Bolton Hill’s Eutaw Place has an important anniversary this month: it was on March 19, 1853 that Baltimore’s city council passed an ordinance authorizing the mayor to accept from Henry Tiffany the deed for land now in the 1200 and 1300 blocks of Eutaw Place to create what was then to be called “Eutaw Square.”
“Be it enacted and ordained that the said squares shall be called Eutaw Square, and that the said piece of ground shall be forever kept as public squares,” the ordinance decreed.
There was just one small obstacle in the way: Tiffany’s residence, known as Rose Hill, stood there in the center in roughly the same location where the Francis Scott Key monument is today. If an ambitious engineering proposal had succeeded, Rose Hill might still be with us for this anniversary.
Rose Hill was built by William Gibson about 1798 according to Scharf’s 1874 book Chronicles of Baltimore. A drawing of Gibson’s house can be seen on the 1801 “Warner & Hanna’s Plan of the City and Environs of Baltimore,” situated northwest of George Grundy’s estate, which was known as Bolton.
In a pair of c. 1800 paintings by Francis Guy on display at the Maryland Center for History & Culture, Rose Hill can be seen in the distance at left, beyond the center focusing on Grundy’s Bolton.
Francis Guy painting of Grundy’s Bolton, showing Rose Hill far in the background at left, above and below.
Architectural historian Lance Humphries has described Rose Hill as “a five-bay Georgian building with a central pediment,” in his 2003 article, “Provenance, Patronage, and Perception: The Morris Suite of Baltimore Painted Furniture.”
Gibson died in 1832, and an 1842 deed shows Henry Tiffany taking title to the land where Rose Hill stood.
The next year, the house suffered a fire and was “entirely consumed,” according to a March 11, 1843 newspaper report.
The location in the report may seem off (“on Madison street, near Hoffman street”?), but streets then in the undeveloped exurbs of Bolton Hill were merely planned, and not precisely laid out and built. Alternatively, of course, sometimes journalists just get it wrong. In any event, Tiffany rebuilt the house. Page 34 of the 2008 Bolton Hill book by the late Bolton Hill historian Frank Shivers includes an image of the plat of Eutaw Place, showing the footprint and location of Rose Hill superimposed on the median.
From that, we can see Tiffany rebuilt a larger, more elaborate structure than was depicted in the early 19th century images. So, after the fire, like the Ship of Theseus, the house we refer to as Rose Hill wasn’t exactly the original Rose Hill at all.
Which brings us to the incredible engineering proposal floated after Tiffany donated the land for Eutaw Place. Maybe because Tiffany had invested so much in rebuilding the property, it was reported in an April 19, 1855, Sun article, “An effort will be made to remove [Rose Hill] bodily and entire to an adjoining building lot. If successful, the effort will be a great triumph of the mechanical arts, as the building is one of the largest and most magnificent to be found in the city.”
Alas, the great triumph of the mechanical arts did not materialize. More than a year later, an August 13, 1856, Sun article tells us, “The magnificent dwelling and park of Henry Tiffany, Esq., has been demolished in order to build upon the site the most princely buildings. A few walls of brick and the old reservoir adjacent are all that now remain to mark the spot of his munificence.”
And now we don’t even have those few walls of brick and reservoir to mark Tiffany’s munificence, but we do still have something else. In addition to Eutaw Place itself, west of Eutaw within Madison Park there’s an alley called Tiffany Alley, running northwest from Lafayette Ave. up to Gold St., just south of North Ave. (and a fragment of Tiffany Alley also appears south of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., down between Moore St. and Orchard St.). It appears the city council gave the alley its present name around 1908, simply listing “Former property-owner” as the reason for the change.
Finally, if you were wondering how the Baltimore Tiffanys were related to the more famous New York Tiffanys: according to the 1901 book The Tiffanys of America, Henry’s father Otis Tiffany (1767-1846) was a brother of Comfort Tiffany (1777-1843), and Comfort was the father of Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812-1902) who created the gifts and jewelry shop in New York. Charles was the father of the stained glass & decorating impresario Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). So Henry was a first cousin of Charles Lewis Tiffany, and coincidentally, Henry’s first cousin once removed. Louis did interior design and stained glass work at Oheb Shalom on Eutaw Place – on the same land his relative had owned. Henry is buried at Green Mount Cemetery, in a mausoleum without any name on it.
The author gratefully acknowledges the generous research input from Lance Humphries, Ph.D., especially regarding the fire at Rose Hill & the rebuilt Rose Hill. Further research assistance from Lyle Garitty at Green Mount Cemetery confirmed the resting place of Henry Tiffany. Additional editorial guidance was provided by Charles Duff and Sarah C. Ramirez Cross.
–Kevin Cross
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