Monument City Blog

Quaker abolitionist Elisha Tyson (1749-1824) established a successful milling business along the Jones Falls during Baltimore’s early stages as an American town. In the 1790s his Woodberry Flour Mill was rapidly turning grain to flour, providing a conduit between the regions farmers and the city’s burgeoning port. The radical Tyson embraced philanthropic ideals, using his acquired wealth to give back to the city’s less fortunate.

Tyson was an advocate of African-Americans, fighting for their freedom as well as providing institutions to better their welfare. In 1801 Tyson and Archbishop John Carroll founded the Baltimore Dispensary, the city’s first free health clinic for all citizens regardless of race or gender. Three years later he and Mayor Edward Johnson helped open the Baltimore House of Industry to provide vocational training and housing for the disadvantaged. That same year Tyson, along with Robert Goodloe Harper, John McKim, Andrew Ellicott and other Baltimore business men, successfully lobbied local government to pipe sufficient and sanitary water to the town’s growing residents.

Along with fellow business associates, Tyson helped fund and organize the Falls Road Turnpike (once a Native American trail and now Falls Road) that connected his and other Jones Falls mills to the harbor. He may have used the route as part of an Underground Railroad system operating in the area. Hideouts are rumored to still exist under the Greenway Cottages on 40th Street. He even directly challenged City Council on several occasions, successfully influencing legislation on the out-of-state sale of slaves. Legend claims that 10,000 blacks joined his grand funeral procession in 1824.

Elisha Tyson built his summer home on the east bank of the Jones Falls sometime between 1790 and 1804. The Quaker incorporated the Woodberry Flour Mill in 1790 and eventually erected his residence directly above the enterprise. The house faces the former estate of Colonel Nicholas Rogers IV, now known as Druid Hill Park. The Tyson gristmill stood where the Mount Vernon Mill No. 1 and No. 2 buildings stand today.

In 2005 local preservationists Robyn Lyles and Mark Thistle purchased the Stone Hill, Hampden property. The two diligently restored the Tyson house to its original form. Materials were removed, restored and reused when possible and previous alterations, though minimal, were undone. The entire process took four years and around a half million dollars. Completed in 2009, the address won the 2010 Baltimore Heritage Preservation Award.

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This Hans Schuler sculpture depicts the 19th Century ship The Julia Rollins. Marking Commodore Thornton Rollins grave in Green Mount Cemetery, the detailed relief was created around 1935, the year of the Commodore’s death. Thornton Rollins was a successful Baltimore merchant dealing heavily in the international coffee trade. In 1885 Rollins commissioned the Skinner & Sons shipbuilding company to build the 146-foot bark for his growing enterprise. Baltimore was a thriving American port in the late 1800s and Skinner & Sons was a premiere shipbuilder, employing around 250 people and maintaining a 350′ X 350′ dry dock at the harbor. The Julia Rollins was named after the Commodore’s wife and cost $24,208.

On January 29, 1894, the 586 ton bark came under enemy fire at Rio Harbor. The merchant ship was attacked by Brazilian insurgents during their bombardment of Rio de Janeiro. The complicated diplomatic affair was tempered by the American Admiral Andrew E. K. Benham, a Civil War veteran sent to the region to protect American interests. Benham’s order of return fire from the U.S.S. Detroit stunned the determined insurgents. However, the Brazilian rebels, under the leadership of Admiral de Gama, did not go easily, and musket fire was exchanged. Realizing the American’s strict stance, de Gama attempted to surrender to U.S. forces. Admiral Benham refused and maintained his defensive position until the conflict was resolved. The rebellion ended a few months later and order was returned to Rio Harbor. The minor maritime standoff made newspaper headlines across the United States and was seen as an act of patriotism by President Cleveland and his administration. The Julia Rollins was later renamed the Northwest. It sank off the coast of South Carolina on July 13, 1916.

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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.

Elijah Bond was best known for filing the first United States patent for the Ouija board. Born in Harford County, MD in 1847, Bond became a successful lawyer in Baltimore City, starting his own practice in the 1870s. He filed the Ouija patent on behalf of the Kennard Novelty Company in 1891. Elijah Bond died in 1921 and was anonymously buried in his family’s plot at Green Mount Cemetery. Robert Murch, America’s foremost Ouija historian, after fifteen years of searching, located the ambiguous grave. Murch erected the Ouija-themed headstone in 2008. The cemetery’s mausoleum is nearby.

Hugh Sisson was born in Baltimore in the twentieth year of the 19th Century. He began an apprenticeship in marble cutting at the age of sixteen, and seven years later, after achieving master status in the field, started his own company. The young Baltimorean quickly rose to the top of his profession, securing government and residential contracts throughout the city. By 1881 the Sisson family business had 1017 employees working in a network of marble mills and quarries. The enterprise provided the marble work for the interiors of City Hall, the Peabody Institute and a long list of other buildings. Hugh Sisson’s greatest accomplishment may be in the District of Columbia. His steam-powered mills fabricated the columns for the U. S. Capital building.

The Edgar Allan Poe Grave Monument is also the work of the master stonecutter. Dedicated in 1875, the Egyptian style monument was designed by Gearge A. Frederick and carved by Sisson. The memorial is situated at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground.

Green Mount Cemetery is home to many headstones etched at Sisson’s Steam Marble Works. While I was locating Olivia Cushing Whitridge (Green Mount’s first interment) I noticed H Sisson inscribed at the bottom edge of a grave in the Whitridge family plot. The otherwise unreadable marker points in the direction of its creator. Hugh Sisson is buried with his work, a towering obelisk in the eastern section of the graveyard nobly marks his grave. He died in 1893. William Henry Rinehart‘s eloquent Sleeping Children sculpture is contained within the Sisson family plot.

The Baltimore Trust Building (or Bank of America Building) is located downtown across W. Baltimore Street from the William Donald Schaefer Tower. Built between 1924-1929 by the architects Taylor, Fisher, Smith and May, the ‘setback’ style skyscraper is a monument to the financial history of Charm City. As the Great Depression materialized the building’s occupant, the Baltimore Trust Company, went into bankruptcy, eventually vacating the tower by 1935. The virtually brand new Mayan Revival structure stood empty just six years after its completion. Maryland’s Public Works Administration moved in shortly after under the direction of FDR and his New Deal. By 1961, with the country’s economy stabilized, the Maryland National Bank purchased the structure. In 1993 the Bank of America acquired Maryland National, turning the 37-floor building into its downtown office.

The skyscraper is decorated inside and out with various sculptures and paintings. Mayan statues stare down to the street from above while significant relief work surrounds the entrance ways to the bank’s main lobby. One relief shows the old Baltimore Trust Bank being protected by a God during the Great Fire of 1904. The bank’s much smaller former building was spared when most of downtown went up in devastating flames. The building’s large open-space lobby contains murals depicting significant Baltimore events by local artists R. McGill Mackall and Griffith Baily Coale.

The Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower is two blocks north of Oriole Park at the intersection of S. Eutaw Street and W. Lombard Street. Conceived by Captain Isaac Emerson and designed by Joseph Evans Sperry, the iconic structure was modeled after the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Captain Emerson invented Bromo-Seltzer, a hangover remedy containing sodium bromide, a toxic ingredient taken off the U.S. market in 1975. Bromo-Seltzer was sold nationwide and was very popular for its sedative qualities. Originally a giant bottle of the elixir stood on top of the clock tower. The factory at the base of the structure has since been replaced with the John F. Steadman fire station, the busiest fire station in the country. Today the tower is an enclave for some of Charm City’s artists, the historic building providing studios for painters, writers and photographers.

The Alexander Brown Building stands at 135 E. Baltimore Street. Built in 1901 for Alex. Brown & Sons, the first and oldest continuously operational investment firm in America, the structure is one of few that survived Baltimore’s Great Fire of 1904. Damaged stone on the building’s facade is striking evidence of the devastating event. The company’s former headquarters is an important monument to Charm City’s financial significance during the 19th century. The building is also the first in U. S. history to be entirely heated by electricity. In 1997 renovation was completed on the interior, restoring the century old bank to its original layout. The Gustave Baumstark designed stained glass ceiling was cleaned during the process. The historic Continental Building is across the street.

East Mount Vernon Place (Street View)

GPS: 39° 17′ 51.18″ N 76° 36′ 54.33″ W

History

Born in 1795 in the town of South Danvers, Massachusetts, George Peabody was an entrepreneur and philanthropist who moved to Baltimore in 1816, where he lived for twenty years overseeing the dry-goods mercantile business he co-founded, Peabody, Riggs, and Company. In the 1850′s, while in London, Peabody became involved in banking, forming a prominent partnership with Junius Spencer Morgan, father of financier JP Morgan. A number of large financial institutions, including Morgan Grenfell, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, can trace their roots directly back to Peabody’s handiwork. For this reason, a statue of Peabody quite similar to Baltimore’s was unveiled before his death beside the Royal Exchange in London. Peabody is also considered to be father of modern philanthropy. In 1857, Peabody founded the first music conservatory in the United States in Baltimore, the Peabody Institute (now a part of Johns Hopkins University). In 1862, he set up the Peabody Trust in London to provide housing for the city’s deserving poor. After the American Civil War, he established the Peabody Education Fund to educate children from the Southern States, and is known to have donated some $8 million dollars to charitable trusts and organizations during his lifetime. His philanthropic acts served as a model for others, including Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates.

Notes

Peabody’s Baltimore Monument rests in the park just east of the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon. Immediately to his south is the historic Peabody Institute building, with the Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church to the north.

Nearby

• Washington Monument
• Severn Teackle Wallis
• Marquis de Lafayette
• Military Courage Statue
• John Eager Howard
• Roger B. Taney Monument
• Sea Urchin in Mount Vernon

Links

• On Flickr [2] & Panoramio [2]
• Smithsonian entry

N Charles Street & E 33rd Street (Street View)

GPS: 39° 19′ 41.02″ N 76° 37′ 4.55″ W

History

In 1873, Johns Hopkins died. In 1875, a university in his name was established, one of many institutions that would eventually use his moniker. A Quaker from a plantation in Virginia, Hopkins and his brothers first business was selling supplies from covered wagons in the Shenandoah Valley. Occasionally they traded goods for corn whiskey, repackaged the liquor, and sold it to Baltimoreans as Hopkins Best. After a series of businesses Hopkins eventually helped bankroll the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad during the company’s westward expansion, bailing the company out of debt several times and making himself a very wealthy man in the process. During and after the Civil War, Hopkins thrived as an investor and professional, becoming one of the richest men in American history.

Notes

The bust of Johns Hopkins, sculpted by Hans Schuler, rests atop a tall foundation and is flanked by two statues, one a young male and the other a youthful female. Originally located at North Charles Street & East 34th Street, the structure was moved a block south due to numerous automobile accidents attributed to its placement. Surrounded by lush vegetation, with the school’s campus behind, the monument presents a dignified view of an American icon.

Nearby

• Spirit of Music
• Sidney Lanier

Links

• Brief summary on JHU website
• On Flickr [2] [3] [4] & Panoramio [2]