What’s the oldest house in Bolton Hill? Most sources will tell you it’s the cottage at the northwest corner of Lanvale and Bolton streets, but those claims may not have been entirely accurate.
In the mid-19th century, Bolton Hill was home to several freestanding cottages on the north side of Lanvale, and also some on Lafayette Ave., then known as Townsend Street.
This 1851 map shows some of them, with the cottage of Rev. Henry Van Dyke Johns (for whom Memorial Episcopal was originally named) on the north side of Lanvale between Bolton and Jenkins Alley, and the cottage then known as the “Duncan” house between Jenkins and what’s now called Park Avenue (then Grundy Street). At bottom left is labeled Henry Tiffany’s house, “Rose Hill,” on Eutaw Place at Lanvale.
In Baltimore Sun advertisements, John Gibson listed much of the land along Lanvale St. between Linden Ave. (then known as Garden St.) and John St. for sale in January 1848:
He advertised those nine “squares for cottage residences” and specifically mentioned the Johns cottage and the Duncan cottage “now being erected,” which might be thought of as model houses in contemporary neighborhood construction.
On Sept. 13, 1848, those two cottages were finished and listed for sale in the Baltimore Sun: “two beautiful well finished BRICK MANSIONS, on Lanvale street, near the residence of Mr. Henry Tiffany, designed by R.C. Long, and built by Messrs. Curley & Sons.”
In 1850, Gibson sold the cottage that is now the Bolton Hill Nursery to John Duncan and his wife:
The conveyed property was described as “all that piece or parcel of ground. Beginning for the same at the corner formed by the intersection of the southwest side of Grundy Street [Park Ave.] and the northwest side of Lanvale Street and running thence Northwestwardly bounding on Grundy Street one hundred and ten feet thence Southwestwardly parallel with Lanvale Street one hundred and fifty feet to Jenkins Alley thence South Eastwardly bounding on Jenkins Alley one hundred and ten feet to Lanvale Street and thence Northeastwardly bounding on Lanvale Street one hundred and fifty feet.”
Based on this record, by 1848 the Johns and Duncan cottages were built and listed for sale, and in 1850 the Duncans took title to what is the nursery school today. And so we see in the 1851 map, the cottage labeled “Duncan.” (The record is a little muddy because an 1849 article suggests Isaac Tyson Jr. may have bought the cottage, and he was in fact a third party in the 1850 deed, but as can be seen, Gibson sold the property to Duncan, and it is so labeled in the 1851 map.)
What about that cottage on the northwest corner of Lanvale and Bolton? In his description of the property for National Historic Trust consideration, the late neighborhood historian Frank Shivers informs us that John Robbins was among the earliest owners – actually stating he was the first owner.
An Aug. 29, 1850 record advertisement for the sale of a vacant lot used the Robbins cottage as a reference point: “ONE LOT on Lanvale street, 50 feet front by 160 feet in depth, adjoining the Rev. Mr. Robbins’ [sic] building, now in progress of erection.” The cottage, then, was still being built in 1850.
If the “Robbins’ building” was under construction in August 1850, it would be younger than the Duncan cottage (i.e., the nursery school), completed by sometime in 1848. Later, a similar Sun advertisement, from Sept. 4, 1852, refers to “the recently finished Cottage of the Rev. Mr. Robbins.” So among these cottages, the nursery school must be the oldest.
These findings raise unanswered questions, like when – if at all – did Isaac Tyson Jr. reside in the Nursery School cottage (note his name in the preceding image), and these search results do not rule out the possibility that another existing structure in the neighborhood might still be older.
It has been suggested that maybe 211 W. Lanvale St. could be the oldest, but an ad in the Sun from Sept. 7, 1852, describes the lots on the south side of Lanvale as though they were empty, “eligible lots of the Rose Hill estate, beautifully situated for improvement”:
Merry Rogers, a lifelong Bolton Hill resident on Lanvale St., said she was once told that the house at 1222-1224 Bolton St. (just south of Lanvale, on the west side) was the oldest.
In my research, I was unable to locate reference to a structure there predating the nursery school’s cottage. And Charlie Duff , a resident of Lanvale St., points out that the house labeled “Peters” on the 1851 map was never reported to be torn down; it appears to have been simply built over and incorporated first into the Women’s Hospital and then into MICA’s Meyerhoff dormitory.
I located no record of the Col. George Peters house being there prior to 1851, but if one looks at that structure from Brevard Alley (formerly known as Foster Alley), Charlie notes, an irregularity can be seen in the side of the building, where it juts out from the rest of the wall. This could be part of a house even older than the Duncan cottage:
Have you seen documentation of any Bolton Hill structures earlier than the Duncan cottage? Email history@boltonhillmd.org to share what you’ve found.
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Thanks to Merry Rogers, Charlie Duff, John McLucas, Johns Hopkins, Meg Fairfax Fielding, Alex Greenspan, and Michele LeFaivre for their generous input & feedback on drafts of this piece.
–Kevin Cross
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