Category Archives: South Baltimore

Baltimore Building of the Week: Italianate Conversions

Posted on by
Reply

Finishing up our series on Italianate rowhouses is this week’s post focuses on Italianate conversions in older neighborhoods such as Federal Hill and Fells Point,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The Italianate style, with its consistent cornice line, made for uniform and stately rows of identical houses. In older federal and Greek Revival style rowhouse neighborhoods, however, it had the opposite effect. The imposing cornices reminiscent of the palaces of the Renaissance – and the full-height top storey beneath them – proved so popular that Baltimoreans either tore down their old dormered or Greek Revival rowhouses or converted them to the Italianate style. The result is a romantic jumble of differing rooflines that lends a peculiar charm to older neighborhoods like Fells Point and Federal Hill.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Irish Shrine at Lemmon Street

Posted on by
Reply

Diminutive but nationally significant, Baltimore’s Irish Shrine at Lemmon Street offers a rare glimpse of immigrant home life in America in the middle of the 19th century. Please join us for a tour of the Shrine, two restored 1848 alley houses in the Hollins Market neighborhood, with our hosts from the Shrine and its affiliate, the Railroad Historic District Corporation.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Tour Information

Dates: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 / Thursday, June 24, 2010
Time: 5:30 to 6:00 PM wine and cheese reception
6:00 to 7:00 PM tour
Place: 900 Lemmon Street – one block north of the B&O Railroad Museum
Parking is available along nearby streets
Cost: $15 (includes wine and cheese reception)
Registration: Click Here to Register
Continue reading →

Baltimore Building of the Week: Italianate Rowhouses

Posted on by
2

Our Baltimore Building of the Week series from Dr. John Breihan returns with Italianate Rowhouses, the second entry in our three part series on Italianate Rowhouses,

Franklin Square, image courtesy Jack Breihan

Italianate rowhouses, popular in Baltimore from the 1850s until the 1880s and beyond, were particularly suited to long, uniform rows beneath uniform carved cornices. They formed stately “street walls” around Baltimore’s squares and along principal thoroughfares like Broadway. Pictured here are Waverly Terrace, circa 1850, on Franklin Square, and the north side of Union Square, circa 1880. The latter contains the home of the Sage of Baltimore, Henry Mencken, now owned by the City of Baltimore.

Union Square, image courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: Greek Revival Rowhouses

Posted on by
Reply

This week in the Baltimore Building of the Week series from Dr. John Breihan features the Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street and the Babe Ruth Birthplace on Emory Street.

Lemmon Street, courtesy Jack Breihan

The popularity of the Greek Revival in Baltimore was not limited to churches and schools; it also produced a new design for the city’s ubiquitous rowhouses. Greek Revival rowhouses dispensed with the dormer window of the older federal style. Instead, the top half-story was lit by a square “attic” window beneath a less steeply gabled roof. From grand examples in Mount Vernon to humble 2 ½ story houses in Fells Point and Federal Hill, Greek Revival rowhouses dominated from 1830 or so until 1860. Two examples saved from demolition and open to view are the Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street and the Babe Ruth Birthplace on Emory Street.

Babe Ruth Birthplace, courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: St. Peter the Apostle Church

Posted on by
1

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week arrives one day late, but with two buildings from Dr. John Breihan instead of one. The first of these two Greek Revival churches is St. Peter the Apostle Church built in 1843 at South Poppleton and Hollins Streets.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Nothing shows 19th-century Baltimore’s eclectic taste in architectural styles better than the churches erected by the city’s Roman Catholics. Their Cathedral (now the Basilica) was neoclassical, as were the first two parish churches, St. Patrick (demolished in 1897) and St. Vincent de Paul. St. Mary’s Seminary chapel was gothic. Here at St. Peter the Apostle, completed in 1842, the style is Greek revival. The first Catholic parish on the West Side, St. Peter’s was meant to serve immigrant Irish workers at the nearby B & O Railroad shops. Perhaps as a nod to “Jacksonian democracy,” the church is a brick version of an austere Athenian temple, with six white wooden Doric columns supporting a large pediment. The designer was the fashionable local architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. Three years after completing St. Peter’s, Long used the same Greek style on the East Side of town for another immigrant congregation, the Lloyd Street Synagogue. While the synagogue has been preserved as part of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, St. Peter’s is threatened by the lack of ongoing activity. The Transfiguration Community, combining three West Side parishes, recently consolidated worship in just one church, St. Jerome’s.

Continue reading →

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Old Otterbein Church

Posted on by
Reply

Image courtesy wallyg/Flickr


Old Otterbein Church, built in 1785, is the oldest church still standing in Baltimore. With its classic brick and white trim tower (with bells brought over from Germany), the church shows off its landmark stature for countless Orioles fans and anybody traveling around downtown and Camden Yards. Please join us to get a better look at this Baltimore gem and its two historic ancillary buildings, the 1811 Parsonage and the 1872 Sunday School. We’ll also be treated to a demonstration of the church’s one-of-a-kind 1897 Niemann Organ.

Tour Information

Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010
Time: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. (the organist will start playing at 6:15)
Place: Old Otterbein Church, 112 West Conway Street, 21201
Park in the church lot to the east of the church, entrance off Conway Street
Cost: $10
Continue reading →