Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/22/2024
10:00 am - 12:30 pm

Location
Baltimore Federal Courthouse

Categories No Categories

***THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT***

THE DOWNTOWN BALTIMORE YOU NEVER KNEW:

HISTORY, ARCHITECTURE, & FILM!

This 2 1/2 hour walking tour will cover a rectangular section of downtown roughly bounded by Pratt Street on the south, Fayette Street on the north, Hopkins Place on the west, and South Street on the east.  You will learn about Baltimore from its earliest days, through the Civil War, the labor unrest of the Gilded Age, the Great Fire of 1904, and the start of the Civil Rights movement. We will strip away today’s urban landscape to reveal the original natural features – including a sandy strand, marshes, streams, and a steep bluff that fell sharply to the Jones Falls – along with the now-vanished buildings that stood along these street in centuries past.

Along the way, you will see where Captain John Smith explored, the Continental Congress met, Francis Scott Key composed The Star-Spangled Banner, mobs rioted, Abraham Lincoln evaded assassins, slaves were freed from confinement and joined the Union army, German agents plotted sabotage during the First World War, Thurgood Marshall practiced law, famous court cases were litigated, and George Washington, John Adams, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Woodrow Wilson slept!  The tour will also include notes on downtown architecture and will point out filming locations from various movies and television programs.

The meeting point will be the colorful, abstract Jules Sugarcane sculpture on the grounds of Baltimore’s Federal Courthouse at 101 W. Lombard Street, at the corner of Lombard and Hanover – one block north of the Convention Center.

Jefferson Gray is a member of the Yale Class of 1978 (and a history major) who has practiced law and walked these streets in downtown Baltimore since 1989.