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This was estate countryside in the 19th century, characterized by large homes built by prominent city residents on the hilly countryside several hundred feet above the Inner Harbor area. Mondawmin takes its name from the estate owned by Dr. Patrick Macaulay (1795-1849), physician, city councilman, B&O Railroad director and patron of the arts. Tradition relates that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited Dr. Macaulay, who asked him what to name his home, then surrounded by corn fields. The poet allegedly looked around and replied, "Why not Mondamin, after the Indian corn god?" (Mapmakers later added a "w" to the name, and it stuck.)
In 1850, George Brown, grandson of Alexander Brown, founder of Alexander Brown & Sons, bought Mondawmin and transformed the property into a fashionable country estate. Throughout the remainder of the century, Mondawmin flourished as a social center. By 1890, the property was included within the new Baltimore city limits but still retained its rural atmosphere.
By the early 1900s, rowhouses appeared in the Mondawmin area, as better transportation allowed people to move into wooded, rolling countryside once hunted by gentry on horseback with fox hounds. After World War II, the area became popular among Jewish residents who were attracted by the new "garden suburb". The Mondawmin Mall opened in 1956 during a period when many of the Jewish residents were being replaced by African-Americans who came to the area for the same reasons.
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