Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Germans at Lehmann’s Hall

Looky what I found!

Ad from the back of the 1889-1890 Baltimore Society Visiting List, or Blue Book.

I found this advertisement in the inaugural issue of the Society Visiting List—or, as it is more commonly known, the Baltimore Blue Book—which first came out in 1889, and is still being published today.

The Blue Book was one example of what are known as social registers, lists of those who are known, and worth knowing—i.e., the social elite. According to the all-knowing (though not always fully informed) Wikipedia, the social register is a distinctly American phenomenon, and the first one was published in Cleveland in 1880.

The social registers were subscription publications, like a cross between a book and a periodical, and distributed to a very small, closed readership. You had to be part of the crowd to be in the know, if you know what I mean. My neighbor John Hurd, who gave the Aperio group a tour of his fantastic Victorian-era house a couple of weeks ago, furnished in period style, told me that only 14 copies of the latest edition were actually distributed.

The Baltimore Society Visiting List– better known (for reasons easily divined) as the Baltimore Blue Book.

The edition of the Blue Book that I was looking at was digitized by the Society Visiting List, who graciously provide a link to it from their website. I was actually looking up some members of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore, trying to see who actually was from the elite classes, and who might not have made the cut. Mrs. Uhler, yes. Miss Crane and Miss Reese, no. (For more on the Blue Book, issues of which are held at the MDHS, see this recent Baltimore Sun article, which even includes a video featuring our friend Francis the reference librarian.)

The ad was included with lots of others for clothiers, tailors, jewelers, florists, music lessons and instruments, elocutionists, schools, caterers, druggists, doctors—and theaters and other places of amusement. Pretty much all the sorts of things the crème de la crème might need. Of course, regular Baltimoreans would have patronized many of the same businesses too.

As Ellen said in her post, one puzzling aspect of Lehmann’s was the various street numbers used. This ad gives the address as 852, 854, and 856 Howard St. The address that’s given throughout the minutes (the name “Lehmann’s Hall” only appears two or three times throughout the year or so when the club used it as their primary meeting place) is 861 Garden St. So what gives?

Some historical maps of Baltimore provide the answer. First, a glance at the 1901-1902 Sanborn fire insurance map of Baltimore shows that Lehmann’s Hall actually faced both N. Howard and Linden Ave.

Sanborn map
Detail of 1901 Sanborn Fire Insurance map, area east of Eutaw and west of Park, just north of Madison St.

If you squint, you can see that the street number given for the northwest corner of the hall is 861 Linden, and on Howard the street numbers jump from 850 for the building next door to the south of Lehmann’s, to 860 for the building just north of the hall. So Lehmann’s would have occupied 852, 854, and 856—and 858, for that matter! Howard St. Since Howard would have been the more “commercial” side, that’s probably why they listed these addresses in the Blue Book.

But the WLCB minutes say, repeatedly, that they met at 861 Garden St. The map gives the address as 861 Linden. Well, another map I found solves this answer. (I found the same street name on the 1890 Sanborn map also, but was unable to get an image that would reproduce online.)

Garden St.
Detail of map showing Linden St. named Garden St.

So that’s one problem solved. But a question I had about this hall was why they didn’t continue meeting there after their first season. The minutes from 1890-1891 indicate that the Club does not want to keep meeting there, but don’t say why. (And eventually they arrange to meet at halls provided by the Academy of Sciences, which would host them for years afterward.)

This ad provides some answers, but also raises more questions.

The ad states that they have “restored these Halls to their former neat and attractive appearance.” So clearly the halls had not been neat and attractive, even by admission of the halls’ proprietor, Edward G. Lehmann, in recent memory. Perhaps the ladies of the Club felt that though the halls were sufficiently decent in 1890 when the Club started meeting there, they lacked the caché of a more dignified space. Or perhaps they worried that their activities would be seen as outré or somehow disreputable, given other activities that had previously gone on at this address.

The ad also lists the sorts of events they hope to attract: “Germans, balls, soirées, weddings, and other Social Entertainments.” Now what, exactly, are Germans?

A close look at the map shows that across the street from Lehmann’s was “Deichman College.” A little digging shows that Deichmann College Prep School was one of several German-language high schools located in Baltimore at the time (that’s a subject for another post!). So perhaps the “Germans” had something to do with, well, Germans? And maybe this association with a particular ethnic group made the halls less appealing to the blue-blooded members of the Club?

Further searching indicates that “Germans” did and did not have to do with actual Germans. They were not an event for Germans, but rather a kind of social event originating in Germany. Short for German cotillion, they were events involving dancing and other games. So it would be a sort of ball or soirée geared at the social set that made up the Blue Book’s audience.

Certainly the minutes reveal that the meetings of the WLBC could be considered “Social Entertainments.” But perhaps the Club didn’t want to make that aspect of their activities so obvious.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Lehmann’s Hall–What are you?

Taken from http://www.mdhs.org/digitalimage/street-scene-lehmanns-hall-café-des-arts-852-north-howard-street-baltimore From the Julius Anderson Photograph Collection

In the early years ofthe Woman’s Literary Club, they met at 861 Garden Street. Some time later, they began meeting at Lehmann’s Hall, which is addressed as 858 N. Howard Street, but, as Dr. Cole told me, used to be at 861 Garden Street. My assignment for this week was to research the history behind Lehmann’s Hall, and how the women came to meet there.

After some research, I came to the conclusion that any discoveries I made would not come about easily. In fact, there was remarkablylittle information on Lehmann’s Hall, and virtually nothing about 861 Garden Street. I assumed the address change of Lehmann’s Hall from 861 Garden Street to 858 N. Howard Street occurred after the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904 that left a huge portion of the city decimated.

I cannot paint a complete picture of Lehmann’s Hall, nor can I answer the questions of why the women started meeting there and why they eventually stopped. However, through my research, I found some interesting tidbits about Lehmann’s Hall, which, today, is right behind the popular coffee joint, the Bun Shop.

The earliest record I could find of Lehmann’s Hall is from the Maryland Historical Society, which credits various musical performances, concerts, Glee Clubs, and plays as being performed at Lehmann’s Hall between 1875 and 1914.

Lehmann’s Hall was also mentioned in an 1890 edition of Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, which described the “Orioles” Subordinate Lodge as meeting at Lehman’s Hall [sic] on 861 Garden Street on the second and fourth Sundays of the month.

In the 1898 Volume XXVIII of The National Druggist, the forty-sixth annual meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association met at Lehmann’s Hall, though the address was written as 856 N. Howard Street, which would debunk my hypothesis about the fire sparking the change of street names.

In the August 22, 1907 edition of the “Daily Bulletin of theManufacturers’ Record”, the single mention of Lehmann’s Hall is to highlight the remodeling and addition to the building by the Ellicott and Emmart architects.

By 1935, right before World War II, Lehmann’s Hall was a popular destination for Nazi sympathizer rallies, as well as the local bowling alley and dance hall. In a photograph in the Maryland Historical Society archives, Lehmann’s Hall has a sign out front describing it as a “Café Des Artes,” and it is addressed as 852 N. Howard Street.

I cannot fully uncloud the mystery behind Lehmann’s Hall, nor can I provide conclusive, definitive answers as to how the Woman’s Literary Club came to find itself there. However, it does seem that, despite road changes and address inconsistencies, Lehmann’s Hall remained a gathering spaced for quite a number of years, and even lends itself to a popular gathering space today. It was the primary meeting space of the Woman’s Literary Club during their genesis and early years, and I wait with anticipation to see where/when/and how Lehmann’s Hall falls off the radar of the Woman’s Literary Club, should that information come about through further transcription of club minutes.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

What was the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association?

At a certain point in my transcribing, I started to notice that the minutes often mentioned the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association–a club which, the minutes explain, boasts nearly the same Board of Management as the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. From the 1908 minutes, I got the feeling that the Club was becoming more invested in the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association than the original woman’s club– meetings were few in the beginning of the year and at one point an ‘informal meeting’ was held simply to cancel another Club meeting in favor of an event for the EAPMA. I started to wonder what the deal was with this other club.

I found that in 1907, the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore decided to create the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association. Their original goal was to erect a monument for Poe to be completed by 1909 for the centennial of his birth. I was surprised that I read nothing of this sort in the Club minutes, though I guess this would be discussed in the minutes of the EAPMA, if there are any. Its omission also might be due to the fact, though, that the statue didn’t end up making its way to Baltimore until 1921– some time after its 1909 goal. The monument had, well, what can be politely described as a series of mishaps.

The artist, Moses Jacob Ezekial, finished the first sculpture in 1913 but it was destroyed in a fire. The second model was also destroyed, this time in an earthquake. The third was done by 1916 but World War I delayed its shipment across the Atlantic by 5 years. Despite the bizarre delays, the tribute got to Baltimore eventually, and today it sits in Gordon Plaza at the University of Baltimore, thanks to our ladies from the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. 

Another interesting thing I found was a book entitled “Edgar Allan Poe: A Centenary Tribute” which was published in 1910, on account of, again, the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore and the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association.

A page from the beginning of the text. The Board members were almost identical at this time.

The book is a published account of the Centenary Celebration–the lectures/speeches given by the speakers at the January 1909 tribute were recorded and bound together in the text, along with an introduction explaining the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association, written by, I’m assuming, Mrs. Wrenshall.

From the introduction I found out that the WLCB had originally talked about forming the Association in 1904, and in 1907 they officially formed it with the goal of, “erecting in Baltimore a monument to the poet worthy of his genius”. The introduction also boasts that the birth of this association and its goal was received enthusiastically among other women’s clubs in the state, and also in the press. Apparently the Association received support across state lines, all of this being completely voluntary with respect to the importance of honoring the poet. Even through all this support, though, it’s mentioned that in June of 1907 the efforts had to be halted due to the “financial stringency”. That explains why the first statue wasn’t completed until 1913, then.

As I read the introduction praising the Association and also the speakers who “graciously permitted” to record their tributes in the text, Miss. Reese was in the back of my mind–the source of the drama regarding her poem’s inclusion in the celebration. I was surprised, and delighted to see that the very first tribute in the book, right after the introduction, was Lizette Woodworth Reese’s poem. I can’t help but wonder if her poem was included first for a reason, maybe as a way to make up for its apparent omission at the celebration itself.

From my understanding, the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association served not only as a tribute to the infamous poet, but also as a way for the women involved to engage in a community bigger than themselves. Through it, they worked with prominent, if entitled, men from Johns Hopkins and other Poe fans across state lines to come together to form a monument for a comment interest. Where the Woman’s Literary Club seems to have been a means for sharing art and literature with each other while straying from state or national woman’s clubs, through the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association those same women seemed to extend themselves outward, while creating a monument that stands to this day.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

A reader writes

Dr. Mangiavellano just wrote to me & asked me to send you this:
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts on the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore and following along with your questions and discoveries. I ran into Dr. Cole yesterday on campus before your walking tour and we fell into conversation about the pleasures (and frustrations) you’ve experienced in your research and transcriptions. We talked a little about the difficult of finding birth and death dates of club members–and how some of you have turned to obituaries of their husbands for information about the wives. Dr. Cole explained to me the frustrating reality that obituaries of prominent Baltimore husbands may mention wives in passing without any substantive reflection or information on them. Tremendously frustrating.
Might it be worthwhile to visit Greenspring cemetery (or wherever they’re buried) and seek out the graves themselves, I wonder? I’m sure you could contact the sexton, get a map of the grounds, and do some sleuthing. I doubt there would be GPS locations for them, but you never know. It would be an entirely different kind of research I’m sure most of you have done and I’d love to hear about it if you pursued it. Not only would and afternoon of traipsing around a cemetery help you find the birth and death dates you’re looking for, you can write up a great post about it. Win-win!
So yes, it looks like another field trip is in order– Hunter, maybe you could organize this one. The Green Mount Cemetery website has a lot of great info, and there are various maps available online. Plus, a bunch of the graves are indexed in the appropriately named FindaGrave.com (e.g., Miss Lydia Crane).
Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

It’s 1909 and I smell drama

In my last post I mentioned how that week I found a lot in the Board of Manager’s minutes that stuck out to me. The main story I wanted to tell happens to be one that Dr. Cole has asked me to share, too, about a bit of drama that’s recorded in May of 1909.

The entry is from May 8th, 1909, but it refers to events that happened in late December 1908/early January 1909. What struck me initially was that the minutes were supposedly taken by the President, not Miss Lydia Crane, the Recording Secretary. It’s weird though because it all appears to be written in the same handwriting but then there are notes supposedly differentiating between who was writing what; Crane or Wrenshall. Why Wrenshall would be writing as opposed to the Secretary at all, I don’t know and I probably never will know–but I almost get the feeling that she wanted to make sure the story was relayed the way she wanted it to be told.

The matter actually concerns the Edgar Allen Poe Association, the Executive Board of which was, at the time, nearly identical to that of the WLBC. I’ll go into that in a later post–what’s important now is just to know that the Board members of the two groups are almost exactly the same, and so they took up affairs of the EAPA in the WLBC meeting.

The Edgar Allen Poe Association took part in the Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe, a celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of Poe, held at Johns Hopkins University. The ladies worked closely with a few very important men at the time to organize the event, including the president of the university, Dr. Remson, and a man referred to as Professor Bright, who Wrenshall says Remson appointed as his “representative”. Wrenshall, in a lengthy statement to the Club, tells of three visits she had with Bright, the first two in December planning the program for the celebration. The speakers included the university’s pick, Dr. W. P. Trent, who was designated 40 minutes to speak, and two selections by the EAPA ladies, Dr. Huckel and Mr. Poe, who were to have 20-30 minutes each.

Wrenshall then explains how on their Janaury 6th meeting, Bright insisted that she cut Dr. Huckel’s time speaking to eight to ten minutes, and to reduce Mr. Poe’s to only four to five minutes. So to reiterate: the two speakers chosen by the EAPA were given less time to speak than the Hopkins choice to begin with, but then Bright had the nerve to try to compel Wrenshall to shorten her speakers’ time to nearly nothing.

The minutes read, “To do this Mrs. Wrenshall positively declined,–with difficulty maintaining the position of the speakers as asked by the Association.”

Already, this sounds like an uncomfortable position for Wrenshall to be in, especially for a woman at this point in time. Saying no to a prominent man was considered taboo, so I was impressed with Wrenshall in this moment for standing her ground. But then it gets more complicated.

Apparently, this whole time, Wrenshall was supposed to ask about incorporating a poem, written by Miss Reese, in the celebration. Because the meeting didn’t exactly go swimmingly, she didn’t end up bringing it up. This is ultimately why Wrenshall makes the whole statement on May 8th to begin with: to put it bluntly, Miss Reese is pissed off.

At this point, minutes from the meeting of January 11th are read to the group, recalling that Miss Reese was unhappy with the way matters stood so she insisted on going to Dr. Bright herself to ask permission to read her poem. After some back and forth over whether Wrenshall thought that was “suitable”, it was decided that the President would write a letter to Bright on the Board’s behalf, politely asking for the poem’s inclusion. She did so that night, she insists. After some more trivial commentary in the statement, it’s clear that Wrenshall means business:

In concluding Mrs. Wrenshall said she wished to emphasize the facts: First, that Miss Reese’s poem was not written when the poem was decided on, in Dr. Bright’s two visits of December 15th and 20th. Second, that after hearing from Miss Reese that she had a poem, (this in the last week of the year,) she was willing to forego her own judgment, and ask Dr. Bright for Miss Reese to be placed on the programme, according to the letter asking him to call before the programme was finally arranged.

Thirdly, that when he came on the evening of that day, the situation was so uncomfortable and strained that she could not consistently with the dignity of the Association ask for any further addition to the programme from the Association.”

That third ‘fact’ is what got me. From Wrenshall’s initial description of the encounter with Dr. Bright, I knew it was unpleasant, but that last sentence says it all. It sounds to me like Wrenshall felt helpless. I get the feeling that she did want to support her fellow Club member by including her poem, but the position she was put in with this awful man made it, she felt, impossible to push for it. It would be ‘inappropriate’. It also strikes me how she speaks of how doing so would sacrifice the ‘dignity of the Association’.

At the end of her statement, Wrenshall is met with a chorus of loving expressions of gratitude from her colleagues. They “agreed that [their] President had done all that she could have done under trying circumstances; and more than could have been asked or expected.” The strength of their affectionate response is interesting– in one way, it shows the Club’s dedication and appreciation for their President. But it also might show an underlying understanding–maybe these women reacted as strongly as they did to this particular story because they’d all been there, in one way or another. They’d all had their ideas and passions stifled by a man. Some of them, so much so, that their names have vanished from history in favor of “Mrs.” slapped onto their husband’s full names.

Posted on by Hunter Flynn · 1 Comment

Halls of memory

Having lived my entire life in the same house in Baltimore County, at the age of thirteen or so I scoured the internet for whatever history I could find about my neighborhood. There wasn’t much of it at all. But I do remember two discoveries: (1) a member of the Padian family dodging the Civil War draft by running off and hiding in the woods with his sweetheart (I haven’t been able to find anything about this since, and I’m beginning to realize it probably didn’t happen at all); and (2) the burning of the woman’s college in Lutherville.

I was glad to discover I didn’t make the second one up. On the meeting of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore on Tuesday, January 31st, 1911, a mention of the disaster is made. The recording secretary (who I now know to be Lydia Crane) writes, “The President spoke of the misfortune that has befallen our member, Mrs. Gallagher and her husband, in the destructive fire at the Maryland College at Lutherville, the institution of which they are the principals and owners.” Mrs. Reese makes the motion that a “letter of sympathy and regret” be sent to the Gallaghers.

Two months later, on April 11th, the fire is mentioned once more. Now back in attendance, Mrs. Gallagher closes the meeting with an original composition—a poem entitled “The Hall of Memory,” which allegedly owes its inspiration to the fire. Crane writes, “Mrs. Gallagher was given the tribute of moist eyes and rapt attention.”

Regrettably, minutes don’t give any more details of the Lutherville fire than that. And I don’t know what kind of literary chops Mrs. Gallagher might have had, but I can’t find the poem either. I can only assume that it’s lost to time.

But stumbling upon a mention of the fire in the minutes did get me to do some of my own research.

The Maryland College for Women at Lutherville, initially the Lutherville Seminary, constructed in 1853, stood at the corner of Francke Ave and Seminary. It occupied a large estate within view of the Jones Falls and overlooking what is today the light rail (then the Northern Central Railway).

The fire broke out around midnight of January 31st—the very day the Club discussed it. According to the Baltimore Sun, the fire began when someone “threw a lighted match down the waste paper chute”—all other accounts I have read of it, however, attribute the fire to smoking. There were seventy-five women present in the building. All escaped unharmed, with one student from Boston, Ruth Keeney, having to jump out the window. Villagers reportedly threw open their doors to get them in out of the cold.

The only individual to sustain any injury of significance was Dr. G. W. Gallagher—our Club member’s husband. In an effort to save some of the rarer articles in his library, he burned two fingers. Our Club member reportedly had to pull him away from the fire, and she telephoned the teachers to wake up the girls. The Baltimore Sun reports that he was “dangerously ill. The shock of the catastrophe has given him a serious relapse and he is now at a cottage near the institution.” He was “kept under medical attention.” It is reported that everything in his library was lost.

The building was burnt beyond repair, but it was eventually reconstructed—though with little of its original grandeur. It closed its doors in the 1950s, and is presently the sight of College Manor, an assisted living facility.

Seminary avenue is one of the most frequented roads in Baltimore County, but few people realize it’s named after a ruined institution. There are no historical markers on the site—only a run-down stone gateway, choked with vines. It doesn’t seem right to me that Mrs. Gallagher’s poem should be lost; the college ought to be immortalized.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Let’s not go this route

I thought I’d do a little digging on “Mrs. Wrenshall,” the longtime President of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore, and found out that Mrs. Wrenshall’s husband, John C. Wrenshall, served as an engineer for the Confederate Army; and that the Wrenshalls had lived in Atlanta (remember Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind– “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again”?) for some years before the decimation of the South during the war forced them north– apparently to Baltimore.

So, yes, the connection between this Club and Confederate sympathies is not only present– I think we will need to address it in a substantive way. Focusing on gender issues and empowerment of women represented by these women’s organizing around intellectual activities should not be a smokescreen for troubling and, speaking frankly, damnable attitudes some? many? all? of these women had about racial minorities, as well as other marginalized groups.

However we decide to present their work, let’s not employ the strategy that Sofia Coppola apparently has adopted in her just-released film about “Confederate wives” during the Civil War, The Beguiled: make it “just about gender.” As I said in our meeting last week, the difficulty will be in doing justice to the entirety of the history, the people, popular/cultural memory, and helping to bend the arc of history toward justice.