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Historically, Waverly was a village located along both sides of the York Road, north and south of today's 33rd Street. It is generally bounded on the north by 39th Street and Ellerslie Avenue and on the south by 27th Street. The greater Waverly area covers the neighborhoods of Waverly, Better Waverly, Abell and the northern part of Harwood.
All of Waverly was annexed to the City in 1888. It has been characterized as a former Victorian village, once surrounded by large estates and summer mansions, built largely during the second half of the nineteenth century. European settlement in Waverly, however, can be traced back to the late seventeenth century. In 1688 two adjoining tracts of land were granted by Lord Baltimore -- "Merryman's Lot" to Charles Merryman. and "Huntington" to Tobias Stanboro, an early settler of German descent. These two tracts covered portions of the up per part of what is today Waverly, as well as much land to the west and south Stanboro's 136-acre"Huntington" also provided the first name for the general area.
Huntington later passed through the hands of members of the Thompson and Edwards families before being acquired along with much adjacent property by Charles Ridgely in 1746. In 1757 Huntington was resurveyed for owners John and Achsah Carnan, members of the Ridgely family. The new Huntington totaled 475 acres and stretched as far south as today's Oliver Street.
Beginning in 1783 the new owners of Huntington, Henry Dorsey Gough and Thomas Bond Onion, began leasing to others large lots divided from the tract. Gough, the 18th century equivalent of a land developer, acquired Huntington outright from Onion in 1790 and continued to lease and sell lots, group settlement along the Waverly portion of York Road probably began around 1790. The little village grew slowly until after the Civil War when its name, Huntington ,was changed to Waverly.
Around this time residents desired a post office of their own. When application was made, they were informed that the state possessed a multiplicity of Huntingtons and would allow no more. At that time, the novels of Sir Walter Scott were at their height of popularity in America. Inspired by the name of one of them, Henry Tyson, a local resident, suggested that the name of the new post office be "Waverley." Somewhere in the process of change. the "e" of the last syllable of Scott's title was lost. The Huntington name survives in the name of an avenue in Remington.
The Waverly community developed in three successive stages, each characterized by a distinctive housing type. The original wave of settlement occurred during the mid-nineteenth century when a number of well-to-do Baltimoreans developed handsome estates in the area around Greenmount Avenue and what later became 33rdStreet and Ellerslie Avenue. Until around 1880 residential development, aside from these early estates, was confined almost entirely to two areas: the Wyanoke Avenue and Argonne Drive vicinity to the north in Pen Lucy and the two blocks bounded by Old York Road, Greenmount Avenue, and 33rd and 35th Streets in Waverly. However, only 42 houses were built in these areas.
Throughout the second half of the century, a number of tracts along Chestnut Hill Avenue and Tinges Lane were purchased by members of the Hoen family, well-known for their photographic and lithographic work. As early as 1866, the Hoens and others were accumulating such open properties, usually portions of other large estates, with the eventual purpose of erecting row houses.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Waverly and the other nearby communities of Homestead, Oxford, and Friendship had become popular summer retreats for other well-to-do Baltimoreans in addition to the original wealthy large estate owners. After spending the summer months away from the City in their cottages, many of these people decided later to make their permanent residences there. The transportation improvements along York Road made such commuting increasingly possible. In the 1870s horses pulled double-deck buses along iron tracks. By the 1890s this early streetcar system had been electrified. So much strip development occurred because of this improved transportation that it became difficult, even then, to tell where Waverly ended and Govanstown and other small communities began.
Between 1880 and 1890, construction accelerated sharply in Waverly. Four times as many houses were constructed in this one decade as in the previous fifty years. These buildings, the majority of which were of frame construction, were modest detached and semidetached versions of the various Victorian styles popular at the time. This construction of a substantial number of small frame cottages filled in much of the vacant land on and around the old estates in a second wave of development. Waverly had become a popular suburb.
In 1895 most of the land to Waverly's north, east, and west was still farm and estate country. Building operations slackened here between 1895 and 1905, but masonry construction for the first time exceeded frame and eventually virtually replaced it. The volume of construction increased in 1910 and thereafter, but the third significant wave of growth occurred in Waverly during and after World War I. Brick row houses became the predominant development pattern. In the northern portion of the community. on 38th Street east of York Road, the Welsh Construction Company built rows of bay window-front houses in 1917, advertising that they adjoined Guilford. The Rochester Home Building Company built daylight house son 36th Street in 1920 and the 700 block of Melville Avenue in1925. Houses at Ellerslie Avenue and 38th Street were built in1929 by Phillip C. Mueller who had previously developed "Oakenshawe."
Houses immediately to the west of the stadium and along 33 rd Street were built by Edward J. Gallagher from 1917 to about 1925. Both Gallagher and Frank Novak bought land in this section before plans for the stadium were disclosed and they later used the Venable Stadium, constructed in 1922. as a selling feature for their houses. Also, the building of the stadium in Venable Park assured that streetcar lines would be opened on 33rd Street.
Just before the Depression, the third round of development in Waverly reached its peak, as numerous row houses were built upon land formerly occupied by frame cottages. Building declined. Beginning in 1926, along with the general slump in national construction.
In 1939 Waverly became the target area chosen for a conservation study which came to have national implications for confronting the problem of urban deterioration. The novel philosophy then developed, tested. and later promoted elsewhere was that of rehabilitation, not demolition. in the treatment of neighborhood decay. The program’s goal was to stabilize property values and living conditions in the Waverly district.
Waverly has always been predominantly residential, but it has experienced changing uses and populations. its shopping district along York Road near 33rd Street flourished in the early and mid-1900s. In 1940 it earned plaudits from the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce for being one of the most efficiently operated and productive residential shopping districts in the United States. This still viable and unique shopping district hides an interesting conglomeration of homes tucked away behind the corners of two of Baltimore’s major traffic arteries.
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