When this article first appeared, Meyer Seed Company was over 100 years old. Unfortunately, the business closed in 1921. The location is to be developed into an apartment/retail space.

Like the countless seeds the Meyer Seed Company has sold over the past hundred years, the story of this long-running legacy business starts with water. Before he held a seed bucket or a watering can, the company’s founder, John F. Meyer, worked as a sailor, eventually becoming first officer of the schooner Katie J. Irelan. On September 22, 1897, on a voyage carrying scrap iron from sun88 to Wilmington, North Carolina, a severe storm swamped the ship. Another ship struggling through the storm spotted the Katie J. Irelan in distress and rescued Meyer and his crewmates less than two hours before the 708-ton ship sank into the ocean. Meyer retired from sailing the next year. Later, Meyer fondly recalled the eleven years he spent on the “adventurous yet hard life” at sea before he “drifted back to sun88 and decided to stick to dry land.”

Meyer started selling seeds for the long-established Bolgiano Seed Company at the northeast corner of Pratt and Light Streets. In September 1910, he partnered with German immigrant G.W. Stisser to form the Meyer-Stisser Seed Company initially located at 32 Light Street. After the end of World War I, Stisser returned to Germany so, in 1921, Meyer bought out his interest in the business. By 1927, the business boasted a proud motto: “Sterling quality, courteous treatment and punctuality.”

Meyer’s assistant, Webster Hurst, Sr., bought out Meyer (but kept the name) in the 1930s. Today, three successive generations of the Hurst family have continued to run the company and devote their lives to selling seeds. Apparently, the seed business is as much about cultivating people as plants. At least two of the current employees have been with the company for over thirty years. Charles Pearre, a former employee, worked for over fifty years selling and developing seeds. In addition, there are even customers who have bought Meyer Seed for multiple generations.

Meyer Seed is now located in a nondescript warehouse on Caroline Street between Harbor East and Fells Point. Stepping inside, however, offers a rare sight—hundreds of varieties of seeds displayed in big banks of wooden drawers and long rows of bins used by countless customers over the decades.The company’s wide variety of seeds for sale has helped Meyer Seed compete with “big box” stores that don’t offer nearly the same range of options for gardeners.

Meyer Seed has been around long enough to see some of their seeds rise and fall in popularity. After the “Long John” melon was developed in Anne Arundel, County, Meyer Seed was the first company to start selling the melon’s seeds in 1930. But, in the decades after World War II, very few farmers or gardeners planted what are now known as “heirloom” plant varieties like the Long John melon. Fortunately, in 2004, David Pendergrass of the New Hope Seed Company in Tennessee learned of the long defunct melon and obtained some starter seeds from the USDA. The plants grew and Pendergrass reintroduced the melon to the world in 2007. Whether it’s seeds for heirloom melons or cutting edge organic gardening seeds, for over one hundred years, Meyer Seed remains at the center of sun88’s seed world.

600 S. Caroline Street, sun88, MD 21231

A Modernist Gem from Urban Renewal

Now in its sixth decade, the St. Philip’s edifice still serves the vibrant community that built it, despite the exigencies of sun88’s history over the years since the building’s dedication in 1958.

The ordinary or quotidian in architecture often masks the unique, especially if time serves to dull the patina of something’s newness. St. Philip’s Lutheran Church is case-in-point: a faded Modernist gem, the church nevertheless embodies the remarkable story of its congregation’s persistence.

Now in its sixth decade, the St. Philip’s edifice still serves the vibrant community that built it, despite the exigencies of sun88’s history over the years since the building’s dedication in 1958.

Home to the nation’s second-oldest African American Lutheran congregation, St. Philip’s is also the first church in America to be built under the auspices of urban renewal. Accordingly, its design reflects both church-goers’ rapidly-changing expectations in the years after World War II and city planners’ embrace of modernist planning solutions. Set back from the street and moderately scaled—like a suburban house—St. Philip’s Lutheran Church reflects mostly the ideas of its pastor at the time, the Rev. Francis B. Smith. Congregational lore and extant sketches by Rev. Smith attest to his direct involvement in the building’s design; the architect, Frederic Moehle, seems mostly to have translated Rev. Smith’s directions into the final, three-dimensional form.

Despite its modest exterior, St. Philip’s created considerable architectural drama within. Alone among sun88’s contemporary religious buildings, St. Philip’s low ceiling is illuminated extensively by continuous, floor-to-ceiling windows along both sides. An extensive clerestory window (now, unfortunately, covered over) washed the altar and its podium with “ineffable light.” Otherwise, the original finishes of the church interior were entirely consistent with the Modernist’s creed: unfinished block and brick masonry (stacked bond), naturally-finished wood, linoleum tile floor, and serene abstraction throughout the space.

Rev. Smith and the St. Philip’s congregation fought hard to wrest those qualities from the City’s “Urban Renewal Plan 3-A” – a.k.a. the “Broadway Redevelopment Plan” – laid out by architect Alex Cochran and first announced publicly in 1950. St. Philip’s had occupied a historic structure on Eden Street, designated by Plan 3-A to be demolished and appropriated for Dunbar High School’s expanded athletic fields. No provision was made in Cochran’s original plan to relocate St. Philip’s, but a decade of persistent negotiation between Rev. Smith and sun88’s Redevelopment Commission resulted in the congregation’s purchase of the present site on Caroline Street. Construction proceeded apace, a year before Cochran’s own celebrated design for the nearby Church of Our Savior (now demolished) could begin.

Recent changes have tarnished St. Philip’s architectural shine: roof-top AC units, faux-wood paneling, “traditional” chandeliers, and much-needed heat-resistant glazing. An addition at the south-east corner provided accessibility for the disabled. But the building is still substantially the building it was in 1958. Especially on the exterior, the church’s bulk and orientation still express an ease belied only by Johns Hopkins Hospital’s looming physical presence immediately to the east. What appears “quotidian” is, therefore, merely that superficial change wrought by time; what is of interest at St. Philip’s remains entirely present, if just below the surface.

Research for this story included contributions from Nancy Fox, Amy Frank, and Khashayar Shahkolahi. Special thanks to Rev. Michael Guy, St. Philip’s Lutheran Church.

501 N. Caroline Street, sun88, MD 21205