underbelly
Eben Dennis
Summer Vacation: Greetings from Ocean City!
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 [...]
Morris A. Soper Papers – Coming Soon! (or 25 years late…)
Several months ago while pulling a collection from our sub-basement, or coal cellar, under the south end of the Keyser building here at MdHS, I became intrigued by a box labeled Soper Papers. Most curious were the words “Don’t catalog until 3/88” scrawled on it. Being quite familiar with the fact that most archives—including MdHS—have [...]
A Whale of a Tale: the Mysterious Case of the Tolchester Whale*
It’s hard to work at the Maryland Historical Society and not be familiar with the R.H. Eichner & Company color lithograph entitled “Go See the Whale at Tolchester, 1889.” An original of this iconic print lives in our library, and posters depicting it grace the halls of the Education Department and the offices on the [...]
Antoinette in the Air: Hubert Latham and His Historic Flight Over Baltimore, 1910
Hubert Latham was almost the first person to fly an airplane over the British Channel. If the French aviator and adventurer was discouraged when his first attempt came up short, he never showed it. As he bobbed in the waves waiting to be retrieved by a passing vessel, Latham casually smoked a cigarette in the cockpit [...]
Conduit: Druid Lake and the Wall of Mud (1863 – 1871)
In 1863 the Baltimore City Council approved a $300,000 loan to construct a billion gallon capacity reservoir in the newly established Druid Hill Park. Though the new city waterworks project from Lake Roland to the Mount Royal Reservoir on the Jones Falls had just been completed, it had become apparent that the city’s water problems were far [...]
Conduit: Mount Royal Reservoir and the Baltimore Waterworks,1857-1863
Since last month’s Hampden Reservoir post, I have taken more delight in my commute as I pass by Roosevelt Park, going to and returning from work via the Falls Road exit of the JFX; I can almost see the half moon shape of the reservoir on my left as I climb the hill approaching 36th Street. [...]
41st Annual Monument Lighting and MdHS Open House
Like so much of the City of Baltimore, the annual monument lighting bears the stamp of Mayor William Donald Schaefer. Schaefer, mayor from 1971 to 1987, got the inspiration for the idea following a trip to Indianapolis in 1972, when the beauty of the city’s monuments and statues aglow in holiday lights left him in [...]
Then and Now: Pratt Street – A View From the Power Plant
Today’s “Then and Now” photograph was taken from the roof of the Pratt Street Power Plant, ca. 1905. The three-story buildings shown here on the 500 block of East Pratt were built to replace a row of four-story buildings, most likely involved in maritime supply or wholesale commodity trades, that were destroyed by the Baltimore [...]
Hampden Reservoir: A Muddy History
As a follow up to last week’s post, “Slabtown to Hampden,” I’m focusing this week on the Hampden Reservoir, the impetus of the map’s creation. With city pipes bursting left and right the past couple weeks, you could say that this has been on my mind. Here’s a quick history of the reservoir accompanied by [...]
From Slabtown to Hampden
As I was inventorying some of our maps a couple months ago, I was very excited to stumble across a crumbly, crusty, and torn map of Hampden from 1857. Though we have an absolutely staggering amount of material in our collection, we do not have a lot from the community that almost half of our [...]
© 2013 underbelly. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by Wordpress. Designed by 