In The News Community Description Historical Overview Historical Significance
In The News
Examiner.com There are certain things which used to automatically be implied by the word neighborhood: community, security, neighborliness, continuity. Some neighborhoods have retained their focus on those ideals, and Academy Heights is one of those neighborhoods.
"This is a family-oriented, diverse, close-knit neighborhood," said Kathleen Q. Bankert, neighborhood resident and president of the Academy Heights Civic Association. "We look out for each other."
The Catonsville neighborhood, comprised of rowhomes built in the neo-Colonial style on a streetcar line in the 1950s, is bounded by Academy Road, Edmondson Ave, Harlem Lane, and Northdale Road. The streetcar line is no longer operational, but the homes -- constructed of red brick with slate roofs -- remain sturdy and impressive today.
"One of the most wonderful things about Academy Heights is the construction of the homes," according to Jan Hayden, a Realtor in the Ellicott City (Enchanted Forest) office of Coldwell Banker. "Wood floors, plaster walls, formal-sized dining rooms ... there's just a lot more character. They don't build homes like this anymore."
The residents of the neighborhood certainly appreciate that fact. They have covenants to ensure that the houses remain as originally built, down to certain cosmetic details -- white trim around the roof, concrete porches with black or green railings, slate roofs. "We've expanded a bit around the back of the houses," Bankert said. "Things like new decks have to be approved by committee, and most things are approved without a problem."
The sense of continuity in Academy Heights extends beyond the infrastructure. "We still have quite a few of the original owners," said Bankert, "as well as some second generation, even some third generation." Bankert herself has lived in the neighborhood since 1950, when her parents purchased an inside-group unit for around $10,000.
Prices have increased -- recent sales prices have been closer to $285,000 -- but many other things have remained the same. "When I first moved in, every kid knew every kid," Bankert recalled. "Now, kids have a good time here. We have an Easter egg hunt, a bike parade, a Halloween party, Christmas decorating contests. There are always little kids to be looked after, the adults look after each other, and we all look after the neighborhood seniors."
Despite its long history and sense of continuity, the neighborhood is also friendly to newcomers. "Oh, I haven't had a bit of a problem," said Academy Heights resident and Coldwell Banker Realtor Melissa Kesner-Fultz, who moved to the neighborhood in 2004. "The woman who lived next to me was an original owner, and she was delightful and welcoming."
Kesner-Fultz agreed with Bankert's assessment of the neighborhood's character. "Everyone is outside a lot, and there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood. It's very safe, and very comfortable."
The neighborhood also benefits from its location, inside the Beltway but outside Baltimore City lines. "You're fifteen minutes from everything," observed Hayden. "Downtown, Columbia, Ellicott City ... you're five minutes from the Beltway but you don't hear it at all."
Which is not to say that Academy Heights is perfect:. "Other than parking, I love Academy Heights," said Kesner-Fultz. "Parking can be frustrating."
It's a small price to pay, though, for what Kesner-Fultz described as "the security of knowing that your neighbors are conscious of what's going on, and the friendliness of being in such close quarters."
Academy Heights is a
community of 487 neo-Colonial style rowhouses located in Catonsville, Maryland.
The neo-Colonial style became popular in the 1930s, thanks to John
D. Rockefeller's restoration of Williamsburg, VA.
All 487 homes conform to the same basic rectangular footprints and
have slate roofs, red brick walls (running bond, with every 7th course
alternating headers and stretchers) and white fascia boards.
They all have six-over-six double-hung sash windows, white doorways
with Roman Doric pilasters and fluted pediments, and front doors with four
inset panels surmounted by two small rectangular windows. In front they
all have porches, staircases, and walks made of cement, with wrought iron
railings on the porches. They all have small front- and back yards, and
service alleys in the rear. They all are two stories plus a basement
(usually finished and containing a half-bathroom) and attic (usually
unfinished). The first floor contains a living room in front, dining room
in the rear, and narrow kitchen adjacent to the dining room. Upstairs are
two bedrooms in the rear with one bedroom and a bathroom up front. All the
rooms on the first and second floors, except for the kitchen and bathroom,
are hardwood, although many are now overlaid with carpeting. The houses
come in seven sizes (plus a few anomalies), with square footage ranging
from 1,200- to 1,512 square feet (not including the basement). A very few
houses were built as a residence plus apartment.
The
houses appear in rows of from two to seven, with the most common number
being seven. The condition of the houses is good to excellent; no houses
are dilapidated or even ill repaired, beyond what may be considered normal
maintenance. Thanks to protective covenants, all houses must retain the
slate roofs, brick walls, cement porches and walks, but just the appearance
of the original windows, doors and exterior
woodwork. Replacement materials are allowed for windows, and aluminum
siding is allowed to cover original wood. If siding covers the doorways,
the contours of the original pilasters and dentil motifs must remain.
Powder rooms, an option on the houses, make their presence at
random, as revealed by the open brickwork in front of the powder room
window beside the front door. (Lambeth Road has no powder rooms.)
More
Americans live in the suburbs than in urban and rural areas combined. The
suburbanization of the United States "is the most important social
movement of our time." The
railroad and the streetcar aided the dispersal of urban populations into
the suburbs in the late 19th and early 20th century,
but suburbanization became a truly inexorable force, largely because of
the triumph of the automobile and the interstate highway, after World War
II. Academy
Heights, a neighborhood in the Catonsville area of Baltimore County,
Maryland, is a fine example of the early postwar suburb that began to
change America after World War II. Located on a now defunct streetcar
line, it was literally the first stop of Baltimore's great postwar
migration to the suburbs. In
the 1850's, the land that later became Academy Heights was "thick
with woods" and part of "a green, bowery, undulating expanse of
country…"3.
Even
into the 1940s it was described as "completely cut off from the
sights and sounds of the city... a meadow with rail fences and cows
grazing...”. By 1953, it
was part of "one of the faster growing communities surrounding
Baltimore City."5 Academy
Heights is a "first ring" suburb, lying between the Baltimore
City line to the east and the Baltimore Beltway to the west.
Based on information from the Maryland Office of Planning’s
“Maryland Property View”, it shows that Academy Heights was literally
one of the first neighborhoods built in the southwest section of Baltimore
County after World War II. Academy
Heights was built in the years 1950-1952, very early in the post-war
suburban migration to Baltimore County. In
1900, one new house was being built for every 400 people in Baltimore and
its suburbs. In 1950, the figure was one unit for every 100 people.
The bulk of that construction, for the first time in history, moved
from Baltimore to its suburbs during the period when Academy Heights was
being built. For the three years 1949-51, one- and two-family structures
completed in Baltimore and in Baltimore County totaled 11,001 and 11,030,
respectively, based on the number of newly assessed structures. The portion of Baltimore County "between Catonsville and
Edmondson Village," which includes Academy Heights, was "one of
the faster growing communities surrounding Baltimore City. In the past few
years the density and housing characteristics of this area have changed so
completely, turning a formerly rural area into an active urban
community." This area
accounted for almost nine percent of the total County units completed from
1949-50, and 10.2% of total units in 1951." What
was happening in Baltimore and its suburbs was just a local manifestation
of a nationwide trend. "A Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of home
building in 1946-47 in six metropolitan regions determined that the
suburbs accounted for at least 62 percent of construction. By 1950 the
national suburban growth rate was ten times that of central
cities...." High
marriage and birth rates after the war, coupled with a lack of
construction since the Depression, meant "six million families were
doubling up with relatives or friends by 1947, and another 500,000 were
occupying Quonset hut or temporary quarters. Neither figure included
families living in substandard dwellings or those in desperate need of
more room.... In brief, the demand for housing was
unprecedented."" A Federal Reserve Board Survey saw "demand
for seven million housing units for the five years beginning in
1949...."" The
Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944 (more commonly known as the GI
Bill), "created the Veterans Administration home loan guarantee
program. It helped finance
the housing boom that swept across Baltimore and the rest of
America." Mortgages for ex-GIs were four-percent. People who weren't
veterans could avail themselves of mortgages insured by the Federal
Housing Administration (FHA). "The FHA and VA funding put home
finance within reach of families of all social classes, the money being
made available through savings and loans, life insurance companies, and
mutual savings banks. The amounts increased year by year with savings and
loans lending $1.5 billion more in 1950 for home financing than they had
in 1949." As a result,
"[single-family housing starts spurted from only 114,000 in 1944, to
937,000 in 1946, to 1,183,000 in 1948, and to 1,692,000 in 1950, an
all-time high."" "The 1950s, as the 1960 Census showed, was
the decade of the greatest suburban growth in American history...."16 Mass
production techniques led to "architectural similarity"
nationwide, and it certainly did in Academy Heights, although variation
lives among the repetition. Other characteristics of post-war suburb
nationally also applied to Academy Heights: "easy availability and
thus its reduced suggestion of wealth" and "economic and racial
homogeneity."17 The
layout of Academy Heights reflects the transition from city to suburb.
Alleys are retained and the streets form a grid as in the city. On the
other hand, the four north-south streets are clearly curvilinear, an
innovation that started with early garden suburbs (such as Baltimore's
Roland Park, whose second section - "Plat 2"- was designed by
Frederick Law Olmsted. Jr. to follow the contours of the terain18)
and continues to this day with cul-de-sac subdivisions in the exurbs. The
style of houses in Academy Heights - the neo-colonial rowhouse also marks
the end
of the line in the evolution of the Baltimore rowhouse, before it
disappears for two decades, to be replaced by detached single-family
houses such as ranchers and split-levels. Academy
Heights is significant for being the work of a family of great Baltimore
homebuilders, and also for being characteristic of the Neo-Colonial
rowhouse during the period that marked the end of the evolution of the
Baltimore rowhouse. The
Welsh Construction Company, which built Academy Heights, was one of
Baltimore's great homebuilders. The company was owned and operated by
several generations of the Macht family. The patriarch of the family was
one of Baltimore's great builders, the "King of the
Homebuilders," Ephraim Macht. Macht
(1866-1944) was one of “four major developers [who] vied to dominate
Baltimore homebuilding.” He
was born in Russia in 1866 and immigrated to the United States at the age
of twenty, later becoming the first Jewish real estate broker in
Baltimore. The Macht Real Estate & Banking Business began with funds
earned by Macht's wife Annie, “who made and sold hats from a push cart
in Fells Point”. The
business “began by buying old houses and inexpensively remodeling them
for resale or rental”. “In
1911, Macht, reacting to the harsh anti-Semitism which prevailed in
Baltimore during the first quarter of the twentieth century, used the name
of Irish real estate salesman John Welsh and began building homes under
the name Welsh Construction. Eventually
the two companies merged and formed the Welsh Construction Company, which
served all functions. Macht, his son Morris, and nephew Morton … buil[t]
over eight thousand homes.”22
The Welsh Construction Company lived up to its claim of offering
“a choice of homes in a wide variety of types, sizes, locations and
prices” These homes were built in northeast, northwest, and west side
of Baltimore, eventually moving beyond the western boundary of Baltimore
City into Baltimore County. They came in a variety of styles, often
showing the influence of English architecture and nomenclature (as does
Academy Heights, where the roads are named Lambeth, Stratford, Greenlow,
Whitfield, Northdale, and Regent Park):
“Brick, stone, and stucco” single family houses in “English
and Early American architecture” in Ashburton; “Elizabethan”
detached and semi-detached Tudor-style house in the Nottingham development
on off Edmondson Avenue opposite Ten Hills; “English Group Homes” 2600
Block Chesterfield Avenue from Harford Road to Belair Road.
The Welsh Construction Company also designed cottages and bungalows
(Chesley Avenue at the 6900 block of Harford Road west to Old Harford
Road). More in line with the evolution of the Academy Heights rowhouse,
the company built rowhouses with flat roofs and covered porches (1400
Block of Rosedale Street between Belmont Avenue and Presstman Street in
Walbrook) and daylight rowhouses of two or three bedrooms, covered stone
or brick porches (Parklawn Avenue and Erdman Avenue at Clifton Park).25 Among
his philanthropic efforts, Ephraim Macht endowed Sinai Hospital with funds
for the care of the needy and built a nursing home at Levindale.26
Ephraim Macht's son and nephew succeeded him after his death in
1944 and ran Welsh Construction Company when it built Academy Heights. The
son, Morris Macht, served on the Board of Directors of the Home Builders
Association of Maryland with such prominent builders and philanthropists
as Joseph Meyerhoff and James W. Rouse, and also served on the Board of
Directors of the National Association of Home builders.
Welsh Construction Company was building 1,000 homes a year in the
late 1940s and 1950s in northeast Baltimore alone.28 The Macht Company is still
in business today on 11-13 E. Fayette Street in Baltimore, managing
properties rather than building them, and still occupies the landmark
Macht building. Constructed in 1908, it “is one of the City's most
architecturally unique, elaborately adorned commercial structures”;
“its mansard roof...pronounced cornice...
enriched Ionic entablature...cartouches...lion heads, shields,
Greek fretwork, and lead and scroll ornamentation” are intact.29 The Welsh Construction
Company, through its subsidiary The Cardenas Company, bought the 44.698
acres of Academy Heights in August 1945 from the Academy of the Visitation
B.V.M. of Mount de Sales Academy, Baltimore County, for the sum of $134,094.
Mount de Sales Academy, a Baltimore County landmark also listed on the
National Register of Historic Places, was named after a 17th Century
French saint and opened on September 5, 1852.
At the time, it was Baltimore County's largest structure. Its
chapel is the oldest active Roman Catholic house of worship in the County.
(Part of the look of Academy Heights was stipulated by the Academy,
which required that on the streets bordering the Academy -- Whitfield Road
and Northdale Road -- houses be built on only one the side of the street,
facing the Academy.) Academy Heights differed
from early postwar neighborhoods elsewhere by retaining the rowhouse.
Indeed, the Neo-Colonial rowhouse, such as that in Academy Heights, marked
the end of the long evolution of the Baltimore rowhouse. Elsewhere in the
country, “[i]n all but the most isolated instances, the row house
completely lost favor; between 1946 and 1956, about 97 percent of all new
single-family dwellings were completely detached, surrounded on every side
by their own plots. Typical lot sizes were relatively uniform around the
country, averaging between 1/5 (80 by 100 feet) and 1/10 (40 by 100 feet)
of an acre...”. Even the
Baltimore Real Estate and Building News of 1950 noted that “[t]he
All-American House of 1950 - the most popular type of dwelling now being
sold will be a bungalow,” according to a survey of 513 cities
conducted by the National Association of Real Estate Boards. The ranch.
Cape Cod, and colonial styles followed in popularity.” As the authors of
The Baltimore Rowhouse put it, after the success of Levittown, built
between 1947 and 1950, “[t]ract houses built in the suburbs after World
War II meant the end of the rowhouse.... Within a decade, the Baltimore
Sun's real estate pages were filled with photographs of ranchers,
ramblers, and split-level houses….”34 That the 1950's suburban
Baltimore rowhouse was the latest step in the evolution of the Baltimore
rowhouse was clear from articles at the time, such as “Baltimore Row
House Tries A New Guise” in the Baltimore Sun of September
9th, 1951. New houses “are being built much after the design and manner
of prewar years.” The row
house is a “group house” now, limited to as low as four to as many as
nine units, maximum. Some of
the latest features were an improvement, though others were not. On the
down side, bay windows cover only one story. The windows are ready made.
Covered and walled in front porches are now just concrete floors over
masonry, open to the weather. The windows have no shutters. The steps are
masonry, and fewer modestly priced
houses have fireplaces. (All these things are true in Academy Heights,
except that the porches and steps are all concrete.)
On the plus side, the new rowhouses have front yards that are
sodded and planted. They have
forced air heat. More
attention is paid to foundations and basement floors, the latter thick,
hard, and smooth so that asphalt tiles or paint can be easily applied.
Poured concrete basements are not as thick as stone or brick and
are easier to use and adapt. (Another
article was even more effusive: "Cellars have changed almost beyond
recognition from the shallow, dark, wet dungeons of the past. Many of them
are now additional, and pleasant rooms for family living and
recreation.”) 35 "Medicine
cabinets have been glamorized, fitted with all sorts of gadgets and
combined with special lighting fixtures, plug-ins for power razors,
etc.”36 Modern kitchens gleam with good cabinetwork,
automatic dishwashers, hardwood floors, freezers, laundry gadgets, and
ironers. In place of the old black coal range, the new
white-enamel gas or electric stove, trimmed in chrome, is an object of
attractiveness and efficiency. The old bathrooms, with their leggy tubs, have
given way to tiled chambers, capable of immaculate care. While some
functions of the room have, in many homes, been broken off into powder
rooms. Most
of these improvements were found in Academy Heights as well. A
number of rowhouse neighborhoods succeeded Academy Heights by a couple of
years -- the approximately 1,000 units of Edmondson Heights or the 500
units of Loch Raven Village, but they did not show an evolution in style.
A hiatus of approximately 35 or 40 years would occur before new rowhouses
would be built again. They replaced the demolished experiments in
high-rise low-income housing, or were small developments of market rate
infill. Both displayed
variations of the handsome, malleable Neo-Colonial style.
Please Note: All
information on this page has been taken directly from the Historical
Society submission document created by Dan Rosen, our Historical Committee
Chairman. This document was created in an effort to get Academy Heights
listed as an historical community. Quotes and bibliographical
information shall be posted at a later date. Several quotes have
been used without proper recognition of where they were derived
from. This will be corrected shortly. If you have any problems
or questions, please don't hesitate to contact the webmaster.
We have hopes of posting the original, complete document on the website
for your viewing as soon as we are able to come up with a proper method of
doing so. If you find any errors in this document, please let me
know right away and I will correct them. |