Mount Washington Mill Historic District (Boundary Increase)

About this property

Mount Washington is an area of northwest Baltimore, Maryland. It is a designated city historic district and divided into two sections: South Road/Sulgrave to the southeast and Dixon's Hill (or Dixon Hill) to the north. The Mount Washington Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 with a boundary increase in 2001, with five contributing buildings and four contributing structures. Historically, Mount Washington was a small area. However, residents and businesses of many other nearby neighborhoods in the 21209 ZIP code and a small portion of the 21215 ZIP code (west of Pimlico Road) around the neighborhood refer to their location as Mount Washington. Though mostly within the Baltimore city limits, but mixed with some of these areas within Baltimore County as Pikesville. The Mount Washington neighborhood is served by the Mount Washington Improvement Association, which, though not speaking on behalf of all the neighborhood's residents, wields significant political clout in Baltimore. Mount Washington Village, off the west side of the Jones Falls Expressway near the Kelly Avenue bridge, containing several restaurants and stores, as well as the Baltimore Light Rail's Mount Washington Station. Mount Washington Mill, a refurbished textile mill now housing stores, shops and offices, off the east side of the Jones Falls Expressway near the Kelly Avenue bridge, commonly referred to as Historic Mount Washington. These two areas were at one time viewed as a single area, but since the construction of Interstate 83 these areas have been separated, and travel over a longer distance is required between them. In 1854, George Gelbach and Elias Heiner purchased 314 acres near Washingtonville, a mill village. Though the original homes were designed as summer houses, Gelbach envisioned that Mount Washington would eventually become a suburb of Baltimore. Building picked up after the Civil War, with developers, such as John Graham (a resident of Mount Washington) developing small groups of houses around the South Road section. The northern section of the area, what became Dixon's Hill, was the result of Thomas Dixon purchasing 20 acres from Gelbach in 1855 and developed in the 1860s. Mount Washington is considered by some to be Baltimore's first suburb. It was part of Baltimore County until it was annexed in 1914. Prior to the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, racially restrictive covenants were used in Baltimore to exclude African-Americans and other minorities. A 1921 advertisement in the Baltimore Sun described Mount Washington as a racially "restricted community".

Location

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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