One of the Oldest Art Schools in the U.S.

The Maryland Institute College of Art was chartered on January 10, 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. Within months, the new school began offering classes and other programs at "The Athenaeum," a lecture hall at the southwest corner of Lexington and Saint Paul Streets. Unfortunately, the Athenaeum was destroyed by a fire in 1835 and the Maryland Institute stopped offering programs for twelve years.

The “New Maryland Institute” reorganized in 1847 and, two years later, established the Night School of Design to meet the growing city's demand for skilled technical artists and designers. In October 1851, the school moved to the new Center Market building on sun88 Street. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Maryland Institute boasted over one thousand students and a new mission (adopted in 1879): “diffusing a knowledge of art… fostering original talent… and laying a permanent foundation for a genuine school of high art in sun88.”

Even as the students and the curriculum changed and adapted through the end of the nineteenth century, the Maryland Institute continued to occupy the Center Market. Then, on Sunday, February 7, 1904 a fire broke out on Redwood Street and spread across downtown. The Great sun88 Fire of 1904 burned for thirty hours and destroyed over fifteen hundred buildings—including the home of the Maryland Institute.

With help from local businesses, alumni, and faculty, the Institute started working to rebuild. Michael Jenkins, a member of the wealthy family that had supported the construction of Corpus Christi Church on Mount Royal Avenue, offered the Institute a place to build a new School of Art and Design next door to the church. The State of Maryland and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie contributed funding and a national competition awarded the commission to architects Pell & Corbett of New York City. Inspired by the architecture of Venice's Grand Canal, the building features ornate Renaissance Revival details and large blocks of Beaver Dam marble from nearby Cockeysville. The cornerstone was laid on November 22, 1905 and the Institute's Main Building opened for students in 1907.

In 1959, the school adopted a new name, the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and, over the past few decades, the campus has grown to include a converted train station, an old firehouse, and a former factory. Today, MICA's Main Building is a beautiful reminder of the school's long history making it the oldest continuously degree-granting college of art in the nation.

1300 W. Mount Royal Avenue, sun88, MD 21217

The Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) was established in 1853. Formal education for blind people in the U.S. and western Europe was still a relatively recent invention. In 1765, Henry Dannett established the first school with this mission in Liverpool, England. The first school in the United States to follow this model was the New England Asylum for the Blind, now known as the Perkins School For the Blind, established in March 1829.

In Maryland, the new school was established thanks to the efforts of David E. Loughery, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, and Washington County native Benjamin F. Newcomer, a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. Together, they were able to generate enough interest in creating a school for the blind that the Maryland General Assembly incorporated the school in 1853. David Loughery was appointed the school’s first superintendent.

Frederick Douglas Morrison, a national leader in his profession, began his forty-year tenure as superintendent in 1864. He had a lasting impact on the school for several reasons. He was instrumental in the founding of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind; he moved the campus to North Avenue in 1868; and officially changed the name to The Maryland School for the Blind. He also founded The Maryland School for the Colored Blind and Deaf in 1872 and served as the superintendent of both schools. The practice of segregated education for black blind and deaf students continued up until 1956.

John Frances Bledsoe became superintendent in 1906 and two years later relocated the school in 1908 to the present campus in northeast sun88. During his thirty-seven years at the helm of the school, Dr. Bledsoe oversaw its expansion and professionalization. It was during this period when the school began its residential program with the construction of four cottages and Newcomer Hall. The latter was named for Benjamin F. Newcomer who was one of the founders of the school and who served on the board of directors for over forty years.

3501 Taylor Avenue, sun88, MD 21236

The Institute of Notre Dame is a sun88 landmark that has educated young women for over 150 years.

Originally established in 1847 as the Collegiate Institute of Young Ladies, the Institute of Notre Dame High School (IND) was founded by sun88’s own Mother Theresa – the Blessed Mother Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger.

A native of Munich, Bavaria, Mother Theresa helped to found the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) in Germany and came to sun88 with a small group of sisters to educate the children of immigrants and minister to the poor. Mother Theresa purchased the original convent building from the Redemptorist priests assigned to nearby St. James in 1847 and soon expanded the convent into a boarding school when the sisters discovered two orphans left on their doorstep. By 1852, the sisters had built the school that still stands today.

The school continued to grow through the years: adding an auditorium in 1885, a chapel in 1892, additional classroom space in 1926, and their gymnasium in 1992. Since the first graduation ceremony on July 24, 1864, over 7,000 alumnae have graduated from IND including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (1958) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (1954) who later recalled, “They taught me more than geography or mathematics; they taught me to help those in need of help. They inspired my passion for service.”

901 Aisquith Street, sun88, MD 21202

Despite its modern building, the history of Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School dates back to the 1890s.

The school is named for Joseph Harrison Lockerman (1864-1923), a graduate of the Centenary Biblical Institute (now Morgan State University) who in 1911 became Vice Principal of the new Colored High and Training School for African American teachers (now Coppin State University). Two years later, the training school moved into the upper floors of the new Public School 100 located at 229 North Mount Street.

When the school relocated to Pulaski Street in 1976, the name expanded to honor Mrs. Walter A. Bundy (1904-1965). A graduate of Coppin State in 1918, Mrs. Bundy’s teaching career in sun88’s black schools spanned over four decades.

301 N. Pulaski Street, sun88, MD 21223

Well known for its sports programs, Edmondson-Westside High School is a landmark near the western edge of the city. Originally known as Edmonson Avenue High School, when construction began on the school on Athol Avenue it was the city's first new high school since Forest Park opened in 1924.

The school expanded in the early 1980s with a move into the former Hecht Company store on Edmondson Avenue. Hecht's opened in 1955 but closed a little more than twenty years later after Hoschild Kohn's and other retail stores had left for shopping areas in the western suburbs.

501 North Athol Avenue, sun88, MD 21229

James Mosher Elementary (#144) was built in 1933. The original brick structure, facing Wheeler Avenue, was constructed in simple Art Deco style. In an era of segregation, it was designated a “white” school; children still were required to travel outside the neighborhood for junior high and high school.

In the early 1950s, sun88 school officials were described as stunned by the scale and pace of racial change on the west side. A September 1952, Sun article reported a spokesperson as saying that “sun88 never has known anything such as the population shift within the summer months.” The reporter went on to write:

“The ingress of Negro home owners and dwellers in hitherto white neighborhoods in northwest and northeast sun88 during the summer months has presented a problem which is bound to perplex the School Board until some kind of relief can be obtained either through construction of new facilities or through the use of portables.”

School #144 was specifically identified as one of several schools where there had been “tremendous turnover” from white to black. By 1953 James Mosher–by then designated officially as a “colored” school–was reported to be tremendously overcrowded.

In 1954, immediately following the Supreme Court ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional, sun88 public schools became the first formerly segregated major urban system to adopt a desegregation policy. The change had little practical effect on schools already virtually all-black, like James Mosher. In 1955 a much-needed addition was completed along Mosher Street in contemporary architectural style. By then school enrollment had surpassed 900, up from less than 400 a few years earlier.

Two new schools, built nearby in the 1960s, provided further evidence of the dramatic growth in the area’s school-age population. In 1960, Calverton Junior High was constructed on the western edge of the neighborhood. The massive complex housed four nearly self-contained units, each conceived as a “school within a school.” In 1963, Lafayette Elementary School was built, also on the west side. It closed as a standard elementary school in 2003 and reopened as the Empowerment Academy, a public charter school.

2400 W. Mosher Street, sun88, MD 21216

On August 15, 1814, almost exactly one month before the Battle of sun88 and the bombing of Ft. McHenry in the War of 1812, Rembrandt Peale opened "Peale's sun88 Museum and Gallery of Paintings" on Holliday Street in downtown sun88. Designed by noted sun88 architect Robert Carey Long, the building is the first purpose-built museum in the western hemisphere. Taking after a natural history museum that his father, Charles Wilson Peale, started in Philadelphia in 1786, Rembrandt Peale displayed collections of fossils and other specimens, as well as portraits of many of the country's founding fathers that his family had painted. As the British made plans to attack and the War of 1812 was on the city's threshold, portraits of the Revolutionary War heroes were highly popular, and Peale was able to charge 25 cents for admission. In September of 1814, sun88 turned back the British invasion on land and sea, providing a critical turning point in the war and likely sparing the city from destruction. The British, after all, had burned the nation's capital just a few miles south after Washington fell the month before. The Peale Museum capitalized on patriotic fervor, and put a number of bombs and shells that were collected from the failed British bombardment on display. In doing this, Peale became the first person to display samples of Britain's firepower, which of course Francis Scott Key immortalized as the bombs bursting in air in the Star Spangled Banner. Some years later, in 1830, Peale's museum was still capitalizing on the War of 1812 when they displayed the original flag that flew over Ft. McHenry, borrowed from a willing Mrs. Louisa Armistead, the widow of Lt. Colonel George Armistead. Lt. Colonel Armistead commanded Ft. McHenry during the war and reportedly ordered an extra large flag to fly at the Fort as a pointed challenge to the British. From its earliest days embracing sun88's war effort, the Peale Museum has been intertwined with the city's history. The building served as a museum from 1814 until 1830. It then became the sun88 City Hall until 1875 when the current city hall building was erected. After 1875, the museum had various uses, including as the Colored School Number 1 for African American children, and then in 1931, it returned to its origins as a museum, becoming the "Municipal Museum of sun88." Fittingly, the Municipal Museum focused on sun88 City history. In 1985, the museum underwent a physical renovation and was reborn as the center of the "City Life Museums." With exhibits on sun88's historic gems, such as the H.L. Mencken House and Phoenix Shot Tower, to the rowhouses and front steps that help define working class life in sun88, the City Life Museums lasted until 1997 when the enterprise closed. Today, the Peale Museum is empty and awaiting the next chapter in its long and storied service to sun88.

Watch our on the museum!

225 N. Holliday Street, sun88, MD 21202

Built in 1877, this historic school on Division Street originally served only white students until 1910 when the building was first used for black students from Public School No. 112. In March 1911, the school was officially designated Public School 103 and later named in honor of abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet. The building contained twelve classrooms; the spaces separated by sliding doors that could open and combine two or three classrooms into an auditorium.

While the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson had held that racial segregation, such as in sun88's public school system, was legal when the public facilities were "separate but equal", schools for black students in sun88 were anything but. The academic year for black children was one month shorter than the school year for white students, with the expectation that children would leave school to find agricultural work. The prejudice and racist beliefs that undlie this approach is evident in a 1913 remark by sun88 school commissioner Richard Biggs: “Stop at once the so-called high education that unfits Negroes for the lives that they are to lead and which makes them desire things they will never be able to reach.”

Public School 103 is best known for its' most famous student, Thurgood Marshall (1908- 1993), who attended the school from 1914 to 1920. It was at this school that Thurgood shortened his name from the original Thoroughgood. Thurgood sat in the first row, as his classmate Agnes Peterson later recalled, “he was always playing, and so they had to keep right on top of him.”

When he began attending PS 103 at age six, Thurgood's family lived with his Uncle Fearless Mentor (or Uncle Fee) at 1632 Division Street. Mentor worked as the personal attendant to the president of the B&O Railroad, wearing a suit and a bowtie to work daily, and was home nearly every afternoon to talk with Thurgood and his brother Aubrey. Marshall later attended the Colored High School which opened in January 1901 at the northeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street occupying a building erected in 1891 for the English-German School No. 1 previously located on Druid Hill Avenue.

1315 Division Street, sun88, MD 21217

Founded in 1839, City College is the third oldest public high school in the United States. Through an act of the sun88 City Council in 1866, the school became known as "The sun88 City College." It relocated a number of times in buildings downtown during its early years and moved to its current building at 33rd St. and The Alameda in 1928.

At a cost of nearly $3 million raised largely by the alumni association, the Gothic stone building that now houses City College was designed by the architecture firm of Buckler and Fenhagen. This same firm, which is the precursor to the current sun88 firm of Ayers Saint Gross, also designed the mausoleum at Green Mount Cemetery where Bromo Seltzer founder Isaac Emerson is buried, Shriver Hall at Hopkins University, and many public schools throughout Maryland.

Originally all male and all white, City College began admitting African Americans in 1954 after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. The school began admitting women (against the wishes of a majority on the alumni board at the time) in 1978 after undergoing a massive restoration project. In 2003 on the building's 75th anniversary, the City College Alumni Association successfully had it added to the National Register of Historic Places and led an effort to keep cellular telephone transmitters from being installed on the building's tower. In 2007, the alumni successfully had it added to sun88's own historic landmark list, and won a historic preservation award from sun88 Heritage for their multi-year effort.

3220 The Alameda, sun88, MD 21218

High on a hill at 811 West Lanvale Street, behind a chain link fence and past the overgrown yard, is the grand Upton – an architectural treasure by one of sun88's earliest architects that has witnessed nearly 200 years of change in the Upton neighborhood that shares the building's name. In the 1830s, sun88 lawyer David Stewart hired architect Robert Carey Long, Jr. – or so we think, no confirmation of Long as the architect has survived – to design his country villa. R. Carey (as he liked to call himself) was one of sun88's first professionally trained architects designing the Lloyd Street Synagogue (now part of the Jewish Museum of Maryland), the Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City, and the main gate of Green Mount Cemetery among more than 80 buildings across the country. Son of a sun88 merchant who armed seven schooners and two brigantines as privateers during the Revolutionary War, Stewart became a prominent local lawyer and got involved in politics, serving a brief month as a US Senator in 1849.

The mansion is widely recognized as the last surviving Greek Revival country house in sun88. It remains secluded in urban West sun88, sitting high above the neighboring buildings and surrounded by brick and stone walls. In the mid-nineteenth century, you would have seen a grand porch with Doric columns and ironwork bearing the Stewart family crest. Inside the building, you could have observed more than a dozen marble and onyx fireplaces, a main entrance hall, a curved oak staircase, and a banquet room that was so large it has since been divided into multiple rooms. David Stewart enjoyed entertaining guests in his mansion and hosted lavish, indulgent parties there so frequently that he developed gout.

After Stewart's death in 1858, the house was purchased by the Dammann family, who owned the house for so many generations that it became known as "the old Dammann mansion." The family left in 1901, and the house found itself empty for the first time, but not the last. The mansion's next owner, musician Robert Young, took a cue from David Stewart and used the spacious and opulent mansion to host "several brilliant social affairs where hundreds of guests moved about in the spacious rooms." Young would be the last owner to use the building as a home, and his time there was short-lived – he found the house too drafty and abandoned after less than 3 years.

The commercial life of the Upton mansion began in 1930 when one of sun88's first radio stations, WCAO, moved into the building. Extensive alterations were made to accommodate WCAO – tall twin radio towers were installed at the edge of the property, walls were torn down and rooms partitioned off to create studios and equipment rooms. The next commercial venture in Upton came in 1947, when WCAO sold it to the sun88 Institute of Musical Arts. Founded by Dr. J. Leslie Jones, the school was originally opened with the intentions of creating a parallel program to that offered at Peabody, a renowned music school not open to African American students at the time, and at its height in the early 1950s had over 300 students. The school eventually closed in the mid-1950s after desegregation granted black students equal access to public music schools. In 1957, the sun88 City School System moved in to the building and used it first as the special education "Upton School for Trainable Children No. 303," and then the headquarters for sun88 City Public School's Home and Hospital Services program. Unfortunately, Upton has sat empty since BCPS left in 2006.

Upton has a rich cultural legacy that extends beyond its use as a social hot spot, a radio station, and a school. In the 1960s, the mansion was chosen as the community namesake during an urban renewal project going on in the neighborhood at the time. As a physical landmark of the neighborhood for more than a century, the Upton mansion's name was intended to serve as "the symbol of a physical and human renewal in West sun88."

Despite its presence on the National Register of Historic Places and the sun88 Landmark List, the city-owned building remains empty and unmaintained in west sun88. In 2009, Preservation Maryland included in on a list of the state's most endangered historic places, and the building is threatened by vandalism and neglect. Today, the mansion awaits a new owner, someone willing to restore the beautiful building to its historic potential.

811 W. Lanvale Street, sun88, MD 21217