Westminster Burying Ground and Catacombs was established in 1786 as Westminster Presbyterian Cemetery. In the middle of the 19th Century the congregation (First Presbyterian) decided to erect a church building. They chose the cemetery for the Dixon, Dixon, Balbirnie designed structure, placing the foundation on top of the burial ground. Completed in 1852, the Gothic Revival church is raised above a portion of graves creating catacombs. It closed in 1977 and is now owned and maintained by the University of Maryland School of Law. The facilities are available for functions and the cemetery is open to the public from 8am until dusk. The catacombs can be toured by appointment.

Several American heroes are resting at Westminster. Revolutionary War physician James McHenry was buried here in 1816. A signer of the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s aide-de-camp, McHenry eventually became the third United States Secretary of War. Fort McHenry was named in his honor.

Brigadier General John Stricker was instrumental in Baltimore’s defining moment during the War of 1812. In command of the third brigade of the Maryland Militia, Stricker was tasked with stalling the approaching British land force as they marched on Baltimore in September of 1814. His men were successful, enabling Major General Samuel Smith to carry out his fortification plans. Stricker was also a soldier during the Revolutionary War.

Next to the Stricker vault is the final resting place of Samuel Smith, merchant, statesman and war hero. Smith elevated to Lieutenant Colonel during the Revolutionary War and to Major General during the War of 1812. He commanded the city’s overall defense during the Battle of Baltimore and was a United States Senator from Maryland. He was mayor of Baltimore from 1835-1838. Smith died in 1839 at the age of 86. His politician brother Robert, Secretary of State under James Madison, is also buried at Westminster.

A number of Baltimore mayors are entombed here. James Calhoun, Edward Johnson and John Smith-Hollins join Samuel Smith in the small Victorian cemetery.

In 1849 Edgar Allan Poe was placed at Westminster next to his grandfather, David Poe Senior. A veteran of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, David was Charm City’s assistant deputy quartermaster during the Revolution and apparently committed $40,000 of his personal fortune to the American cause. He helped defend Charm City in 1814 at the age of 71. His tombstone reads: Patriot.

In 1875 Edgar Allan was moved to the front of the cemetery and placed under an Egyptian-themed George Frederick designed monument. Several years later, in 1913, a second headstone was erected at the writer’s initial burial site.

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Sherwood Gardens is located on 6 sprawling acres in the North Baltimore neighborhood of Guilford. Each year the tranquil expanse is planted with around 80,000 tulips. April and May are the best months to see Sherwood in full bloom. The park has no fence and is open to the public.

Guilford was once the estate of Revolutionary War veteran General William McDonald. McDonald named his property after the Battle of Guilford Courthouse where he was wounded. Upon the good General’s death, his son, Billy, installed a boat lake, horse track and a massive 50 room Italianate mansion designed by local architects Edmund Lind and William Murdoch.

Baltimore Sun publisher Arunah S. Abell purchased the rural property in 1872 for his family’s country seat. The Guilford Park Company acquired 210 acres in 1907 from Abell’s heirs for a million dollars and began developing shortly thereafter. The boat lake was drained and made into a community park named Stratford Green.

When the Olmsted Brothers designed community opened, local oil baron John Sherwood purchased a lot near Stratford Green and set about building his home. The conservationist’s love of gardening found him importing Dutch tulips and transplanting Colonial period trees from Southern Maryland. He purchased adjoining lots and created a vast flowering landscape. The Guilford community has maintained the park ever since Sherwood’s death in 1965.

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Washington Boulevard and W Camden Street (Street View)

GPS: 39° 17′ 6.42″ N 76° 37′ 22.63″ W

Brooks Robinson played his entire baseball career with the Baltimore Orioles, winning the MVP of the 1970 World Series. Considered the greatest defensive third baseman of all time, Brooks won 16 gold gloves during his 23 years in Major League Baseball. He was invited to 18 All-Star games and won the American League MVP award after the 1964 season. Brooks was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1983.

This statue was unveiled on October 22, 2011 next to Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Oddly, the bronze likeness was not placed along side the Babe Ruth Statue on stadium grounds. Orioles owner Peter Angelos never offered the location and didn’t even show up to the ceremony. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was also absent without reason. The statue was privately instigated and funded by the former CEO of Crown Central Petroleum Henry Rosenberg.

The Maryland born Joseph Sheppard was chosen to execute the Oriole great’s monument. Sheppard created the Pope John Paul II statue and the Flame at the Holocaust Memorial. He also painted the mural of five panels inside Police Headquarters. Working out of his studios in Pietrasanta, Italy and Baltimore City, Sheppard has created a substantial body of work. The artist has reached a level of success achieved by few Baltimore artists. Architect: Richard Jones of Mahan Rykiel Associates.

Nearby

• Babe Ruth Statue
• Camden Station
• Memorial Stadium Urn
• Johnny Unitas Statue

Links

• On Panoramio [2] & Flickr
• Baltimore Brew article

America’s first commercially operated electric streetcar ran in Baltimore on August 10, 1885 when inventor Leo Daft converted the Baltimore and Hampden line from horse-drawn cars to his third rail system. The pioneering technology used current from a middle rail as its power supply. Often attributed to Frank Sprague, Daft’s electric train was in service before Sprague electrified Richmond Virginia’s public transit system.

In 1891 an extensive cable car system was established by the Baltimore Traction Company, its first line running from Druid Hill Park to Patterson Park. The expensive technology used underground steel cables to pull streetcars along at 6-11 mph. Power was supplied by steam engines placed in warehouses. The cable car system was abandoned in 1899, the same year Baltimore’s numerous transit providers consolidated into the United Railways and Electric Company.

After consolidation a multitude of technical obstacles needed to be dealt with. The various types of streetcars, tracks and power sources were slowly standardized into one working unit. A massive coal-burning power plant was erected on Pratt Street near the center of the system, its four smokestacks reaching 190 feet into the air. Overhead lines were stitched throughout the city, and structures, large and small, were erected or altered in many neighborhoods and districts.

Baltimoreans used streetcars not only for vocation and recreation but to extend their territorial boundaries. As City Council annexed county land residents began to migrate. Electric streetcars enabled workers to live further from their jobs, facilitating the city’s growth in the first half of the 20th Century.

Enter the automobile. By 1914 Henry Ford was producing a new Tin Lizzie every fifteen minutes using improved assembly line techniques. The proliferation of cars created the need for better roads and highways, marking the beginning of the streetcar’s decline. WWI and WWII provided significant bumps in business, but it was too late. City engineers gradually removed trolley tracks to accommodate the influx of new automobiles. The United Railways and Electric Company was slowly taken over by out-of-state interests and eventually dismantled. The bus system was chosen and in November of 1963 the last electric streetcar to operate in Baltimore made its final run.

Several monuments to the city’s trolley system remain. North Baltimore has three waiting stations: Bedford Square, Overhill and Edgevale Road. Numerous communities have tracks still installed on or under the streets, especially in the Fells Point area. Old power stations and car barns are still standing. The Charles Street streetcar barn, built during the cable car experiment of the 1890s, is just north of Pennsylvania Station next to the Chesapeake Restaurant building. Park Terminal near Druid Hill Park and Bolton Hill’s Linden Avenue stop are further examples of local streetcar relics.

The Baltimore Streetcar Museum offers rides on restored historic cars. Located under the North Avenue bridge, the unique museum is open on Sundays year round. The facility also contains the Maryland Rail Heritage Library, a valuable resource to local history.

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Fasces is a bundle of rods bound in ribbon with an axe contained within. Roman lictors, bodyguards of the republic, carried the symbolic weapon as they faithfully protected government officials. Lictors were physically capable men with the power to arrest citizens compromising the establishment. Fasces became a powerful mark of the Roman Republic, an emblem of democratic principals.

Baltimore has several examples of fasces decorating public monuments and architecture. Robert Mills designed the ornate wrought-iron fence around Mount Vernon’s Washington Monument. On the base of the nearby Marquis de Lafayette Monument is a subtle fasces representation. Both contain the axe.

The Battle Monument is a large bundle without an axe. Architect Maximilian Godefroy omitted the cleaver from America’s first servicemen memorial. The column’s ribbon is decorated with the names of those who lost their lives in the Battle of Baltimore. George Aloysius Frederick, architect of City Hall, added fasces to the main entrance markers to Patterson Park. The pillars occupy the northwest corner of the park adjacent to the pagoda.

Italian leader Benito Mussolini adopted fasces as motif for the National Fascist Party. Mussolini retained the axe at center as a message of potential applied force. The negative association confused the overall directive of the historic bundle. The examples above precede Mussolini’s application of the symbol.

The land for Saint Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery was purchased for $3000.00 by the 2nd Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Baltimore on October 25, 1854. The obscure location is west of the Jones Falls across from the neighborhood of Hampden. In 1860 the countryside surrounding the 4.5 acre cemetery was purchased by City Council under the guidance of Mayor Thomas Swann and turned into Druid Hill Park, the third oldest landscaped public park in America.

In 1868 the 2nd Evangelical Lutheran Church divided into three separate congregations: Saint Paul Evangelical Lutheran, Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran and Martini Lutheran Church. An agreement was reached to jointly maintain the burial ground thereafter. One stipulation of the agreement was that no lot owners could bury blatant blasphemers. During this transitional period the City of Baltimore bought 2.25 acres reducing the cemetery’s size by half.

The burial site was severely vandalized in 1986 leaving many of the markers tipped over and broken. A pile of stones remains at the base of an old growth tree. Today Saint Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery is solely owned and operated by Martini Lutheran Church with the Friends of Druid Hill Park adding assistance. The two groups have made vast improvements to the yard. A stone-worker is repairing neglected memorials and someone is keeping the grass trimmed.

The peculiar family plot of Gottlieb Taubert lies unmarked in Saint Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery. Lincoln conspirator George Atzerodt is supposedly buried with the Tauberts, secretly interred here by his mother and father sometime after 1869. Victoria and John Atzerodt went to Washington to retrieve their son’s remains when President Andrew Johnson pardoned those involved with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. They brought their son to Baltimore.

Upon reviewing the cemetery’s burial records at the Maryland Historical Society Library I noticed that a Viktoria Asserat (Victoria Atzerodt) was placed to rest in the Taubert lot in 1886. It’s my belief, and others, that George Atzerodt is buried anomalously along with his mother in the Gottlieb Taubert family plot, Lot 90 near the center of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery in Druid Hill Park.

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Old Saint Paul’s Cemetery is located in west Baltimore and is bound by Redwood Street to the north, Lombard Street to the south and Martin Luther King Boulevard to the west. 2.8 acres of land was purchased in 1800 as a burial ground for Old Saint Paul’s growing congregation. The church, established in 1692, is one of 30 original parishes granted to the Colony of Maryland by the Church of England.

Several prominent American war veterans are interred at Old Saint Paul’s Cemetery. Revolutionary War hero and Maryland politician John Eager Howard is buried here in his family vault. Howard is famous for leading the 3rd Maryland Regiment during the Battle of Cowpens. He later served as 5th Governor of Maryland from 1788 to 1791.

George Armistead rests within the park’s boundaries. Commander of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, Armistead died just four years after the epic Battle of Baltimore. His nephew Lewis Armistead became a Confederate Brigadier General during the American Civil War and was incredibly courageous at the Battle of Gettysburg, a battle which ultimately claimed his life. He lies next to his uncle near the cemetery’s center.

Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner, was initially interred in the Howard family vault. His daughter Elizabeth was married to Charles Howard, the fourth and youngest son of John Eager Howard. Francis Key died at his daughter’s Mount Vernon home in 1843. His remains were moved to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland in 1866.

Jacob Small, Jr. is buried in Old Saint Paul’s Cemetery. Small fought in the Battle of North Point during the War of 1812 and later served as mayor of Baltimore. He designed the Aquila Randall Monument in 1817. The memorial still stands in Dundalk.

Other notable Marylanders at rest here are politicians Samuel Chase, James Carroll and George Howard. Chase signed the United States Declaration of Independence and eventually became an associate justice of the Supreme Court. His father, Reverend Thomas Chase, was the first pastor of Old Saint Paul’s Parish. James Carroll was a Congressman from Maryland and George Howard, 1st son of John Eager Howard, was the 22nd Governor of the state.

Robert Cary Long, Sr. was a self-taught American architect responsible for designing and building numerous structures throughout the City of Firsts. His Peale Museum and Davidge Hall remain. Long was a member of Old Saint Paul’s Parish and was the architect of its second church building which burned down in 1854. He sleeps within the park’s protective walls.
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An interesting aspect of historic cemeteries is the burial bell. In the past there was a legitimate fear of being buried alive. A bell atop a burial room with a string hanging below was one last insurance policy for the recently departed. Cemetery workers were employed around the clock to listen for the ringing of the dead. Rick Tomlinson, Verger for Old Saint Paul’s Parish and gatekeeper of its graveyard, pointed out a few burial bells while he graciously lead me around the grounds.

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A friend and I found this strange structure on the western side of Herring Run Park. The empty building is hidden in dense woods near the northeastern portion of Lake Montebello. Possibly once part of the Ivy Mill, a former gristmill purchased by Morgan State University in 1917, the building appears to be constructed of Baltimore Gneiss. Baltimore Gneiss is a gray-green rock formed along this section of the Herring Run over a billion years ago. The oldest material within city boundaries, the abundant stone is said to be stronger than granite and was the primary construction material for the Ivy Mill complex.

The building may have been used by the city park system. At some point the windows and doors were removed and the interior gutted, creating a convenient pavilion for park-goers. Today it stands with a damaged roof and its access is limited by overgrown foliage and yellow caution tape. A complete restoration is necessary to return the historic building to a safe and useful status. Whether or not this will be done is unknown to this author.
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I received an email stating that this building was a Methodist church built around 1850. This book detailing the congregation’s history suggests it was a mission built near Harford Road. A map of Baltimore from 1905 shows the modest structure as M. E. Church or Methodist Episcopal Church. A site labeled Old Quarry is a few hundred yards to the northwest.

Robert Cary Long, Jr. was one of the first trained architects from the state of Maryland. Born in 1810, as a youth he apprenticed with his entrepreneurial father. Robert Cary Long, Sr. (1770?-1833) was one of Baltimore’s prominent builders during America’s youngest days. Working from design books and construction experience, Long Senior began creating his own structures by the late 1780s. His modest Peale Museum and the ornate Davidge Hall are lasting legacies of his work.

R. Cary Junior attended Saint Mary’s College and later worked at the office of Martin E. Thompson and Ithiel Town in New York City where he cut his teeth in the architecture profession. When his father passed in 1833 he returned to Baltimore and took over the established family practice. In 1837 Long designed Green Mount Cemetery’s Gatehouse and original mausoleum. In 1929 the Egyptian Revival style mausoleum was replaced with the structure that exists today. Why it was replaced is unknown. The E. Sachse’s & Co’s Bird’s Eye View of Baltimore 1869 shows the antecedent building surrounded by sparse monuments and abundant trees.

The younger Long specialized in houses of worship, designing churches and synagogues primarily in the Gothic and Greek Revival forms. In 1845 his Lloyd Street Synagogue was completed in Old Town. It stands today as the third oldest synagogue in the United States. Across town, Saint Alphonsus Church was finished around the same time initiating a professional relationship with the Catholic Church that would last until the architect’s death.

Saint Peter the Apostle Church, Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, Mount Calvary Church and the aforementioned are excellent examples of Cary’s work inside city limits. His buildings can be also found in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Mississippi and throughout the state of Maryland. In the late 1840s, Robert Cary Long, Jr. outlined his plans to move his family to New York City. He died suddenly of cholera in New Jersey in 1849 during a visit with a client, having never completed the move. His influence and skill were on the rise at the time of his tragic death. The architect is buried at the Presbyterian Church in Morristown’s historic cemetery.

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The Gwynns Falls Parkway entrance to Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park has recently been renovated and decorated. The project consists of six salvaged iron support columns topped with historic images from the park’s past. Created by artist William Cochran and entitled Oak Wisdom, the monumental structure gives the west entrance a dignified appearance in-line with the nearby Rawlings Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. The entryway’s public works contract was awarded to the Mirable Construction Company at a cost of $276,617. The firm completed the project in early 2011. Further plans are in place to improve the entire complex surrounding the Conservatory.