The row house baltimore

In s, local builders began to use pressed brick for better houses. Initially manufactured by hand with a brick press, they were later made by machine. This harder brick did not need to be painted and the regular size allowed builders to lay the bricks with much smaller mortar joints. Pressed bricks were only used on the facade, side and rear walls were still built with locally made brick.

By the s, major brickyards were also located in East Baltimore in the area north of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Around , a new kind of brick became available and was first used in high-style houses like the Goucher House at St.

Often called Roman brick , the bricks were narrow and very hard and yellow-brown in color and were commonly used in Renaissance Revival style buildings and rowhouses of the period.

By the late s builders using red bricks again for Colonial Revival style buildings, houses, and rowhouses. In the 19th century, most marble for steps and buildings was quarried in Baltimore County at sites near Texas and Cockeysville. The importance of marble diminished after the s concrete and stone often substituting for marble on newer daylight rowhouses. Some home-owners even painted their steps leading H. Mencken in the Baltimore Evening Sun, February Lintel — The horizontal beam that spans the top of the opening for the door that supports the rest of the building above the door.

Transom — A horizontally-oriented window, typically rectangular, located above the door. Threshold — The horizontal base of the door that is raised above the exterior, signaling a transition from outside to inside. Door frame — The opening and surrounding trim of the passage between rooms or the entrance of the building. Doorjam — Facing sides of the wall opening for the passage in which a door is set.

Doorknob — The rotating handle of the locking mechanism. Also doubles the function of a door pull. Rail — The horizontal framing member of a door. Top Rail — The upper-most horizontal framing member of a door. Lock Rail — The horizontal framing member of a door located in the lower-middle of the door in which the door pull or locking mechanism is set. Bottom Rail — The bottom-most horizontal framing member of a door.

Middle Panel — The panels located between the frieze panels and the bottom panels. Bottom Panel — The bottom-most panels in a door. Stile — The vertical framing member of a door. This post is meant to show the most common types of rowhouses found in Baltimore, and to match their names to their pictures.

Wood Frame Houses. Are these the oldest houses in Baltimore City? This is likely what most of the original housing in Baltimore town looked like. Here are some wood frame houses nearby on Ann St, which are also likely among the oldest in the city, but probably a few years more recent than those above, and clearly better maintained. These begin to resemble what we think of as rowhouses. In general large, fine houses were built on main streets, smaller versions erected on side streets, and tiny versions on alley streets.

Two Story and Attic Also very common around the oldest neighborhoods of the city near the harbor is the Two Story and Attic rowhouse. Half-House Appearing mostly in alleys or small side streets the half house is only one room wide and one room deep with a lean-to at the back.

These may or may not have been meant to be added to later but many were not. Alley Houses An alley house is only two rooms deep, though most have since had small kitchens and bathrooms added Before the city had no sewers. If a house is older than this it would have had a separate shithouse in the back yard and the current bathroom is retrofitted.

What was built there by leading architects influenced the rest of the city, especially around parks and squares. Early developers invented a scheme whereby they could donate a plot of land to the city for a park, then build around it using the park to enhance property values. These houses were influenced by the latest styles in London and Europe, and builders of working class houses wasted no time scaling down and copying elements for use on much smaller houses.

Things like stone porches and false attic windows which appeared on some Daylight rows owe their inspiration to these designs, and in places like Highlandtown even ordinary Italianate houses sometimes appeared with tiny front balconies or spires.