Lauraville Improvement Association • Greater Lauraville

Lauraville

Though today’s Lauraville was largely built up over the two decades between 1910 and 1930, the community has a history dating back at least from the late 18th Century. Early settlements were sparse and limited to a scattering of farms along the Harford Road. One of the earliest community buildings in the area was a log schoolhouse-reputedly the first in Baltimore County- that stood just outside of today’s Lauraville, approximately where Echodale and Twin Oaks Avenues meet. Traces of the schoolhouse’s foundations remained at the site until well into this century. The schoolhouse land was owned by the Read family, who also owned quarries and in the early 1800s built a grist mill along the Herring Run.

The Harford Road was established during Colonial Times and linked the town of Belair and the homesteads on the Gunpowder Falls with the fledgling Baltimore Town. In 1816 a turnpike company was chartered to substantially improve and maintain Harford Road for the privilege of charging tolls. By 1818 a bridge across the Herring Run (at approximately the foot of today’s service drive down to the run) was completed and by 1819 the turnpike was open to Gunpowder Falls.

The Hall Springs Hotel was located on the west side of Harford Road, slightly north of the bridge over the Herring Run. The hotel took its name from the nearby freshwater spring that to this day, continues to pour forth. The hotel probably dates from the early 1800s and originally served stagecoach passengers on the turnpike. Later, it was used as a popular vacation hotel - a summer country haven from the city’s heat- though before being razed in the early 1900s, it had become a private residence.

In the decade preceding the start of the Civil War, Lauraville began to take on the appearance of a village. In addition to the Read Mill on the Herring Run, the Green family had built a cotton mill, located on the south bank of the run, near Lake Montebello. At some time prior to 1852, a second school house was built for the children of mill workers, and farmers, near the corner of Gordon Lane and Weitzel Avenue. The 2 room building still stands, and serves as the meeting place for a social club. Churches were also built to serve the pre-Civil War Lauraville community. These included the original Eutaw Methodist Church, which was built in 1860 on a hill overlooking the Herring Run, and the older St. Andrews Chapel which was located just east of Lauraville along today’s Cold Spring Lane.

Soon after the Civil War, Lauraville became an official village, with its own post office, and as a result its present name. Local residents who had lobbied for a local mail service were confronted when the Post Office’s requirement for a village name as a mail destination. At a local meeting, chief supporter for the village post office, John Henry Keene, a local property owner who also operated a planing mill and lumber yard on the site of today’s Bond Lumber, suggested that the community be named after his daughter Laura. Apparently that was acceptable to all present, for the area has been Lauraville since. Until Hamilton got its own post office, the Lauraville post office which was located in William Emmel’s confectionery store on the west side of Harford Road, south of Southern Avenue, handled all of the mail service along Harford Road, between the Herring Run, and Parkville.

In the last decades of the 19th century Lauraville became thoroughly self-sufficient. Blacksmiths and carpenters practiced their trades along Harford Road, and virtually any necessity could be brought locally for the house or farm. Truck farms covered the area and a wide variety of locally raised produce, as well as fresh meat, poultry, and dairy products were available. Weber’s Park, a brewery, with adjoining picnic grounds and beer garden operated for many years along Harford Road in the Southern end of Lauraville, about opposite today’s Overland Avenue. A fire station for the volunteer fire company was also built, on the site of the present modern engine house.

In the early 1870’s the Hall Springs Passenger Railway opened its limited horse-drawn passenger service on the Harford Road between the Hall Springs Hotel and a car barn south of 25th Street, where connections could be made for downtown Baltimore. While never wildly successful, the line operated continuously until it was electrified and extended north to Hamilton Avenue in the 1890s, and eventually absorbed into the United Railway system. This growth and improvement of the Harford Road transit service coincided with the rapid development of the Lauraville as a residential suburban community. First commuter transit, then automobile travel, made communities like Lauraville increasingly accessible to the Baltimore Downtown. In 1895 land was acquired from the Garrett family for a new schoolhouse, which was built in the late 1890s at Morello and Alisa Avenues. The school was and is still called Garrett Heights, though previously had junior high grades as well as the elementary grades. The 1932 addition to Garrett Heights is the only portion still standing, as the older wing was destroyed by fire in 1969. By 1918, when most of Lauraville was annexed to Baltimore City many houses had already been built.

While Lauraville was built up over a period of years by various developers, most of the houses are detached, single family frame or cedar shingle structures, similar in style. The Lauraville neighborhood benefits from irregular street patterns, and from the considerable number of shade trees that the residents have striven to protect.

While no longer an isolated rural village, Lauraville still maintains a feel of cohesion and community spirit reminiscent of its earlier days.