Monument City Blog

Endymion	Sleeping Children	Ellen Walters	Girl Strewing Flowers
Bust of William Walters	Roger B. Taney	Clytie Statue (BMA)	William Prescott Smith

William Henry Rinehart was born in Union Bridge, MD in 1825. The son of a farmer, William began his career working as a fieldhand. The ambitious youth quickly graduated to an apprenticeship with a local stonecutter, an enforcement of his already peaked interest in the arts. In 1844 William moved to Baltimore, taking a job at Baughman and Bevan, then the largest stonecutting firm in the city. Initially tasked with fireplace mantel repair work, one of Rinehart’s first customers was William Walters, a railroad and whiskey man of considerable wealth who would go on the found the Walters Art Musuem. Walters, an avid art collector, was so impressed with Rinehart that he decided to sponsor the young artist. Their fruitful partnership lasted until the sculptor’s death in 1874.

Baltimore has a variety of Rinehart’s work on public display. The Baltimore Museum of Art has two of his important pieces, each designed in the Neoclassical style. Atalanta, an athlete in Greek Mythology, was finished after Rinehart’s death and may have been one of the last things he worked on. Clytie, considered to be the artist’s masterpiece, was completed in 1872 and purchased by John W. McCoy. A year later McCoy donated the statue to the Peabody Institute. Positioned in the middle of a dimly lit room lined with paintings, Clytie is both dignified and mischievous at the same time.

A bronze bust of William Walters is recessed in the outer wall of the Walters Art Museum at Mount Vernon Place. Inside the historic gallery are several pieces by Rinehart, including his original marble likeness of Mr. Walters, the Woman of Samaria and Brooch with Cameo of Spring.

Green Mount Cemetery contains several sculptures by Rinehart, including the renown Sleeping Children, of which there are twenty-five reproductions in galleries and private collections throughout the world. The work was commissioned by Baltimore businessman Hugh Sisson to memorialize his lost children. 150 years of wind and rain has deteriorated Sleeping Children in an elegant manner.

In the center of the cemetery, near the Mausoleum, Girl Strewing Flowers stands atop the Walters Family Plot, her stoic gaze fixed south. William Walters, his wife Ellen, their son Henry and the family servants reside peacefully below the majestic statue. Adjacent to Girl Strewing Flowers is the Tucker Memorial by J. Maxwell Miller. Miller graduated from the Rinehart School of Sculpture.

Known as the “last important American sculptor to work in the classical style,” William Henry Rinehart is one of Maryland’s greatest treasures. He is buried in Green Mount Cemetery, a bronze reproduction of his Endymion statue rests peacefully atop his headstone.

In 1892, lawyer and businessman Peter Hamilton gifted Druid Hill Park and the city of Baltimore this peculiar sundial. Hamilton was a 19th Century stonecutter (much like Hugh Sisson) who became president of the Guilford and Waltersville Granite Company, the firm responsible for supplying the stone for the Library of Congress. After countless hours of calculations, Hamilton hand-carved the the hemispherical compendium dial, affixing shadow-casting metal gnomons to the completed sculpture. In 1904 the sundial was repaired and reset by the Board of Park Commissioners. The board had metal sheets placed over the sundial, protecting it from the elements.

When local resident George McDowell, a sundial enthusiast, heard about the relic he went to investigate. He found the dial to be mathematically incorrect and decided to personally oversee its 1993 restoration. Jacques Kelly interviewed McDowell for a Baltimore Sun feature in 1994.

With the city’s permission, he worked with local metal artist Larry Lewis to have the dial cleaned of years’ worth of dirt. Some of the gnomons had been vandalized. Others needed mathematical correction. Mr. Lewis fabricated replacement pieces.

Peter Hamilton’s restored sundial sits within the John Cook Memorial Rose Garden next to George Aloysius Frederick’s historic greenhouse. Built between 1887 and 1888, the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory (or Palm House) contains exotic plants from around the world.

The Baltimore Museum of Art is located in Charles Village at the bottom edge of Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus. The BMA features paintings by Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh along side ancient mosaics, miniatures and stained glass. And admission is free. The Spring House of Dairy sits on the western end of the museum’s property. Designed by acclaimed architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1812, the small building was once located in what is now Roland Park at the former Oakland estate. Oakland was owned by the retired South Carolina State Senator Robert Goodloe Harper, a close friend of Latrobe’s, and the son-in-law of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. The building was originally situated over a running spring using the cool waters to preserve milk and other perishables. Spring House had a detailed frieze (possibly sculpted by Antonio Capellano) that has since been lost to the ages.

When John Russell Pope was designing the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1929, the Spring House of Dairy was donated to the project. Pope reconstructed the small Neoclassical style structure with as many original components as possible. He used the construction to offset the Wyman Gatehouse at the other end of the property, the subtle technique providing a balanced perspective between the lot’s three buildings.