When my
old friend, Tom Gamper asked me to present a lecture on Roland Park School, he
was asking me in the context of my work with the Dead Architects Society and the
architects, Palmer & Lamdin, who designed the school.
Today, I
will be talking about the history of the school and how it came to be, but I
will be mostly talking about the school’s unique architecture.
By the 1920's, the oldest parts of Roland Park were
more than 30 years old, and it was beginning to become a settled neighborhood,
not just a summer enclave. So, it needed a school which all the local children
could attend.
There was a small school, known as Todd’s Academy, with
an enrollment of 112 children, on the corner of Roland Avenue and St. John’s
Road. But there was not enough room to expand to accommodate the children who now
were living in the area.
At this time, Baltimore was embarking on an
ambitious plan, building schools in many of Baltimore's neighborhoods using the
services of some of the city's best architects. And certainly, schools of that
era reflect the classical architecture which was the watchword.
Oldies like me still refer to the school as Roland
Park Public School to delineate it from Roland Park Country Day School, located
directly across the street since the late 1970s.
The plan
was to build a new school with 16 classrooms, and the enrollment was projected
to be about 700 students, which equaled more than 40 children per classroom. The land for the school had been acquired by the City through eminent domain from property owned by the Gilman School.
The City’s
allocation for the project was $430,000, which is about $48.6 million today.
This included the design/build for the building and playgrounds, paving and
plantings.
It originally did not include an auditorium/gymnasium because funds
had not yet been allocated,but an auditorium does appear on the architects’ 1925 plans.
As
mentioned, Baltimore City tapped the architects Palmer & Lamdin to design
the school. Edward Palmer had been the “house architect” for the Roland Park
Company and later designed many of the most interesting houses in Homeland and
Guilford. Additionally, Palmer & Lamdin worked on sections of Bryn Mawr and
Friends Schools.
Many of
Palmer & Lamdin’s influences were inspired by their European travels. English, and
specifically Cotswolds-style architecture was a particular favorite, followed by the
chalets of Switzerland, and architecture from the Normandy region of France. They did design an Italian monastery
in Howard County in 1926, therefore, an Italian-style school building was not
much of a stretch.
The school is modeled on a classic Italianate
design, unlike anything else in Roland Park. To emphasize its importance, the school was
built on a small rise on the main street through Roland Park.
Key visual components of the Italianate style
include:
- Low-pitched or flat roofs, barely discernable from the ground.
- Arched windows
- Tall first floor windows
- Campanile or bell towers
- Small “Juliette-style” balconies
- Terracotta “Barrel-style” tiled roofs
- Loggias
About 15% of Italianate buildings in the United
States include a tower, which, at Roland Park, was an early ventilation system.
In the original blueprints, which I was able to
photograph at the University of Baltimore’s architectural archives, you can see
that the building’s design didn’t vary too much from the architects’ plans and
elevations.
The windows still retain their iron-work grids, and
the brick
columns between the windows have been rendered in a demi-hexagonal shape,
a
detail which would go un-noticed unless you were really looking, but which adds
to the grace of the building.
The brickwork at the top of the campanile is very
unusual with two courses of bricks above the loggia. The inner course is a
regular rounded keystone arch, while the outer one looks more gothic in style.
The decorative stone on the sides of some of the
windows still remain. As does the design for the small balcony above the front
door.This 1962 photograph of a class at the Junior High
School still shows some of the original details, including a “casualty clearing
station” sign for civil defense. This was at the height of the Cold War and
the school would have been used as a nuclear fallout shelter which would have
been in the basement of the building.
Additionally, you can just see the bottoms of two
lights on either side of the front door.
They’ve long been removed, but the
design for the two light fixtures was discovered on the original blueprints and
the lamp was the only detail rendered in color on dozens of pages. They are a
fairly common style of lamp in the 1920’s.
The initial specifications for the building were to
have had imitation stone trim, but there was a great deal of push-back for
this, as it didn’t have the look or long wear of natural stone.
Letters
to the editor of the Sun went back and forth, pro and con, and eventually the faux-stone
people won the battle.
Under threat of arrest, the City’s building
inspector had refused to issue a permit for the foundation and groundwork of
the new school. The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 was still fresh in people’s
minds, and the codes called for fire-safe cinderblock in the foundation. After
several months, the issue was resolved, no one was arrested, and the
construction could finally begin.
By December of 1926, newspaper stories were
reporting that the new Roland Park School was already crowded. By 1928, a proposal
for an addition was put out for bid and once again, Palmer & Lamdin won the
job.
The
addition would be added onto the north side of the building, backing up to the
property owned by Gilman School. The capacity went from 850 to nearly 1,400
students.
But nothing’s ever easy. In the spring of 1929,
serious cracks were discovered in the wall of the gymnasium, then only three
years old. It was closed to students immediately. The vertical cracks went
along the structural piers which helped support the upper floor. It was said
that the cracks had been visible for about three years, but that they hadn’t
worried anyone, and they had just been plastered over!
The
inspectors had opened the wall, but when the city’s crew came to take
documentary photographs, the wall had been plastered and painted over to
disguise where the cracks were. The wall was finally torn out so that steel
girders could be installed, and it was found that there was no mortar between
the bricks!!!
Additionally,
surprise! there were issues with the cast stone that had been used, chunks of
it were dropping off, and they crumbled at a touch.
In the early 1980s, rumblings began with a rumor
that the Roland Park Public School would be torn down, and an entirely new
building would be constructed. A distant second-place option was to renovate
the school and install all new utilities.
Of course, a mighty uproar ensued, but the
school was enlarged and renovated as we see it today.
Here are
some interesting facts I discovered when I was researching this lecture:
- Between
1929 and 1931, the name of the street just to the south of the school was changed
from Linden Avenue to Deepdene Road.
- Roland
Park School was once home to one of public baths scattered around the city and
funded by William Walters of Walters Art Museum fame. I found a small clip in a
1931 article in the Baltimore Sun which mentioned that the public baths located
at Roland Park School had the fewest users of any other public bath in the
city. Towels and soap were available for five cents per person.
It is down to the skill of the architects, Palmer
& Lamdin, and the wisdom of those who followed, that the building that is
Roland Park School is still intact, and retains most of its original classic
Italianate design on its one-hundredth anniversary.
My sources for this lecture were:
- Maryland
Historic Trust’s document: Baltimore City Schools Architecture, 1889 to 1941
- Newspapers.com
- Palmer
& Lamdin.com
- Palmer
& Lamdin and the Successor Firms’ Catalogue Raisonné
- Medusa:
Maryland’s Cultural Resource Information System
- The University of Baltimore’s Architectural Archives.
A special
thanks goes to RPEMS alumni, Anson Stine, who helped with the drone footage.
Thank you for including me in this special event.
the front is accessed by a long driveway,
leading to the ivy-covered stone house, complete with its own turret! 
The house
shows off some of Palmer & Lamdin’s hallmarks, including steeply pitched
roof-lines, advancing and receding planes, casement windows, and quirky
details. The front door is recessed in an arched cove which leads to a large
entry hallway with arched doorframes. At this point, the house is only one room
wide, with huge steel-framed casement windows on either side and throughout the
house.
While the third floor originally
contained several small bedrooms for servants, there is now a large children’s
playroom and loads of storage space. 
.jpg)
