The Details

As I mentioned, I recently acquired a drone! My drone's name is Daisy Drone because the blades of the motor look like daisy petals.

I had an opportunity to fly it outside our 1898 building to see the details a week or so ago. The building's details are brownstone, and 125+ years worth of being on a busy street has caused a lot of deterioration and discoloration. 

1215-1217 Cathedral Street

I recently found out that MedChi once owned the two buildings directly to the north of our 1909 building, 1215 and 1217 Cathedral Street.

The School 49 building is on the right and 1215-1217 is to the left. 

In 1935, the owner of the two properties died, and in 1936, the Faculty, as it was then known, bought the two for $6,500, or $862,000 in today's money. The plan was to expand the Faculty's building and relocate the Board of Medical Examiners and the Committee on Careers in Nursing to the building. 

At the semi-annual House of Delegates meeting, the members were encouraged to visit the new buildings, and check the display of bookplates (some of which are now displayed in our Museum).

On the left side of the image, you can see a "white" house that looks like two joined houses, which would have been 1215 and 1217.

During the 1950's, plans were to demolish the two buildings and build a three-story building as an annex to the 1909 building.

But at the semi-annual House of Delegates meeting in April of 1960, that plan was dropped and a new plan was formulated to renovate and upgrade the original building, including adding an elevator, air conditioning and new seating for Osler Hall. 

This may have been the period in which all of the decorative elements from Osler Hall were removed and the Hall was stripped to Mid Century Modern blandness. (Details here)

Osler Hall, Circa 1962

At some point in the early 1960s, the buildings were demolished.

1961 and the adjacent buildings have been demolished.  Cathedral Street is one-way, southbound.

Plans to build a parking lot there to supplement the parking on the Maryland Avenue side. Half of the current lot was the playground for the adjacent School #49. 

Jewish Baltimore by Gilbert Sandler

I happened upon a copy of the late (great) Gilbert Sandler's book, "Jewish Baltimore" the other day.

Of course, the first thing I did was to check the index for names I recognized. In a section about schools, I saw a listing for School No. 49. I was not surprised, as I'd heard it referred to as the "Jewish Private School."

Here is the section on School No. 49. Click on each image to enlarge.

Even all these years later, School No. 49's legacy continues in Baltimore. 

School #49 Mini-Reunion

In September, MedChi was pleased to host a group of School #49 alumni who gathered to celebrate the dedication of a bronze plaque which now graces the front of the building. 

The event was spearheaded by Celeste Pushkin, mother of MedChi’s immediate past president, Dr. Gary Pushkin. She and a group of fellow “49ers” donated funds to install a bronze plaque on the façade of the building, acknowledging its place as an accelerated school for gifted children from across Baltimore. Click here for a piece in the Baltimore Jewish Times about the dedication.

When the renovations to the building were completed in the mid-1980's, a reunion was held across the street at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Mr. Meyerhoff had attended School #49) and a book filled with decades of memories was published. You can download it here. 

If you have any memories of your time at School #49, please email them to us here. 

In Celebration of the Old School

We have recently held a mini-reunion of alumni of School #49, the old school where MedChi is now located. We acquired the building in the 1970's, but waited a few years before we renovated it in the mid 1980's. Once we did, we had a reunion of the School #49 alumni. A small booklet of remembrances was published, which included a wonderful article by R.P. Harriss, the Critic-at-Large for the old News American paper. His wife was on the faculty at the school, which opened in 1909 and closed in 1960. 

In Celebration of the Old School
By R.P. Harriss

Among Baltimoreans, who by almost any measurement, would be rated successful, a remarkable number are known as "Forty-Niners." They take this designation pridefully, from the fact that they went to School 49.

They're so prominent, so self-assured and generally, so prosperous, that in planning their coming reunion, they have engaged Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, because their dinky little old school house, which still stands at 1206 Cathedral Street, would be too small and cluttered for the high-class hoopla they're planning.

Why the big reunion excitement? Because the graduates remember School 49, no longer existent, as the place that gave them a good start in life.

School 49, otherwise known as the Robert E. Lee Accelerate Junior High School, was unique in Baltimore's public school system. Its students came there strictly by invitation from all parts of the city. Admission requirements were a high IQ, and an excellent achievement record. 

It was a no-frills school. No sports, no swimming pool, no proper gym, even. The building itself had been condemned. It's so-called cafeteria was an area in the basement with asbestos-covered steam pipes above the tables. When fire drills were held, classes exited the building by circuitous routes via classrooms and fire-escapes.

There was no automatic bell system. After fire drills, classes were summoned back by an all-clear buzzer on the vice principal's desk - or by a large dinner bell that she vigorously swung by hand when the buzzer didn't work.

There were no lockers, students and teachers kept their coats, galoshes and other essentials in a cloakroom. Yet there were no thefts, no truancy, no drugs, no handguns. What School 49 did have was spirit. Motivation. The kids were there to learn, the teachers there to teach. And they all just loved it.

Between 1909 and the late 1950's, more than 21,000 young people took the accelerated program at School 49. Forty-niners have been outstanding in law, medicine and the creative and performing arts. Among those of an earlier generation were Chief Judge Emory H. Niles, of the Supreme Bench; Dr. J. Whitridge Williams; Gary Morfit, who became fondly known to millions as the radio and television celebrity, Garry Moore. 

Among today's notables who went to School 49, are Maryland's Attorney General, Stephen H. Sachs, candidate for governor; David Harfeld, now a federal judge in Washington, DC; many prominent doctors both male and female, including the nationally known Dr. Helen Harrison, and the controversial author, Dr. Edgar Berman. 

In the liberal arts, School 49 alumni include Dr. George Fuld, MIT mathematician; and Dr. Eric Goldman, Princeton historian. In the performing arts, let's cite the noted Broadway actress, Mildred Dunnock and Larry Adler, the world-famous concert-stage harmonica performer, and in the graphic arts, Bennard Perlman, artist and art historian.

That's just a random sampling. A comprehensive list would include an admiral, and even (astounding!) one big-league baseball figure. In the just plain money-making category, Forty-niners are there in goodly numbers, most notably, the late philanthropist Joseph Meyerhoff, for whom the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's hall is named.

School 49's story is worth telling, and its alumni and teachers are in the process of putting together a book of reminiscences. My wife, Margery Harriss, who as a young woman, taught English there during and after WWII, is among those involved in compiling this book, so I've taken some notes from her.

"Besides being in a dilapidated, actually condemned building," she says, "School 49 had very limited supplies. Textbooks were 20 years old and falling apart. Sometimes, a book would be so tattered, the student using would have to carry it to and from school in a brown paper bag."

Yet, students and teachers made do, sometimes grumbling but usually cheerful. 

She recalls the children of the cultured but destitute WWII refugees from Europe as having been the most strongly motivated - here was this wonderful school with the high European standards, and it was free!

Now let's think back. School 49 was always an anomaly, an advanced idea in a contradictory setting. Even its naming (although General Lee had, after the Confederacy's defeat, became an educator) reflected a socio-historical echo, not compatible with modern democracy. This location was in a once-fashionable neighborhood. (Actually, School 49's building, though woefully inadequate, was not bad looking outside, with its Romanesque façade of red brick and white terracotta trim, and its present owner, the prestigious Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, is nicely restoring it.)

The building was that of the old Marston Private prep school for boys, and directly across the street had been the Bryn Mawr private prep school for girls. In effect, School 49 was the public prep school for boys and girls - Spartan as to physical plant and equipment, but uncompromisingly aristocratic as to academic standards. 

In today's open society, such a public school would not be tolerated; it was elitist and that's an angry put-down word now. By the late 1950's, School 49 had ceased to be an accelerate junior high school, eventually becoming a school for pregnant teen-agers, sometimes coarsely referred to as "the watermelon farm."

An attempt to recreate School 49 would be inadvisable, and probably impossible. But School 49 worked. No students left there without knowing how to read and write acceptable and to cope with ordinary arithmetic. Most went on to high school, college and a notably worthwhile life.

January 19, 1986

Our Building Explained in Architectural Terms

This building is three stories high and three bays wide. It is laid in common bond, and has a stone water table and details.

In the center of the façade’s first story, four steps flanked by stone blocks (1) lead to a double door with a one piece, round-arched transom overhead (2). This is contained within a beveled, stilted round arch which contains vertical anthemion bands (3) below the impost block and above, in the intrados of the arch. At the crown of the intrados is a cartouche flanked by palmettes (4). Between the transom and intrados is a band of rinceau moulding (5). Beneath, the extended portions of the impost blocks are puti heads (6). At the crown of the arch, above the cartouche, is a bracket which serves as a keystone (7). The extrados are filled with egg-and-dart moulding(8).

To either side of the entrance, the basement is pierced by two casement windows, each containing one light (9).

First story windows are arranged in two pairs. They are double hung with stone sills and moulded, flat-arched frames which contain terra cotta tiles with foliate motifs (10). The surface of the first story façade achieves a rusticated effect through deep incisions in the masonry which occur at intervals of two feet (11).

Between the first and second story windows is a stone belt course underscored by a strip of egg-and-dart moulding (12).

Second story windows are arranged in threes. These windows are all single hung with six lights, and have four-light transoms overhead (13). The window groups are contained within a large, moulded cornice supported by flat pilasters with composite capitals (14). The frieze of the cornice contains two rondelles flanked by ribbons (15). At either end of the frieze is an egg moulding (16). The junctions of the muntins and mullions contain cruciform mouldings with inscribed squares (17). In the outer window groups, a tablet bearing a wreath surround an open book appears beneath either outer window (18).

Third story windows are double hung 1/1, and have a common flat-arched lintel and sill (19). A flat, rusticated, fluted pilaster appears at either end of the window group (20), while in between bays, fluted, rusticated colonnettes resting on projecting, bracketed, cornice-like dados, support the lintel (21). Above the pilaster and colonnettes are rondelles (22).

The braced roof cornice is coffered between the braces (23).

From the Maryland Historic Trust's Building Survey, 1975

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.