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 19^th and early 20^th 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.

Historical Significance

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.