The 2017 Program Consisted of the Following Baltimore History Evenings:
January 19, 2017
Baltimore and the B&O: A Cautionary Tale in Economic Development
Presented by Matthew A. Crenson
Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Johns Hopkins, Author of Baltimore: A Political History.
Baltimore's economic and political elites invested heavily in railroads in the hope that they would be the city's salvation. The city became a pioneer in rails and steam engines, but well before the end of the 19th century, Baltimoreans recognized the failure of this economic development strategy.
February 16, 2017
Unbuilding Baltimore (or What I Learned While Taking Apart 200 Rowhouses)
Presented by Max Pollock
Director, Brick + Board, a social enterprise of the workforce development nonprofit Humanim. A graduate of the London School of Economics, formerly with the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.
Nobody knows 19th-century Baltimore rowhouses like Max Pollock, who has taken apart hundreds of them, brick by brick, joist by joist, diverting 95 percent of the material from landfills to productive reuse. Only the builders knew as much about these houses as Pollock and his crews.
March 16, 2017
Jane Jacobs and Baltimore
The Grace Darin Memorial Lecture
Presented by Robert Kanigel
Author of Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs; The Man Who Knew Infinity; and six other books.
Jacobs visited Baltimore, wrote about the city in her journalism, cited it in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In this revolutionary book, she created an indelible vision of what a “great” city could be, a model of urbanity. How far does Baltimore diverge from it? Is it getting any closer? Or is her model wrong for Baltimore?
April 20, 2017
Stone Hill: Baltimore's Hidden Mill Village
Presented by Guy Hollyday
Author of Stone Hill in Baltimore: Stories from a Cotton Mill Village
Guy and his wife moved to Stone Hill in 1982, at just the right moment to interview and photograph neighborhood old-timers and capture their stories. His book 1994 book, and now this enlarged second edition, combines these interviews with extensive research in mill records, the U.S. Census, and other records, to record the life of a still-evolving neighborhood.
May 18, 2017
Sisters of Faith: The Oblate Sisters of Providence
Presented by Willa Banks
Benjamin Banneker Historical Park & Museum and Lord Baltimore Fellow, Maryland Historical Society; formerly Associate Curator for Education at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park & Museum
The national student movement of the 1960s grew out of Baltimore's student movements of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The Baltimore City The Oblate Sisters of Providence, established in Baltimore in 1829, were the first order of African American nuns. which was established in Baltimore in 1829 and has rendered over 180 years of community service. Pioneers in the Catholic education, the order established an exceptional school for girls of color in the early 19th century known today as St. Frances Academy.
June 15, 2017
Neighborhood Matters: What Baltimore Learned from the War on Poverty
Presented by Aiden Faust
Head of Special Collections, University of Baltimore Langsdale Library. Winner of the Baltimore City Historical Society's Joseph L. Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore History, 2015.
To what extent did the Great Society lead to changes in Baltimore’s municipal governance? This study makes a case for a Long War on Poverty by tracing the development of Baltimore’s early antipoverty demonstration program in 1967 through the rise and fall of the City’s Urban Services Agency in 1993.
