Chrstine Ladd-Franklin was an important scientist who, with her husband, lived at 1507 Park Avenue in Bolton Hill from about 1904 to 1909. She is best known for developing and promulgating her own theory of color blindness. Despite successfully completing graduate work at Johns Hopkins, she was prevented from receiving her doctoral degree for 44 years.
How many times have we walked past the double-width structure at 151 W. Lanvale St., but not known what accounts for its unique design among Bolton Hill houses? Look at it closely – maybe squint a little – and you might think it resembles a classic, red-brick schoolhouse. And you’d be right.
While visiting a former John Street neighbor, Barbara White, recently at Edenwald in Towson, neighborhood historian Kevin Cross saw her 1893 copy of Artwork of Baltimore, a volume of 19th century photos published by The W.H. Parish Publishing Co., of Chicago.
“Have you seen how bad the dip has gotten on Lafayette west of Park Avenue?” a friend emailed last week. “It kind of provides some de facto traffic calming.” This provoked reminiscence of the hurricane-like flooding of Bolton Hill after a sinkhole developed 47 years ago at the intersection near Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.
If you spend time around Park Avenue north of Mosher Street, odds are good that you’re on land once owned by Judge William Frick. His country estate is labeled on the 1851 Plan of the city of Baltimore, situated near the top of what was then called Grundy Street (later Park Avenue), where the Friends School condos are now.
When one thinks today of Bolton Hill or describes it to a friend, it’s likely to reflect a bias for what the City of Baltimore website calls its strong Victorian-era, traditional row house character with relatively intact blocks of structures from the middle-to-late-19th Century. A few of those buildings date back to pre-Civil War times.
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.
This month we are lucky to have several new photos to share, showing Bolton Hill during its “urban renewal” period in the mid-20th century. R. Julian Roszel, Jr. was a president of one of the earlier iterations of the neighborhood association then — instrumental in getting the John Street Park created in 1955. Before the wrecking ball hit several blocks of houses, he had the forethought to grab his camera and snap photographs.
As I walked around Bolton Hill and read all the blue historical plaques on homes identifying former residents, I was motivated to do research on who had owned the house I live in at 1526 W Mount Royal Ave. before it was converted to apartments. Interesting tile work around the fireplaces got me curious as to what inspired a resident to select that design.
At an April get-together, a neighbor mentioned historic artifacts hiding in plain sight on a curb near the northeastern edge of the neighborhood. According to the preservation agency CHAP, the east side of Mt. Royal Avenue isn’t considered part of Bolton Hill; I don’t know what other neighborhood it would belong to. According to the official Live Baltimore neighborhoods map, it’s in-bounds, Bolton Hill proper. I went to investigate.
