Robert Kniesche at work.
Baltimore Colts vs Detroit Lions, October 2, 1961, Associated Press, PP79.2376, MdHS.(reference photo – copyright owned by the Associated Press)

When longtime Baltimore Sun photographer Robert Kniesche died in 1976, a colleague praised him as “one of the best cameramen The Baltimore Sun ever knew.”(1) Although far more obscure than his famous contemporary at The Sun, Aubrey Bodine, Kniesche left behind a body of photographic work that stands among the best produced by a Marylander photographer.

Born in Baltimore in 1906, Kniesche recognized his calling early on, and he left Baltimore Polytechnic Institute without graduating to pursue a career as a photographer. In the mid 1920s, The Baltimore Sun hired Kniesche on as a news photographer, his first stint with the newspaper. Kniesche joined the staff a few years after Bodine, who at the time was a commercial photographer for the paper.

Kniesche and Bodine became fast friends and often traveled around Baltimore together on picture-taking excursions. Together, they snapped photographs of many of the same subjects that would bring both of them acclaim later in their careers: images of the city at night, the harbor, and Baltimore industry. They were also drinking buddies. The pair, joined by Raleigh Carroll, a Sun reporter and Bodine’s housemate at the time, and another Sun photographer Leigh Sanders, lived “high and well on their $40 and $50-a-week salaries”(2) In the prohibition years of the 1920s, they frequented the various speakeasies in the area around Park Avenue where Bodine lived. Every year they would attend the annual Bal des Arts, a wild, costume themed party held by Charcoal Club, Baltimore’s historic art club established in 1885. According to one Bodine biographer, “a day or two before the ball they would get a supply of gin from the busy bootleggers. Bodine and Kniesche carried their gin and juice in two suitcases. They would meet in the basement of the Charcoal Club on Preston street to apply their makeup and start ‘to get a package on,’ an expression in those days for getting drunk.”(3) Over the course of their long careers, the two often found themselves in friendly competition in local and national photograph competitions.

Kniesche left The Baltimore Sun for a brief period in the late 1920s to work for the Chicago Tribune. He returned though in 1930, and aside from four years spent in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a pilot and flying instructor, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander, Kniesche remained with the Baltimore paper for the next 40 years. In 1947 Kniesche organized the photographic department of the Sun owned WMAR-TV, the first television station in Maryland, and shot the first local films shown on the station. When he retired in 1971, he had been the chief of photography for The Sun’s morning, evening, and Sunday staffs for over two decades.

In 1957, the Press Photographer’s Association of Baltimore awarded Kniesche “Best in Show” for this photograph of the Ruxton train station. It was his second win in a row. The organization praised Kniesche in it’s annual publication: “Bob has always been known for his excellent aerial pictures but we’ll guarantee he rates tops in making Pictorial pictures as well.”
“Ruxton Station” (Whistle Stop, U.S.A.), 1957, Robert Kniesche, pp79.1466, z24-00611, MdHS.

As a photojournalist for Maryland’s leading newspaper, Kniesche documented virtually everything newsworthy, from presidential inaugurations, National Football League games, and aerial shows, to the opening of the oyster dredging season and city architecture. One of his early assignments after returning to Baltimore from Chicago in 1930 was to photograph the aftermath of Maryland’s first lynching since 1911.  On December 4, 1931, Matthew Williams, an African-American man accused of murdering his white employer, was lynched on the front lawn of the Salisbury courthouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Kniesche was with a group of reporters and photographers sent by The Sun to cover the event. In his memoirs, H.L. Mencken, Kniesche’s co-worker at the newspaper, wrote that, “all the reporters who were sent to Salisbury from the home office were threatened with violence and one of the photographers, Robert F. Kniesche, was saved from rough handling, and maybe even murder, only by escaping in an airship.”(4) Kniesche would go on to photograph the famed journalist on many occasions over the following decades.

Like Bodine, Kniesche was an artist and master craftsman. One reviewer noted that he seemed “to have made a fetish of focus, [delighting] in knife-edge precision.”(5) Both photographers had an affinity for certain subject matter and many photos that Kniesche took could be easily be mistaken for Bodine’s and vice versa: duck hunters silhouetted against an early morning sky; blast furnaces spewing out flames at Bethlehem steel; oyster tongers on the Chesapeake. Kniesche was particularly renowned for his aerial photographs and photographic essays. One award winning series of his photographs that accompanied a 1949 series of Sun articles entitled “Maryland’s Shame the Worst Story the Sunpapers ever told” helped expose the deplorable conditions then rampant in Maryland’s state mental health facilities to the general public.

Kniesche was also very fond of animals and images of baboons, tigers, monkeys, and especially house cats, can be found throughout the collection of his photographs at the Maryland Historical Society. In his obituary, The Sun noted that Kniesche’s images of animals were executed “with an often sensitive and humorous approach to their expressions, habits postures and activities.”(6) He often posed his subjects in amusing positions accompanied by a humorous caption.

Kittens…in jars.
Kittens in Jars, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79(unprocessed), MdHS.

His photographs won many awards and were exhibited both nationally and abroad as far away as Helsinki, Finland. His work was shown in cultural institutions throughout Maryland, including the Peale Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Kniesche rarely sold any of his prints, preferring to give them away to friends

The Maryland Historical Society has over 7,000 negatives and prints that Kniesche took over the course of his career. Most of these are part of  PP79, the Robert Kniesche Photograph Collection. At this point, 5,000 of the film and glass plate negatives are available to the public. The remaining 2,000 prints  are currently being processed and should be available by the fall of 2013.(Damon Talbot)

Click on the slideshow below to see more of Robert Kniesche’s photographs.

Packed house at Memorial Stadium for the 1958 All-Star Game.

All star game, Memorial Stadium, July 8, 1958, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1314, MdHS.

Kniesche took a number of photographs of “the Block,” the stretch of Baltimore Street which has served as the city’s adult entertainment center for over a century, documenting the various strip clubs, burlesque shows, penny arcades, and tattoo parlors.

Tattoo parlor on the Block, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP567.2, MdHS.

Musical entertainment on the Block.

Band in a club on the Block, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.567.3, MdHS.

The Crown Cork and Seal Company was founded in 1892 by William Painter soon after he patented the ‘crown cork,’ the first bottle cap. Located on the corner of Eastern Ave and Kresson Street in Canton, the company was producing half the world’s supply of bottle caps by the 1930s. Kniesche captured this image of a fire that began when two storage sheds containing 3000 bales of raw cork ignited.

Fire at Crown Cork and Seal, Baltimore, November 8, 1930, Robert Kniesche, PP79.17, MdHS

“Water Ballet on Ann Street” - Kniesche won 1st Honor award in the Peale Museum’s 19th Annual Photo show for this 1960 photograph.

“Water Ballet on Ann Street,” Robert Kniesche, 1960, MC4028, MdHS.

Bethlehem Sparrows Point Shipyard in 1940.

Bethlehem shipbuilding, Sparrows Point, April 7, 1940, Robert Kniesche, PP79.324, MdHS.

In May of 1956 Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus’ last outdoor show in Baltimore under canvas tent was held at Herring Run Park. The show featured such performers as Glenn Pulley, the “Thin Man,” who weighed 62 pounds; Ella Mills, the 586-pound "Fat Lady" from Wisconsin; Harry Doll, a 30-inch, 38-pound 44-year-old who was known as the "World's Smallest Man.", a “Human Corkscrew,” and of course, clowns.

Clown, Barnum & Bailey Circus, last outdoor show in Baltimore, May 1956, Robert Kniesche, PP79.390.1, MdHS.

"Night Brakeman," 1957.

Brakeman, 1957, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1186, MdHS.

Alongside his pictorial and journalistic work, Kniesche produced a large number of abstract images, often marked by high contrast, such as this 1970 shot of a ship’s gangway taken through a fish-eye lens.

Fisheye on ship gangway, April 13, 1970, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1398, MdHS

Kniesche titled this image of an unusual piggyback ride, "Don't you hit him."

"Don't You Hit Him," undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.2419, MdHS.

H. L. Mencken having his bust done.

H.L. Mencken, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79-1828, Negative#32, MdHS.

Like his fellow Baltimore Sun photographer Aubrey Bodine, one of Kniesche’s favorite photographic subjects was the sea, and he produced some of his most picturesque work when he turned his camera to the water. One admirer described a Kniesche photograph of log canoes on the Chesapeake as “one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen – and much more beautiful than anything in the Louvre in Paris.”

Oyster Boats, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.2583, MdHS.

Footnotes:

(1) “Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976.

(2) Williams, Harold A., Bodine: A Legend in His Time (Baltimore: Bodine & Associates, Inc., 1971) p. 29.

(3) Ibid., p. 28.

(4) Mencken, H.L., edited by Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, Bradford Jacobs, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: a memoir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1994) p. 212.

(5) Johnson, Lincoln F., “Weekend by day: Kniesche photo exhibit at historical society,” The Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1978.

(6) “Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976

Sources and Further Reading:

An American Tragedy, Underbelly

Charcoal Club Records, MS 1792

Crown History

Crown Cork and Seal Photograph Collection, PP33

Darkroom – Robert Kniesche: A Life Devoted to Baltimore and Photography

Johnson, Lincoln F., “Weekend by day: Kniesche photo exhibit at historical society,” The Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1978.

“Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976.

Matt Williams, Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series)

Mencken, H.L., edited by Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, Bradford Jacobs, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: a memoir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1994)

Rasmussen, Fred, “Remember when circus shows took place under canvas Finale: the last time the big top was raised was in Baltimore was May 22, 1956 in Herring Run Park,” The Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1998.

Robert Kniesche Photograph Collection, PP79

Schoberlein, Robert W., “Maryland’s Shame”: Photojournalism and Mental Health Reform, 1935-1949,” Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 98, Spring 2003.

Williams, Harold A., Bodine: A Legend in His Time (Baltimore: Bodine & Associates, Inc., 1971)

These people were having more fun than you are right now.
(click to enlarge)
Beach Scene, Ocean City, Md, Robert Kniesche, not dated, PP79.754, MdHS

How does the small underbelly editorial team cope with colleagues traveling to the beach, mountains, and parts unknown while we’re stuck here running the blog and tending to our many other duties? We travel vicariously through photographs and post cards! While real beach-goers are dealing with staggering crowds, the oppressive sun, crawling traffic, and marching through a sea of sticky popsicle wrappers on the way to the boardwalk, we’ll stay here in the air-conditioned library and take a little trip back in time…we really need a vacation.

For this week’s post we’ve decided to write the definitive history of Maryland’s favorite vacation spot, Ocean City. Not really…but please enjoy the slideshow of postcards below and a brief tale of the storm that altered the course of the city that, during the summer months, becomes Maryland’s second most populated town. (For those interested in Ocean City’s rich history,  please visit here or here. For further research, readers can check out Ocean City (volumes 1 and 2) by Nan Devincent-Hayes and John E. Jacob or City on the Sand by Mary Corddry.)

Greetings from Ocean City, Md, 1943, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

The Atlantic Hotel. The first Atlantic Hotel opened on July 4, 1875, regarded as the founding day of Ocean City. Located on Wicomico Street, it was destroyed by fire in 1925. The hotel was rebuilt in 1927 and still stands today. The New Atlantic Hotel, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Board Walk showing Atlantic Hotel and Pier, Ocean City, Md., ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Boardwalk and Beach and Cottage Line, Ocean City, Md, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Ocean City Pier and Boardwalk, Ocean City, Md, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Bathing hour on the beach, Ocean City, Md, ca 1940s, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Originally called the Ocean City Life-Saving Station, the United States Coast Guard Station was built in 1891 by the U.S. Treasury Department for “the saving of vessels in distress and lives in peril upon the water.” In 1915 the U.S. Coast Guard took over the operations of the building until moving to a new facility in 1964. The building was relocated to its present location at 813 South Boardwalk in 1978 and converted to a museum. United States Coast Guard Station, ca 1940s, Ocean City, MD. Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Air View of Ocean City, Md., looking north from Inlet, 1947, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Greetings from Ocean City, Md, 1947, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

Greetings from Ocean City, Maryland, 1944, Postcard Collection, MdHS.

One of the defining events in the history of the self-proclaimed “White Marlin Capital of the World” is the great storm of 1933, captured by A. Aubrey Bodine in the images below. On August 22 after four days of saturating rain, heavy winds picked up, battering the boardwalk, pummeling the city with large waves, and destroying the town’s railroad bridge and fishing camps. The storm’s greatest and most lasting impact was a 50-foot wide, 8-foot deep  inlet, that was carved through the barrier island by a  continuous four day ebb tide, flowing from the bay out to the ocean. Three entire streets were submerged at the south end of the town.

Ironically, the resulting scar connecting the ocean to the sheltered bay was exactly what turned Ocean City into the ideal port for fisherman and caused it to flourish as a vacation spot. In fact, for several years prior to the storm, Senator Millard E. Tydings had been fighting to get funding for a man-made canal five miles south of Ocean City. His hope was that the bay side would provide a calm harbor for up to 1,000 fishing boats which could easily access the Atlantic, and from there the markets of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Though the storm caused approximately $850,000 of damage, the main discussion in the immediate aftermath revolved around appropriations for constructing seawalls to make the canal permanent. Within two years $781,000 was spent on concrete to stabilize the inlet. Not only did these seawalls keep sand from the channel, but they diverted it towards the beaches, greatly expanding their size and making the boardwalk even with ground level.

This inlet made Ocean City the state’s only Atlantic port. The resulting commercial and sport fishing boom greatly shaped the character of the Ocean City we know today, as vacationers content with more modest accommodations flocked in large numbers to crab and fish, and dozens of hotels and restaurants sprang up to meet their needs. (Eben Dennis and Damon Talbot)

Ocean City, MD. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A. Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-A, MdHS.

Ocean City, MD. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-E, MdHS.

Ocean City, Md. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A. Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-C, MdHS.

Ocean City, Md. View of the damage after the hurricane of 1933, A. Aubrey Bodine, 1933, MC8230-D, MdHS.

Sources and further reading:

Corddry, Mary, City on the Sand: Ocean City Maryland and the People Who Built It (Centerville, MD: Tidewater, 1991)

DeVincent-Hayes, Nan & Jacob, John E., Ocean City- Volumes 1 and 2  (Charleston: Arcadia, 1999)

Ocean City Life-Saving Museum

There are two stories behind the creation of John Moale’s drawing of Baltimore Town. One version is that sometime in the late eighteenth century, Moale (ca. 1731-1798) sat down and sketched from memory the Baltimore of his youth. The other account has the amateur artist sitting on the future Federal Hill and sketching the town from life in 1752.
Baltimore Town in 1752, by John Moale, MdHS museum collection, 1845.1.1.

Sitting down in a field or on a city bench, pulling out a sketch pad, and drawing a building or cityscape is today a lost practice, largely left to artists. In an era when you can access a digital map of the entire world, and then zoom in on practically any building on earth, a sketch of a house, or even a printed map of city, may seem almost primitive. The watercolor to the right, which could easily be mistaken for a child’s drawing, is actually the earliest existing depiction of Baltimore when it was still just a tiny backwater town. Merchant and land developer John Moale’s unfinished sketch is a document of 1752 Baltimore, then known as Baltimore Town, that although rendered in “shocking disregard…of the laws of perspective,” gives a sense of the architecture of eighteenth century Baltimore now almost entirely lost. While there are surviving examples of houses from the mid to late 1700s still standing in the city (and photographic examples of many now gone), none of the structures depicted in Moale’s “original and homely draft” remain.(1)

In 1752, Baltimore Town was a “small, straggling village,” of roughly 200 inhabitants who lived, worshiped, and drank in 25 houses, one church, two taverns, and a brewery.(2) The drawing captures the young town just prior to a boom period marking the beginning of 200 years of uninterrupted population growth that wouldn’t come to an end until 1950. In the 1750s the town’s commercial and residential possibilities began to attract a diverse group of immigrants. German and Scotch-Irish businessmen from Pennsylvania, French-Acadians exiled from Nova Scotia in 1755, and other immigrant groups traveled to the waterfront community in the hopes of starting a new life. By 1760 there were over 1200 inhabitants. Fourteen years later, on the eve of the Revolution, the population consisted of nearly 6,000 people living in some 560 residences.

Most of these dwellings were simple wooden structures, between one and two stories in height. The most common homes found in eighteenth century Baltimore were three or four bay-wide structures with gambrel roofs and dormers. Only four of the 25 houses pictured in John Moale’s original sketch were brick; in 1741, Irish immigrant Edwin Fottrell, using bricks imported from England, began construction on the first. The Fottrell house – the largest residence in 1752 Baltimore Town – was erected at what is today the northwest corner of Fayette and Calvert Streets.(3) Fottrell returned to his homeland sometime before 1755, leaving the residence unfinished and in a state of disrepair.

Edwin Fottrell house. Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16.

St. Peter the Apostle Church, constructed 1843, 11-13 South Poppleton Street, June 2013

The deserted home lay vacant for only a short time as it was soon occupied by a group of newly arrived French-Acadian refugees whose ship had appeared unexpectedly in the harbor. The refugees – part of a larger group of 900 that had arrived in Annapolis following their expulsion from Nova Scotia by British authorities – were soon being called on by Reverend John Ashton, the resident Catholic priest of Carroll Manor. Ashton visited Baltimore Town once a month to provide church services for the few Catholics living there. The Reverend and his congregation, consisting of some 40 members -  including a few of the Acadians – took for their place of worship one of the lower rooms of the Fottrell house; one of their first tasks consisted of “expelling the hogs which had habitually nested there.”(4)

From these squalid beginnings emerged Baltimore’s first Catholic Church. In 1770 the congregation began construction on St. Peter’s Church, at the corner of Saratoga and Charles Streets. Although the original building was torn down in 1841, a new church was built two years later that still stands at the corner of Hollins and Poppleton Street in West Baltimore. Edward Fottrell’s house, on the other hand,  had a much shorter life span. In 1780 the State of Maryland seized the residence and property, which was then in the possession of Fottrell’s heirs, divided up the land into six lots and sold them off at auction.

John Moale’s sketch of Baltimore Town provided the basis for a number of prints in the first half of the nineteenth century that proved to be very popular. Moale provided no identifications of the structures that he sketched out – the later reproductions have filled in many of the details left out by the amateur artist. Probably the most widely known as well as the most artistically rendered is an 1817 engraving by architect William Strickland. Some notable additions are the two ships visible in the harbor. The larger vessel is the “Phillip and Charles,” owned by William Rogers who also operated of one of the town’s two taverns. Docked on the left side of the harbor is the Sloop “Baltimore,” built in 1746 and owned by Captain Darby Lux, a two-time commissioner of Baltimore Town. The ship was the first Baltimore owned vessel to be sailed from the port. Lux’s house on Light Street is also identified in the print. The main thoroughfare, visible in the center of the engraving, is Calvert Street. Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16.

The first and fourth St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church.
(top) The first, built 1739, razed in 1786; Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16, (detail)
(bottom) The fourth, built in 1854, 233 N. Charles Street, June 2013.

The most prominent structure in Moales’ original sketch, although it appears unfinished, is St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Baltimore’s first church of any denomination. Completed in 1739, it was built atop Saratoga Street Hill, the highest point in town. By 1780, the building had become too small to accommodate its rapidly growing congregation, and a new church was built on another section of the large parcel of land bound by Lexington, Saratoga, Charles and St. Paul Streets, purchased by the church when the town was first established in 1729. The original church was put to use as a school until being demolished in 1786.

One feature of the early town that does not appear in either Moale’s sketch or the later reproductions was a wooden fence erected around the town in 1750. According to historian Thomas Scharf, the fence was built to protect the town from hostile tribes of Native Americans. Many sources have repeated this tale, although it appears the townsfolk had a far more mundane reason for erecting the fence that encircled the town “as completely as the walls enclosed a medieval fortress.”(5) It was instead devised as a barrier against the herds of swine, flocks of sheep, and gaggles of geese that roamed freely throughout the town. The hogs did serve some purpose, acting as an early sanitation department, as well as providing a source of food for the poorer members of the community. But these benefits were apparently soon outweighed by their penchant for destroying property, creating ruts in the roads, endangering children and causing general mayhem.

The fence however had a brief existence – residents soon began removing sections of it for firewood. One of the persons accused of pilfering timber was Thomas Chase, the rector of St. Paul’s Church. By November of 1752 most of the fence was gone. Whether John Moale intended to add the fence to his unfinished drawing or whether he sought to keep the image of the dilapidated enclosure from the historical record when he sat down to put pen to paper will probably never be known.

In 1796, Baltimore Town – which in 1773 had merged with Jones Town and Fell’s Point – incorporated to form the City of Baltimore. Only a handful of the buildings that existed prior to the merger of the three neighboring communities survived into the late nineteenth century. The last building visible in John Moale’s sketch to fall by the wayside was apparently Kaminsky’s inn, located at 106-110 Mercer Street, at the northwest corner of Mercer and Grant Streets. An 1885 Baltimore Sun article described the tavern as being:

“built in 1750 of wood, two stories and an attic, with dormer windows. The first story was plastered outside and the upper part weather-boarded. A lone flight of stairs from the outside led up to the second story. The building presented the appearance of an old-fashioned German hostelry. It was the grand hotel of the city. Washington, Lafayette and other revolutionary heroes stopped there.”(6)

Baltimore Town’s last remaining building finally met its demise in the early 1870s when it was razed to make way for three iron-front buildings at 101-105 East Redwood Street. These buildings were in turn destroyed some 30 years later when the Great Fire of 1904 swept through downtown Baltimore. A dozen years passed before another edifice, the Sun Life Insurance Company Building, was erected.(7)

In 2000, the site of one of Baltimore’s first two inns made a return to its roots when the Sun Life Building and its companion on the block – the former headquarters of the Merchant and Miners Transportation Company – were demolished to make way for a Residence Inn Marriott. While it lacks the charms of its predecessor, with laundry dangling from its windows (see photo below), it does make up for it in girth, rooming capacity, and general unattractiveness. (Damon Talbot)

Progression of a city block.
(Top left) Kaminsky’s Inn. Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16, (detail)
(Top right) Kaminsky’s Inn, ca 1875, MdHS, CC 2821. The Tavern was originally two stories; a third story was added at some point in the nineteenth century to adjust to alterations in the street level.
(Bottom right) Sun Life Insurance Building, 109 East Redwood Street, about to be demolished, ca 2000; the building next to it is the partially demolished former Headquarters of the Merchant and Miners Company.(photograph not from MdHS’s collection)
(Bottom left) Marriott Residence Inn, 17 Light Street, June 2013.

Footnotes:

(1) Scharf, J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of “Baltimore Town” and Baltimore City (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874), 48; Mayer, Brantz, Baltimore: Past and present with biographical sketches of its most prominent men (Baltimore: Richardson and Bennett: 1871)

(2) Scharf, Thomas J., History of Baltimore City and County (Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1971), 58.

(3) Baltimore in 1752, 1817 engraving by William Strickland based on a 1752 sketch by John Moale, MdHS, H16.

(4) Scharf, J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore, 66.

(5) Stockett, Letitia, Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History (Baltimore: Grace Gore Norman, 1936), 45.

(6) “A Leaf from the Past,” The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1885

(7) The Sun Life Insurance Company building was designed by Louis Levi, the first Jewish member of the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Sources and further reading:

Beirne, Francis F., St. Paul’s Parish, Baltimore: A Chronicle of the MotherChurch (Baltimore: Horn-Shafer Company, 1967)

Clark, Dennis Rankin, Baltimore, 1729-1829: The Genesis of a Community (Washington D.C., 1976)

Griffith, Thomas W., Annals of Baltimore (Baltimore: Printed by William Wooddy, 1824)

Gunts, Edward “Residents may rise at Redwood and Light,” The Baltimore Sun, November 29, 2004.

Gunts, Edward “Turning Point for Downtown,” The Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2000.

Hall, Clayton Colman, ed., Baltimore: Its History and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1912)

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

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

Kelly, Jacques, “Redwood Street preservation move grows”, The Baltimore Sun, September 30, 2000.

Kelly, Jacques, The Voice of this Calling: St. Paul’s Parish – Baltimore, Maryland, 1692-1992 (Baltimore: The Vestry of St. Paul’s Parish, 1993)

“A Leaf from the Past,” The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1885

MarylandState Archives, Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series) John Moale

Mayer, Brantz, Baltimore: Past and present with biographical sketches of its most prominent men (Baltimore: Richardson and Bennett: 1871)

The Passano-O’Neill Files: Light Street (7-11); Mercer Street (106-110); Charles Street (231 North); Calvert Street (100-102 North)

Rice, Laura, Maryland History in Prints, 1743-1900 (Baltimore: The Press at the Maryland Historical Society, 2002)

Scharf, J. Thomas, The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of “Baltimore Town” and Baltimore City (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874)

Scharf, J. Thomas, History of Baltimore City and County (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881)

Stockett, Letitia, Baltimore: A Not Too Serious History (Baltimore: Grace Gore Norman, 1936)

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

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

(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/

Robert Long House, ca 1930, Hughes Company, MdHS, SVF.

Half a block north of where Fell, Thames, and Ann Streets intersect just east of the heart of Fell’s Point, stands a nondescript rowhouse that, at first glance, has little to distinguish it from the other brick rowhouses in the neighborhood. But a closer look at 812 South Ann Street reveals a front facade that is noticeably different from its neighbors. Named for its builder and first resident, the Robert Long House, completed circa 1765, is the oldest surviving residence in Baltimore.

But wait, less than three miles to the west stands another seemingly out of place structure and candidate for oldest residence in Baltimore, the Mount Clare House. An 18^th century colonial mansion perched incongruously on a hill overlooking Carroll Park and the modern city now surrounding it, the Mount Clare House was built by Charles Carroll, Barrister, a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and one of Maryland’s first state senators. Sources differ on the exact time frame of the building’s construction. Some claim construction began as early as 1756; others as late as 1763, but most place the completion date around 1767.

The two properties could not be more dissimilar—one a modest rowhouse, the other a Georgian-style mansion built on what was, at the time of construction, a sprawling plantation estate of some 1000 acres. Robert Long, a merchant who hailed from York, Pennsylvania, was one of the earliest settlers of Fell’s Point (originally known as Fell’s Prospect), founded in 1730 by William Fell, an English Quaker. In 1764, Long began construction on his property on Ann Street and then apparently abandoned the project within the year. According to the Annals of Baltimore, published in 1824, it was said that Long had “persuaded Mr. Fell to lay off that part of the town, commenced some improvements at the corner of Ann and Thames Streets, moved to the country and left his building unfinished.” Long and his family soon returned though, occupying the property from 1765 to 1781.

Robert Long House, 812 South Ann Street (right), December 2012, photograph by Damon Talbot.

Rather than adopting the architectural style of his newly adopted home, Long constructed the house in a style found in the southern regions of his native state, with the shed dormer and pent roof the most noticeable architectural features setting it apart from the typical Baltimore rowhouse. The house was originally built with only two floors—the third floor and attic that are seen in the circa 1930 photograph were added sometime in the mid to late 1800s. The home was set to be torn down by the City of Baltimore in 1969, until the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point stepped in and acquired the property in 1975. The group then set about restoring the property to its original appearance. Today the group maintains its office in the residence and offers daily tours of the house and garden.

Mount Clare House, ca 1915, MdHS, SVF.

The Mount Clare House has more prosperous origins. In 1732, Dr. Charles Carroll, the father of Charles Carroll, Barrister, purchased 2,368 acres of land west of the recently established Baltimore Town. He called the property Georgia Plantation. Carroll eventually sold all but 800 acres of the original purchase to the Baltimore Iron Works, of which he was part owner. His son, Charles Carroll, Barrister, inherited the property in the late 1750s. Mount Clare was built as his summer residence, and was named in honor of his sister and grandmother.

Following Charles Carroll’s death in 1783, the estate remained in the possession of the Carroll family until 1840. Between the years 1840 to 1860 all of the original outbuildings on the plantation were destroyed, leaving only the main house remaining. During the Civil War, the house served as a quarters for Union soldiers. In 1865, a group of Germans leased the house and used it as a beer garden until 1890, when the City of Baltimore purchased the house and the remaining 70 acres of land. The city also purchased an adjoining tract of land and merged the properties into what is now Carroll Park. In 1917, the National Society of Colonial Dames in Maryland took over operations of Mount Clare and opened the site to the public as a museum. The group continues to offer tours of the home today.

Mount Clare House, December 2012, photograph by Damon Talbot.

So which dwelling is officially the oldest in Baltimore? Answering this question seems to be an ongoing debate, with both print and web sources yielding conflicting views. The Mount Clare House is variously described as: “the oldest colonial-era structure in Baltimore”; “the oldest extant colonial building in Baltimore”; “Baltimore’s oldest house”; “the oldest home in Baltimore City”; and “the oldest house in Baltimore City.”

The Robert Long House is billed as: “the oldest residential house in Baltimore city”; “the oldest surviving city house in Baltimore”; “the oldest existing residence in Baltimore”; “Baltimore’s oldest surviving residence”; “Baltimore’s oldest surviving urban residence”; and “the oldest standing residence in Baltimore City.” One publication goes so far as to state that the structure is the “oldest surviving urban residence within the boundaries of the original Baltimore Town,” though Baltimore Town, founded in 1729, did not amalgamate Fell’s Point until 1773. Mount Clare, on the other hand, did not become part of Baltimore City until at least 1822; a map from that year shows the western boundary of the city extending just over six blocks beyond the estate.

It seems that a distinction can be made. If the date that construction commences on a property is used as the basis for determining the age of a residence, then the Mount Clare House is the oldest. If date the house was completed is given more weight, than it’s the Robert Long House. Either way you choose to look at it, Baltimore has some pretty old houses. (Damon Talbot)

Sources and Further Reading:

Annals of Baltimore, Thomas Waters Griffith (Baltimore: W. Wooddy, 1824)

Historic Baltimore: Twelve Walking Tours of Downtown Fells Point, Locust Point, Federal Hill, and MountClare, Priscilla Miles, (Baltimore: Priscilla Miles, 1987)

Images of America: Fell’s Point, Jacqueline Greff (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005)

MountClare: Being an Account of the Seat built by Charles Carroll, Barrister, upon his Lands at Patapsco, Michael F. Trostel (Baltimore: National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of  Maryland, 1981)

The Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage, 60^th Anniversary, 1937 – 1997, Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage, (Baltimore: Printed by Reese Press, Inc.,1997)

http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/70000860.pdf

http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=1034&ResourceType=Building

http://www.baltimoremd.com/monuments/sea01.html

http://www.mountclare.org/index.html

http://www.nps.gov/nr//travel/baltimore/b2.htm

http://www.preservationsociety.com/PS2011robertlonghouse.html

Herbert Frisby and the crew of the B-29 just before the flight that took Frisby directly over the North Pole, August 12, 1956, MdHS, PAM 11,409. Frisby dropped a steel box over the exact location of the geographic North Pole, which contained a U.S. flag and a bronze memorial plaque to Matthew Henson, the first African-American to reach the North Pole.

When one thinks of arctic exploration, the state of Maryland does not immediately come to mind. But Maryland’s connection to the history of polar exploration is more than tenuous, as two of its native sons occupy prominent places on the list of travelers to the northernmost point of the earth. When Baltimorean Herbert Frisby flew over the geographic North Pole aboard a U.S. Air Force B-29 on August 12, 1956, he became the second African-American to reach the point where all longitude lines converge and every direction is south.** Frisby was following in the trail blazed by another Marylander, Matthew Henson, who forty seven years earlier, became recognized as the first African-American to set foot on the North Pole as a member of Admiral Robert Peary’s expedition, credited with reaching the pole on April 6, 1909. An arctic explorer in his own right, Frisby gained greater fame in his quest to see his fellow Marylander recognized as co-discoverer of the North Pole alongside Robert Peary.

Herbert Frisby was born on Lee Street in southwest Baltimore, near what is today Camden Yards. Details of his early life are murky—Frisby was somewhat cagey about certain details of his life, particularly his age. According to census records he was born in 1888, but in published interviews Frisby would often avoid answering direct questions about how old he was. In a 1977 Baltimore Evening Sun article he would say only that he was in his 80s. It is also unclear when Frisby first became aware of Matthew Henson. In what is most surely an apocryphal story, Frisby claimed to have first heard of the story of Henson’s voyage to the North Pole when he was in the sixth grade. In the audio excerpt below taken from an interview conducted in 1971, Frisby discusses his recollections of the event that altered the course of his life.

By all indications, Frisby was a student at Howard University at the time of the Peary expedition in 1909, having graduated from Baltimore’s Colored High and Training School (renamed Douglass high school in 1923) in 1908. He worked his way through college playing the piano and taking various odd jobs. Upon graduating in 1912, he took a teaching post at an elementary school in Baltimore, and for the next 46 years was employed in various positions in Baltimore’s public school system. By the time he retired in 1958 as head of the science department at Douglass, a position he had held for over thirty years, he was a highly regarded educator whose commentary on various subjects could often be found in the pages of Baltimore’s Afro-American newspaper.

It was perhaps in his role as a science teacher that Frisby first became fascinated with the story of Matthew Henson and decided to follow in his footsteps. During World War II he received his first opportunity when he became a war correspondent in Alaska for the Afro-American. Frisby provided readers of the newspaper with accounts of his encounters with Eskimos and his travels through Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

Just prior to his service as a correspondent, Frisby got a chance to meet his idol. According to Frisby he spent five years traveling from his home in Baltimore in search of Henson’s birthplace, a small cabin in the tiny village of Nanemejoy on the southwestern tip of Charles County. He eventually located it, and taking a piece of wood from the cabin, he travelled to New York in search of Henson, beginning a friendship that would last until Henson’s death in 1955.

Following his hero’s death, Frisby began a one man crusade to see Henson recognized as co-discoverer of the North Pole alongside Robert Peary. There had been many supporters to Henson’s claim, including the Afro-American, that he arrived at the Pole before the exhausted Peary. But Peary, as leader of the expedition, received credit for arriving first. Henson’s lack of recognition was also due in no small part to the color of his skin, and for much of the first half of the twentieth century he was largely ignored. Frisby took it upon himself to change this.

Image of the Matthew Henson Memorial Plaque located in the Maryland State House, Annapolis, MdHS, PAM 11,409.

In 1955, Frisby established the Matthew Henson Memorial Project dedicated to commemorating Henson’s life and accomplishments. Four years later, Governor J. Millard Tawes established April 6 as Matthew Henson Day in Maryland. In 1962, largely through Frisby’s advocacy, Baltimore City Public School #29, located on North Payson Street, was renamed the Matthew Henson Elementary School. Frisby’s ultimate dream was realized on August 8, 1966, when a memorial plaque commemorating Matthew Henson’s arrival at the North Pole was unveiled at the Maryland State House. Bearing the inscription, “Matthew Alexander Henson, Co-Discover of the North Pole with Admiral Robert Edwin Peary, April 6, 1909,” the plaque was the first official endorsement of Matthew Henson and Robert Peary as equal partners in their expedition to the North Pole.

Another goal not realized in Frisby’s lifetime, was the fulfillment of Henson’s request to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery near the grave of Admiral Peary. In 1988, Henson’s remains were exhumed from Woodlawn cemetery in New York City and re-interred near Peary’s grave.

Frisby achieved a good deal of renown in his lifetime for his efforts on behalf of Matthew Henson, but he also received significant attention for his own arctic travels.  By the time Frisby died in 1983, he had made over 26 trips to the polar regions—on one expedition he spent two months sharing an igloo with an Eskimo family. Reports of these excursions were often printed in the pages of the Afro-American. In 1965, a group of women inspired by Frisby’s accomplishments as an educator and explorer, established the Herbert M. Frisby Historical Society. The organization worked to promote the study of African-American history as well as continuing Frisby’s mission of promoting the legacy of Matthew Henson. In 1977 Mayor William Donald Schaeffer designated March 6 as Herbert M. Frisby Day in Baltimore in honor of the explorer’s life and accomplishments.

Herbert M. Frisby, undated, MdHS, PAM 11,409. Frisby is holding a pair of traditional Inuit snow goggles used to prevent snow blindness.

The story of Frisby’s quest to gain Matthew Henson recognition as “co-discoverer of the North Pole” is not without irony. Doubts over whether Henson and Robert Peary reached the pole have been widespread since their story was first announced to the world in the pages of the New York Times. Peary and another American explorer, Frederick Cook, emerged from the arctic wilderness in September of 1909 within a week of one another, with Cook claiming to have discovered the North Pole on April 21, 1908, a full year ahead of Peary. Both have had their share of detractors, but for most of the twentieth century Peary’s claim has been generally viewed as the more credible. In 1911, Peary’s claim was even formally endorsed by the U.S. Congress, although they too had strong reservations over the veracity of Peary’s claims.

In recent decades, the doubts have only increased. Another aspirant to the title of “discover of the North Pole,” American aviator Richard Byrd, who claimed to have flown over the pole by plane on May 9, 1926, has largely been discredited as well. Although the debate will probably never be conclusively resolved, today, credit is generally given to Norwegian Roald Amundsen as the being the first to arrive at the North Pole. Amundsen, who was also the first to reach the geographic South Pole in 1911, flew over the pole in a dirigible with his 15 man expedition on May 12, 1926, just a few days after Byrd claimed to.

So in all likelihood, Herbert Frisby, who is probably more remembered for his role as champion of Matthew Henson, rather than for his own arctic exploits, was the first African-American to reach the top of the world. (Damon Talbot)

**The geographic North Pole is the northernmost point of the earth, and is the direction of true north. It is the point where the earth’s axis of rotation meets its surface. The North magnetic pole is the point where the earth’s magnetic field points vertically downward and where traditional magnetic compasses point towards. The magnetic pole is in constant motion and located some 200 miles south of the geographic North Pole.

Sources and further reading:

Herbert Frisby, interview, 1971, MdHS, OH 8015.

“North Pole became this family’s guiding light,” Clarice Scriber, The Baltimore Sun, January 31, 1991.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Cook-vs-Peary.html

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/who-was-first-at-the-north-pole/

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/17/us/who-reached-the-north-pole-first-a-researcher-lays-claim-to-solving-the-mystery.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/419365/North-Pole

http://www.dioi.org/vols/wa0.pdf

http://library.osu.edu/projects/byrd-north-pole/controversy.php

http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/a/northpole_2.htm

(left) Clarence Mitchell Jr. staging a one man picket line supporting school desegregation in Baltimore, 1954, MdHS, Political Ephemera Collection.
(right) Parren Mitchell protesting segregation of teacher’s training programs at Douglas High School, Paul Henderson, July 1948, MdHS, HEN.00.A2-161 (detail)

Many who devote their lives to bringing about social change can recall a single incident or episode that altered their perceptions and determined their path in life. Civil rights activist Rosa Parks recalls that one of the first ways she realized the difference between “a black world and a white world” was when, as a child, she saw white children riding buses to school while she had to walk. For historian Howard Zinn, featured in a previous post, it was his experiences as a bombardier during World War II that had a profound effect on his later career as a civil rights and anti-war activist, and outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy. For brothers Clarence Mitchell Jr. (1911-1984) and Parren Mitchell (1922-2007), it was the 1933 lynching of George Armwood in the small town of Princess Anne on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that set the course for their future careers as two of Maryland’s foremost civil rights leaders.

The Eastern Shore was a place apart in the 1930s. Socially and economically it was closer to the south than to the rest of Maryland, particularly in terms of race relations. The roots of a longstanding hostility between blacks and whites in the region were established early in the nation’s history. In 1783 Maryland ended the slave trade across the state, except on the Eastern Shore. Somerset County, where Princess Anne was the county seat, was one of six main centers of slave trading in the state. Isolated both geographically and economically from much of the rest of the state, the economic frustrations of poor whites in the area were often taken out on their African American neighbors. By the 1930s, the increased economic hardships of the Great Depression caused simmering hostilities to boil over, with violent result.

Map of Maryland Showing Somerset County, from Maryland’s Historic Somerset, Board of Education, Somerset County, Princess Anne, MD, 1955.

On December 4, 1931, Matthew Williams, an African American man, shot and killed his white employer in Salisbury and then turned the gun on himself in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. That evening, a mob of more than a thousand dragged Williams from his hospital bed where he lay critically wounded, and hung him up on the courthouse lawn. His body was then dragged to the town’s African American business district, and set on fire.  The Williams murder was the 32nd lynching in Maryland since 1882, and the first since 1911. Less than two years later, another lynching took place that would mirror the Williams murder with frightening similarity in nearby Princess Anne.

Mary Denston, the elderly wife of a Somerset County farmer, was returning to her home in Princess Anne on the morning of October 17, 1933 when she was attacked by an assailant. A manhunt quickly began for the alleged perpetrator, 22-year-old African-American George Armwood. He was soon arrested and charged with felonious assault. By 5:00 pm, an angry mob of local white residents had gathered outside the Salisbury jail where the suspect had been taken. In order to protect Armwood from the increasingly hostile crowd, state police transferred him to Baltimore. But just as quickly he was returned to Somerset county. After assuring Maryland Governor Albert Ritchie that Armwood’s safety would be guaranteed, Somerset county officials transferred Armwood to the jail house in Princess Anne, with tragic consequences.

Sources are conflicting regarding many of the details of the assault on Denston and the subsequent murder of George Armwood, but what is certain is that on the evening of October 18 a mob of a thousand or more people stormed into the Princess Anne jail house and hauled Armwood from his cell down to the street below. Before he was hung from a tree some distance away, Armwood was dragged through the streets, beaten, stabbed, and had one ear hacked off.  Armwood’s lifeless body was then paraded through the town, finally ending up near the town’s courthouse, where the mob doused the corpse with gasoline and set it on fire.

Clarence Mitchell Jr. was a cub reporter for Baltimore’s Afro-American newspaper when he was sent across the bay to report on the lynching. It was his first assignment with the paper. Mitchell, accompanied by photographer Paul Henderson and two other reporters from the newspaper, arrived in Princess Anne mid morning on October 19 after an all night journey from Baltimore. By the time the four newspapermen arrived at the crime scene, Armwood had been dead for some time. Mitchell described the horrific sight in vivid detail for the readers of the October 28 issue of the Afro-American:

“The skin of George Armwood was scorched and blackened while his face had suffered many blows from  sharp and heavy instruments. A cursory glance revealed that one ear was missing and his tongue clenched between his teeth, gave evidence of his great agony before death. There is no adequate description of the mute evidence of gloating on the part of whites who gathered to watch the effect upon our people.”

In a 1977 interview conducted for the McKeldin-Jackson Oral History Project, Mitchell goes into further detail about the lynching:

Interviewer Charles Wagandt can be heard expressing utter disbelief at the idea that the lynching was advertised, but in fact this was the case. Denton Watson, Mitchell’s official biographer, writes that,

“…the advent of the lynching had been well advertised throughout Maryland, neighboring Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia. In Princess Anne members of the fire department sounded the alarm and brought out the fire truck as a signal for the mob to gather. Everyone, including newspaper reporters, had ample time to attend the event. No one was surprised by the news….”

The lynching was celebrated throughout the town. The Afro-American reported that the mob danced around Armwood’s burnt remains singing “John Brown’s Body” and “Give me something to remember you by.” Small crowds gathered throughout the night discussing the murder. One man was quoted as stating,  “It would have cost the state $1,000 to hang the man. It cost us 75 cents.” Pieces from the rope used to hang Armwood were taken as souvenirs.

Mitchell returned to his home on Bloom street in northwest Baltimore a changed man. He had been involved in civil rights activities prior to the lynching—in 1932 he joined the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was the vice president of the City Wide Young Peoples Forum (established by future wife Juanita Jackson). But being witness to the violence of the lynching, which was outside the scope of his experiences living in Baltimore, galvanized his thinking. This, and his coverage of the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American boys charged with the rape of two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama, “awakened his interest in the…need for extensive social and judicial reforms in the country.” That evening, as he related the events of the day to his family over dinner he was so upset he couldn’t eat. For Clarence’s younger brother Parren, 11 years old at the time, seeing his brother’s reaction had a profound effect on the boy. In the clip below taken from a 1976 McKeldin-Jackson Project interview, Parren Mitchell discusses his reaction to his brother’s experience and the impact it had on him.

The murder of George Armwood was the last recorded lynching in Maryland. Clarence returned to Princess Anne to cover the trial of four men arrested for their participation in the lynching. Violence was again in the air as another mob formed, and National Guard troops were sent in. The case was eventually dismissed due to insufficient evidence. Out of the more than 5,000 documented lynchings that occurred in the United States between 1890 and 1960, less than one percent resulted in a conviction.

Clarence Mitchell, Jr. and Parren Mitchell, not dated, Clarence Mitchell Jr. Funeral Program, March 23, 1984, MdHS, MS 3092.

Both Clarence and Parren went on to dedicate their lives to furthering the cause of civil rights. Following World War II, Clarence became the labor secretary for the NAACP, and in 1950 he became the director of the organization’s Washington bureau, quickly emerging as the leading civil rights lobbyist in Washington. Known as the “101^st Senator,” he was instrumental in helping to usher major civil rights legislation through Congress: The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. One journalist called him “the prime source of moral pressure for the cause of racial justice.” In 1985 the city courthouse in downtown Baltimore was named in his honor.

Parren’s career was no less distinguished than that of his elder brother’s. Within a year of the Armwood lynching, Parren joined his brother in a picket against local merchants over discriminatory hiring practices near their home in northwest Baltimore. Over the course of a more than 50 year career in the civil rights movement and politics at the state and national level, Mitchell established a number of firsts for African-Americans. In 1950 he became the first to attend the University of Maryland’s College Park campus when he was accepted into the school’s graduate school of sociology after suing to gain entrance.

When Mitchell was elected to Congress in 1970 as a representative of Maryland’s 7^th district, he not only became the first African-American congressman from Maryland, but the first since 1898 to hold a congressional seat from a state south of the Mason-Dixon line. He also was one of the founding members of the congressional black caucus. Over the course of his eight terms as a congressman, Mitchell remained a tireless advocate for increasing economic opportunities for minorities and minority owned businesses. (Damon Talbot)

Sources and further reading:

African American Leaders of Maryland: a Portrait Gallery, Suzanne E. Chapelle & Glenn O. Phillips (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2004)

“Clarence Mitchell: Man who was always there,” Peter Kumpa, Baltimore Evening Sun, March 20, 1984.

Here Lies Jim Crow: Civil Rights in Maryland, C. Fraser Smith (Baltimore: The JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 2008)

Lion in the Lobby: Clarence Mitchell, Jr.’s Struggle for the Passage of Civil Rights Laws, Denton L. Watson (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990)

“Parren J. Mitchell: 1922-2007, Crusader for justice dies at 85,” Sun staff, Baltimore Sun, May 29, 2007

“Parren Mitchell, 85, Congressman and Rights Leader, Dies,” Douglas Martin, The New York Times, May 30, 2007.

“Shore starting to face up to past, some say,” Tom Dunkel, Baltimore Sun, February 25, 2007.

http://www.msa.md.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013700/013750/html/13750bio.html

http://www.visionaryproject.org/mitchellparren/

http://baic.house.gov/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=60

http://suite101.com/article/rosa-parks-challenges-segregation-law-a175677

Cream, Baltimore Civic Center, November 3, 1968, Edgar Argo, poster collection, Maryland Historical Society. The Baltimore Civic Center (today the First Mariner Arena) has played host to countless musical acts over its history, including two performances by the Beatles on September 23, 1964 – their only visit to the city.

This is an original concert poster for the rock group Cream’s November 3, 1968 concert date at the Baltimore Civic Center during their “farewell” tour of the United States. Often referred to as the first supergroup, Cream, consisting of Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and lead vocals, and Ginger Baker on drums, broke up immediately after the tour amid growing tensions between band members. Although the poster indicates that the Baltimore concert was “their farewell performance,” the group also performed the following night in Providence, Rhode Island. This was followed by two shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 26, their last performances together until reuniting for a number of concerts in the 1990s and 2000s.

Baltimore Sun, November 2, 1968

While it’s debatable that the members of Cream were “the most important controversial pop stars in the world” in 1968—other groups were more important in the history of rock and roll, for instance a group called the Beatles comes to mind, and bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Doors were arguably more controversial—the band was hugely popular and influential, with Clapton recognized as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Wheels of Fire, their recently released album, had a four week run atop the Billboard album chart and would become the world’s first platinum selling double album. The opening acts for the date at the Civic Center were the Moody Blues and the Terry Reid Group. (Terry Reid is pictured at the top of the poster)

The poster was designed by Edgar Argo, a Maryland-based cartoonist and illustrator who passed away in 2009. Durwood C. Settles, the promoter of the concert, was responsible for bringing many of the biggest acts of the era to the Baltimore – Washington area including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, James Brown, and the Grateful Dead. Although not present here, the byline “Durwood C. Settles Presents” on a concert poster usually indicated a quality program. As in many of the rock posters of the era, there are rumored to be a few obscured or hidden images. See if you can spot them. (Damon Talbot)

Sources:

http://nj1015.com/this-day-in-music-history-107/

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/cream-mn0000112462

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/05/03/cream.reunion.concert/index.html

http://blog.postercentral.com/tag/durwood-c-settles-presents/