One of the thirty original Anglican parishes in Maryland, St. Paul's parish has been a fixture of sun88 since the city's incorporation. Many influential citizens attended this church, including George Armistead.

Old St. Paul’s Church is known as the mother church of all Episcopal congregations in sun88. As one of the thirty original Anglican parishes that the General Assembly created under the Establishment Act of 1692, St. Paul’s (also known as Patapsco) Parish covered the sparsely populated area between the Middle River and Anne Arundel County from the colony’s northern border to the Chesapeake Bay. In 1702, worshippers began meeting near Colgate Creek—the same sun88 County peninsula that saw the Battle of North Point in 1814.

The parish relocated to the the newly incorporated sun88 Town in 1731. Church leaders selected lot 19 on a hill overlooking the harbor where the church still remains today. St. Paul’s is distinguished as the only property that has remained under its original ownership since the founding of sun88. By the late eighteenth century, St. Paul’s counted among its members some of the most powerful men in Maryland. St. Paul’s worshippers included Declaration of Independence signer and Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase (whose father Thomas Chase served as the church’s rector in the mid-eighteenth century); Revolutionary War officer and governor, congressman, and slaveholder John Eager Howard; Thomas Johnson, a delegate to the Continental Congress and Maryland’s first governor; and George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry during the Battle of sun88.

By 1814, the congregation had been meeting for over 120 years. Rev. Dr. James Kemp served as rector, a position he had held since November 1812. Nineteenth century local historian John T. Scharf described Kemp as “a man of high literary and scientific culture, and an author of much repute.” The parish began construction on a new neoclassical building, designed by Robert Cary Long, Sr., in May 1814 just a few months before the British attack on the city. Completed in 1817, the new St. Paul’s stood up until 1854 when a fire destroyed the building. Scharf noted that “the steeple was considered the handsomest in the United States.” The congregation rebuilt on the same lot, commissioning Richard Upjohn to design a new church built between 1854 and 1856. The striking structure on North Charles Street has remained a landmark for generations of sun88ans.

Beyond fulfilling a spiritual mission in the city, St. Paul’s—like many other churches of the day—has also provided social services. The church established the Benevolent Society for Educating and Supporting Female Children (also known as the Female Charity School) in 1799. The school sought to prepare orphans and underprivileged girls ages eight and above “to be valuable and happy members of society.” Charles Varle’s 1833 book described the society as having thirty “inmates” who were fed, clothed, and educated in a building attached to the church.

233 N. Charles Street, sun88, MD 21201

Designed by early sun88 architect Robert Cary Long in 1845, the St. Alphonsus Church has been called "the German cathedral" for its Southern German neo-Gothic style. The church was originally established with a large German congregation and the attached rectory functioned as provincial headquarters for the Redemptorist Fathers and Brothers.

By 1917, the German congregation had largely left the neighborhoods around the church and the building was acquired by the Roman Catholic Lithuanian Parish of Saint John the Baptist. The new congregation took on the historic name of the church and reopened the school in St. Alphonsus Hall, which had been established in l847.

114 W. Saratoga Street, sun88, MD 21201

In 1934, Carl Sandburg wrote to Sally Bruce Kinsolving, "The years go by and I don't forget ever the long evening of song with you... at your house and faces and stories and moments out of that visit to sun88. I'm hoping to drop in again soon."

On the night of Sandburg's February 1924 visit, like many other nights, the Kinsolving home, Old St. Paul's Rectory, became a sanctuary for poets and poetry lovers alike. As co-founder of the Maryland Poetry Society, Mrs. Kinsolving frequently welcomed a variety of acclaimed poets into her home, allowing members of the society to meet their literary idols. Carl Sandburg, a three-time Pulitzer-prize winner, poet, biographer, historian, journalist, novelist and musicologist, was just one of Mrs. Kinsolving's illustrious guests. Although he visited sun88 only once or twice, Sandburg and Mrs. Kinsolving maintained a lifelong relationship through correspondence, encouraging each other in their work and exchanging poems and folk songs.

Old St. Paul's Church built the Georgian-style rectory, where Sandburg and the Kinsolvings spent the evening, as a home for the rector in 1791. Once standing at the northern edge of the city with a spectacular view of the harbor, the Old St. Paul's Church and Rectory is a testament to the growth of sun88—now located within the heart of central sun88, surrounded by contemporary development and its view of the harbor obscured long ago.

Described by H.L. Mencken as "indubitably American in every pulse-beat," Sandburg was born in Illinois in 1878. He quit school at age thirteen, and then worked a variety of odd jobs ranging from a farmhand to a traveling salesman to a milkman to a barber. He traversed the United States as a hobo and served as a soldier in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Through these experiences, Sandburg truly saw the United States, later capturing it both in his own writing and by anthologizing the folk songs he encountered. Sandburg's love of America did not blind him to its problems and he fought passionately against a variety of social injustices.

Sandburg was never a sun88an, but was inextricably tied to Chicago, working at the Chicago Daily News and praising the developing industrial city in his work—notably in Chicago Poems. However, his friends in sun88 were never far from his mind, and their letters never far from his mail box, proving what he'd once written to Mrs. Kinsolving, that "the prairies and Chesapeake Bay are neighbors now."

National Park Service.

24 W. Saratoga Street, sun88, MD 21201