The Baltimore City Archives is the official municipal archive of the City of Baltimore, Maryland. The archive is located on Mathews Street in the Better Waverly, Baltimore neighborhood. The Baltimore City Archives "is the central depository for government records of permanent value." [1]
Before the incorporating charter of Baltimore stipulated the care of records in 1796, the clerk of Baltimore's Special Commissioners had been ordered to keep records of the town in a chest for safekeeping. The first Record Office of Baltimore was completed in 1839, built to house the growing number of municipal records needing safekeeping. In 1839, the city librarian's office was created, and the librarians and assistants that followed worked to create order out of the multiplying records. Arguments of cronyism in the city librarian's office resulted in the creation of the Bureau of Archives within the Department of Legislative Reference in 1927.
During the late 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) assigned workers from the Historical Records Survey (HRS) to the Baltimore City Archives, the outcome being twelve hundred detailed worksheets and a completed index of the records of the Archives. Despite this work, the archives fell into disrepair until the 1970s, when a renewed interest in Baltimore's history was the impetus for the creation of the position of City Archivist. After several years of work, which resulted in a guide to the holdings of the Archive in relation to the WPA-HRS index, [2] the archives again fell into disrepair, housed in a substandard building with environmental. [3]
The Baltimore City Archives has been receiving more support from city government, enabling it to move to a new location. The Archives came under the auspices of the Maryland State Archives in 2009 through a five-year agreement [4] whereby the State Archives receive additional storage space in exchange for preservation services. [5] They have received an NHPRC Grant, [6] and work has since commenced to create more access to the holdings, including more detailed descriptions in their online guide [7] and the addition of Web 2.0 tools such as Flickr.
The Archives holds collections from city offices such as the Mayor of Baltimore, Baltimore City Council, and the Department of Housing as well as collections of national historic interest such as the War of 1812 papers. Current holdings include the Provident Hospital (Baltimore) and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency, employing millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States government charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also tasked with increasing public access to those documents which make up the National Archive. NARA is officially responsible for maintaining and publishing the legally authentic and authoritative copies of acts of Congress, presidential directives, and federal regulations. NARA also transmits votes of the Electoral College to Congress. It also examines Electoral College and Constitutional amendment ratification documents for prima facie legal sufficiency and an authenticating signature.
The Historical Records Survey (HRS) was a project of the Works Progress Administration New Deal program in the United States. Originally part of the Federal Writers' Project, it was devoted to surveying and indexing historically significant records in state, county and local archives. The official mission statement was the "discovery, preservation, and listing of basic materials for research in the history of the United States."
Baltimore City College, known colloquially as City,City College, and B.C.C., is a college preparatory school with a liberal arts focus and selective admissions criteria located in Baltimore, Maryland. Opened in October 1839, B.C.C. is the third-oldest active public high school in the United States. City College is a public exam school and an International Baccalaureate World School at which students in the ninth and tenth grades participate in the IB Middle Years Programme while students in the eleventh and twelfth grades participate in the IB Diploma Programme. The school is situated on a 38 acres (0.15 km2) hill-top campus located in the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore. The main campus building, a designated National Historic Landmark, is constructed of granite and limestone in a Collegiate Gothic architectural style and features a 200-foot-tall Gothic tower.
Library and Archives Canada is a federal institution tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. It is the fifth largest library in the world.
Green Mount Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Established on March 15, 1838, and dedicated on July 13, 1839, it is noted for the large number of historical figures interred in its grounds as well as many prominent Baltimore-area families. It retained the name Green Mount when the land was purchased from the heirs of Baltimore merchant Robert Oliver. Green Mount is a treasury of precious works of art, including striking works by major sculptors including William H. Rinehart and Hans Schuler.
Florence Elizabeth Riefle Bahr was an American artist and activist. She made portraits of children and adults, including studies of nature as she found it. Instead of using a camera, more than 300 pen and ink sketchbooks catalog insights into her life, including her civil and human rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the many important captured events included the Washington D.C. event where Martin Luther King, Jr. first gave his I Have a Dream speech. Her painting Homage to Martin Luther King hangs in the (NAACP) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's headquarters. She created illustrations for children's books and painted a mural in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home for Children. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions since the 1930s. In 1999, she was posthumously awarded to the State of Maryland's Women's Hall of Fame, as the first woman artist they recognized.
Westport is a neighborhood in south Baltimore, Maryland. Westport is a majority African-American neighborhood that has struggled with crime, housing abandonment, and unemployment in the past decade. The neighborhood is bordered by the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River on the east, the city neighborhoods of Cherry Hill, Brooklyn and the southwestern Baltimore County community of Lansdowne to the southwest, Hollins Ferry Road and the Mount Winans and Lakeland neighborhoods to the west, and Interstate 95 to the north, along with the South Baltimore communities of Federal Hill and Otterbein. The Baltimore–Washington Parkway runs through the middle of Westport and intersects with Interstate 95, the main East Coast super-highway, north to south, Maine to Florida.
The Baltimore–Columbia–Towson Metropolitan Statistical Area, also known as Central Maryland, is a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in Maryland as defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). As of the 2010 Census, the combined population of the seven counties is 2,710,489. The MSA has the fourth-highest median household income in the United States, at $66,970 in 2012.
Ilchester is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland, United States. The population was 23,476 at the 2010 census. It was named after the village of Ilchester in the English county of Somerset.
The Baltimore City Council is the legislative branch that governs the City of Baltimore and its more than 600,000 citizens. It has 14 members elected by district and a president elected at-large; all serve four-year terms. The Council holds regular meetings on alternate Monday evenings on the fourth floor of the Baltimore City Hall. The Council has seven standing committees, all of which must have at least three members. As of 2022, the President receives an annual salary of $131,798, the Vice President gets $84,729 and the rest of councillors receive $76,660.The current city council president, Nick Mosby, was sworn in December 10, 2020.
The Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello community, often abbreviated to C-H-M, is a neighbourhood in northeastern Baltimore, Maryland. A portion of the neighborhood has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Coldstream Homestead Montebello Historic District, recognized for the development of a more suburban style of rowhouses.
The Baltimore City District Courthouses of the District Court of Maryland are located at North Avenue, Wabash Avenue, Patapsco Avenue and E. Fayette Street in Baltimore, Maryland, and serve as the courts of first impression for the majority of residents in Baltimore City.
Edward C. Papenfuse is the retired Maryland State Archivist and Commissioner of Land Patents.
Francis Blackwell Mayer was a prominent 19th-century American genre painter from Maryland. While he spent most of his life in that state, he took a trip to the western frontier in the mid-nineteenth century and executed a series of drawings of Native Americans; he also studied in Paris for five years in the 1860s.
The Mount Clare Shops is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States, located in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1829. Mt. Clare was the site of many inventions and innovations in railroad technology. It is now the site of the B&O Railroad Museum. The museum and Mt. Clare station were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
The 1892 Maryland Aggies football team represented the Maryland Agricultural College in the 1892 college football season. It was the first football team to officially represent the school. Maryland played three games, all of which it lost, and failed to score any points. Halfback Pearse "Shorty" Prough gained the only positive yardage for the team against Episcopal High School. He netted 35 yards from scrimmage after first running 30 yards in the wrong direction. It remained the only winless Maryland team until matched by the 1967 squad coached by Bob Ward.
The State Library of Massachusetts in Boston, Massachusetts was established in 1826 and "supports the research and information needs of government, libraries, and people through ... services and access to a comprehensive repository of state documents and other historical items." It "opened in 1826 and has been in its present location in the State House since the 1890s." The State Library falls under the administration of the governor.
Constant Friendship is an unincorporated community in Harford County, Maryland, United States.
Ethel W. (Edie) Hedlin is an American archivist, librarian, and historian. She has held many positions within the archival profession, including service to the National Archives and Records Administration, Wells Fargo Bank, and the Ohio Historical Society. She has served the Society of American Archivists as Council Member, chairperson of the Business Archives Committee, Vice President, and President. She was the Society's 49th president and served from 1993-1994. She has also been a longtime member of the NHPRC California Historical Records Advisory Board.
Coordinates: 39°19′11″N76°36′28″W / 39.31972°N 76.60778°W
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