Peabody Heights History
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2900 Block N. Charles Street
Peabody Heights: Beginnings
Chosen for its elevation which afforded both vista and cooler summer temperatures, and named after the British benefactor of the musical conservatory which bears his name, Peabody Heights had the immediate prestige of being a planned suburban community with rigid controls through covenants and building restrictions, a location as high as the top of the Washington Monument a mile to the south and the lauded reputation of George Peabody whose gift to the City of Baltimore in 1866 was a thriving entity adjacent to that first monument to the first president. The Civil War was over, except perhaps on Bolton Hill, and the Peabody Heights Company built its first structure, a duplex in what is now the 2700 block of St. Paul Street.
Unfortunately, the economic depression following the war prohibited realization of the developing corporation and all plans remained static until 1896 when builder and real estate developer Francis E. Yewell took possession of a large section of the Peabody Heights land holdings and sold his first completed row home on the west side of the 2700 block of St. Paul Street on January 2, 1897. From that time, building momentum moved north, but in a brief time would expand both east and west. Peabody Heights had been granted an economic reprieve, middle class city residents were poised for a "better life" north of the city, an area not as far removed from their summer residences in what is now Roland Park, even Towson and beyond. Transportation entrepreneurs cooperated and tracks were laid for, first horse-drawn, later cable and electrically propelled "mass transit" conveyances. This new suburb was firmly in place within structure and architecture which would prove nearly impervious to time.
And so it was, that in the 1960s, an entirely new generation of city homeowners found the exuberant and fanciful structures, with such details as turrets, tiled roof lines, 12-foot ceilings, stained glass, pocket doors, working fireplaces, oak woodwork, as many as six full bedrooms, two kitchens, grand staircases and best of all, buildings with both character AND history. These new city dwellers forged a renaissance that started with a single, tall, elegant row home and spread to virtually a citywide rediscovery of what Baltimore, what city living, what city life had to offer.
Peabody Heights had already provided six mayors, one governor, two US senators, a judge, an admiral, the founder of the Tolchester Steamship Company, two Orioles, later to be major league managers and hall of famers, founders of two major insurance companies, a B and O president, prominent jewelers and silversmiths, a founder of a patent medicine company, many major Baltimore city businessmen and business owners. It soon became home to the founding church of American Methodism, Lovely Lane, Goucher College, Johns Hopkins University which surrounded the Carroll Mansion, Homewood, and five of the earliest Oriole ballparks. Peabody Heights had dozed off only to awaken as Charles Village, home now to doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, teachers and professors, politicians, political appointees, bankers, city, state and federal employees, and simultaneously, home to students, office and blue-collar workers, retail employees and retired persons. In many aspects, Peabody Heights in its several incarnations was a parallel, perhaps a microcosm, better yet and more accurately perhaps, a metaphor for the City of Baltimore.
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Peabody Heights Improvement Association: 1899
By the end of the 19th century, Peabody Heights had progressed to include nearly 100 homes, several established churches, schools and outside the boundaries a few small shops. Some businesses were grouped at the southeast corner of St. Paul and 26th Streets in a building named Peabody Hall, and it was there in a second floor meeting room that on November 27, 1899 the Peabody Heights Improvement Association was formed. Boundaries of the new civic group were established using essentially the north,east, and west property lines of the Peabody Heights Company land, but the southern boundary was moved south from 27th to 25th Street.
The reasons for organizing the Peabody Heights Improvement Association were two-fold, and the group established specific agendas to deal with the neighborhood's unfinished condition and the failure, or at least reluctance, of the city government to address other areas of concern of these residential homeowners. These issues included unfinished streets and sidewalks; street car services; police presence and protection; inadequate street lighting; the problems surrounding uncontrolled streams and ponds (flooding, insect infestation, marsh and wet lands).
By 1906 the Peabody Heights Improvement Association had grown to over 130 members. Still, only men were allowed into membership. The civic group had grown in more ways than numbers; its cohesiveness and influence made City Hall very amenable to answering complaints from this increasingly influential suburb. The Association and the community it represented had grown in prestige, power, and influence to the point that either the Mayor of Baltimore or the Governor of the State delivered the main address at the Peabody Heights Improvement Association banquet held annually at the new Belvedere Hotel.
Issues of concern changed somewhat over the years: shared costs of paving; perceived encroachment of the B & O Railroad in its below ground 26th Street right-of-way by both noise and pollution; the intrusion of the Roland Park Company's trucks on neighborhood streets; the proposed construction of a large non-residential storage structure which prompted an extensive petition drive.
The Peabody Heights Improvement Association did not just oppose specific issues within the community; fund raising for playground equipment was undertaken. The group strongly supported and urged that at least parts of the Olmsted brother's plan for Wyman Park Dell and the multi-lane boulevard concept along Charles Street above 29th be brought into reality.
It almost goes without saying that many of the issues and concerns of Peabody Heights and the Peabody Heights Improvement Association starting in 1899 are startlingly contemporary. Many of today's concerns shared by modern residential home owners in Peabody Heights mirror both the reasons for the inception of the Peabody Heights Improvement Association and its growth in membership and prestige.
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