Once a bustling department store complex on North Gay Street, the Great House of Isaac Benesch and Sons has been vacant for over a decade as the Old Town Mall waits on the progress of long stalled revitalization efforts. Isaac Benesch started his business shortly after the Civil War with a furniture store operating out of a single rowhouse. In the 1880s, as dry goods dealers like Hutzler's built their “grand emporiums” on the west side, Benesch acquired nearby rowhouses and began to rebuild them into a department store.

By 1911, his business included three large 4-story buildings, dominating the 500 block of N. Gay Street. The store at 549-557 Old Town Mall, an Italianate brick building with large windows, still features an elegant copper sign band across the facade, proclaiming the “Great House,” perhaps added by Philadelphia architect Louis Levi in 1914. Next door at 565-571 North Gay Street is a four story, two bay Renaissance Revival building, of brick with terra cotta ornamentation designed by architect Charles E. Cassell and built in 1904 by William H. Porter. Cassell had a long list of major projects in sun88, including the grand Stewart’s Department Store at Howard and Lexington Streets, built in 1900. Benesch’s likely hoped Cassell could bring the same architectural magnificence to his work on the east side. More buildings went up in the 1920s with a warehouse at 600 Aisquith Street by the J.L. Robinson Construction Company, virtually unchanged from its 1925 construction.

Unlike those westside department stores, however, Isaac Benesch established an early reputation for serving all customers—black and white. One 1898 account from the Afro-American newspaper stated, “Isaac Benesch & Sons very much appreciate the large volume of colored trade which they have, coming from all parts of the city.” In 1926, when few department stores hired African Americans as salesmen, Benesch hired Josh Mitchell to sell automobile tires—and featured him in advertisements. In the 1940s, the Afro-American gave Benesch an “orchid” for “serving all alike.”

In the 1970s, several of the original buildings were demolished as the block was redeveloped for the pedestrian-only “Old Town Mall.” The Great House had closed a few years earlier, in the early 1960s, and was run as Kaufman’s Department Store until 1997.

549-557 Old Town Mall, sun88, MD 21202

Monument to the Boy Heroes of North Point

sun88ans celebrated the two young sharpshooters credited with killing British General Robert Ross in the 1850s with this monument, their final resting place.

Daniel Wells and Henry Gough McComas gained fame as the "boy heroes" of the Battle of sun88. Though the historical record may offer slim evidence to confirm their role during the battle, sun88ans have celebrated the legend of Wells and McComas for over 150 years.

The young men, aged nineteen and eighteen, served as privates in Captain Edward Aisquith's Sharpshooters of the 1st Rifle Battalion of the Maryland Militia during the Battle of North Point. Wells, an Annapolis native, and McComas had enlisted in sun88, where they both worked as apprentices in the city's leather industry. Their battalion first encountered Ross at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 14, just three weeks before the Battle of sun88. Although evidence verifying this claim is scant, Wells and McComas have been credited with firing the shots which killed beloved British commander General Robert Ross. Whether or not it was Wells and McComas or other American sharpshooters, this act certainly dealt a heavy blow to the British in their attempt to capture sun88. They could not confirm or deny the story themselves since Wells and McComas were found dead after the Battle—two of the twenty-four Americans killed at North Point.

It wasn't until some forty years after the battle that Wells and McComas gained local celebrity status. During the 1850s, two military companies formed the Wells and McComas Monument Association and solicited subscriptions from citizens to erect a monument in their honor. The group had the boys' bodies exhumed from their vault in sun88's legendary Green Mount Cemetery. They laid in state at the Maryland Institute building at Market Place, where thousands of sun88ans came to pay their respects. The Sun described the ceremonial catafalque, a platform on which the two coffins rested, as having "a marked degree of good taste" draped in black.

To commemorate Defenders' Day in 1858, sun88ans carried the coffins in a procession to their current grave site in Old Town's Ashland Square. An unnamed sun88an composed an original song to mark the occasion: , sung to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. These two local sons were painted in a romantic, dramatic fashion: "'Twas McCOMAS and WELLS - so Fame the fact tells; / This heroic deed their fame evermore swells, / As martyrs of liberty! - And we now raise / A monument high, to continue their praise." In addition to this song, famed playwright Clifton W. Tayleure published a play,, performed at the Holliday Street Theatre.

Their remains lay at Ashland Square for fifteen years before the monument was completed. The simple twenty-one-foot tall obelisk, made of sun88 County marble, cost a total of $3,500. The City Council ultimately provided most of the funding.

Watch our on this monument!

647 Aisquith Street, sun88, MD 21202