Roland Park Historic District

About this property

Roland Park is a community in Baltimore, Maryland. It was developed between 1890 and 1920 as an upper-class streetcar suburb. The early phases of the neighborhood were designed by Edward Bouton and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Jarvis and Conklin, a Chicago investment firm, purchased 500 acres (200 ha) of land near Lake Roland in 1891 and founded the Roland Park Company with $1 million in capital. Not long after, the Panic of 1893 forced Jarvis and Conklin to sell the Roland Park Company to the firm of Stewart and Young. Despite the dire economics after 1893, Stewart and Young continued investment in the development. The Roland Park Company hired Kansas City developer Edward H. Bouton as the general manager and George Edward Kessler to lay out the lots for the first tract. They hired the Olmsted Brothers to lay out the second tract, and installed expensive infrastructure, including graded-streets, gutters, sidewalks, and constructed the Lake Roland Elevated Railroad. The company consulted George E Waring Jr. to advise them on the installation of a sewer system. Bouton placed restrictive covenants on all lots in Roland Park. These included setback requirements and proscriptions against any business operations. It was a modern development, electricity for lighting throughout the neighborhood as well as gas for cooking and lighting. Water came from artesian wells dug up to 500 feet (150 m), nearly 50,000 feet (15,000 m) of water mains were constructed, in addition to 50,000 feet (15,000 m) of roadways, and 100,000 feet (30,000 m) of sidewalks. Bouton and some Baltimore investors purchased the interests of Roland Park and reorganized the company in 1903. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. cited Roland Park as a model residential subdivision to his Harvard School of Design students. Duncan McDuffie, developer of St. Francis Wood in San Francisco, called Roland Park "an ideal residential district." Jesse Clyde Nichols had found inspiration in Roland Park when he was planning the Country Club District of Kansas City. Nichols continued to refer to Roland Park as an ideal residential development when he counselled other residential developers. The park-like setting designed by the Olmsted brothers was a mark of affluence echoed by other neighborhoods in Baltimore such as Mayfield and Guilford. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Baltimore saw an influx of immigrants, nearing 600,000. Bouton took 100 acres of land a few miles north of Downtown Baltimore and sold it as an exclusive, lush “garden suburb”, free of city grime and racial diversity. Letters from the time show that Bouton asked a law firm, Schmuker & Whitelock, if he could legally restrict who bought property in Roland Park. Though the firm advised against it, by 1912, the ‘Nuisances’ section of the deed read, “At no time shall the land included in said tract or any part thereof, or any building erected thereon, be occupied by any negro or person of negro extraction. This prohibition, however, is not intended to include occupancy by a negro domestic servant.”

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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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