Season’s Greetings!

Construction Photographs, Circa 1909

As I was hunting for some evidence of when MedChi first publicized our phone number, I came across two photographs of the construction of the 1909 building. They were taken in October,

and November of 1908.

The notes say that from beginning to end, the construction only took seven months! Pretty incredible.
Dr. G. Milton Linthicum, the Chair of the building committee had this to say about the construction.

At the time this was written, the library, then located at the premises on Eutaw Street, just a few blocks away, only had about 7,000 volumes. So the projection of an eventual 63,000 volumes was very ambitious. The highest number of books, journals, etc. recorded was 65,000.
In another little piece, I found this nugget of information.

Here’s the first picture of the light and airy reading room, suitably decorated.

Not too different! A few coats of paint, some book cases and a carpet added and you’ve got the present day Krause Room.

Our Phone Number

As I was doing a spot of research this afternoon, I came across this fascinating piece of trivia.

Now to figure out when phone service came to Baltimore!

The Old & the New

In preparation for next week’s Baltimore City Medical Society’s annual meeting and holiday dinner, I was asked to give a tour of the building. Unfortunately, I have another engagement and so I created building information sheets so members could give themselves brief self-guided tours.

In creating the sheet for the 1909 building, I took an early watercolor of the building, which we use on notecards, and scanned it into the computer. Then I took a photograph I had taken earlier and merged it with the watercolor.

Because of the Meyerhoff, I can only back up so far, and can’t get the entire building into a photograph! I should probably take another picture of the building now that we have new blinds in the Krause Room and once the leaves are all the way off the trees!

This is a picture of the building I Photo-shopped for a tour right before Halloween. All of our ghostly friends are looking out the windows.

If you stop by, I will happy to give you a tour.