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Preservation Watch List The following are historically important buildings in Baltimore City whose fates are not certain, either from active planning for demolition of from demolition by neglect. |
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Clifton Park
Valve House
William Jones House /
Devine Seafood Built between 1805 and 1810 by bricklayer William Jones and most recently occupied by Devine Seafood, this red brick, two-and-one-half-story Federal style building is perhaps the oldest remaining structure on the West Side. Although altered over the years, the Jones House remains in remarkably good condition and is considered a contributing building subject to development guidelines under the West Side Memorandum of Agreement between the Maryland Historical Trust and the City of Baltimore. The building is now owned by the City and in the summer of 2007, the Baltimore Development Corporation issued a request for proposals to develop the site. Currently, the BDC has not selected a developer or development proposal, and whether the building will be preserved is unknown.
Pennsylvania Railroad
Building Built to house the Baltimore branch offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, this structure at 200 East Baltimore Street was an early commission of the architectural firm of Parker & Thomas (later Parker, Thomas & Rice), the pre-eminent architects of Baltimore’s Beaux-arts commercial & financial structures of the first quarter of the twentieth century. The three-story brick building, which occupies a corner site on one of Baltimore’s most historically significant commercial intersections, complements the nearby Alex. Brown & Sons Company building in both style and scale and reflects the architectural trends in Baltimore’s business and financial center following the Great Fire of February 7-8, 1904. The building’s completion by July 1905 indicates the rapidity with which the Pennsylvania Railroad and the city’s other business institutions rebuilt in the area, thus maintaining their association with the part of the city that had functioned as its financial and commercial heart since the eighteenth century. Currently vacant, the building occupies a site in an area undergoing intensive redevelopment. Adjacent buildings were recently demolished for a surface parking lot, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Building has been considered recently for demolition as well. The building lies within the boundaries of the Business & Government National Register Historic District, and it was featured in the Built to Last exhibit at the Maryland Historical Society in 2002.
600 Block of West
Lexington Street This row of eight, slightly altered, red brick buildings most likely dates from the 1840s. The south side of the same block and that of the 500 block contain sporadic buildings from the same period, but many original buildings in these rows have been demolished or severely altered. The row on the North side of the 600 block has survived largely intact. The University of Maryland at Baltimore, which now owns the block, has indicated that it intends to preserve the houses. In April, 2006, the University signed an agreement with the Maryland Historical Trust agreeing to preserve this row of pre Civil War historic buildings. Baltimore Heritage first included this block on Lexington Street in 2002, before the University of Maryland’s commitment. The University’s commitment has greatly advanced the prospects for preservation and renovation, but to date no work has been done.
400 Block of
Park Avenue
Sellers
Mansion Built in 1868, the Sellers Mansion is a three-story Second Empire brick house with a mansard roof that rivaled its outer suburban contemporaries in size, quality of craftsmanship, and attention to detail. Its carved stone lintels, patterned slate roof, original roof cresting, and its two classically detailed porticoes (one of which still retains its elegantly carved wooden columns and capitals) identified this household as one of taste and affluence. Although carefully restored in the 1960s and adapted to a variety of community uses through the early 1990s, the mansion currently stands vacant and in an advanced state of deterioration. The windows are missing, wood trim is rotting, and exterior masonry is deteriorating. The roof has failed in a number of places. The mansion occupies a prominent corner of Lafayette Square in West Baltimore and is at the center the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District. This district, with over 5000 contributing structures, is one of the largest predominately African American historic districts in the country. The mansion is the only remaining detached private residence on the Square, and one of the first residences constructed there. It is owned by St. James Episcopal Church, also located on Lafayette Square. The Church has expressed an interest in restoring the building. The building was included on the 2006 inventory of endangered buildings by Preservation Maryland. With advanced deterioration, work will need to begin soon if the building is to be preserved.
Eastern Female Highschool A Baltimore City Landmark since 1976 and declared one of Baltimore’s “architectural gems” in a March 8, 2002 Baltimore Sun editorial, this 1869-1870 Italianate-style, red-brick and white-trim structure is the city’s oldest surviving purpose-built public school building. It is also a memorial to the post-Civil War expansion of secondary education opportunities in Baltimore. The school is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has appeared on the Register’s travel itinerary of historic sites in Baltimore. The building was renovated and converted into apartments in the 1970s. Baltimore City transferred the building to Sojourner-Douglass College in 2004. It continues to stand boarded up and vacant.
606-610 Cathedral The three houses at 606, 608, and 610 Cathedral Street are all that remain of the elegant nineteenth-century townhouses that once lined this block off West Mount Vernon Place. Built between 1850 and 1860 on land originally owned by John Eager Howard, the three houses served as primary residences for prosperous merchants in the tobacco and other trades who had flocked to Baltimore’s fashionable new Mount Vernon neighborhood and whose reputations in business and society grew in tandem with the neighborhood’s prestige. The house at 610, attributed to the Baltimore-based architectural team of Niernsee & Neilson, among the region’s most sought-after nineteenth-century architects, operated for several decades as part of the Mount Vernon Hotel, reputedly Baltimore’s first “family hotel” and the preferred residential hotel of travelers and extended-stay visitors of distinction. The Walters Art Museum has acquired the three townhouses. The Museum has not publicly indicated how the townhouses fit into its ongoing planning for museum expansion.
200 Block
West Lexington Street The 200 block of West Lexington Street is in the heart of the “Superblock” redevelopment area on the City’s West Side. The south side of the street is an intact block of historic buildings, a rare occurrence in this part of old downtown. Lexington Street was once a busy shopping hub for Baltimore and is a block away from the renovated Hippodrome Theater. The block has sat in a deteriorated state for many years as the planning has plodded along for the larger Superblock redevelopment. The Baltimore Development Corporation recently awarded development rights for the block to the Chera / Dawson Group. The current plans call for the demolition of virtually the entire block to clear the area for new mixed-use construction.
400 Block West Baltimore
Street The 400 block of West Baltimore Street was the location of the first toll booth of the National Road. The block, across from the Hippodrome Theater, is a mostly intact street wall of historic properties. It includes two of the last nine full cast iron fronted buildings left standing in Baltimore (see entry below for cast iron buildings). Most of the buildings on both sides of the block are protected under city ordinance and are listed as “contributing buildings to be preserved” under a written memorandum of understanding between the city and the Maryland Historical Trust. Many of the buildings are owned by A&R Development Corporation and David S. Brown Enterprises. The development team offered to retain the facades of the block and build a large new building over top, which the city’s design review committee rejected, and then unsuccessfully sought an amendment to urban renewal plan to allow for complete demolition. Currently, the developers have not publicly released their plans for the block.
Flour House The six-story Flour House was built in 1894 with “superior grade” hard pressed brick and solid wooden beam construction. It is one of the few buildings in the area to survive the 1904 fire. Touted as fire-proof (although not tested in 1904), it began as a flour warehouse. Flour and other commodities arrived from the West by railroad and were stored in the building awaiting transportation throughout Baltimore. At its creation, the building was noted for its “superior workmanship” and materials, including the use of Port Deposit stone and 12-over-12 windows in segmental arched frames, both at extra cost. A wrought iron fire escape on the Davis Street side was another unusual feature for the day and exemplifies the nineteenth century interplay between art and technology. The signature octagonal water tower on the roof, to be used in case of fire, has been a landmark for downtown for over a century. The building was designed by architect Benjamin Buck Owens, who also worked on the Pennsylvania Steel Company’s Sparrow’s Point plant and school building in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The building was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and is listed as a notable property under Baltimore’s Central Business District Urban Renewal Ordinance. It is owned by RWN Development Group, which also owns the adjacent Hammerjacks Building. After considering options, including demolition, RWN obtained zoning clearance with the support of Baltimore Heritage to densely develop the surrounding parcels that it owns as part of a planned unit development that calls for the preservation of the Flour House. Current plans are to convert the building into residential apartments, and hopes are high that preservation work will start in 2009.
Boss
Kelly House and Row
Old
Town Mall The 500 block of Gay Street, the heart of Old Town Mall in the Jonestown neighborhood, is a full block of intact historic commercial properties that contain over 200 years of architectural heritage. In 1818, Baltimore constructed the Bel Air Market on this site, the sixth in the city’s market operation, to accommodate the growing commercial center at the hub of streets leading out to the countryside and into the city. By 1836, the 500 block of Gay Street was lined with solid brick buildings. The buildings, 64 in all, largely fall into three architectural categories: row house shops (mostly two stories with dormers) that date to the 1820s; Victorian stores, dating from the 1870s and wider and taller than the earlier rowhouse shops; and 20th century stores that emphasize Art Deco, Moderne and Sullivanesque styles. Some of the buildings are the last in the city to have cast iron fronts. The 500 block of Gay Street was closed to traffic in 1968 to create a pedestrian walkway that the city hoped would help business. Today, the Baltimore Development Corporation is overseeing a large redevelopment for the area. The goal is to attract additional commercial activity to the Mall and surrounding area, and will begin by returning the street to vehicular traffic in 2008. The 500 block was designed a CHAP district in 2004. There is no plan to demolish any of the buildings in the 500 block, but many of the buildings are in desperate need of renovation.
Upton Mansion 811 West Lanvale Street
Constructed in 1838, Upton Mansion is significant architecturally as a rare surviving nineteenth century Greek Revival country house. Historically, it has served as the home of a prominent attorney and U.S. Senator (David Stewart), the headquarters of Maryland’s oldest radio station (WCAO, first licensed in 1922), and the home of the Baltimore Institute of Musical Arts, a pioneering African-American musical conservatory. Although the architect of the mansion is not known, Robert Cary Long, Jr. is a likely possibility. The mansion is located two blocks east of historic Lafayette Square in West Baltimore and is a contributing structure in the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District. It was added to the city’s historic landmark list in 2008 and was included in the 2009 list of the most endangered buildings in the state by Maryland Magazine and Preservation Maryland. The City of Baltimore owns the building, which has been vacant since the Department of Education left in 2006. Vandalism and neglect are the two largest threats to the Mansion: the exterior ironwork has been removed for safekeeping and the interior was badly damaged when vandals tore open walls to remove copper wiring and plumbing. It is clear that a continuous use must be found for the building to remain standing.
BALTIMORE CAST IRON BUILDINGS Baltimore is an American center for cast iron buildings, although the number left standing in Baltimore is dwindling. A century ago, there were more than 100 of them. By 1962, the city was down to 36 buildings with full cast iron fronts. Today, there are only 9 of these left, and an additional 13 with cast iron storefronts. Many cast iron buildings were destroyed in the 1904 fire, and many more were demolished as part of various urban renewal projects. Cast iron, unlike wrought iron, is formed by pouring hot iron into a mold. The Sun Iron Building, built by A.S. Abell in 1851, was the initial large-scale commercial building built using all-iron construction. This building, which received international acclaim, perished in the 1904 Fire. Between roughly 1850 and 1900, cast iron became a new and desirable building material across the United State. Baltimore’s Bartlett, Robbins & Co. was one of the nation’s premiere architectural iron works facility and produced many of the city’s cast iron fronts, as well as fronts for buildings in New York, New Orleans, and Portland Oregon, among others. With the advent of steel and new construction techniques at the turn of the 20th century, however, the use of architectural iron decreased sharply. Today, the cast iron fronted buildings left standing in Baltimore are a beautiful and important link with our past. Today, most of Baltimore’s cast iron buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. This provides some level of preservation protection when there are federal or state funds involved in a redevelopment project. It does not provide any protection when private financing or city funds are used exclusively. Of the cast iron fronted buildings once standing in Baltimore, the following are all that remain. These were identified by James Dilts and Catherine Black in their 1991 book on Baltimore’s cast iron architecture, Baltimore’s Cast-Iron Buildings & Architectural Ironwork, published in association with Baltimore Heritage.
Cast Iron Buildings Downtown 202-206 West Pratt Street
(1870) Cast Iron Buildings on the West Side 307-309 West Baltimore
Street (1875 - Pearre Brothers Building) 32-34 S. Paca St. (Heiser Building) 36-38 S. Paca St. (Rosenfeld Building)
235 North Gay Street
(1875 - Spartan Electronics) Cast Iron Buildings in Fell’s Point 813 South Broadway (1860 -
the Port Mission Building) Demolished Cast Iron Buildings 412 West Baltimore Street (1857 - full front, demolished 1998)) 1031 West Mulberry Street
(1871 - demolished 2000)
Fells Point Wooden Houses Once a staple of the Baltimore landscape, wooden houses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are now an endangered resource in Baltimore. The neighborhood of Fell's Point has the highest collection of remaining wooden structures: eight. Wood houses date to the earliest development of Fell’s Point, but really took off when Ann Fell took over the task of developing Fell’s Point in the late 18th Century. To maximize sales (and profits), she imposed a covenant on each lot she sold requiring the owner to develop a house not less than 400 square feet within 18 months. As wood was the most prevalent building material, the fast growing Fell’s Prospect (as it was then called) developed largely with this material. In 1799, the fear of fire prompted city officials to prohibit building new structures of wood within the city center. Although the ordinance did not apply to Fell’s Point, new construction increasingly was accomplished with brick here as in downtown Baltimore. The remaining wood houses range from simple single room dwellings to multi-story buildings three bays wide and with dormer windows. The number of these early wood houses has dwindled over time. In 1798, there were over 400 wood houses; in 1880 there were 280; and today there are 8. Stacy Patterson worked with Baltimore Heritage in 2006 to identify the remaining wooden houses from the late 1700s and early 1800s in Fell’s Point. The following buildings constitute the remaining stock in Fell’s Point. 1627 Aliceanna Street
(circa 1790s)
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©2007 Baltimore Heritage, Inc. • 11-1/2 West Chase Street • Baltimore, MD 21201 |
