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Charles Village is the name of the north Baltimore neighborhood that the Victorians called Peabody Heights. It has its beginnings--at least on paper--as an unusual proposal in suburban living conceived by real estate developers and investors shortly after the Civil War. By anticipating the City's growth, they aimed to fortify foresight with profit. On October 1, 1879, the Peabody Heights Company was incorporated by a Baptist minister, a brick manufacturer, a soap and candlemaker, and two real estate brokers. Their offer was simple and direct--"the most desirable lands for the erection of first-class residences within the suburbs of Baltimore."
The name Peabody Heights was coined by joining the repute of George Peabody, the generous benefactor of the Institute dedicated in 1866, with the high ground about a mile due north of his cultural gift to the city on Mount Vernon Place. High ground was especially enticing at this time, for it promised to be cooler in the summer, provided more attractive views and commanded an increased price. Added to this, a home in Peabody Heights assured the owner of a correct address in proximity to old estates. The sales campaign concentrated on this point, remarking about the "country seats of our most prominent and cultivated citizens" so close at hand.
These estates included the Vineyard, the home of Robert Gilmor and Whitely families; Huntingdon, the James Wilson residence; the Brady Mansion, home of Mayor Samuel Brady; and the Wyman family holdings, the Homewood House and Villa. The former was a Federalstyle summer home built about 1792 by Charles Carroll of Carrollton for his only son. The Wyman Villa was an 1851 Italianate home belonging to William Wyman, whose estate would become the basis of a park and campus of The Johns Hopkins University.
But these Victorian real estate speculators misjudged the forces that would ultimately shape the City. Since the period immediately preceding the Civil War, there had been a strong undertow to the City's development, a tide that carried the middle class out of the historic center of Baltimore and towards the newly built, quasi-suburban neighborhoods of open fields, farms and orchards. In 1879, when the Peabody Heights Company's 50 acres were set aside, Baltimore's rowhouse building was held in check by the Jones Falls, below what is now Pennsylvania Station. It was not an unreasonable guess that homes would sprout up along Calvert, St. Paul and Charles Streets and Maryland Avenue .
But their guess turned out to be off by some 25 years. The Peabody Heights lands began in the 2700 block of St. Paul Street and extended west to Maryland Avenue and east to Guilford Avenue, northward to 31st street, twenty blocks sectioned into twenty-five foot wide building lots. No streets were graded, nor were there sidewalks. The improvements existed only on paper, along with a very early set of restrictive covenants -restrictions that required homes to be set back from the pavement 20 feet (for front lawns and landscaping).
There was also a clause prohibiting nuisances-"slaughter houses, offensive manufacturing establishments, lager beer saloons or places for the sale of intoxicating drinks."
In the 1870's and 188O's the area between North Avenue and 25th Street was built up. In 1882, the First Memorial Episcopal Church (now called Lovely Lane Methodist) was constructed after designs by architect Stanford White. Six years later came the Women's College of Baltimore, subsequently named for Dr. John Franklin Goucher, the church's pastor and benefactor of the school .
In April 1896, Francis E. Yewell, an Anne Arundel County born builder, bought nearly all the Peabody Heights property for $417,000. He was one of Baltimore's most prolific rowhouse contractor-developers, and had considerable experience opening the Reservoir Hill neighborhood. He began as a carpenter, branched out into his own building firm, then secured capital for land investment. Within days of taking possession of the Peabody Heights property, he had building permits for both sides of the 2700 block as well as the east side of the 2800 block of St. Paul Street, which at that time had just witnessed the arrival of electric streetcar service.
F.D. Sauerwein was selected as builder of the 2700 block houses designed with glazed Roman brick, with rounded, fiat and squared facades, marble Seneca stone trim, topped by slate roof caps. By April, 1897, the homes were being advertised for sale, at prices that ranged from about $4,000 to $7,000.
The formation of the Peabody Heights Improvement Association logically accompanied the new neighborhood. The group, which permitted only men to its membership, was formed November 27, 1899. It fought the City to win better streetcar service, street paving and police protection. Its members also closely guarded Peabody Height's restrictive covenants regarding the construction of new homes. Each winter, the association held a banquet attended by the Governor and Mayor .
Once established, there was no stopping the growth of what is now Charles Village. Homebuilding continued up St. Paul Street; Calvert Street, with its porch-front homes and financial architecture, blossomed in 1902, with more rows going up each year. The Peabody Heights builder had to keep abreast of popular trends if his products were to sell. While few of the scores of rowhouses were designed to specifications of one particular owner, the dwellings were constructed so that interior appointments could be selected and the house finished off to the taste, and pocketbook, of its first buyer.
When a row of houses was about 80% completed, the builders posted a newspaper advertisement, glowingly worded with promises of plaster detailed ceilings, stained-glass windows, missions oak doors and wood work. Dutch living rooms, parquet wood floors, tiled vestibules and baths, artistic gas and electric combined light fixtures, white enameled mantels, jewel safes, mahogany trim and "other conveniences too numerous to mention."
The first Peabody Heights residents were merchants, bankers and professional people, who lived comfortably. The neighborhood met their needs, with a public and parochial school, churches, three drug stores and community celebrations on major holidays.
Over the years, the once rural development assumed all the characteristics of a solid, uptown neighborhood. The Johns Hopkins University moved to Charles and 34th Streets, the old Wyman estate; Gilman Hall, the first main academic building, was dedicated in 1915. Large apartment houses went up along Charles Street, laid out as a boulevard by the Olmstead Brothers landscape architectural firm.
As early as the 1920's, the name Peabody Heights began to be forgotten. Many of the original residents moved on to the garden suburbs that were developing northward. Still, the community remained stable, though it was increasingly under siege by increased auto traffic on the main streets and unrelenting conversion of three-story rowhouses into apartments. The conversions were pushed along by the locally acute World War II housing shortage.
Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, the neighborhood was suffering a gradual decline accentuated by its loss of identity as Peabody Heights or any other name.
Grace Darin, a civic activist and 26th Street Pastel Row resident, diagnosed this chronic identity when she renamed the community Charles Village. She writes newspaper articles highlighting the neighborhood and praising City living.
Before long, renovation work began and Charles Village safely passed its years of uncertainty. Today, the Village ranks high on the list of Baltimore's success stories .
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