Shake and Bake Center was one of the earlier revitalization projects on Pennsylvania Avenue—more than three decades later, efforts to return the former cultural hub to at least a semblance of what it once was are still under way. (Damon Talbot)

Footnotes:

1. Advertisement, The Baltimore Afro-American, June 24, 1916. Sparklin & Childs were also responsible for other theaters in the city, including the Rialto Theater on North Avenue.

2. Headley Jr, Robert Kirk, Exit: A History of Movies in Baltimore, (University Park, Md, Robert Kirk Headley, Jr., 1974), p. 116.

3. “Regent’s Gradual Rise to Fame,” The Baltimore Afro-American, October 27, 1928; Headley, Jr, Robert Kirk, Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 (London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006), p. 380.

4.  “Regent Theater Owner Cancels Jack Dempsey Film,” The Baltimore Afro-American, February 7, 1925.

5.  “Regent Theater gets Vitaphone: Local Playhouse on of Few in the Country,” The Baltimore Afro-American, April 7, 1928.

6. Headley Jr, Robert Kirk, Exit: A History of Movies in Baltimore, (University Park, Md, Robert Kirk Headley, Jr., 1974), p. 116; Headley, Jr, Robert Kirk, Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 (London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006), p. 167.

7. Siegel, Eric, “Shake & Bake: Wide Receiver to entrepeneur, Doughty still meets challenges,” The Baltimore Sun, April 25, 1982.

8. Siegel, Eric, “Shake & Bake: Saturday Night street-corner rival,” The Baltimore Sun, November 4, 1982; Brown, Johanne, “Shake and Bake Grand Opening: The Realization of a Dream,” The Baltimore Afro-American, October 19, 1982; Gite, Lloyd, “Shaking and Baking in Baltimore,” Black Enterprise, February 1984.

Sources and Further Reading:

Advertisement, The Baltimore Afro-American, June 24, 1916

Cinematreasures.org

Headley Jr, Robert Kirk, Exit: A History of Movies in Baltimore, (University Park, Md, Robert Kirk Headley, Jr., 1974)

Headley, Jr, Robert Kirk, Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 (London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006).

Gite, Lloyd, “Shaking and Baking in Baltimore,” Black Enterprise, February 1984.

Kilduffs.com

“Other Houses Cancel Dempsey Films: Movie Theatres Follow Regent’s Lead,” The Baltimore Afro-American, February 21, 1925.

The Passano – O’Neill Files, Pennsylvania Avenue (1619-1629)

Peterson, Bernard L., Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.)

Rasmussen, Frederick, “Jack Fruchtman, Sr., 86, Theater Owner, The Baltimore Sun, July 3, 2001.

“Regent’s Gradual Rise to Fame,” The Baltimore Afro-American, October 27, 1928.

“Regent Theater gets Vitaphone: Local Playhouse on of Few in the Country,” The Baltimore Afro-American, April 7, 1928.

“Regent Theater Owner Cancels Jack Dempsey Film,” The Baltimore Afro-American, February 7, 1925.

Siegel, Eric, “Shake & Bake: Saturday Night street-corner rival,” The Baltimore Sun, November 4, 1982.

Siegel, Eric, “Shake & Bake: Wide Receiver to entrepeneur, Doughty still meets challenges,” The Baltimore Sun, April 25, 1982.

“3-D Cinemascope to Bring Crowds to Movies,” The Baltimore Afro-American, April 18, 1953.

Ventriloquistcentralblog.com

The origin of baseball in Baltimore is a ridiculously complicated affair. Scant photographic evidence remains and accounts in newspapers, which used nicknames for teams and players as often as they did proper names, leave behind a murky, hard-to-follow record.

By the 1870s there were already a handful of defunct Maryland base ball* clubs with names like the Excelsiors, the Marylands, the Pastimes, the Monumentals, etc. Keeping track of who they were, where they played, where they packed up and left town to play before coming back under another team name is a chore difficult for the most earnest of sporting historians. Add to this mess a game so loosely organized that it was impossible to even agree on a national champion until 1894. A little research on the subject yields a solid argument for keeping things simple, so here goes…

“Members of the Lord Baltimore Base Ball Club of Baltimore, Maryland” in the first year of their existence with Lip Pike at bottom left. The Dramatic News and Sporting News couldn’t even get Pike’s name right. He’s listed as Lyman Pike. Medium Prints, Sports, Baseball 1872, MdHS.

Meet your Lord Baltimores a.k.a. the Yellow Stockings a.k.a the Baltimore Canaries, so called for their bright yellow uniforms. These dandies wore thick silk shirts—instead of the usual flannel—emblazoned with the Calvert arms, wide white belts, and snazzy yellow and black argyle socks.

The 1872 Lord Baltimores, detail from James Bready’s Baseball in Baltimore. Uncredited photo.

The year was 1872. Out of the ashes of Waverly’s Pastime Base Ball Club, which started fielding amateur players as early as 1861, came the Lord Baltimores. When the team played well, fans called them Lords. When they didn’t win, fans were more inclined to call them Canaries. They were the city’s first professional team under the auspices of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, but they were its second professional team overall.

The honor of being Baltimore’s first professional base ball club went to the Marylands who in the late 1860s defected to Fort Wayne, Indiana when wealthy businessmen there flashed some cash and convinced them to stay while the team was in town for a game. After a brief dalliance as the Fort Wayne Kekiongas, half the team returned home to Charm City to form the Lords. Not surprisingly the team was plagued from the start with rumors that they threw games.

Newington Park probably sat below Cumberland Road to the left of Pennsylvania Avenue in this depiction by the Sachse Company. Bird’s Eye View of the City of Baltimore, 1869, V32-a2, MdHS.

In their three seasons of existence (1872-1874), the Lord Baltimores played their home games at Baltimore’s Newington Park, which was located between Baker and Gold Streets. There are no known photographs of the venue, though with the help of G.M. Hopkins’ Atlas and the Sachse Company’s “Bird’s Eye View…” we’re able to get some idea of when and where the park stood. Newington Park was located on Pennsylvania Avenue “extended” in West Baltimore.

The site of Newington Park which by 1876 was known as the Peabody Base Ball Grounds found in G.M. Hopkins’ Atlas of Baltimore and Its Environs. Vol. 1 (1876) available at MdHS.

The club’s most popular player, Lipman Emanuel “Lip” Pike (1845–1893),** was also the first Jewish major leaguer. Known as the “Iron Batter,” the left-handed batsman was a homerun king at a time when dingers were only an occasional treat. A noted speedster, Pike was no stranger to the inside-the-park homerun and had a reputation for racing any challenger for a cash prize. On August 16, 1873, he reportedly raced a horse named “Clarence” in a 100-yard sprint at Newington Park, and won by four yards with a time of 10 seconds flat, earning him a cash prize that would amount to about $5,000 today).*** While in Baltimore Lip Pike ran a cigar store on Holliday Street near Fayette. His financial prospects outlived his team’s.****

Finishing their first and second seasons in second and third place respectively, the future of the Lords club was looking bright. But the Panic of 1873 caught up with the team’s financiers. Funding dried up and the team they fielded in 1874 was a disgrace. They ended their final season 9-38, 31.5 games behind the first place Boston Red Stockings. (Joe Tropea)

Sources

* Prior to 1890, baseball was written “base ball.”

**Baseball Almanac, United Press International. October 9, 1986.

*** Joseph Siegman, Jewish Sports Legends: The International Jewish Sports Hall Of Fame, 2005.

**** Lip Pike played and managed teams up and down the East Coast after the Canaries went kaput. When his baseball days were over he ran a haberdashery that became a well-known hangout for baseball enthusiasts. In 1893, he died of a heart attack at age 48 and was buried in his native Brooklyn, N.Y.

James H. Bready, Baseball in Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1998.

Paul Batesel, Players and Teams of the National Association, 1871-1875, McFarland, 2012.

Glimpses Into Baseball History blog, “Early Baltimore Baseball, Part 16,” http://baseballhistoryblog.com/2055/early-baltimore-baseball-part-16/

Sulzebacher House, ca 1865, MdHS, CC956.

West Baltimore was once a densely packed, vibrant neighborhood full of theaters, local businesses, and industry. Drive down many of the streets today and you’re likely to see a vacant lot or a boarded up row house on nearly every other block. But even an empty field has a history. The tiny, off-kilter house pictured to the left is one of the oldest houses in West Baltimore. Or at least it was circa 1865 when the photograph was taken. Like many of Baltimore’s historic structures it has been lost to time and the march of progress. It is now the site of a vacant lot. Built in the mid-1700s, the two-story wood frame house was located at 930 West Baltimore Street, two doors west of Amity Street. The property is known as the Sulzebacher house. The name is most likely a corruption of Sulzbach; according to the Baltimore city directories, a currier named Peter Sulzbach occupied the residence for a few years in the 1840s.

The house is of typical design for a mid-eighteenth century home in Baltimore. The gable roof may point to the construction of the home in the 1760s or 1770s; by then “gambrel roofs had fallen out of favor and most frame houses were a full two stories in height, with gable roof, with or without dormers.”* The building’s obvious tilt was characteristic of structures “located on streets built to match a since-altered street grade.”** Visible on the second floor is a fire insurance seal. Also called a fire mark, these iron, copper, or lead emblems indicated that a specific insurance firm paid a volunteer fire department to protect it – Baltimore’s first paid fire department was established in 1859, but the fire seals often remained left on the buildings. The Sulzebacher house survived for over 150 years, no mean feat for a wood frame house from that period. Sometime before 1911 the house was razed – the structure is not visible on the 1911 edition of the Sanborn fire insurance atlas – and replaced by a three-story barber shop.

Baltimore Street, 900 block west, looking east, 1920, Hughes Company, MdHS, MC6284. A sign for the New Aladdin Theater is visible in the center of the photograph. (Click to enlarge)

The house at 932 West Baltimore Street, the edge of which can be seen in the photograph, may have been even older. Built in the same period, it had a much larger frontage than its neighbor at 930. The original structure was razed just a few years prior to the Sulzebacher house to make way for a motion picture theater. Both 932 and 930 West Baltimore Street appear to have caught the eye of rival theater owners. At around the same time that James W. Bowers was pursuing the properties at 932, A. Freedman had similar designs on 930. Freedman apparently lost the contest, because the only theater that debuted was Bower’s Aladdin Theater, which opened its doors to the public near the end of 1909. Advertising itself as “West Baltimore’s finest motion picture house,” the Aladdin theater seated about 400 patrons.

Between 1910 and 1938 the theater changed both ownership and names a number of times. In 1917 J. Louis Rome purchased it and renamed it the New Aladdin. The following year it came under the control of C.E. Nolte and his partner, Baltimore-born movie mogul Frank Durkee, whose Durkee Enterprises owned or controlled a large number of the movies houses in Baltimore, including the Ritz, the Palace, the Arcade, and the Senator. In 1930 the theater became the New Queen. It was open for less than a year, perhaps closing from the effects of the Great Depression. Then from 1933 to 1938 it operated as the segregated Booker T. Theater. This was the last of the property’s run as a host for cinematic productions – in 1942 it was converted into a plant for the New Gold Bottling Company, a soft drink manufacturer.

Sun Spot Advertisement, 1949, Hughes Company, MdHS, PP30.254-49.

The New Gold Bottling Company was founded in 1925 by Greek immigrant Dionicios Karavedas. The company went on to produce Sun Spot, a popular orange flavored soft drink, whose advertisements boasted that it was made with real orange juice. During the 1950s and 1960s, the beverage, which retailed for a nickel, could be found in neighborhood stores and confectionaries throughout the city. The riots of 1968, which hit West Baltimore particularly hard, led to a decline in business for the soft drink manufacturer. In an odd change of direction, Dionicios’s son Nicholas, who took over the company after his father retired in 1960, began producing a sugar detecting beverage alongside his sugar enhancing ones – in the 1970s, he was involved with developing a product known as GTTS (Glucose tolerance testing solution) that detected the presence of gestational diabetes in pregnant women. Through a new company, Custom Laboratories, Inc., Karavedas went on to become the “the largest supplier of glucose testing solutions in the country.”***

Baltimore Street, 900 block west, looking east, 2013, Photograph by Google.

By the 1980s, the beverage companies were still producing their dissimilar drinks on West Baltimore Street. But the city had its own plans for the site. In the mid-1980s it began purchasing properties on both the 900 and 800 blocks of West Baltimore Street for a proposed redevelopment project.

By 1992 the Karavedas owned companies were the remaining holdouts. According to a Baltimore Sun article from that year, the beverage companies were “the last tenants on a block the city has been clearing for as-yet unspecified housing or commercial redevelopment use.”**** By 1998, they had relocated across the city to Highlandtown. Twenty years later the 900 block of West Baltimore street, now owned by the University of Maryland, still remains undeveloped, a field of grass surrounded by a mixture of boarded up row homes, storefronts, University of Maryland medical buildings, and vacant lots. (Damon Talbot)

900 block, West Baltimore Street, corner of Amity Street, 2013, Photograph by Google.

Footnotes:

 *Hayward, Mary Ellen & Frank R. Shivers Jr., ed., The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History (Baltimore: JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 2004), p. 9.

**The Passano Files, Baltimore Street (928, West)

***Kelly, Jacques, “Nicholas D. Karavedas, beverage producer, dies,” The Baltimore Sun, October 19, 2010. 

****”Boondoggle on Baltimore Street,” The Baltimore Sun, March 16, 1992. 

Sources and further reading:

”Boondoggle on Baltimore Street,” The Baltimore Sun, March 16, 1992. 

The Dielman-Hayward File, Karavadas, Dionicios

Hayward, Mary Ellen & Frank R. Shivers Jr., ed., The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History (Baltimore: JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 2004)

Headley, Jr, Robert Kirk, Exit: A History of the Movies in Baltimore (University Park, Md: Robert Kirk Headley, Jr., 1974)

Headley, Jr, Robert Kirk, Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore: An Illustrated History and Directory of Theaters, 1895-2004 (London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006)

Jones, Carleton, Lost Baltimore: A Portfolio of Vanished Buildings (Baltimore: Maclay & Associates., 1982)

Kelly, Jacques, “Nicholas D. Karavedas, beverage producer, dies,” The Baltimore Sun, October 19, 2010.

Life Magazine, December 24, 1965

The Passano Files, Baltimore Street (928, 930-932, West)

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/9958

http://www.fireserviceinfo.com/history.html

http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_3/3_3_6.pdf

A view looking north along Evans Chapel Road and east to Roland Park. Hoes Heights. Ornamental wall. Back of Roland stand pipe, City Buildings Collection, 1926, MdHS, PP236.1771A

Ever wonder about Hoes Heights? The hidden and oft-overlooked north Baltimore neighborhood of Hoes Heights bears the name of Grandison Hoe, a freed slave in Antebellum Baltimore who once owned and operated a farm on the location. Nestled between its more renowned neighbors—Hampden to the south and Roland Park to the north— this neighborhood remained entirely African-American until the last few decades. Hoes Heights, bound by Cold Spring Lane to the north, 41st Street to the south, Falls Road to the west and Evans Chapel Road to the east, became part of Baltimore City under the 1918 Annexation Act. It is an architecturally diverse community consisting of 19th century stick style houses, turn of the century single-family homes, and brick rowhouses. Many are probably familiar with this neighborhood’s most prominent feature—the 148 foot tall water tower located on Roland Avenue near the intersection of University Parkway.

Grandison Hoe’s plot of land from J. Morris Wampler’s map of Hampden in 1857. Hampden Improvement Association map, J. Morris Wampler, 1857, MdHS, M271

The earliest reference to the Hoe property is found in an 1857 map of Hampden and its surrounding regions by J. Morris Wampler (seen to the left). The property’s boundaries terminated to the north at what is now Roland Heights Avenue and to the west along the crest of the hill that descends to Falls Road. In the 1860 census of Baltimore County, Grandison is listed as being 40 years of age with property worth $3,600 and an estate worth $200—a modest house on valuable land. Also listed as residents of the farm are his 38-year-old wife Lucy, their five children, and a man named Augustus Green. All are identified as farmers.

The history of Hoes Heights prior to 1857 is somewhat murky. Who deeded Grandison Hoe, a freed slave, this coveted piece of land? Eliza Hoe, who may have been a sister or close relative of Grandison, shows up in the 1870 census as a housekeeper for a branch of the Fendall family in Bolton Hill. This same family also owned property adjacent to Hoes Heights, which was once part of Charles Ridgley’s massive North Baltimore estate. This Hoe-Fendall connection could possibly explain how Grandison ended up with the land.

Hiram Woods (1826-1901), a local sugar refining magnate who owned land north of Cold Spring Lane, so desired Hoe’s Hill (as it was then known) that he offered several times to buy the land and resettle the Hoes in Cross Keys, a small African-American village just to the north. Woods even offered to relocate the family burial ground. The Hoes rejected the offer. (Woods’s parcel later became part of Roland Park.)

Lucy Hoe’s plot of land. Taken from the Atlas of Baltimore and its Environs, 1877, MdHS.

As the Hoe family grew older the need for more living quarters arose. Grandison’s two sons, William and Richard, built their own houses adjacent to their father’s. Relatives, possibly from Charles County, moved to the Hoe farm and built homes. As the 20th century approached, the occupants of Hoes Heights began shifting from farm to domestic work, earning their livings in Roland Park and other exclusive neighborhoods. The harsh circumstances of the Great Depression forced the Hoes to sell portions of their land in order to pay delinquent tax bills. As a result, several blocks of small brick rowhouses were built on 43^rd Street, 42^nd  Street, Evans Chapel and Providence Road during the 1930s and 1940s. Around 70 houses were built with most sold to African-American veterans returning from World War II.

By 1876, Grandison Hoe was most likely deceased—the 1877 Atlas of Baltimore and its Environs, Vol. 1 by G. M. Hopkins shows the name Lucy Hoe on the parcel. The map also depicts a P. Solvine as the property owner of a small piece of land above Roland Heights Avenue terminating at Cold Spring Lane. The Solvine parcel (now part of Hoes Heights) eventually came to be known as Heathbrook. A mid-1970s census report states that Heathbrook was 100 percent white, while Hoes Heights was 100 percent African-American. Historically the two communities have maintained close ties—the Heathbrook Community Organization has worked closely with the Hoes Heights Improvement Association, but the two have remained separate entities.*

Today, Hoes Heights continues to feel more like a rural village than a city neighborhood. The amicable neighbors and tranquil setting gives the impression of simpler times and a real connection between past and present is evident. (Bryson Dudley)

Public School # 57 once stood where Evans Chapel Road intersects 41st Street. The wood-framed structure was torn down shortly after 1927 when 41st Street was reconfigured. School #57. Church Street and Merryman’s Avenue. City Buildings Collection, 1926, MdHS, PP236.0946A

The Roland tower which was built in 1904-1905 still stands today. Designed by William J. Fizone. Roland stand pipe (water tower), City Buildings Collection, 1926, MdHS, PP236.1773A

(Top) Fell’s Point Newsletter and Mercantile Advertiser, August 14, 1835, MdHS. (Detail from masthead)
(Bottom) The Gazette: The Fells Point Newspaper, October 1983, MdHS. (Detail from masthead)

While writing a previous post that looked at the debate over the oldest house in Baltimore, a coworker introduced me to another longstanding Baltimore debate. After reading the post, my coworker gently chided me for the use of “Fell’s Point” rather than the correct “Fells Point.” Not being a native Marylander, I was unfamiliar with the argument over the little mark of punctuation, or the fact that its use, or absence, can elicit such strong feelings. Just within the last dozen or so years, the debate has been addressed in the pages of The Baltimore Sun, City Paper, and Baltimore Magazine, with various theories proposed. A 1999 City Paper article, for instance, states that Fells Point is spelled without an apostrophe, because it’s not a mark of ownership, but rather “the plural of ‘Fell,’ presumably in honor of the two brothers.” (The two brothers being English Quakers Edward and William Fell) The reaction got me curious, so I decided to do a little digging of my own, to see if a brief history of the apostrophe could be charted.

In 1730, English carpenter William Fell arrived in Maryland and purchased a plot of land overlooking the Northwest branch of the Patapsco River. The small 100-acre tract, called Copus’s Harbor, soon became known as Fell’s Prospect. The success of his younger brother Edward, who settled in Maryland a few years earlier and set up a successful store on the east side of Jones Falls, convinced William to make the trip across the Atlantic.  Both William and Edward figured prominently in Baltimore’s early history – in 1732, Edward and a group of settlers founded a town they called Jones’s or Jones Town, after David Jones who first settled the area around Jones Falls in 1661.

Colonel Edward Fell, c.1764, attributed to John Hesselius, MdHS Museum.

Maryland Gazette, January 14, 1762, MdHS. The advertisement is dated January 4 but appeared in the January 14, 1762 issue of the Maryland Gazette.

When William died in 1746, he left his settlement and business interests to his son Edward, who in 1763, laid out the town that bears his family’s name. Needing residents and revenue for his new venture, Edward placed an advertisement in the January 14, 1762 issue of the Maryland Gazette newspaper notifying those who had submitted their names for the right to purchase lots in his new town that their “Lea[s]es are now ready to be filled up…” In what is probably one of the earliest printed references to the Point, the land is described as being near “Baltimore-Town, Maryland, on a Point known by the Name of Fell’s-Point.” (Note the liberal use of the hyphen, a common stylistic choice in the period.) Four years later, Edward’s wife Ann placed another ad in the Gazette, this time threatening legal action against new residents of the town for unpaid debts. The ad retains the apostrophe but dispenses with the hyphen.

The Maryland Gazette, the state’s first newspaper, set a precedent that most other newspapers from the period followed. Early papers published from the Point continued to use the apostrophe, including the Fell’s Point News-letter and Mercantile Advertiser (1835), and The Courier and Inquirer (1836). The neighborhood’s first newspaper, the Fell’s-Point Telegraphe (1795), retained Edward Fell’s original use of the hyphen as well.

Fell’s-Point Telegraphe, May 29, 1795, MdHS.

The Baltimore Sun, founded in 1837, also utilized the possessive apostrophe until changing course early in the twentieth century. A keyword search through the Enoch Pratt Library’s online database of The Baltimore Sun from 1837 to 1985 reveals the usage of “Fell’s Point” almost exclusively throughout the 1800s. (Fells’ – the plural possessive form of Fell – can also be found on occasion.) It appears that sometime in the early decades of the twentieth century, the paper made a decision to switch to “Fells,” although “Fell’s Point” can still be found in articles as late as 1985.

Within decades of the founding of the community, however, references to the Point that omit the apostrophe could be found scattered through manuscripts and government documents. In 1773, Fell’s Point was incorporated, along with Jones’s Town and Baltimore Town, forming the City of Baltimore. Three years later, the first census of what was now the neighborhood of Fell’s Point was taken. The apostrophe is eliminated. Members of the Fell family were also not overly concerned with using the possessive when referring to their own town; a June 29, 1769 land indenture for the sale of “Lot 90” in “Fells Point” to a Robert Harrison of Dorchester County is signed by Ann Fell. Edward consistently omits the mark in a record of his business transactions from the period.

The preferred usage of early historians of Maryland and Baltimore was “Fell’s Point.” One of the earliest histories of the city, Thomas Griffith’s Annals of Baltimore, published in 1824, doesn’t reference either “Fells” or “Fell’s” Point, but “Fell’s Prospect” does appear within its pages. Historian Thomas Scharf, in his History of Baltimore City and County, published in 1881, the standard reference work on Baltimore through the mid-twentieth century and still one of the best sources on the history of early Baltimore, uses “Fell’s Point” throughout. By the twentieth century though, the balance had tipped and today both forms can be found in equal measure in scholarship on the city.

Plan of the Town of Baltimore and It’s Environs, A.P. Folie, 1792, MdHS. (Detail of key)

Although newspaper publishers and historians remained generally loyal to Edward Fell’s original use of the possessive apostrophe through the nineteenth century, cartographers have omitted it from their work from almost the beginning. In 1792, Frenchman and self-styled geographer A.P. Folie produced the first printed map of Baltimore – and employed the apostrophe. Most subsequent nineteenth century maps however, including Fielding Lucas Jr.’s, Plan of the City of Baltimore, drafted under the direction of the state legislature of Maryland and the mayor and city council of Baltimore in 1822, omit the apostrophe. An identically titled map produced in 1882 by Englishman Thomas Poppleton and commissioned by the city, uses the same designation. The Poppleton map remained the standard reference map for Baltimore until the publication of the Bromley Atlas in 1896. Today, the ubiquitous Google maps has replaced its printed predecessors as the leading geographical resource, and it too omits the apostrophe.

An appeal to the federal government to provide resolution to the debate is no help, as the government began eliminating the possessive use of the apostrophe for geographic names on most maps and signs in 1890. The following is the official stance of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the organization charged with overseeing U.S. naming conventions:

“Since its inception in 1890, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has discouraged the use of the possessive form—the genitive apostrophe and the “s”. The possessive form using an “s” is allowed, but the apostrophe is almost always removed. The Board’s archives contain no indication of the reason for this policy…Myths attempting to explain the policy include the idea that the apostrophe looks too much like a rock in water when printed on a map, and is therefore a hazard, or that in the days of “stick–up type” for maps, the apostrophe would become lost and create confusion. The probable explanation is that the Board does not want to show possession for natural features because, ‘ownership of a feature is not in and of itself a reason to name a feature or change its name.’”

As of 2013 only five natural features have official license to use the possessive apostrophe. These include Martha’s Vineyard, granted permission in 1933 after an extensive local campaign, and Clark’s Mountain in Oregon, which received the blessing of the Board in 2002 to “correspond with the personal references of Lewis and Clark.” The federal disregard for the apostrophe applies only to geographic names. According to Board’s website,

“[a]lthough the legal authority of the Board includes all named entities except Federal Buildings, certain categories—broadly determined to be “administrative”—are best left to the organization that administers them. Examples include schools, churches, cemeteries, hospitals, airports, shopping centers, etc. The Board promulgates the names, but leaves issues such as the use of the genitive or possessive apostrophe to the data owners.”

Other administrative branches of the U.S. government have followed suit. In 1969, “Fells Point” was added to the National Register of Historic Places, the U.S. government’s official list of the nation’s historic sites worthy of preservation, becoming the first area in Maryland recognized as such. Although you’ll find subject entries on the Library of Congress’s list of authority headings for both “Harper’s Ferry” and “Harpers Ferry” as well as “Pike’s Peak” and “Pikes Peak,” you won’t find reference to “Fell’s Point.” If you’re going to cite a source according to Library of Congress standards then “Fells Point” is the proper designation.

Warner & Hanna’s Plan of the City and Environs of Baltimore, 1801 (1947 reproduction), MdHS. (Detail)

Today, “Fells Point” is by far the most common and popular usage. Most modern newspapers, including the Gazette: The Fells Point Newspaper (now defunct), City Paper, and The Baltimore Sun, use it. The Baltimore City government also endorses “Fells.” For Google, the ultimate arbiter of popularity in the internet era, it is no contest—a Google search for “Fells Point” generates some 2.5 million hits; “Fell’s Point”, on the other hand, produces a meager 300,000. Although vastly outnumbered, there are still a few groups that continue to carry the banner for the apostrophe including The Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point and the Fell’s Point Residents’ Association. In 2009, Baltimore Magazine joined the minority, switching its allegiance from “Fells” to “Fell’s.”

Although “Fell’s Point,” the grammatically correct and first choice of founder Edward Fell will probably continue to be used, it may eventually disappear. With the U.S. government, the Baltimore City government, and most importantly, the Google juggernaut, all aligned against “Fell’s Point,” its future looks bleak. And while people have been omitting the possessive apostrophe for hundreds of years, the internet has greatly accelerated the practice. In recent years the debate over the increasing decline of the apostrophe  has become a major issue in Great Britain, with some cities removing the offending mark from street signs. In 2001, some concerned folk even established an Apostrophe Protection Society. When British book seller Waterstone’s, dropped the apostrophe from its name in January of 2012, the chairman explained that “it was a matter of simplifying the name to suit its digital presence.” At this rate, we may see the apostrophe go the way of other rarely seen punctuation marks like the hedera or the snark. Perhaps the possessive apostrophe will be just one more thing our Intel-equipped descendants will mock us for. (Damon Talbot)

Sources and Further Reading:

Francis, G. Gardner, Fell’s Point bicentennial jubilee. 1730-1930. Two hundredth anniversary (Baltimore: The Weant press, 1930)

Greene, Susan Ellery, Baltimore: An Illustrated History (Woodland Hills California: Windsor Publications, 1980)

Papenfuse, Edward C. and Joseph M. Coale III, The Hammond-Harwood House Atlas of Historical Maps of Maryland, 1608-1908 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982)

Scharf, Col. J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore, (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874)

Scharf, J. Thomas, History of Baltimore City and County (Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1971)

http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/presscheck/2009/04/fells-not-fells-point

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-03-25/features/0803250140_1_apostrophe-fell-point-fell-family

http://www2.citypaper.com/bob/story.asp?id=5948

http://citypaper.com/bob/baltimoreliving/best-grammar-nazi-fodder-1.1205567

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/10/magazine/sunday-march-10-1996-apostrophe-cops-don-t-be-so-possessive.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Verbal-Energy/2011/0804/Uncle-Sam-s-war-on-apostrophes

http://wmjasco.blogspot.com/2011/08/possessive-apostrophe-his-origin.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9010013/Leave-the-apostrophe-alone-it-makes-sense.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-hitchings/apostrophe-grammar_b_1029337.html

http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/index.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2086128/Waterstones-O-apostrophe-art-thou-.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/28938136/ns/world_news-europe/t/its-catastrophe-apostrophe-britain/

Mysterious photo no. 1. Scroll to the end of the story to see no. 2. SVF Animals Elephant Hanging, 1900,  no. 1, MdHS.

One persistent rumor floating around the library goes that the elephant was hanged to death as punishment for killing or harming a handler. Noted skeptic H.L. Mencken, then a rookie journalist writing for The Baltimore Herald, covered the event, which as it turns out actually took place on June 7, 1900.* Mencken unfortunately adds to our confusion in his memoir, Newspaper Days 1899-1906, where he wrote offhandedly about the episode in a passage on the tenacity of press agents:

“The [incident] I remember best was the hanging of a rogue elephant, for I was assigned to cover it. This elephant, we were informed, had become so ornery that he could be endured no longer, and it was necessary to put him to death. Ordinarily he would be shot, but Bostock [the elephant's owner and well-known animal showman], as a patriotic and law-abiding Englishman, preferred hanging, and would serve as the executioner himself.” (Newspaper Days 1899-1906 [1941] 33-34.)

Frank C. Bostock, the “Animal King.” Image taken from eBay. This tag sold for nearly $400!

In part Mencken’s memories were accurate. Frank Bostock, the owner of Bostock’s Zoo or Wild Animal Show as it was alternately known, was an Englishman and he did in fact oversee Sport’s hanging. The rest of Mencken’s memories, undoubtedly jumbled over time, do not align with the facts.

Part of the confusion can be explained by the fact that, as disturbing as it sounds, there were actual punitive elephant executions in the early twentieth century. Topsy the elephant was electrocuted to death in 1903 for allegedly killing three men—one of them a severely abusive trainer who reportedly fed him a lit cigarette. Thomas Edison even filmed Topsy’s gruesome execution for posterity. The fact that electricity and moving pictures were relatively new and novel inventions can only partially explain why Edison would have filmed this horror. In 1916 Mary the elephant was hanged for allegedly killing her trainer. The heavily doctored photo evidence of this murder pales in comparison to the photos of poor Sport.

After searching through microfilm of Baltimore’s major newspapers at both the H. Furlong Baldwin and Enoch Pratt libraries, the mystery of the photos is now solved and it’s unlike anything I could have expected. The truth of Sport’s sad tale is as follows.

In 1900 when crowds still got excited about world fairs and expositions, Frank Bostock, internationally known as a top animal trainer in Paris, London, New York, and Chicago, was transporting his Wild Animal Show from New York to Baltimore. Bostock, known as “the Animal King,” had recently started a zoo at the old Cyclorama building at Maryland and West Mount Royal Avenues, now the site of University of Baltimore’s Gordon Plaza. (Baltimoreans today also know this as the plaza where the Edgar Allan Poe statue sits.) The Cyclorama building once housed a giant painting of the Battle of Gettysburg, but by the 1880s visitation slowed and the art was removed. Before Bostock took over, the building served as a roller rink, a bike riding school, and as a venue for evangelical revivals.

The only known photo of the Cyclorama which housed among other things Bostock’s Zoo until it burned down in January 1901. Unknown photographer, Sunday Sun Magazine, April 18, 1965.

“Bostock’s Zoo would not have been anything like what we think of today as a public zoological garden,” says Dr. Nigel Rothfels, author of Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. Though many of his animals were trained, most were simply stored in cages as they would have been in circus menageries at the time. Bostock was also involved in the Elks’ Exposition located at North and Greenmount Avenues. The Elks planned to open their attraction in June. It was to include a veritable greatest hits of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Barnum’s Circus, an exact reproduction of the Chicago World Fair Midway, and Bostock’s Wild Animal Show which replaced Hagenbeck’s Zoo in the Baltmore midway.

In mid-May 1900, on a train bound for Baltimore, somewhere in New Jersey, two of Bostock’s elephants, Jolly and Sport, began to roughhouse. By all accounts this wasn’t unusual for the two pachyderm friends, but on this day and on this train there were grave consequences. Sport backed into the door of his boxcar, which gave way to his considerable weight, and was ejected from the moving train. According to The Sun, “He emitted a terrible scream that drowned the locomotive whistle and the clatter of the train and startled the brakemen into instant activity.” His spine irreparably damaged and unable to get up on his own, Sport was lifted by a derrick back onto the train to continue his trip to Baltimore.

Once at his destination, veterinarian Dr. Robert Ward examined Sport and advised ending the animal’s life as the most humane option. The recommendation opened a debate on methods. A precision rifle shot to the brain was ruled out as too risky in the case of a miss. Poison was deemed too dangerous as some believed elephants could go violently out of control, harming or even killing those nearby. The final choice came down to hanging by rope or electrocution, the latter ruled out at the last minute for unspecified reasons. Most accounts portray Bostock and his staff as highly distraught over the loss of Sport and firmly in favor of hanging as the least horrific form of execution. He even took care to consult with the local Humane Society who agreed that hanging was the most merciful way to end Sport’s suffering.

“The Hanging of Sport” by Tom Barg, The Baltimore News, June 8, 1900, page 12.

In a strange twist of fate, further misfortune beset Bostock’s enterprise when Jolly mysteriously dropped dead the day before the hanging. According to his handlers, Jolly, a seventeen-year-old Indian elephant had been very depressed since his friend Sport’s accident. On Tuesday evening Jolly was given half a gallon of rye whiskey, on Bostock’s orders, in an effort to lift his spirits and the following morning died within minutes of his daily exercise routine. Heart failure was the diagnosis.

When the day arrived to end Sport’s suffering, Baltimore newsmen flexed their typewriters. “Misfortune of elephantine proportions” began the account in The Baltimore American. The Baltimore News led the morning with the least accurate headline on the matter, “To Be Electrocuted.” The Herald‘s cub reporter Henry Mencken went on in true tabloid style, ”Like a common murderer, James W. Sport, the Asiatic elephant of the Bostock Midway Carnival Company, was hanged… at the Bolton freight yards of the Northern Central Railway, where he had been incarcerated since his condemnation.”

Accounts differ on the extent to which Sport suffered. The Baltimore American reports that he went quietly, “…if [Sport] felt any pain after the first tightening of the fatal noose, it was not discernible.” But The Sun and Herald told of how he “trumpeted wildly” and “struck dismay to the hearts of those about him.” Most agree that he was gone within nine minutes, hanged from a freight yard derrick able to support his two tons of girth. An estimated two thousand spectators gathered for the hanging, some on rooftops. At first authorities attempted to hold the crowds back, but the Bolton Street yards proved too porous. Despite Mencken’s retelling in his memoir, there seems no proof that Bostock or any promoter touted the hanging beforehand. No tickets were or could have been sold given the freight yard venue and it seems unlikely that it was a stunt to promote Bostock’s business, already operating in the confines of the wildly popular Elk’s Exhibition.

Jolly and Sport were taken to the Elk’s grounds where their remains were sold to local furriers Messrs. Dumont & Co. of 318 Light Street. An autopsy revealed that Sport’s spine was broken, confirming that a mercy killing was in fact the kindest thing to do for him. Nothing revealed why Jolly met his end. Although young for an elephant, zoo-kept elephants during this time period often only lived just seventeen to nineteen years.**

The only known photo of the remains of the Cyclorama building a.k.a. Bostock’s Zoo. Unknown photographer, Sunday Sun  Magazine, August 2, 1953.

Business resumed as usual for Bostock who still had two elephants left, Big Liz and Little Roger. But it didn’t go on in Baltimore for much longer. On a freezing cold night at the end of January of the following year, Bostock’s Zoo caught fire due to faulty electrical wiring located in the ceiling and burned to the ground. Some 300 animals including lions, polar bears, pumas, jaguars, monkeys, and others perished in the flames. Bostock refused to open the pens to free the animals at the expense of the public, but that did not stop rumors of wild animals running amok from flying around the city. It was a gruesome thing that the picture at right cannot even begin to capture. Despite the carnage, many old enough to remember have fond memories of Bostock’s as evidenced in the old “I Remember…” series the Sunday Sun Magazine used to run in the inner cover. Bostock left Baltimore for New York City and in 1904 the animal king opened Bostock’s Arena at Dreamland in Coney Island. It too burned down, along with the rest of Dreamland, in 1911—the day after he reportedly sold his interest in the business.

Bostock’s  short-lived Baltimore enterprise operated concurrently with the Baltimore Zoo, though the latter  got its start at Druid Hill Park in 1876 by an act of the Maryland state legislature. Newspaper men and advertisements of the day used the term zoo to refer to both, but we should not mistake them as similar entities. Bostock was a showman who trained and worked his animals for entertainment purposes. He regularly moved exotic stock around the country, not unlike a traveling circus. Although news accounts portrayed him as a man who cared deeply about his livestock, this should be weighed against the fact that some of his animals, like Jolly, were valued at $10,000. But neither should Bostock be remembered as a man who sold tickets to an elephant lynching.

Two bears and a camel. Residents of the Baltimore Zoo at Druid Hill Park. Reference imagess, photographer unknown, ca. 1927, MC7785-1 and MC7785.

Similarly we should not put the Baltimore Zoo on too high a pedestal.  By the 1890s, the public zoological garden boasted a modest collection including sheep, deer, camels, monkeys, an alligator, and some birds.*** The Baltimore Zoo, which did not become the Maryland Zoo in name until 2004, grew its collection at a much slower pace. It didn’t get its first resident elephant until 1924. Her name was Mary Ann and she is reportedly buried somewhere on the Druid Hill grounds. While the public zoo provided somewhat more stable environments for its animals than Bostock, zoological practices in the 1900s were still lacking by today’s standards.

The tale of Sport’s untimely demise was reduced to the words “elephant 1898 hanging” on a mislabeled photograph folder. Inaccurately remembered by a famous newspaper reporter, the elephant that apparently never hurt anyone could have been remembered as a rogue or killer of man as rumors and mistakes innocently become facts—such is history. Mencken, writing his memoir some forty years later, would certainly have more clearly remembered Sport’s hanging had he reviewed his own coverage in the pages of The Herald. Today thanks to microfilm and historic newspaper scanning, we are able to piece together what really happened to Sport. (Joe Tropea)

Formerly mysterious photo no. 2. Sport the elephant was euthanized on June 7, 1900.  SVF Animals Elephant Hanging, 1900,  no. 1, MdHS.

* Accounts in the following major newspapers confirm that these photos are from 1900, not 1898: Baltimore American, Baltimore Morning Herald, The Baltimore News, The Baltimore Sun, and The New York Times. Unequivocal proof is found in the Baltimore American of June 8, page 12, where a nearly identical photo to the one above can be seen. This article is based on accounts in the above mentioned publications from June 6-8, 1900.

** Mott, Maryann, “Wild Elephants Live Longer Than Their Zoo Counterparts,” National Geographic News, December 11, 2008. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081211-zoo-elephants.html

*** Hoage, R.J. and William Diess editors, New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century.

Special thanks to Dr. Nigel Rothfels and The Maryland Zoo for invaluable help and guidance with this article.

Sources and further reading:

Jensen, Brennen. “Beastly Night,” City Paper, July 2, 2003.

Hoare, Ruth Mohl. “I Remember … The Enchanting Old Bostock Zoo,” Sunday Sun Magazine, October 2, 1960.

Mencken, Henry Louis. Newspaper Days 1899-1906 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1941.)

Rothfels, Nigel. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2002.)

Shaffer, F. Ward. “I Remember … When Fire Swept Bostock’s Zoo,” Sunday Sun Magazine, August 2, 1953.

“Rare & Vintage: Souvenir of Frank Bostock’s Coney Island”

Vannorsdall Schroeder, Joan. “The Day They Hanged Mary the Elephant in East Tennessee,” May 1, 1997.

The Hampden Reservoir as it appeared in 1880 (note the pump house right of center in this photo). Subject Vertical File Medium Photographs (Baltimore Reservoirs) Hampden Reservoir [SVF].

The City Needs a Water Supply

In the early days of Baltimore an abundance of natural springs provided clean and pure water for its inhabitants; but alas, good things never last. As the population grew, springs became stressed, contaminated, and even dried up. There was a need for pumps, wells, and general infrastructure to be created, so after a decade of attempts to establish a water company, a 1797 ordinance passed that appropriated $1,000 to erect pumps in the city’s streets. It seems this ordinance passed because people had concerns about putting out fires; they were complacent about the cruddy water they drank. The linear causation likely had fewer steps. Fire burning skin is easier to comprehend than water gets dirty, we drink water, we get sick. Boy it’s a good thing we don’t make reactionary environmental decisions like that anymore….

By 1800 the idea of bringing water from Gwynns Falls, Jones Falls, and/or Herring Run was being kicked around, and the City Council began plans to divert water into the city. In 1804 water from Carroll’s Run ( a source of springs on the west side) was in the process of being piped to the city, when land owners whose property the pipe encroached upon issued an injunction stopping the efforts. Unable to accomplish its goal, the city was forced to rely on its civic minded citizens. Gen. Samuel Smith, Alexander McKim, Elias Ellicott, Robert Goodloe Harper, Thomas McElderry, and John Eager Howard, formed the committee which laid the groundwork for the creation of the Baltimore Water Company on April 20, 1804. This company was funded through subscriptions by citizens, insurance companies, and corporations.

On the suggestion of civil engineer Jonathan Ellicott, the company set its sights on the Jones Falls. The elevation and dry season volume made the waterway quite suitable. Though they couldn’t purchase the water rights as far north as they desired in Woodberry, John Eager Howard sold the rights to the water around  the present day site of the Preston Street bridge. A storage reservoir to hold the water delivered by a millrace from this site was built on the corner of Calvert and Centre Streets, which was also the site of the Baltimore Water Company’s offices.

By 1830 there was yet another need to increase the supply of water to the growing city. Wooden pipes were replaced with cast iron pipes, new plans were made, and surveys were drawn up to determine how to supply Baltimore with “a never failing supply of pure, fresh, and wholesome water.”*  Due to their elevation above sea level, Gwynns Falls and the part of Jones Falls near Tyson’s mill (in present day Hampden) seemed to be the most suitable sources. Unlike the landowners along the Gwynns Falls, however, many of the landowners on the Jones Falls made outright refusals to sell their property, and the committee recommended the Gwynns Falls as the best choice.

Fast forward twenty-eight years. New iron pipes had been laid, new water sources were exploited, and a new reservoir had been built to supply water for the east side of the city. But it still wasn’t enough. The city continued to expand and grow. After an ordinance was approved by the City Council on July 11, 1857 to provide an increased water supply from the Jones Falls, the water board authorized the money to buy the water rights from Rock Mills north of Woodberry for $150,598, and Swann Lake (now known as Lake Roland) for $289,539.

The map from last week’s post, made by Chief Engineer of the City Water Board J. Morris Wampler, was drawn for the purposes of purchasing and condemning land for the conduit from Lake Roland to the new city reservoir in Hampden on the present day south side of Roosevelt Park. The Hampden reservoir was completed in 1861 three years after it began at a cost of $206,643.50 by John W. Maxwell and Company. Maxwell, along with Joseph H. Hoblitzell and F.C. Crowley, constructed the dam at Lake Roland, the conduit, and the new reservoirs at a total cost of 1.3 million dollars. The conduits construction consisted of the excavation of three separate tunnels totaling over 5,000 feet, and over 6 million bricks. All of the pipes used in the project were manufactured in the Poole and Hunt foundry and presumably rolled up the hill. The work was done by mechanics and day laborers.

The Hampden Reservoir in 1906. Taken from the Bromley Atlas of Baltimore City and Vicinity, plate 17.

The Hampden Reservoir remained in operation until 1915, when the municipal water supply was reconstructed once again, and the polluted 40,000,000 gallon reservoir was reduced to a neighborhood ornament. In 1930 it was drained and cleaned, and the pipes were cut off entirely from the city water system to prevent any contamination through seepage. Though the city threatened to drain it for years, Hampden residents managed to block all proposals for more than forty years.

A Murky Murder and a Heliport

In 1957 the Hampden reservoir was drained as investigators searched for a .32 caliber automatic weapon they believed was used in the murder of sandwich-shop proprietor Vincent DiPietro. A few weeks before it was drained, a youth laborer named Donald Coleman was charged in the killing of DiPietro after making “certain admissions” following four days of interrogation. Though DiPietro was a known hot-head, and had stabbed a man in his shop a year earlier, for some reason revenge was discounted as a motivation by the investigators; nor was a robbery mentioned in any report.

Only minutes after the investigators pulled the gun out of the mud of the drained reservoir, DiPietro’s widow (who he had also stabbed in a separate incident several months prior) married John C. Lloyd in the Hampden Methodist Church (now known as the United Methodist Church) directly across the street from the muddy pit. When the Rev. Leslie Werner, who was conducting the ceremony on short notice—unaware of the woman’s connection to the victim—told the couple that the gun was discovered, there wasn’t much of a response. Only after reading their names on the marriage certificate and directly questioning her relationship to the slain man did Rev. Werner realize it was her deceased husband. A week after the marriage the reservoir was once again filled back in with water to the delight of Hampden residents.

In 1960 the Bureau of Water Supply began draining the reservoir without announcement. The city then revealed plans to fill the muddy pit and turn it into a Department of Aviation heliport. The residents, led by Rev. Werner,  responded with an immediate outcry. The irate citizens protested that helicopters would be a major disturbance to the school, recreation center, and churches in the immediate proximity. Werner called the ordeal “an infringement on our territorial rights without due recourse to a public hearing.”** Eventually the city recanted on the heliport. The draining did continue, however, as the city conveniently had an arrangement with the contractors excavating the new Jones Falls Expressway nearby. In exchange for a local site to dump the excavated soil, the city would receive a discount on the cost of that stretch of highway.

So it was settled, the mud from the Jones Falls Expressway filled the giant hole, and the reservoir has been largely forgotten.

(Eben Dennis)

This is a photograph of Roosevelt Park, the former site of the Hampden Reservoir, from roughly the same angle. The pump house from the previous photograph is behind the line of trees. Photograph of Roosevelt Park taken in 2012 by Anna Dennis.

An aerial view of Roosevelt Park taken from Googlemaps.

Sources:

*Scharf, J. Thomas. History of Baltimore City and County. Baltimore, MD: Regional Publishing Company, 1971.

Passano File, H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Maryland Historical Society.

“Water Bureau Draining Reservoir at Hampden,” Baltimore Sun, October 5, 1930.

“Police Probe ‘Wide Open’: No Definite Suspects Held In DiPietro Slaying,” Baltimore Sun, March 2,1957.

“DiPietro Slaying Laid to Laborer: Man, 21, Held Without Bail On Murder Charge,” Baltimore Sun, March 28, 1957.

“Reservoir Plug May Be Pulled,” Baltimore Sun, April 7, 1957.

“Police To Drain Reservoir For DiPietro Murder Gun,” Baltimore Sun, April 9, 1957

“Youth Presented in DiPietro Case: Jury Acts Though Murder Weapon Is Not Found,” Baltimore Sun, April 24, 1957.

“Gun Found by Police in Reservoir,” Baltimore Sun, April 28, 1957.

“Water Refilling Reservoir Again,” Baltimore Sun, May 7, 1957.

**”Residents Fight Heliport Plans: Would Ban Move To Use Reservoir Site Near School,” Baltimore Sun, May 2, 1960.

“Views Given on Heliport: Chilcote Sees False Fear; Draining Halt Held Unlikely,” Baltimore Sun, May 5, 1960.

Bromley Atlas of Baltimore City and Vicinity, 1907, plate 17.

[title] Hampden Improvement Association map, J. Morris Wampler, 1857.

I’m of the opinion that historical material needs two of three factors in order to survive for future generations: luck, money, and someone caring. Most of our collections have benefited from all three. Because of this there is less material representing working class people that survives than the wealthy; in other words, without money the material’s survival relies heavily on luck. Since Hampden was a traditionally a working class community, less stuff has survived, making the manuscripts, artifacts, and photographs that much more valuable.

So what can I learn from this swiss-cheese piece of map that somehow made its way to our library years ago? For one, I learned that the history of the area represented in the map is equally full of gaps—not a coincidence. Second, I learned that the best way to fill these historical gaps is by using the resources the map lives amongst in our library. A healthy library (and the help of Francis O’Neill) can make each crumb exponentially more valuable.

There are three very striking features on this map. (1) The ornate title reading “Hampden Improvement Association; Property Baltimore County, 1857, J. Morris Wampler;” (2)  it is subdivided into 250 numbered, mostly undeveloped plots; and (3) the name H. Mankin, the man responsible for giving the village known as “Slabtown” its modern name “Hampden,” on a couple of the larger plots with two houses.*

The Mankin plot can be seen here as #270. The street directly north of the lot, 3rd avenue, is present day 36th street, or “The Avenue.”

Using The Baltimore Sun and the Dielman-Hayward file, we found that J. Morris Wampler was appointed Chief Engineer of the City Water Board in 1857; he most likely designed the Hampden reservoir. It appears this map was commissioned by the Hampden Improvement Association, perhaps to create the path for a pipe from the reservoir at Roland Park to another reservoir at the present day site of Roosevelt Park in Hampden.

We found references to the Hampden Improvement Association in The Baltimore Sun, but couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. We did find reference to the incorporation of a similar group calling themselves “the trustees of Hampden Hall,” in Chapter 222 of Laws of Maryland, 1856. This group evidently had the joint goal of forming a girls school. In the process of incorporating, they established themselves as a land company. Whether this was coincidence, an accident, or for economic reasons is unclear, and though two lots are called “College Lots” on the map, no school was ever established. The names associated with Hampden Hall are John N. McJilton, David Stewart, Samuel Wyman, Isaiah Martin, and Henry Martin. After looking up H. Mankin in the Dielman-Hayward file, I noticed that his father was named Isaiah. I am guessing this is a typo and these two “Martins” are actually the “Mankins.”

General Henry Mankin (1804-1876) made his fortune in shipping, taking over the firm Clark and Kellog,  when its founders retired. He was responsible for establishing the first regular lines between the major ports of Baltimore and Liverpool; his fleets became famous for the large quantity of freight that was sent overseas, and the hundreds of immigrants who arrived on his boats returning to harbor. In 1838 Mankin married Sarah Anne Foard, and they bought a country place north of Baltimore between Falls Turnpike and Stoney Run called Mount Pleasant. They planted many trees and flowers, and soon the area that is now known as Hampden “became noted for its beauty and fragrance.”

Predicting that Baltimore would be forced to expand northward, Mankin left the shipping business and formed the Hampden Improvement Association (possibly through the Hampden Hall maneuver) as a business venture with the Mount Pleasant tract at its heart. Unfortunately for Mankin the expansion did not happen at the rapid rate he anticipated—it  was slowed by the Civil War. Mankin passed away In 1876 a much poorer man than he had been in the 1850s, his investment never really panning out. Though the village had greatly increased in size due to an influx of mill hands and foundry workers, it  never turned into the prosperous business venture he envisioned. In 1887 Hampden was incorporated into the city when Baltimore expanded northward.

(Eben Dennis)

*Outsiders originally called the village “Slabtown” after the architecture of its small houses. This name was greatly disliked by the majority Irish population of the tiny village, and they pushed to name the town Kellyville, after Martin kelly, the inn keep and man responsible for building many of these houses. Evidently he was a modest man and declined. The largest landowner in the community was General Henry Mankin (1804-1876), and thinking the name Hampden (after 17^th century British statesmen John Hampden) sounded distinguished, he got it to stick.

The plot owned by the Clarke family was part of the Mount Pleasant tract (not to be confused with Mankin’s mansion of the same name), presumedly purchased from Henry Mankin. The Clarke family built the buildings shown in the map above called the “Beaumont Estate.” The property next changed hands to the Dulin Family who eventually sold it to the Maryland Casualty Company. Shortly after the first World War the Maryland Casualty Company built the structure we know of today as the Rotunda.

Sources

“Man in the Street: Martin Kelly,” The Baltimore Sun, Feb 11, 1951.

“Classified Ad #23,” The Baltimore Sun, May 1, 1868.

“Classified Ad #15,” The Baltimore Sun, January 9, 1861.

“Classified Ad #35,” The Baltimore Sun, June 29, 1859.

“Local Matters,” The Baltimore Sun, July 25, 1857.

“Local Matters,” The Baltimore Sun, May 28, 1856.

Passano Historic Structures Index, Maryland Historical Society.

Dielman–Hayward File, Maryland Historical Society.

“Sketch of the Life of Henry Mankin,” Dielman–Hayward File, Maryland Historical Society.

Baltimore County. Map of Hampden. 1857, M271, Maryland Historical Society.

Laws Made and Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Maryland, 1856.

Chalkley, Mark. “Hampden Woodberry.” Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina, 2006.

Francis O’Neill standing in the main reading room with the Passano Historic Index File.

The most valuable resource for studying the buildings of Baltimore is not Google Maps—in fact, it isn’t online at all. It is an index card collection of historic structures known as the Passano File that lives in the H. Furlong Baldwin Library at the Maryland Historical Society. Edited and overseen by Francis O’Neill, a reference librarian who began working in the MdHS library in 1981(the year this writer was born), the file is comprised of over 40,000 entries.** If you walk into our library and hear the antiquated clacking of a typewriter, you are hearing the sound of Mr. O’Neill at work on the most richly detailed catalog of our city’s geographic history.Alongside Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner, the Paul Henderson Photograph Collection, the William Stone Engraving, and the McKeldin-Jackson Oral History Collection, the Passano File stands among the most valuable gems in our collection.

Eleanor Phillips Passano (1870-1949)

From 1935 through 1940, Eleanor Phillips Passano (1870-1949), a library volunteer at MdHS , worked on a card file that connected family names to specific properties in Baltimore and the surrounding counties. Over the course of the next 50 years, this file remained dormant. As the years passed, what was once a rich source of information became less and less useful; modern researchers had become chronologically detached from the family names previously associated with the buildings decades before.

By his fifteenth year at the MdHS library, O’Neill had noticed the waning use of the Passano File. More importantly, however, he recognized the informational value and research potential of the resource. In 1995 O’Neill began the process of reorganizing the Passano File according to geographical location rather than family name, linking the cards to a permanent physical space. Most importantly, he once again began updating and adding index cards, giving the Passano File a whole new life.

The Passano File is arranged geographically in the sense that it is alphabetical by street address. As you flip through the typed index cards, you physically travel east and west or north and south through Baltimore’s streets. Through address changes, fires, and demolitions, each index card describes the history of the buildings, estate, or neighborhoods that have existed at the modern address of the geographic space. Each card also contains further references to photographs, articles, and books about the structures.

Since the formal title is the Passano Historic Structures File, and structure is a somewhat vague term, O’Neill needed to settle on a definition. For convenience and practicality’s sake, O’Neill defines a structure as “anything you can go in and out of.”  Parks, neighborhoods, and cemeteries, accompany the buildings and city blocks. When asked how monuments fit into this scheme (being for the most part solid structures), he matter-of-factly responds, “I have a different file for those.”

As the majority of us get dumbfounded, overwhelmed, and are eventually numbed by the waves of information that constantly flow past us, Francis O’Neill narrows his scope. He casually filters, plucks, and types up information about the city as it changes around him. Luckily for those who venture into our library with a little curiosity, he makes it available for our use. I nominate a name change to the Passano-O’Neill File. Anyone with me?* The Passano File is open to researchers from 10-5pm Wednesdays through Saturdays. Ask for Mr. O’Neill.

As an example, I’ve photographed the cards for 2001-2003 Druid Park Drive from the file. You can see that these five cards contain detailed information about the location, as well as references to other books and articles in our library.

(Eben Dennis)

* The Passano File did indeed have its official name changed tothe Passano-O’Neill file on 4/20/13.

**index card count derived from a mathematical formula that relied heavily on the width of my finger.