PART 1: 210 East Lexington

210 East Lexington:


The Douglass Institute



Prior to the Baltimore Heritage - Maryland State Archives research collaboration, 210 East Lexington Street appeared to be merely a Gilded Age office building dating from 1890, the year shown on its facade. Research by the summer project team and afterwards by Archives staff, revealed that the current structure is built on a site with great historical significance to the African American community, to the Civil War, and to the history of education in Baltimore.

On May 19th, 1870, Frederick Douglass spoke to a crowd assembled to witness the largest African American parade in U.S. history prior to the 1950's. The crowd was celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. According to reports in the Sun and the News American, Douglass spoke movingly of his past as a slave and of the promise of freedom. Douglass told his listeners of the need for African Americans to work hard, earn money, and get an education for their children. Most importantly, he urged them to exercise their newly won right to vote.

When the parade ended, Douglass and other dignitaries attended a dinner at 11 East Lexington Street (the old number for the current 210). Five years before, he had gone to that same address to dedicate an institution that became the focal point of the city's African American community between 1865 and 1890: the Douglass Institute, named in his honor. The Institute's first charter (a copy of which is at the State Archives) shows that its goals were to promote education for African Americans and to provide meeting space for members of the black community. The original founders were white because blacks were not permitted to incorporate. The board of directors changed when the Institute took out a new charter in 1872, after African Americans could legally form corporations.

The Douglass Institute hosted countless meetings of organizations promoting African American causes. Post No. 7 of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Order of Odd Fellows used the hall, as did black leaders of the Republican Party. Men like Isaac Myers, Dr. H.J. Brown and John Butler met in the Institute and organized efforts to open schools for blacks, to have black teachers hired by the city, and to meet the black community's other needs. By 1889, the Douglass Institute had performed its duties so well that its members decided to liquidate its holdings and disband. At President Butler's encouragement, the stockholders sued to have the courts properly dispense with the Institute's property, which included 11 East Lexington and several rental properties.

Much of the story of the Douglass Institute is contained in equity papers from the Circuit Court of Baltimore which are in the collections of the State Archives. Land records there show that the building was auctioned off by the trustees and purchased by the Abell family, the owners of the Baltimore Sun. The new owners constructed an office building on the foundations of the old Institute. Elements of the original structure can be seen in the basement today. Did the vigorously Democratic family intentionally destroy a Republican and African American landmark and replace it with a building named after a famous Democratic city mayor?

The new building not only hid the site's history as the Douglass Institute, but concealed an even richer past. The Civil War era print of the block showing Newton University is well known. What had not been pieced together is that the school in that print, shown as a hospital, was also the Douglass Institute and the site of the Vansant Building. The summer's research discovered numerous records relating to Civil War hospitals in Baltimore, especially among the records of the National Archives and in the volumes of the Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War. It has already been learned that the United States Army rented the structure from Manufacturer's Bank of Troy, New York, a bank noted for its abolitionist connections. The bank took possession of the building after its occupants, the Newton University, folded. Again, court records at the Archives tell the entire tale and, with further research, it will be possible to learn who worked at the hospital, who was treated there, and how that hospital related to the community around it.

A great deal is already known about the earlier occupant of the building, Newton University. The Maryland General Assembly passed an act of incorporation in 1845, apparently making Newton the first University in the city. Newton University operated a college and a preparatory school. Advertisements in the Baltimore City Directory show that the school taught languages (classical and modern), natural philosophy, and mathematics. The University was located at 11 East Lexington, the second building on that block. Directory advertisements and Scharf's History of Baltimore date the building to at least 1847. Equity records combined with the act of incorporation show the building was constructed in 1845. By the late 1850's, University President Harlow Heath's health prevented him from properly managing the school. He began bankruptcy proceedings in the Circuit Court while Purley Lovejoy, the principal of the preparatory school, continued to administer classes. Lovejoy eventually purchased the property and then sold it to the Manufacturer's Bank.

The bank was only interested in the building's revenue potential. Rental values were indicated by the court case which lists among its tenants the Baltimore School of Dentistry (which had a dissection laboratory on the top floor), and the Mozart Society (which used the 22 ft. high saloon on the second floor as a concert hall). A detailed diagram of the building is recorded in the chancery case. Court papers show that the one thing the building could never be used for was apartments because it was across the street from the hotel stables! The bank found its most reliable tenant in the United States Army which operated a general hospital at 11 East Lexington from 1862 through the end of the conflict. The bank sold the building to Samuel Appold, a notable Baltimore businessman in the tanning industry. Appold transferred it to the Douglass Institute after the war, but long after the Institute started meeting there.

The history of 210 East Lexington is interwoven in the story of education in Baltimore. The most important chapter in that story is the effort of the Douglass Institute to promote education for African Americans and the central role the Institute played in the black community after the Civil War. The site's importance has been disguised by the more recent construction of the Vansant Building, but research among original records housed at the State Archives has revealed the rich heritage of 210 East Lexington.

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