On May 16, 1814, the Grand Lodge of Maryland laid the cornerstone for the new Masonic Hall on St. Paul’s Lane. The new hall was designed by French architect Maximilian Godefroy and built by Colonel Jacob Small and Colonel William Steuart. Maryland Governor Levin Winder, Esq., serving as the R.W.G. Master of Masons led the ceremony.
Masonic Hall from J.H.B. Latrobe’s Picture of Baltimore (1832). Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, F 189.B1 P53 1842 QUARTO.
The different Masonic lodges of this city formed in procession on Monday, the 16th of May, at the riding-school in George street from whence, accompanied by a band of music and a company military, they proceeded to the First Presbyterian Church, in East street (Fayette.) After divine service, the procession moved to, “a spot of ground near the southwest corner of the new court-house in St Paul’s lane where according to the ceremonies of that most ancient and honorable fraternity, the foundation was laid of a new and superb Masonic hall.”
St. Paul’s Church from J.H.B. Latrobe’s Picture of Baltimore (1832). Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, F 189.B1 P53 1842 QUARTO.
On May 4, 1814, after months of preparations by the Building Committee of St. Paul’s Church and builder Robert Carey Long, Rev. Dr. James Kemp gathered his congregation at the northern end of Charles Street to lay their cornerstone for their new church. In a sermon delivered at St. Paul’s Church in 1878, Revered John Sebastian Bach Hodges commented on the pressing need for a new building in 1814:
The ground upon which the Church stood, we have already remarked, was high, but that occupied by St. Paul Street and by the first five houses which front on Lexington Street counting from the corner of St. Paul had, as early as the beginning of the century, been reduced to the present level. The consequence was caving in of the hill upon which the Church stood, which, about 1811 or ’12, was obliged to be protected by a strong wall the defence proved inadequate, and the consequence was that it was indispensable to build a new Church, hence the erection of the present S. Paul’s, which was consecrated in the year 1817.
Thanks to Lance Humphries with the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy for sharing today’s update on Baltimore’s Washington Monument.
On May 2, 1814 the Board of Managers of the Washington Monument informed architect Robert Mills that his design for the city’s planned memorial to George Washington had been selected. As the monument was the first one in the country to honor America’s first president, the board was particularly pleased that this honor could go to an American architect, a realization that the new nation was becoming cultural independent from the “Old World,” as they had declared they were politically in 1776.
Robert Gilmor and Isaac McKim were tasked by the Board of Managers to send Mills the official letter sharing the news:
Baltimore 2d May 1814
Sir,
At a meeting of the Managers of the Washington Monument thisday,agreeably to notice, to award the premium for the best design of a monument, the one furnished by you received the approbation of the board, & we as members of the corresponding committee are directed to communicate this information, & that your [draft] on Mr. Eli Simkins, their Secretary for five hundreds dollars (being the amount of the premium) will be paid at sight.
Agreeably to the terms of the public notice, should you have committed to you the execution of your plan, the amount of the premium will be deducted from your Commission or contract, as the adoption of your design is presumed to be a sufficient compensation for what you have already done.
Your mo. ob. s
R.Mills,Esq. IsaacM’Kim
The design was not quite final, however, as Mills’ complex design (with many levels and tiers of inscriptions documenting the history of Washington’s life) posed some initial concerns. The height of the column worried those who lived on its intended location (at today’s Monument Square) that it might be “overturned by some shock, owing to its great elevation.” Others feared that the monument might be too expensive. These concerns continued to shape the design and location before the city laid the cornerstone to the Washington Monument on July 4, 1815.
Source: Robert Gilmor, Jr., Board of Managers of the Washington Monument, to Robert Mills, May 2, 1814, Richard X. Evans Collection, Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington.
On February 2, 1814, in a letter to Reverend James Kemp, Nicholas Rogers offered up a novel metaphor for the National Union Bank (designed by Robert Cary Long at Charles and Fayette Streets) when he observed that the building was:
“wonderfully full of deformity, a sort of oyster in Architecture!”
Rev. Kemp, the recipient of Rogers’ letter and an associate rector of St. Paul’s Church, was working with Robert Cary Long on the construction of the new building for St. Paul’s Church on Charles Street.
Library of Congress, HABS MD,4-BALT,52–1
Organized and chartered in 1804, the Union Bank of Maryland was built in 1807 with architect Robert Cary Long joined by builders William Steuart and Colonel James Mosher. One artifact from the long-since demolished bank building still survives up through the present. A carved sandstone typanum, created by “Messrs. Chevalier Andrea and Franzoni,” was moved to the “Municipal Museum,” better known as the Peale Museum, where it was installed in the rear yard after the museum’s 1931 restoration.
E. H. Pickering, September 1936. Library of Congress, HABS MD,4-BALT,52–4
Source: Hayward, Mary Ellen, and Frank R Shivers. 2004. The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
On January 24, 1814, the Maryland legislature joined Pennsylvania in chartering a new turnpike company to connect Lancaster County to Baltimore. The state offered a detailed and descriptive title: “An act to enable the governor of this commonwealth to incorporate a company for making an artificial road by the best and nearest route from the Philadelphia and Lancaster turnpike road through the village of Strasburg in Lancaster county to the Susquehanna bridge at McCall’s ferry and from thence to Baltimore.”
In the 1810s, states established countless turnpike companies but road-building remained a potentially challenging and speculative venture. Some projects like the Baltimore and Havre-de-Grace Turnpike (chartered in 1813 but unfinished until 1825) took years to complete. Others, including this road from Baltimore to Strasburg, were never built at all.
On January 12, 1814, a 33-year-old architect named Robert Mills mailed off a “book of designs” to the Board of Managers of the Washington Monument in Baltimore. Accompanying the dozen drawings and pages of notes describing his design, Mills included a letter making the case for his particular qualifications as an American architect:
Gentlemen,
Through your indulgence in granting me a little time beyond the period fixed upon in your advertisement, for designs for the Monument you purpose to erect to commemorate the inestimable virtues and glorious deeds of the immortal Washington, I have now the honor of submitting to your consideration the result of my labors towards accomplishing the Wishes of your honorable board— Accompanying this letter you will find a book of designs with a description of the Monument….
Being an American by birth and having also the honor of being the first American who has passed through a regular course of study of architecture in his own country, it is natural for me to feel much solicitude to aspire to the honor of raising a monument to the memory of our illustrious countryman. The education I have received being altogether American and unmixed with European habits, I can safely present the design submitted as American founded upon those general principles prefaced in the description contained in the Book of Designs. For the honor of our country, my sincere wish is that it may not be said; To foreign genius and to foreign hands we are indebted for a monument to perpetuate the Glory of our beloved Chief.
Maryland Historical Society
Four years earlier on January 6, 1810, Maryland had authorized the “Board of Managers of the Washington and Monument in Baltimore” to raise funds by lottery to support the design and construction of a monument to George Washington. Delayed by the war and difficulties in raising money, the members of the board voted on February 15, 1813 to hold a design competition with a prize of $500 for the “best design, model or plan for a Monument to the memory of General Washington.”
Robert Mills submitted a detailed description of his proposal back in November along with a few rough sketches. When the board extended competition deadline from January 1 to April 15, it gave him more time to prepare the illustrations contained in his “book of designs,” an essay with a description of the drawings and “a few remarks upon Monuments in general,” and the letter excerpted above.
In claiming the title of America’s first trained architect, Robert Mills played to his strengths despite the debatable nature of his claim. The board’s original announcement for the competition, appearing in the Niles’ Weekly Register on March 20, 1813, remarked:
“it is hoped that the American artist will envince by their productions, that there will be no occasion to resort to any other country for a monument to the memory of their illustrious fellow-citizen.”
Learn more about the history of the Washington Monument from the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy or on Robert Mills in the excellent history by John M. Bruan: Robert Mills: America’s First Architect.
Washington Monument looking north. Painting by John Rubens Smith, 1828. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-01542.
