Category Archives: Downtown

Behind the Scenes Tour: 1st Mariner Arena – January 18

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A heritage tour of the 1st Mariner Arena? Yes! Built in 1962, the 1st Mariner Arena is celebrating its 50th year and has a marvelous history. Please join us as we wander backstage and peek into the building’s nooks and crannies with arena manager Frank Remesch to see where the Beatles played, Martin Luther King orated, and Elvis threw up.

Tour Information

1st Mariner Arena | 201 West Baltimore Street, 21201 (specific directions for where to enter and where to park will be forthcoming)
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 | 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
$10 for Baltimore Heritage Members | $20 for non members (please join today!)

RSVP for the tour today!

In 1961, the cornerstone of the Baltimore Civic Center (as it was then called) was laid, enclosing a time capsule with notes from President John F. Kennedy, Maryland Governor Millard Tawes, and Baltimore Mayor Harold Grady. Located on the site of the former Old Congress Hall where the Continental Congress met in 1776, the arena opened a year later to great acclaim as part of a concerted effort to revitalize downtown Baltimore. Through ups and downs and a number of renovations, the arena has become woven into the fabric of the city. In its early years, Baltimore’s professional hockey team (the Baltimore Clippers) played here, as did the Baltimore Bullets, the city’s former basketball team. In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a speech called “Race and the Church” at the arena as part of a gathering of Methodist clergy, and in 1989 the arena hosted the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships. And then there are the concerts. On Sunday, September 13, 1964 the Beatles played back-to-back shows at the arena to throbbing young Baltimoreans, and the arena is reportedly one of the only indoor venues in the U.S. still standing where the Fab Four played. In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin played the arena and shot a few scenes for their movie “The Song Remains the Same” backstage. Also in the 1970s, the Grateful Dead performed many shows here, including a performance where they played the song “The Other One” for a reportedly record forty minutes.

Finally in 1977, Elvis Presley performed at the arena just weeks before he died. The tickets for the show sold out in 2 ½ hours, and although there were no untoward incidents reported while The King was onstage, he did apparently lose his lunch in a corridor in the back. Please join us and First Mariner Arena manager Frank Remesch on a tour of the building, onstage and backstage, to see the inner workings of a 14,000 seat arena and hear some of the stories that it has collected over its half a century in Baltimore. Please also join us after the tour for a drink at Alewife, a bar/restaurant just a block and a half away, to share your stories of the arena.

Why the West Side Matters: Join us for West Side Wednesdays this winter

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Howard & Lexington, November 1966, image courtesy the Maryland Historical Society

This morning the Board of Estimates voted to extend the city’s land disposition agreement with Lexington Square Partners for the development of the Superblock for another year. We’ve spent much of 2011 pushing the city to recognize the importance of the West Side’s rich social and architectural history as an asset to the neighborhood’s revitalization. The development team has now acknowledged the landmark sit-in at Read’s Drug Store with a proposal to retain the exterior walls of the 1934 building and the City has approved a plan with funding to stabilize this publicly-owned building. We opposed the extension granted by the Board of Estimates this morning because we believe the development plan continues to call for the demolition of too many historic buildings. The West Side’s unique heritage should be the foundation for building a more vibrant and livable neighborhood so we are renewing our efforts to share the stories of the West Side with people from across the city.

Dr. Helena Hicks, West Side Walking Tour with City Neighbors Charter SchoolFor over two hundred years this neighborhood has been a center of activity to entrepreneurs and merchants of all kinds, suffragists and civil rights protestors, and much more. With all of these diverse stories to tell, we’re bringing back last winter’s Why the West Side Matters series here on our website and offering a new set of lunch time walking tours on the second Wednesday of each month from January through April 2012.

  • January 11 — Meet at Lexington Market (Eutaw & Lexington Streets)
  • February 8 — Meet at Pratt Library Central Branch (Cathedral Street between Franklin & Mulberry Streets)
  • March 14 — Meet at Lexington Market (Paca & Lexington Streets)
  • April 11 — Meet at Charles Center (Center Plaza)

Each unique 1-hour tour will start at 12:30 pm visiting places like Pascault Row, G. Krug & Son Iron Works, the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, and much more. Come for one tour or come for them all and please make sure to join our e-mail list or connect with us on Facebook for reminders about these and other upcoming programs.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Baltimore’s Battle Monument

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Did you notice that Baltimore’s Battle Monument at Calvert and Fayette Streets was recently covered in scaffolding and black tarps? What’s happening is a whole-monument restoration effort in advance of the commemoration of the War of 1812 beginning next year. Thanks to the Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation and monument restoration specialists S.A.T., Inc., we have a rare opportunity to peek behind the tarps, so to speak, to learn about the monument close up and how the experts are going about restoring nearly 200 year old marble, iron, and bronze. Please join us!

Battle Monument

Calvert and Fayette Streets
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 | Noon to 1:00 p.m.
$10/members, $15/non-members
RSVP Today!

Please Note: Due to very real space constraints at the monument site, space on this tour is limited to 25 people. Sorry! We’ll fill up on a first to RSVP, first served bases. This is a hard hat tour that may include climbing a few stairs on scaffolding. We will supply the hard hats.
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Behind the Scenes Tour of Ships Out of Water

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This winter, the USS Constellation and USS Submarine Torsk were towed from the Inner Harbor and put in dry dock at the Sparrows Point Shipyard for much-needed repairs. The historic vessels are scheduled to return to the water in a few weeks, but before they do we have a chance to visit them and learn about the boats and how historic ships are repaired. Please join us and our tour guide, Mr. Christopher Rowsom, executive director of Historic Ships of Baltimore (which owns these and other historic vessels), on a tour to see the Constellation and Torsk in a way that not many do: from the underside up!

Sparrow’s Point Shipyard, 600 Shipyard Road, Edgemere, MD 21219

Saturday, March 5, 2011 | 9:30 to 11:00 AM
$10 for members; $20 for non-members
Register online today!

The tour is at the shipyard in Edgemere, about ½ hour from downtown. The Sparrows Point Shipyard is not open to the public and we will have to be escorted in through the main gate promptly at 9:30 AM.
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Why the West Side Matters: Remembering Edith Houghton Hooker at the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center

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Linda Shevitz, Why the West Side Matters at the Maryland Women's Heritage Center
The Maryland Women’s Heritage Center at 39 West Lexington Street is located on the first floor of the historic Baltimore Gas and Electric Company Building in a store-front gallery and exhibit space donated to the Center by David Hillman, CEO of Southern Management Corporation. Originally completed in 1916, the former Baltimore Gas & Electric Company headquarters building was carefully preserved and restored as a mixed-use development including apartments and offices. Its 22 stories rise in majestic neoclassical style, capped by large, arched windows on the top two floors. At the fourth floor, the façade is graced by allegorical figures or goddesses representing Knowledge, Light, Heat, and Power.
The corner of Lexington and Liberty Streets is particularly important in the history of the Maryland suffrage movement as the location of a huge open air rally organized by Edith Houghton Hooker (1879-1949). A Buffalo native, Hooker arrived in Baltimore as one of the first women accepted into the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1909, she established the Just Government League of Maryland, a local affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and edited and published Maryland Suffrage News from 1912 through the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Linda Shevitz, Why the West Side Matters at the Maryland Women's Heritage Center

From its beginning as the Maryland Women’s History Project in 1980, the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center has worked to preserve the past, understand the present, and shape the future by recognizing and sharing the experiences and contributions of Maryland women and girls of diverse backgrounds and regions. Their exhibits honor Maryland’s historical and contemporary renowned women and girls in the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame, as well as highlighting those “Unsung Heroines” who have shaped their own families and communities. The Center serves as a resource with historical information on Maryland women and a gathering place to hold workshops, forums, and other special events.

Our Why the West Side Matters series is produced with the assistance of Baltimore Heritage volunteer Sally Otto. Read our last post  in the series on 200 Years of Iron Work at G. Krug & Son.

Why the West Side Matters: 200 Years of Iron Work at G. Krug and Son

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Stephen Krug at G. Krug & Son, January 2011G. Krug and Son, now including daughters as well as sons, opened on Saratoga Street in 1810. One of Baltimore’s oldest businesses and the nation’s oldest continuously operating blacksmith’s shop, G. Krug has been an anchor on the West Side of Downtown for over over 200 years employing hundreds of skilled workers, serving as a retail destination for artistic wrought iron work, and reflecting the unique character of historic businesses on the West Side. G. Krug and Sons is one of the many reasons why the West Side matters to the people of Baltimore.

G. Krug & Son workers, Feburary 2011Originally operated as the blacksmith shop of Augustus Scwanka, Gustav Krug joined the business in 1848, working his way up to journeyman, foreman, partner and then purchased the shop in 1871. At one point, the shop supported 100 artisans and could proudly boast that virtually every building in Baltimore contained something made in the shop, even if that something was only a nail. The business has remained in the skilled hands of his descendants ever since maintaining a dedication to fine craftsmanship G. Krug & Son is one of the few companies left in Baltimore that can claim their ancestors helped in building Baltimore.
The company remains dedicated to providing their customers with ironwork that is beautiful, durable and represents a value that will stand the test of time. You can view a great gallery of a few of their past projects on their website or take a look at photos from a Behind the Scenes Tour of the shop back in 2009. Today the company is run by 5th generation Krugs, Peter and Stephen, who operate the business with the same dedication to craftsmanship and customer satisfaction as their forefathers. Today, Stephen’s daughter Alexandra, and Peter’s son David work in the company and are already skilled in their family’s trade.

Our Why the West Side Matters series is produced with the assistance of Baltimore Heritage volunteer Sally Otto. Read our first post  in the series on Read’s Drug Store and Baltimore’s Civil Rights Heritage.

Join us for a second West Side Walking Tour on January 20!

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Read's Drug Store in 1934, courtesy Baltimore Sun

We’re returning to the Superblock this week for a second lunchtime walking tour on why historic buildings matter to the future of a revitalized West Side and how the proposal for the Superblock threatens to demolish that future. The tour takes place on the 50th Anniversary of the 1955 sit-in at the Read’s Drug Store at Howard & Lexington Streets, so we’ll be sharing a few stories about how black and white civil rights advocates fought to provide African Americans with equal rights to shop, work, and eat on Downtown’s West Side. From the Afro American’s Orchid & Onion 1945 campaign against downtown stores that discriminated against African American customers (“Onions” discriminated against black shoppers and “Orchids” did not) to the 1955 sit-in by the Baltimore Committee on Racial Equality and the students and faculty of Morgan State, Baltimore’s Civil Rights heritage can be found throughout the historic buildings of Downtown’s West Side.

West Side Lunchtime Walking Tour | East Entrance to Lexington Market (Lexington & Eutaw Streets)

Please also join us on February 9 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum for a public forum on Preserving Baltimore’s Civil Rights Heritage. We’ll begin the forum with short presentations by Dr. Helena Hicks, a participant in the 1955 Reads Drug Store sit-in, Dr. Gabriel Tenabe on restoring the home of long-time Baltimore NAACP President Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson, Ms. Tanya Bowers from the National Trust for Historic Preservation on the proposed National Civil Rights Heritage Trail, and more. We’ll follow the presentations with an opportunity for attendees to share their own questions and comments on how we can preserve the stories, buildings and neighborhoods tied to Baltimore’s long civil rights fight.  Stay tuned for further details on our February 9 program!

Why the West Side Matters: Read’s Drug Store and Baltimore’s Civil Rights Heritage

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Howard & Lexington Streets 1963, courtesy the Baltimore Museum of Industry

One of the West Side’s least well known but most important stories is the history of the former Read’s Drug Store at Howard and Lexington Streets and its landmark role in Baltimore’s civil rights movement. Built in 1934 by Baltimore architects Smith & May, the press heralded this Art Deco structure as a local landmark from its beginning– a modern flagship store for the Read’s chain, continuing their 50-year presence at the bustling heart of the downtown retail district.

Like many downtown commercial establishments in the early 1950s, the Read’s chain maintained a strict policy of racial segregation at their lunch counters. In 1955, a group of Morgan State students came together with the leadership of the recently organized Baltimore Committee on Racial Equality to organize a sit-in protest at the lunch counter of the Read’s Drug Store at Howard and Lexington Streets. They succeeded in this effort, marking this building as a witness to the first successful student-led sit-in protest in Baltimore and defining a powerful model for the more famous lunch-counter sit-in of Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. This building is currently threatened with total demolition by the proposed development of the Superblock by the Baltimore Development Corporation and Lexington Square Partners. Baltimore Heritage, together with partners and supporters from across the city, is advocating for the city to reconsider this proposal and encourage the preservation and re-use of this essential landmark in Baltimore’s civil rights history.

Former Read's Drug Store, Southwest corner of North Howard Street & West Lexington Street, Superblock

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Baltimore Building of the Week: 250 West Pratt Street

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Today’s feature is our final post from Dr. John Breihan in our year long Baltimore Building of the Week series. Thank you to Dr. Breihan for a tremendous exploration of Baltimore’s rich architectural history and the many building’s saved by generations of Baltimore preservationists. At the very end of our 50th Anniversary Year, this week’s feature reflects on the future of architectural history and historic preservation in Baltimore with a discussion of the 1986 250 West Pratt Street building.

250 West Pratt Street

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Which of today’s Baltimore buildings will we fight to preserve in the future? My leading candidate is the rather anonymous office tower known only by its address (My suggestion, The Flight of Stairs Building, not having caught on). Designed by America’s foremost corporate architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and opened in 1986, 250 West Pratt is sheathed in high-tech polished marble and mirror glass. Here, form does indeed follow function, as the widely-spaced vertical indentations in the principal facades really correspond to structural steel columns bearing exceptionally wide-span beams. Cool and elegantly abstract, this is an iconic building for the decade of the 1980s.

One day around the year 2050, when its air conditioning plant or fiberoptic cables have become hopelessly obsolete, some future development corporation may call for the demolition of 250 West Pratt (which by then will have at least acquired a name, say, Twitter Tower). Baltimore Heritage, then celebrating its centennial year, will again remind Baltimoreans how their beautiful and unique city is enriched and inspired by these buildings and monuments of the past.

Challenges for preservation and development in the Superblock

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This is our second post in a series on the preservation and revitalization of Baltimore’s West Side. Read our first post for a quick review of the past ten years of redevelopment efforts on the West Side.

200 block West Lexington Street

One of the most significant challenges on the West Side over the past decade has been the preservation and redevelopment of the “Superblock” bounded by Lexington, Fayette, Liberty and Howard streets. These few blocks include a diverse collection of 19th and 20th century historic buildings reflecting the West Side’s past as a thriving center of downtown retail. Among the many contributing buildings within the West Side’s Market Center Historic District are the 1929 Brager-Gutman Building, the 1938 Art Deco Kresge’s Department Store, and the 1934 Read’s Drug Store to name only a few. In 2001, Baltimore City and the State of Maryland established a preservation agreement (known as the Memorandum of Agreement or MOA) that gave the Maryland Historical Trust the authority to review development proposals on the West Side. By 2003, the Baltimore Development Corporation began soliciting bids on the development of the Superblock, then selected Lexington Square Partners as the developer for the area bounded by Howard, Lexington, Park, and Fayette Streets.

Since 2004, Lexington Square Partners has submitted at least five plans for the redevelopment of the site to the Maryland Historical Trust (MHT) and each time MHT has concluded that the plans do not meet the required preservation standards (Baltimore Brew covered this issue in February 2010). The most recent proposal this past November requires the partial or total demolition of 14 of 17 contributing historic buildings in the area, including the complete demolition of 9 structures, the demolition of all but facades on 5, and the full preservation of only 3 historic buildings. Despite this failure to support the preservation principles created to guide the revitalization of the West Side, just yesterday BDC received a 6-month extension to their agreement with Lexington Square Partners from the Baltimore Board of Estimates.

This is not an abstract debate between the relative merits of historic preservation and economic development. Rather, we are dedicated to successfully joining both agendas, recognizing the potential of the West Side’s historic buildings to contribute to the renewed vitality of Baltimore’s downtown. For example, the former Reads Drug Store at the corner of Lexington and Howard Streets (proposed for demolition in current plans) holds a important place in the city’s history as the site of an early sit-in protest against segregated lunch counters. Built in 1934 on the 300th anniversary of the founding of Maryland, the store features several architectural details on a Maryland theme with panels of sailing ships on the outside. At the bustling corner of Lexington Street and Howard Street, the store served as the flagship location of the Read’s chain located at the heart of Downtown. The building is perhaps most historically significant, however, for its role as a witness to Baltimore’s Civil Rights Movement. On January 20, 1955, Dean McQuay Kiah of Morgan State University, along with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and a group of Morgan students staged a sit-in at this location to protest the racial segregation of Read’s lunch counters. The sit-in led to the desegregation of the entire Read’s chain throughout the region and helped provide a model that guided later and better known student-led sit-ins in places like Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. These exceptional and irreplaceable buildings contribute to the rich architectural heritage of the West Side and should be seen clearly not as barriers but as assets to continued development.