Another Piece of Baltimore History

One of our generous members kindly dropped off a print for us the other week, and I’ve just had the chance to take a really good look at it.

It is essentially a view from the old Church Home & Hospital, from where Johns Hopkins is situated today. You can see the iconic dome of Church Home in the center of the image. The amazing building on the right in the foreground is Fairmount Hill Vocational High School, which is no longer in existance.

Fairmount Gardens, near the intersection of East Fayette and Broadway, served as a private pleasure ground in the decades before the Civil War. The hotel with observation deck to the right, “situated upon the most lofty pinnacle near our city, stands in the centre of an enclosure of about five acres,” where visitors could treat themselves to ice cream, a lemonade, or a Baltimore seasonal favorite, strawberries and cream.

Along the bottom of the image is a series of numbers which correspond with highlighted locations.

The map was drawn by Edward Sachse, a premiere map-maker in the mid 1800’s, and the maker of what is called the most spectacular drawing of Baltimore ever made. Measuring 10 ½ feet by 5 feet and produced in 12 sections, the Bird’s Eye View of Baltimore, printed by the lithographic firm of E. Sachse and Company in 1869, is probably the “largest panoramic view of an American city ever published.”

The map is reputed to show every house, church, business, and park—many in fine detail—in Baltimore, which in 1869 was bound to the north by Northern Avenue (today North Avenue), Canton to the east, Gwynns Run to the west, and the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River to the south.

There is even a detail of MedChi’s corner of Preston & Cathedral Streets in the 1850’s, long before we were located there. A downloadable copy from the Library of Congress is here.

For more on Sachse, click here for a Maryland Historical Society article.

We are so delighted to have this amazing piece as part of our collection!

The Other Building

As we have been going through some files this summer, we came across a file on the “new” building, which is actually older than the “old” building.

The building was designed in 1898 by Joseph Evans Sperry who began practicing architecture at age 16 in his own office. But several years later, he was working with Francis Baldwin, a major architect in Baltimore. In 1877, he re-opened his own practice. By 1889, his office was in the old Central Savings Bank building on the SE corner of Lexington and Charles Streets, originally the Lorman house, designed by Robert Cary Long, Sr. and remodeled for the bank by George A. Frederick.

In 1896 he moved his office to the Herald Building which he had designed, remaining there until it was destroyed in the Fire of 1904.  In 1905, he relocated to the reconstructed Calvert Building which he had also designed. Sperry is best known for designing the following:

In 1898, William S. Marston bought a tract of land between Cathedral Street and Maryland Avenue, and soon opened Marston’s University School for Boys. Several other private schools were located in the general vicinity, including Boys’ and Girls’ Latin, Bryn Mawr and Friends. The main building at Marston's included study halls, a library, a kitchen and lunch room, an exercise and drill room, and restrooms. The gymnasium building included gymnastic equipment and an elevated running track.

The exterior facades of the buildings, in brick, brownstone and terra cotta, are done in a Romanesque design, and are still considered architecturally distinctive.

Boys from Marson were not allowed to go to any event at Bryn Mawr, just across the street. However, in 1906, a student dressed in girl’s clothes and successfully attended a gymnastic exhibition. During dances at Bryn Mawr, the boys would tie the doors shut with ropes, requiring someone to come cut them free.

In 1908, the school moved to Charles Street and North Avenue, and then to Riderwood. It eventually closed in the late 1930’s, after Marston’s death.

In 1908, the City purchased the building for $50,000 to use as a public school for accelerated junior high students. In 1910, the school had almost 400 students and TWELVE teachers, only one of whom was male. The school was named for Robert E. Lee.

In 1962, the school underwent a transformation from academic education to more practical learning, and in 1969, it closed. But in 1970, it re-opened as a school for teenage mothers so they could complete high school.

The school finally closed for good in 1977 and in 1978, MedChi bought the building, reputedly for $1.00. Construction began in 1984 and was completed the following year.

The “Priestess”

I was scanning through the Baltimore Sun’s archives when I found a few old articles on our Marcia.

Of course, I can never resist playing around with images, so I added the portrait of “Mr. Smith”, which Marcia loved. She had persuaded the Library Committee to buy the painting, and she said that if she ever left the Faculty, she’d secretly pack him into her suitcase. But she didn’t have to, because the physicians made her a gift of the portrait.

When Marcia died, there was an announcement of her death,

and then after her funeral, there was another piece in the Baltimore Sun, talking about the event.

It is always fascinating to find contemporary writings about our well-known members and staff.