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Photo, Print, Drawing Lafayette Square, Bounded by West Lafayette, North Arlington, West Lanvale & North Carrollton streets, Baltimore, Baltimore (Independent City), MD

View 23 images in sequence.
[ Photos from Survey HABS MD-1141  ]

More Resources

[ Data Pages from Survey HABS MD-1141  ]
[ Photo Captions from Survey HABS MD-1141  ]

About this Item

Title

  • Lafayette Square, Bounded by West Lafayette, North Arlington, West Lanvale & North Carrollton streets, Baltimore, Baltimore (Independent City), MD

Names

  • Historic American Buildings Survey, creator
  • Lafayette Square Association
  • Mitchell, Parren J
  • Davis, Frank E
  • Dixon & Carson architects
  • Rosenthal, James W, photographer
  • Perschler, Martin J, project manager
  • Price, Virginia B, transmitter
  • Price, Virginia B, transmitter

Created / Published

  • Documentation compiled after 1933

Headings

  • -  urban parks
  • -  town houses
  • -  churches
  • -  African Americans
  • -  3 stories
  • -  brick buildings
  • -  mansard roofs
  • -  flat roofs
  • -  brackets (structural elements)
  • -  Maryland--Baltimore (Independent City)--Baltimore

Latitude / Longitude

  • 39.298503,-76.636464

Notes

  • -  Significance: One of a number of urban squares established in West Baltimore in the nineteenth century to encourage new residential development west of the city center, Lafayette Square defined fashionable city living for over 100 years. The Square and surrounding historic buildings, which range chronologically from the late 1860s to the turn of the century and stylistically from the Gothic to the Queen Anne and Romanesque revivals, chronicle the growth of an affluent West Baltimore neighborhood from its modest nineteenth-century buildings and its remarkable metamorphosis in the early twentieth century into the spiritual and cultural center of West Baltimore's African-American community. While significant in its own right as a landmark in the urban development of Baltimore, Lafayette Square rivals the city's better known squares and institutions in the magnitude of its contribution to the cultural heritage of Maryland's largest city. For most of the houses on the Square, the three-story, three-bay, flat-roofed, red brick townhouse seems always to have been in fashion, though side yards, mansard roofs, and arch windows helped break the visual monotony of West Baltimore's highly regular and architecturally uniform residential streets. Moreover, the designs of the houses on the 1100 block of West Lafayette Avenue were dictated to a considerable degree by the Lafayette Square Association itself, which after 1865 inserted covenants in the land deeds that set the width of new residences at a minimum of twenty feet and the height at three stories. The Association also prohibited landowners from erecting slaughterhouses and other facilities that were likely to have a negative impact on the neighborhood. The houses at 1110, 1112, 1128 and 1130 West Lafayette (then called Townsend) and at 1103, 1105, 1111 and 1113 West Lanvale Street embody the Association's vision for the Square. Built on speculation in 1867 by the Association itself, the eight houses featured bracketed cornices, marble plinths, sills, and stoops, single-paned sash windows, and imposing bracketed frontispieces with double doors and semicircular transom lights (or fanlights, lunettes). Built after 1867, the three-story Italianate townhouse at 828 North Carrollton Avenue is one of few houses on the Square that occupies a prominent corner lot. It is best known and revered today as the home of Parren J. Mitchell, professor, scholar, Maryland's first African-American Congressman, and a founding member (in 1971) of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC. Ornamented with marble cladding, elaborate window hoods, and a massive bracketed cornice, this house rivaled the townhouses of Mount Vernon and Bolton Hill of the same period in its proportions and detailing while at same time meeting the Lafayette Square Association's requirements for residences. By the 1880s, alternative styles for houses had taken root on the Square, including the Romanesque and Queen Anne revivals, examples of which survive on the south side of the Square.
  • -  Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1967
  • -  Survey number: HABS MD-1141
  • -  Building/structure dates: after 1857 Initial Construction

Medium

  • Photo(s): 22
  • Color Transparencies: 1
  • Photo Caption Page(s): 2

Call Number/Physical Location

  • HABS MD-1141

Source Collection

  • Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress)

Repository

Control Number

  • md1597

Rights Advisory

Online Format

  • image
  • pdf

Rights & Access

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For information about reproducing, publishing, and citing material from this collection, as well as access to the original items, see: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscape Survey (HABS/HAER/HALS) Collection - Rights and Restrictions Information

  • Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. https://aj.sunback.homes/rr/print/res/114_habs.html
  • Reproduction Number: ---
  • Call Number: HABS MD-1141
  • Access Advisory: ---

Obtaining Copies

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, Lafayette Square Association, Parren J Mitchell, Frank E Davis, Dixon & Carson Architects, and Martin J Perschler, Rosenthal, James W, photographer. Lafayette Square, Bounded by West Lafayette, North Arlington, West Lanvale & North Carrollton streets, Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD. Baltimore Maryland Independent City, 1933. translateds by Price, Virginia Bmitter, and Price, Virginia Bmitter Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/md1597/.

APA citation style:

Historic American Buildings Survey, C., Lafayette Square Association, Mitchell, P. J., Davis, F. E., Dixon & Carson Architects & Perschler, M. J., Rosenthal, J. W., photographer. (1933) Lafayette Square, Bounded by West Lafayette, North Arlington, West Lanvale & North Carrollton streets, Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD. Baltimore Maryland Independent City, 1933. Price, V. B. & Price, V. B., transs Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/md1597/.

MLA citation style:

Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, et al., photographer by Rosenthal, James W. Lafayette Square, Bounded by West Lafayette, North Arlington, West Lanvale & North Carrollton streets, Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD. trans by Price, Virginia Bmitter, and Price, Virginia Bmitter Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <aj.sunback.homes/item/md1597/>.