Is in Baltimore.
3220 The Alameda, Baltimore, MD 21218
As folks can tell I am a complete sucker for all things old and Baltimore City College High is no exception. That and the fact that my father attended high school there makes it a pretty cool place for me. I’ve been in the building a few times and was shown around by dad – places like the tunnel (which I’ll go into later) and the very gothic library were favorites of mine. It looks like the perfect place for a Renaissance Festival. Dad sang in the renowned Glee Club, conducted by Blanche Ford Bowlsbey (dad and apparently all of her students called her Mrs. B.) – the very first female teacher at the school. Brand new at City in 1935, she formed the Alamedia Light Opera Company out of City and the school became the place for rehearsals and performances. Mrs. B also conducted the Drum and Bugle Corps and marched with them. This morphed into City’s marching band, known as the Marching Knights. Music is still an integral part of City’s curriculum with a Full Choir (grades 9 – 12), a Concert Choir (50 students), a Show Choir called Knights and Daze, the Singing Knights (20-24 students) and the newly restored Men’s Glee Club (male voices only). The choirs have performed all over the world and most recently with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Left: A clipping from the Baltimore Sun – February 1954 – A performance of Romberg operetta “The Student Prince” – dad is listed as part of the ensemble.
Right: Mrs. Bowlsbey, City’s first female teacher.
“The Castle on the Hill” as it is called (shhhhhh…. Dad’s friends from Poly called it the “Dump on the Hump”) is one of the oldest still active public high schools in the country. Out of 108, it ranks 47th and it is the 2nd oldest in Maryland. Franklin Academy (now Baltimore County’s Franklin High School) – beats it by a mere 19 years. The two next oldest are Eastern High (my grandmother’s Alma Mater) and Western. Twin schools established in 1844; Eastern was the “All Female School” to City’s “All Male School” and Western later became the sister school to Poly (est. 1883).
Traditionally an all male school, City eventually became co-ed but not without one helluva fight. The Alumni Association wanted it to remain all-male, citing tradition and the school board assigned a task-force to look further into the issue. Despite a 11-8 vote in favor of keeping the school all-male, the school board changed its position and began enrolling women in 1978.
Left: Not dad’s ring but his looks exactly the same.
Right: Dad in his sweater before he got his letter at about age 15 or 16.
The school ring, which features the school’s tower in gold set on onyx, has not changed since it was first designed and patented by Howard and Arthur Jenkins (now J. Jenkins Jewelers in Gwynn Oak) in 1928 to celebrate the new building. I still have dads. The colors are orange and black, the mascot is the Knight and their yearbook “The Green Bag” (first published in 1896) is one of the oldest high school publications in the country. Named after the 19th century “Green Bag” (actually a green carpet bag) containing lists of political appointees that were to be voted on by the Maryland General Assembly. It is thought that the 1896 senior class president gave the yearbook its name based on the role City’s graduates had in Maryland politics.
The Football Game
The City-Poly rivalry which began a few years after Poly was established still exists to this day. In my grandmother’s memory book, she placed a card that said “Go City! Beat Poly!” – she graduated from Eastern in 1916. Poly won that year but it was City’s only loss of the season. The year Dad graduated it was a City/Poly tie. City’s most memorable year was 1965 when it trounced Poly at Memorial Stadium 52-6 completing its season 10-0. Baltimore’s 46th Mayor Kurt Schmoke (’87-’99) was City’s quarterback that year. Seven Knights have gone on to play in the NFL. It is the oldest American football rivalry in Maryland and one of the oldest in the country. Grammy would be proud to see that after 133 years, City leads the series 67-59-6. City also boasts 8 National Lacrosse Hall of Famers.
The football game circa 1937 – City was the MSA Champions that year
City is Established
Established in March 1839 by the Baltimore City Council, the school opened in October of the same year with 46 students taken from the city’s new grammar (elementary) schools. Called simply “The High School”, it was located in a rented building on Courtland Street (now St. Paul Place), in the vicinity of what is now Mercy Medical Center with Professor Nathan Covington Brooks in charge. School was from 9 am until 12 pm with a two hour break and then resumed at 2 pm and ended at 5 pm. There were 2 courses of study, a Classical Course which included Greek and Latin, and the English course which was virtually the same as the Classical Course except it did not include the languages.
Nathan C. Brooks (wikipedia)
Brooks was born in Cecil County in 1809 and began teaching at the age of 16. By 1826 he had opened a private school and by 1831 he was the principal of the aforementioned Franklin Academy and remained there until 1834. A friend of Edgar Allan Poe, he published several of Poe’s writings in his literary magazine, The American Museum of Science, Literature and the Arts. In 1839 he was unanimously chosen to head what would become Baltimore City College High School and remained in charge for 9 years.
Left: A 1869 woodcut of the Assembly Rooms (Wikipedia)
Right: The location today (google.com)
By 1843, the school had moved to the Assembly Rooms (built in 1797) at the corner of East Fayette and Holliday Street, across from city hall and by 1850 the school board was granted the right to hold commencement exercises and give diplomas to the graduating classes. In 1851, the first graduation ceremony was held at what was the Old Front Street Theater. Sadly, the theater is no more; it burned in 1904 during the Baltimore Fire. The idea of gaining a certificate at the end of their education rallied enrollment in the school and 156 boys applied that year. Commencement continued, even despite being interrupted by the Federal Army in July 1861 at the start of the Civil War.
Commencement program – held at the the old MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) building (above the Centre Market on Market Street just west of the Jones Falls) – it too burned during the Baltimore Fire in 1904 and was rebuilt only to be razed again when I-83 was expanded southbound.
Francis G. Waters, the principal who succeeded Nathan Brooks, reorganized the school and the academics were divided into eight 45 minutes classes taught by Waters and seven other teachers who were given the title of “professor”. Subjects taught were handwriting and history, arithmetic, natural sciences, moral, mental, and political science, ancient and modern languages and music.
By 1865, the school was on the way to not only having students graduate from high school, but also provide students with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. A five year program was introduced in an attempt to provide better qualified teachers for the school and the school system as a whole. In 1866, the school name was formally changed from The Central High School of Baltimore to Baltimore City College but the baccalaureate program never took shape. Students showed no interest in an additional year and the facility itself was not being maintained as it should have been.
A fire, which began at the Holliday Street Theater in 1873, and spread to the school, forced the city to finally find a location for a new building. The lot at the corner of Howard and Centre Street was designated and the new building was opened in 1875. All was well for seventeen years until the railroad began construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Tunnel under Howard Street. Undermined by all the digging, the heavy, the foundation of the Gothic revival building promptly collapsed into the construction site forcing the city to condemn the building and raze it. A larger building was built on the same site and finished in 1899, but eventually became overcrowded following World War I, and after a school annex was formed, the city and the school’s alumni began to consider yet another site for the growing school.
World War I also saw the formation of City’s Cadet Corps, with around 1200 enlisting to fight. Forty seven of City’s Knight lost their lives in that conflict.
Left: a drawing of the original building at Howard and Centre Streets (Wikipedia)
Right: The 2nd building at Howard and Centre – it is currently an apartment building (google.com) The cobbestone street to the west of the building is still called Academy Alley.
Left: The City College name above the front door of the old building
Right: A 1901 postcard of the old Howard/Centre Street building
The five year program was reintroduced at this time and students were allowed to take advanced courses, which included calculus, political economics, logic, and higher-level language courses. Students were expected to learn Latin, French, and German; and Greek was offered as well. 1876 bought about another change in that the school offered a 1 year program for students likely to enter the work force. This program included classes in things such as bookkeeping. Around this time two debating societies were formed, the Bancroft Literary Association and Carrollton-Wight Literary Society and in 1879 City’s first athletic team organized – a lacrosse team. By 1895 City had a football team whose rivals included colleges such as the Naval Academy and St. John’s College and University of Maryland. And of course – Poly.
In 1901, academics had changed again, and the program now allowed students to enter Johns Hopkins University without taking an exam despite the program itself being reduced from 5 years back to 4 years.
The Castle On The Hill
In 1926, “Abbottston”, built in 1870, the estate of Horace Abbott (1806-1887), the Baltimore foundry owner (Abbott provided iron cladding to the Union Army for its ships during the Civil War), was purchased by the city and razed in order to make way for the current school. Completed in April, 1928, the new building cost almost 3 million, a record amount for a school project at the time.
The building is styled Collegiate Gothic (basically a merge of Tudor and Gothic styles used at the turn of the century for universities and high schools) and has arched windows, cornices, cloisters, gargoyles, stained glass, mahogany paneling, plaster arches, chandeliers, terra cotta tiles, and terrazzo floors with two courtyards and a 150-200 foot tower. The campus is 38 acres and has two buildings – the main school itself and the powerplant with its square smokestack.
Left: One of the courtyards
Right: The library
As any castle should, the building also has a bit of a secret tunnel. Stretching from the basement near the locker rooms at City, it stretches under Loch Raven Boulevard to old Eastern High (now offices for the Johns Hopkins Medical System). It doubled as a bomb shelter during WWII and the Cold War and served to protect the girls who attended Eastern from getting wet in the rain or slipping on the ice and snow in the winter time when they came to City to take art and music classes. It’s obviously no longer in use and a few former students know where it is but not many it would seem. There are no pictures of it that I can find but dad showed me where it was at a reunion at the school in the 1990s, so it exists or at least it used to.
Along with the new building site, 1928 saw the introduction of City’s A-Course and B-Course. The A-Course was the Advanced Academic Course and allowed students to enter their sophomore year of college following graduation. The B-course was in place until the 1990s when City’s curriculum was changed. The A-course was discontinued citing racial bias, something that Baltimore City’s Superintendent saw in the 1960’s after the school system was desegregated in 1954 following Brown vs. The Board of Education.
During WWII, the school had a distinct wartime atmosphere with 4667 students enlisting to fight in the conflict with 204 losing their lives in Europe and the Pacific. There were blood drives, war bond drives, students participated in the Victory Corps, and service flags were dedicated. There are two Memorial plaques in the school – one for WWI and one for WWII. Baltimore’s Mayor, Maryland’s Governor and Comproller, William Schaefer graduated from City in 1939 and promptly enlisted in the US Army after Pearl Harbor in 1941. He achieved officer rank and left reserve duty in 1979 as an Colonel. During the war he was a hospital administrator in England. City has a Silver Star recipient, 3 Medal of Honors, 1 Bronze Star, 1 Purple Heart, 1 Croix de Guerre, 1 Distinguished Flying Cross and 1 Distinguished Service Cross.
By 1998 the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program had been introduced and by 2000 City was a National Blue Ribbon school. By 2007 it ranked in the top 1% of all the high schools in the nation. (There are 27,500.)
In 2003, to coincide with the current buildings 75th anniversary, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Four years later, in 2007 it was made a designated Baltimore City Landmark with the Alumni Association winning a preservation award for its efforts. That designation means that the school’s exterior can not be changed without all sorts of permissions from the city and currently it keeps telephone transmitters from being mounted on the schools tower.
The schools alumni includes a Grammy Award winner, a 2 time Pulitzer Prize winner, a Tony Award winner, an Academy Award winner, a Golden Globe winner, a 3 time Emmy award nominee and a 2 time Golden Globe nominee. Three Maryland governors, 2 US Senators, 5 Congressmen and 26 Maryland Delegates graduated from City. Authors, poets, journalists, tv writers and producers, musicians, singers, composer and conductors, businessmen and philanthropists, college Deans and Presidents and Baltimore City Schools longest serving superintendent can count themselves among City’s Knights.
Sources:
https://baltimoreheritage.org/behid-the-scenes-tour-of baltimore-city-college
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_City_College
https://franklinhs.bcps.org/for_staff/f_h_s_history
https://www.baltimorecitycollege.us/history
https://www.eapoe.org/people/brooksnc.htm
https://www.facebook.com/BaltimoreCityCollege/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82799673/horace-abbott
The knowledge of Christopher D. DeVier
Baltimore Through My Eyes 