Category Archives: Charles North

Preservation works in Station North: Re-making historic buildings for a new Baltimore

Historic preservation in Station North has been in the news recently with historic tax credits awarded to the former Centre Theater in January and the announcement in December that the long-neglected Parkway Theater will be the new home for the Maryland Film Festival. We asked Charlie Duff, Executive Director of Jubilee Baltimore and the developer of the Centre Theater to share his thoughts on the exciting progress of preservation in Station North.

Charles Theater in Station North, courtesy the Station North Arts District

If you visit North Avenue during the day, you might think it hasn’t changed for years; it’s just a big rundown street. At night, however, North Avenue is starting to be a happening place, a focal point of Baltimore’s emerging Station North Arts and Entertainment District. Like Fells Point, Station North is livelier by night than by day.

10 E. North Avenue, courtesy Jubilee Baltimore

Long known for the Charles Theater – and not much else – Station North is now home to several dozen restaurants, galleries, and venues for music, arts and theater. It’s busy every night and hopping on weekends, and the Station North music scene led Rolling Stone to name Baltimore the best Indie music scene in the country. But it’s not just a scene. It’s also a neighborhood and a part of Baltimore’s economy. More than 700 artists live and work in Station North right now. They’re young and vigorous, and they think Baltimore City is the greatest place on earth.

Even though Station North is Bohemian and avant garde, historic buildings are the key to the growth of Station North. Here’s a brief listing of projects that take advantage of historic buildings:

MICA Studio Center – This summer MICA completed a $20 million renovation of the former Jos. A. Bank loft building on North Avenue near Howard Street. More than 300 MICA students now have studios and take classes on North Avenue. They come and go at all hours of the day and night, and the street is richer and more vibrant because of them. And the building, a splendid loft building from the first decade of the 20th century, looks fabulous.
Baltimore Design School – Under construction now in the 300 block of East Oliver Street is the Baltimore Design School, Baltimore’s new 6-12 school for kids who might want to be architects or designers. This fabulous 1916 loft building, vacant for more than 25 years, uses $3 million in State historic credits. Go check out the amazing (and authentic) brand-new steel windows. Students arrive in September.
The North Avenue Market – Occupying the whole block of North Avenue between Charles and Maryland, the North Avenue Market is becoming beautiful and lively again. New owners are restoring its lovely 1928 façade, and new tenants are making North Avenue hum. The Windup Space, in the North Avenue Market, is the hottest ticket in artistic Baltimore, and printmakers flock here to rent amazing equipment by the hour at the Baltimore Print Studios.
10 E. North Avenue – When Jubilee Baltimore learned that one of the largest vacant buildings in Station North was going to be auctioned off, we put together a team of investors and bought the building very cheaply. Add the cheap price to the $3 million in State historic credits that we’ve just won, and 10 E. North Avenue becomes a real opportunity to create lively space for impecunious but creative people. What should happen here? After much research and millions of conversations with local artists, we are pursuing leads to create a shared use artist space with well-equipped, well-managed, code compliant work spaces of various kinds. We are also in discussions with MICA and a couple of good restaurants and arts venues.

North Avenue Market, 1929. Image courtesy the BG&E Collection, Baltimore Museum of Industry, BGE.1847N.

Station North may not look like a great historic district, but it is becoming a great place. It wouldn’t be happening at all without cheap, wonderful buildings and historic tax incentives. Take a walk down North Avenue and recharge your Preservation batteries. Preservation works!

Jubilee Baltimore is a non-profit developer and neighborhood revitalization organization helping the people of Baltimore to build safe, stable, desirable, mixed-income neighborhoods through affordable housing development and neighborhood revitalization. If you are interested in highlighting a great preservation effort in your neighborhood, please get in touch!

Discover a century of arts & industry in Station North during Artscape

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Come out to Artscape this month and join us for a free walking tour on the history of the theaters, schools, factories and more that made North Avenue one of Baltimore’s most vibrant and creative neighborhoods decades before it ever became an arts district. We’re offering five identical tours from Friday through Sunday during the festival. Don’t forget to bring a bottle of water to beat the summer heat!

Station North Walking Tours

Friday, July 20 – 5:30pm and 7:30 pm
Saturday, July 21 – 3:30 pm and 5:30 pm
Sunday, July 22 – 3:30 pm

RSVP online today! Meet at the southwest corner of Charles Street and Lafayette Avenue.

Parkway Theater, 1915. Courtesy The Photography Collections, UMBC, P75-54-N458g.

Today, Station North has a growing reputation as a hub for art, performance and design but it also boasts a long history of creativity in industry, arts & entertainment. In the first few decades of the 20th century, the inventor of the modern bottle cap built his factory on Guilford Avenue, entrepreneurs on Charles Street pushed the theater business in new directions, and the stately Polytechnic High School on North Avenue trained thousands of young engineers, draftsman and designers who helped to shape Baltimore’s industrial growth. Today, architects, entrepreneurs and educators are adapting these old buildings to new uses from artist studios to the city’s new Design High School. Join us as we explore stories from the past and present of the Station North Arts District on a one-hour walking tour past local landmarks and lesser known gems from the Parkway Theater to Penn Station!

This project is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artists Awards, and Station North Arts & Entertainment, Inc. Special thanks to Elise Hoffman who contributed to the research on this project and will be leading our tours!

Behind the Scenes Tour: Tiffany, Tiffany, Tiffany: St. Mark’s Church

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There are few places where you can stand in the middle of a room and almost everything you see is made or decorated by Tiffany: glass, paint, finishes, etc. St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on St. Paul Street, with its entire interior designed by the Tiffany Company of New York, is one of them. Please join our host, Reverend Dale Dusman, for a tour and a bit of Tiffany overload at this hidden Baltimore gem and us.

Tour Information

St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1900 St. Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21218 (corner of St. Paul St. & North Ave.)
Saturday, January 28, 2012 | 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.
$10 for members | $20 for non-members
RSVP for the tour today!

In the 1890’s, the St. Mark’s congregation engaged architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who would later go on to design Baltimore’s Bromo Seltzer Tower, among other buildings) to help them build a new church. Sperry came up with a Romanesque design that is known for its heavy stones, arched doors and windows, and short columns. Romanesque design comes from central and western Europe, where many of St. Mark’s congregants also traced their lineages. (An Estonian congregation called EELK Baltimore Markuse Kogudus continues to use St. Mark’s for worship each month.) In 1898 the church was completed, and since then has been one of Baltimore’s outstanding examples of Romanesque architecture. On the inside, St. Mark’s engaged the Tiffany Glass Decorating Company, under the direction of artist Rene de Quelen (Tiffany’s head artist), to come up with a plan that was equally fitting to the grand architecture. De Quelen used a Byzantine approach, with deep colors, lots of jewels, and many mosaics. Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of Tiffany’s founder and then head of the company, had studied art in Paris and had spent time in Spain and North Africa where he learned about this approach to decorating. The interior boasts Tiffany windows and Rubio marble inlaid with mother of pearl for the altar, pulpit, and lectern. Our host for the tour is Reverend Dale Dusman of St. Mark’s. Although Reverend Dusman’s calling is the church, he has steeped himself in the history of St. Mark’s and its architecture. Please join us on this All-Things-Tiffany tour. We are sure you will never drive or walk past the 1900 block of St. Paul Street the same way again.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Durward Center’s “Clock House”

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Back by popular demand, we are again offering a tour of one of Baltimore’s most special places: Mr. Durward Center’s “Clock House.” With a lifetime of training and devotion, Mr. Center has blended the best of a Victorian Baltimore rowhouse with ticking, whirring monuments to historical clocks and mechanical musical machines. He even has a clock on the front that is shaped like a dragon holding a bell in its mouth, which strikes the hours with its tail. If you missed this tour in 2009, please join us this time and be prepared to be charmed.

Tour Information

December 7 or December 8 (choose one only please)
5:30 to 6:00 pm wine and cheese reception, 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. tour
2100 St. Paul Street, 21218
$15 for Baltimore Heritage Members and $25 for non members (please join today!)
We are holding two identical tours on separate dates in order to accommodate as many people as possible. Please choose only one date. The tours are the same. Each tour is limited to 25 people.

RSVP for the tour today!

Known widely throughout Baltimore as “The Clock House,” Mr. Durward Center’s 2100 St. Paul Street Victorian home is a Mecca for lovers of early mechanical devices. By profession, Mr. Center is a restoration expert for antique tower-clocks and organs. He has worked on projects across the country, and as close to home as Penn Station in Baltimore. He is also the craftsman behind the restoration of the 1898 Welte “concert orchestration” that sat in the entrance to Oakley Court, the manor house outside of London which was made famous in Dracula movies (and perhaps infamous in The Rocky Horror Picture Show) For his St. Paul Street house, Mr. Center has installed three clock dials on the outside, including the dragon clock, and has an almost endless collection inside. A music room contains early mechanical musical devices which he has restored. One notable item is an antique organ with a custom-made wooden case by Baltimore woodwright Thomas Brown, whose shop was a stop on a previous Baltimore Behind the Scenes tour. Please join us and our host, Mr. Durward Center, as we learn (and literally hear) about the fascinating marriage between a historic Baltimore rowhouse and a world-class collection of early mechanical devices.

Baltimore’s Young Preservationist Happy Hour in the Station North Arts District

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Start your Memorial Day weekend with a happy crowd of architects, archivists, planners and folks who just love old buildings and join us us for our third Young Preservationist Happy Hour at Joe Squared on North Avenue.

Young Preservationist Happy Hour | 133 W. North Avenue

Friday, May 27, 2010
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
RSVP Today!

Since 2005, Joe Squared has anchored the corner of Howard Street and West North Avenue in an early 20th century block first used as a tavern back in the 1950s. No specials on tap this time but with outdoor seating and a menu of unique pizzas, salads, and sandwiches, Joe’s is a can’t miss destination on North Avenue. If this is your first Baltimore Heritage event, we’ll give you a free membership with discounts on tours and a subscription to our quarterly newsletter. Please RSVP for a chance to win discounted tickets to the 2011 Baltimore Heritage Awards Celebration in historic Union Square Park.

Take a tour of the Station North Arts District with the Central Baltimore Partnership

Joe Squared isn’t the only exciting new business and neat historic building on North Avenue. Join Ashley Wallace, Community Planner for the Central Baltimore Partnership, on a quick 30 minute walking tour starting at the Charles Theater at 5:25 PM. We’ll stop by the Crown Cork & Seal Co. Building (better known at the Copycat) where William Painter invented the bottle cap in 1891 along with new arts spaces like the Load of Fun Gallery. When you RSVP just let us know if you’re coming early for the tour.

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Jensen House

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What does someone who spends all day mounting exhibits at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History do when he gets home? Why, he stages vignettes of his collections, of course. Please join us on a tour of the home of Brian Jensen. His vast collection, which includes Victrolas, vintage appliances, and a working 1927 Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ, are a must-see. Wine and cheese will be served.

Jensen House

27 East 21st Street, 21218
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 | 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
$15 for members; $20 for non-members
RSVP today!

Space is limited so sign up early! Confirmations will be sent by email, and payment will be due upon confirmation. For additional information and questions, call Marsha Wise at 443-306-3369, or email wise@baltimoreheritage.org.

Brian Jensen purchased his circa 1879 rowhouse in 1976. Although it was in need of much repair, Brian saw the home’s potential in the high ceilings, curved walls, carved staircase, and wall niches. He took advantage of a low-interest loan offered by Baltimore City to make it inhabitable. Today it houses over 40 years of collecting. When a power-outage hits the neighborhood his home is the only one still ablaze in light as the home boasts period gas chandeliers. Brian’s most prize possession is his working 1927 Wurlitzer pipe organ. The organ was removed from the State Theatre in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and brought to Maryland by its purchaser. Brian, a lover of pipe organ music, jumped at the opportunity to buy it when the Maryland owner decided to sell. He and the organ were meant to be together. He had a great-aunt Winnie who had been a silent film organist at the end of the era. Recalling that she had mentioned living in North Carolina, he asked her about the State Theatre. She said, “I remember playing that organ.” The blowers for the organ reside in Brian’s basement and the pipes are installed in a room on the third floor.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Lovely Lane

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In 1784 during the “Christmas Conference” at the Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore, American Methodist was born. Surprisingly, this predated the organization of the Methodist community in England where it originated. Please join us on a tour of Baltimore’s signature Methodist building today, the Lovely Lane United Methodist Church, known as the Mother Church of American Methodism and an architectural treasure to boot.

Date: Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Time: 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Place: Lovely Lane United Methodist Church (2200 St. Paul St., Baltimore 21218)
Cost: $10 for members / $20 for non-members (please join!)

Registration: Click here to register.
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