This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week returns to Charles Village to highlight the characteristic porch-front rowhouses,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The same sort of exuberant, uniquely American designs that appeared in the late 19th century reached a high point early in the 20th. The so-called Queen Anne Style had nothing to do with Britain’s last Stuart monarch, but instead mixed various architectural details into a happy pastiche. Here in Charles Village row houses boasted Flemish gables, Italianate brackets and arched windows, classical columns and pediments. Deep front porches offered some relief from the city’s heat as well as sociable contact with neighbors. Lately they have been acquiring vivid redecoration that highlights their architectural features.

This week’s featured Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is Homewood House at 3400 North Charles Street on the campus of The Johns Hopkins University. The Homewood House Museum is currently hosting a four-part speaker series in association with their fourth annual student-curated focus show, On the Road: Travel and Transportation in Early Maryland. The first event in the series is David Shackelford, Chief Curator at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, speaking tonight, February 18, 2010 at 4:30 PM.

Image courtesy of John Breihan

Even the wealthy Charles Carroll was shocked by the cost of his son’s country villa, Homewood, built early in the 19th century on a hillside north of town.  A federal-style version of the standard five-part Georgian Palladian mansion house (see Mt. Clare), Homewood’s principal floor is tall, elegant, airy, and cool.  Service rooms are tucked away in the basement or attic (there is a fine brick privy in back).  The Johns Hopkins University acquired the surrounding estate and built a new campus there early in the 20th century.  Homewood is open to the public as part of Johns Hopkins University Museums.