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Baltimore YWCA founded in 1886; Baltimore Colored YWCA formed in 1896, first requested affiliation with the main white branch in 1912 (source); interracial organizing given new urgency during WWI; established affiliation in 1920.
In January 1926 the Druid Hill Avenue Branch reopened its doors. This, its first annual report after the reopening, speaks to the importance of support from Cordella Winn of the YWCA National Board. Despite its earlier difficulties, this Colored Branch appears to have thrived in the years that followed. It outgrew its original building and in 1945 moved into a new building on Madison Avenue. In the 1970s, with full integration of the Baltimore YWCA, the activities of all the branches were consolidated at the Y's main building, and the branch offices closed. (Source)
Like white branches, the majority of the black women who worked for the YWCA came from a middle-class background and held similar concerns for female purity and educational programs. But more importantly, the YWCA became a venue to promote racial uplift and civil rights, an area that the National YWCA and other locals would embrace later.
Martha Elizabeth Murphy, married to John H. Murphy, Sr. founder of the Afro American newspaper, was one of the founders of the Colored YWCA served as the president for fifteen years. Source
On Sunday, the Greater Baltimore YWCA will hold a reunion tea for black women to recognize the cultural heritage they brought to the YWCA. It is a heritage that started when the CYWCA was founded by Sarah A. Charity; Mary E. Bright; Martha E. Murphy, wife of the founder of the Afro-American newspaper; Frances L. Murphy, her daughter; Mary E. Cooper; Novella Rayne, and Maggie B. Ridley and continued many years when there was a separate branch for blacks.
Designed by architect Joseph Evans Sperry and opened in 1917 as the local headquarters of the Young Women's Christian Association, the building is across Franklin Street from the Enoch Pratt Free Library, blocks from the building where a private group plans this spring to open the Maryland Women's Heritage Center and Museum, and blocks from Baltimore's School for the Arts. … In 1916, two YWCA women raised the funds to build what was at the time a facility to provide residences and services for working women. The building served as headquarters for the work of the YWCA for the next 93 years, supporting a variety of programs to empower women.
- 1858: The first association in the U.S., Ladies Christian Association, was formed in New York City.
- 1889: The first African-American YWCA branch opened in Dayton, Ohio.
- 1915: The YWCA held the first interracial conference in Louisville, Ky.
- 1934: The YWCA encouraged members to speak out against lynching and mob violence, and for interracial cooperation and efforts to protect African Americans’ basic civil rights.
- 1936: The YWCA held the Interracial Seminar, marking the first intercollegiate, interracial, co-ed conference in the South.
Source: YWCA History
John Henry Cobbs (1924-1998) a longtime Baltimore activist who organized sit-ins at local restaurants and spearheaded voter registration rallies. Lived in Walbrook in 1998; past president of the Arch Social Club on Pennsylvania Avenue and served on the executive board of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America.
A Baltimore native, graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1942 and served in the Army during World War II. After his discharge in 1945, he attended Loyola College and the former Morgan State College. Graduated in the late 1940s from the old Cortez Peters Business School in Baltimore, where he set a school record for being the fastest typist, and worked at the Bethlehem Steel Corp. Sparrows Point location from the early 1950s until 1986.
Known as "Pookey" most of his life, he organized what is believed to have been one of the city's first black voter registration drives in the early 1960s. He gathered several hundred people at North and Pennsylvania avenues and marched to City Hall, where they registered to vote.
In the late 1950s, Cobbs organized a series of sit-ins the White Coffee Pot diner at North and Linden avenues in West Baltimore. Although blacks worked there, they were refused service.
Cobbs’ wife, the former Mary Frances Jones, recalled:
”They just went there and sat for weeks. They didn't get served, but they just sat. They did it every day it was open. They [the management and other patrons] threw coffee on them and called them names, but they continued to do it. They stayed with it."
The last White Coffee Pot restaurant closed in Brooklyn Park, Maryland, in 1993.
- 1858: Moses Hutzler opened his little retail store on Howard Street and Clay. Over the next fifty years, other stores, both small and large, joined him, opening up and down Howard Street.
- 1868: Established the "One-Price House" policy, no haggling
- 1888: Expanded to open Palace Building, 200 employees
Palace building designed architects Baldwin & Pennington. Neoclassical architecture, Nova Scotia gray stone, carved with arabesque heads and foliage, and large display windows.
- ** 1931:**Hutzler's Tower Building, 254 NorthHoward Street, designed by James R. Edmunds (trained in the office of Joseph Evans Sperry), planned literally to "tower" over the old Palace building on the south.
- ** 1977 September:** “Baltimore Gardens" proposal advanced to redevelop the block including Hoschild Kohn and Hutzlers
- 1978: Downtown store closed
"Hutzler's was the premier store. Hocschild's was for common people like me. I'm a common person. I curse, I drink. Oh my, I'm a horrible man" — William Donald Schaefer
- 1920s: Built in the for the Hecht Company
- 1959: Merged in with the national May Company
- 1988: Department store closed, Rite Aid opened in 1994
- 1899: Designed by Charles E. Cassell for Samuel Posner; a 6-story brick and terra cotta steel-framed building detailed in a highly ornate Italian Renaissance Revival style
- 1904: Louis Stewart acquired the building, turned Samuel Posner's dry goods store into Stewart's Department Store
- Opened its first suburban store in 1953 on York Road followed by Reisterstown Road Plaza in 1962, Timonium Mall in 1969, Westview Shopping Center in 1969, and Golden Ring Mall in Rosedale, Maryland, in 1974.
- 1978: Downtown store was closed, acquired in 1979 by Harry Weinberg
- 2006-2007: Restored with historic tax credits
1940s: Department stores discrimination against shoppers targeted by Afro American in the Orchids & Onions campaign. Onions included the May Company, Stewart's Department Store, and Hutzler’s.
1960 March 26: Black student activists attempted to purchase food at department store restaurants at the Northwood Shopping Center and downtown; black students were attempting to buy lunch at four downtown department stores, only successful at Hochschild Kohn. Stewart's shut its food counters to all, white and black, and closed the food operation. About 20 blacks entered a Hutzler's restaurant and waited for three hours, but were not served.
1960 April 17: Issue resolved on Easter Sunday when the Sun reported that store executive Albert D. Hutzler met with civil rights leaders Furman Templeton, David Glenn and Robert B. Watts, then announced "We have lifted restrictions. Negroes will be served in our restaurants." Hecht-May and other stores followed.
Source: Baltimore Sun
** November 1953:** “If You Ask Me,” Afro-American Newspaper, Mrs. B.M. Phillips:
Thanks to the Committee On Racial Equality, (CORE), the Urban league, and the Americans for Democratic Action, (ADA), more stores in the 200 block W. Lexington st. are realizing there is no color line in the dollars you spend. Lunch counters and restaurants in the Kresge and Woolworth Five and Ten have been serving all customers for several weeks. McCrory's has just reversed its policy and will serve all comers […] Schulte United in the 200 block Lexington is still acting silly."
- 1934: Read’s opened at Howard and Lexington on the 300th anniversary of Maryland colony
- Design by Baltimore architects Smith and May (who also designed the Bank of America building in 1929) included terra cotta panels on the fourth-floor depicting sailing ships, pattern of dolphins on the interior dining balcony
- 1955: after successful campaigns to desegregate the Kresge's and Grant's store chains, CORE joined with Morgan students fighting to desegregate the Read's Drug Store located at the Northwood Shopping Center.
- January 20, 1955: a group of student activists from Morgan, staged a sit-in
- January 22, 1955: Afro-American runs the headline, "Now serve all," sit-down led to desegregation of the whole Read's chain
Picketed by the Baltimore NAACP from 1947-1952; Paul Robeson
** February 17, 1946 **: NAACP executive secretary Addison Pinkney:
This is an insult to our citizens who have recently returned from Europe’s battlefields where they made untold sacrifices to help free Europe's Jews from Hitler's persecution, and to bring democracy and justice to the world. Many of our young men still lie in unknown graves on foreign soil, having given their all... In memory of their sacrifice, and that all boys of all races, creed, and colors we can do no less than refuse to be party to unjust practices which negate the democratic ideal... We, here in Baltimore, are endeavoring to strengthen the democratic concept by seeing to it that it is practiced.
September 1947: picketing at Ford's Theater continued for:
”the entire season [and] reduced the average attendance to less than on-half capacity of [the] building. This shows public opinion was with the pickets in their protests against discrimination and segregation."
Ford's Theater, which was operated by United Booking Office Inc. of New York, leased the building from MorrisMechanic, the Baltimore theater mogul. By 1950, United Booking Office reported that Ford's, once one of the most prosperous theaters in the nation, had its box office receipts cut almost in half. This could be attributed both to the NAACP protest and to the poor selection of plays that had been sent to Baltimore. Baltimore Sun
1951: Basil Rathbone, British actor famous for playing Sherlock Holmes, declared :
You may depend on my taking a firm stand of disapproval of the segregated theatre in Baltimore and to inform any management to whom I may in future contract myself and the case of any play in which I play.
Gov. Theodore R. McKeldin, speaking in early 1952 at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, declared that he wanted Ford's opened to blacks because they had been "needlessly affronted" by its policies. "We are going to walk together," he said. "I am an optimist, and we must win. We are going to stop this evil thing."
February 1, 1952: Ford’s dropped segregation policies
- segregated white
- 1954: black players from three American League teams with integrated rosters coming to play against the Orioles in baltimore had to stay at the York Hotel; white teammeates stayed at the Lord Baltimore, the Emerson or Southern Hotel.
- 1955: Students at Johns Hopkins University organized to move the prom away from the hotel after the hotel manager stated that under no circumstances would they admit black students and threatened to "stop the dance if Negroes attended." to the Alcazar in Mount Vernon in protest of their discriminatory policies.
- July 1958: Earlier lobbying from Theodore McKeldin failed but by 1957 hotels were admitting black ballplayers and some conference attendees. Baltimore hosted the All-Star Game, six black All-Stars (Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson) registered at the Lord Baltimore but visiting black spectators could not.
AFRO assistant editor Jimmy Williams advised spectators to bring pup tents and box lunches.
“The box lunches will be to ease the pangs of an aching stomach... The pup tents will provide a place for them to rest their carcasses after the last door of the downtown hotels have been slammed in their face and the uptown hotels are filled.” Williams predicted visitors would leave "just loving the quaint customs of Baltimore, which boasts of major league baseball and minor league businessmen."
- 1964: George Wallace presidential campaign offices – Hotels refused to accept them as guests. In Baltimore, campaign set up at Lord Baltimore but was suddenly informed there were no rooms for them, party transferred to a nearby motel in Towson. (Source)
- 1965: Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed at the hotel for a SCLC meeting and held a press conference; Mayor Tommy D'Alesandro met MLK to give him the keys to the city, spoke for two hours (Agenda)
Supportive of Civil Rights
A. Lloyd Lillie, Jr.: Born 1932, award-winning sculptor; received a diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and also studied at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, the Corcoran School of Art, and the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence.
A double portrait of former Baltimore mayor, Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., a driving force behind the downtown revitalization of Charles Center. One portrait depicts D'Alesandro casually standing by the side of the plaza looking out over Charles Center. His proper right hand rests on the railing of the plaza and his proper left hand rests on his left trouser pocket. A few feet away, another portrait depicts him relaxing on a park bench with his arms stretched out over the back of the bench. His legs are crossed and he looks over to his proper left.
Thomas D'Alesandro died in 1987:
As mayor from 1947 to 1959, D'Alesandro presided over a period of vast physical improvements in Baltimore. An airport was opened outside the city during his tenure, and major league baseball returned to Baltimore. In 1958, he won voter approval for the financing of the Charles Center urban renewal project, launching the rejuvenation that remade much of the heart of his beloved city.
Behind the Backlash on Charles Center
- **1954 **: Committee for Downtown organized to promote a 1000-acre master plan for stopping the commercial decline of downtown/central Baltimore.
- 1955: Greater Baltimore Committee, led by banker and developer James W. Rouse, joined the effort. Dissatisfied with the slow pace of public planning, GBC formed an in-house planning team, the Planning Council, headed by nationally-known planner David Wallace from Philadelphia.
David Wallace: In Philadelphia, PA in 1953, under Mayor Joseph S. Clark, David Wallace led a citywide urban redevelopment evaluation that resulted in the Central Urban Renewal Area (CURA) Report. The report established a new strategy for overall redevelopment that targeted catalytic actions to strengthen communities and downtown. CURA became a model for Baltimore, MD.
- March 1958: Presented a plan to Mayor & City Council calling for office buildings, commercial space, hotels, a theatre, underground parking, etc. Unusual in for incorporating existing structures (not a "clean-slate" design), across a 33 acre site. Includes three public plazas designed by RTKL, connected by walkways and pedestrian bridges. Plan formed the basis of a $25 million bond issue that year. Eventually spent $40 million public funding, $145 million private investment.
- GBC established an Architectural Review Board: Deans from three of the most prominent architectural schools in the U.S. (Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania) who judged the plans for each parcel of land before development.
Public benefits: increase in employment help the city's economy; increase in tax base will mean more city resources to meet the needs of the poor. Property development scheme of direct benefit to corporate and finance capital: new downtown employment in skilled or high-paying jobs went to suburban residents, jobs created for city residents are temporary construction or low-paying service sector.1
Declaring Charles Center the "New Heart of Baltimore," Jane Jacobs called the project an:
…attempt to stimulate a rebuilding use which is at fundamental odds with previous use or the surroundings of the project. The site is in the very heart of downtown, not on its fringes, and it is to be re-used for precisely the things that belong in the heart of downtown.
September 1970: First City Fair staged at Charles Center:
A pall hung over many city leaders when several of them, including housing commissioner Robert Embry, suggested a city fair at its new Charles Center to celebrate its neighborhoods, ethnic customs, talents and institutional strength. On the eve of the first fair, fearing that it would set up a riot-prone situation and under pressure from conservatives, D'Alesandro almost canceled it. However, the fair was held and became an annual event, drawing over a million visitors.
The 1958 Charles Center promotional report stated:
“Here, open space will be used, loved and economically successful because it will be full of pleasant things: fountains, sculpture, flowers, umbrellas, flags, and trees. The open space will be, in its own way, as concentrated as the city around it.”
- Three plazas, located on the interior of the two superblocks, linked through a series of elevated walkways, escalators and skywalks in order to overcome the problem of the site’s steep topography (a 68-foot drop in grade from the northern boundary of the site to the southern boundary)
- Create a series of “pedestrian islands.”
- Envisioned as a landscape of light, sculpture, and water by George Kostritsky of RTKL
- Circulation system was a typical component of urban design of the 1950s and 60; often promoted as a means of separating pedestrians from the automobile traffic. At Charles Center, the exterior circulation system was also intended to provide a venue for extensive retail activity.2
Not just an office building, but a monument to a revered and influential philosopher -architect will soon rise at Charles and Lexington streets.3
- Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer both proposed designs for this site
- 23-story aluminum and glass International Style skyscraper, completed in 13 months at a cost of $10,350,000.
- Another developer adapted Breuer's proposal for a site across the street, and the two buildings came up practically side-by-side.
**Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) **: As a teenager in Germany started work in his father's stone carving shop. Served as the last director of the Bauhaus architectural school before the Nazis forced the school to close in 1933. Immigrated to Chicago in 1938; best known for midcentury modernist landmarks Farnsworth Building outside of Chicago and the Seagram Building in New York City.
- 1969: Erected by developers Conklin + Rossant
- High-rise apartments, 385 feet/117 meters tall, 30 floors, tallest residential building in Baltimore
Nearby Buildings
- 1894: Fidelity and Deposit Trust Company – North Charles and West Lexington Streets
- 1986: Park Charles – designed by Winsor/Faricy, Inc. St. Paul, MN
- 1975: Charles Center South – North Charles and West Lombard Streets
- 1916: 21-story skyscraper designed by Parker, Thomas and Rice.
- Standing at 88 m (289 ft) it tied the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower from 1916 to 1923 as the tallest building in Baltimore.
** Parker, Thomas and Rice:** Architectural firm based in Boston and Baltimore (Douglas H. Thomas in Baltimore) also designed the Hotel Belvedere and the B&O Railroad Office Building among other iconic Baltimore landmarks
- 1966: Addition designed by Fisher, Nes, Campbell and Associates (also worked on the World Trade Center as Associate Architects)
On April 23, 1943, the Pratt librarian training program rejected Kerr's application without consideration, following a policy to exclude African American students. On October 5, 1943 Louise Kerr filed suit against the library