Irvington

Irvington's boundaries extend clockwise from Hilton and Old Frederick along Hilton, Caton, southwest and northeast roads within Loudon Park Cemetery, Maiden's Choice, a north-south axis along Beechfield Elementary School, Frederick Avenue, Beechfield, Pen Lucy, Hillvale, Mountview, Athol, and Old Frederick. It straddled the city's western boundary, along Augusta, until 1918, much of it an extension of the western slope of the city from Edmondson Avenue south and east to Maiden's Choice Run and the Gwynns Falls. It contains a three-block business district along Frederick, a one-block-deep shopping center on Collins, five churches, two schools, and one cemetery, all among residences built over a century.

Only forty blocks from downtown, Irvington developed in isolation from both city and county. No southern thoroughfare extended beyond it until Yale was put through to Beechrield in 1950. Consequently, it tended to shelter little neighborhoods within a neighborhood, as park land and spacious private institutions isolated distinct subdivisions of the larger neighborhood. Loudon Park segregates industrial blocks on the east from the patch of row and Victorian houses south of Frederick Avenue and east of Mount St. Joseph's High School. Madonna School and Woodington Woods along Woodington encircle the Victorian village of "Old Irvington"; the Woods and Cathedral cemetery cap the mostly post-World War II row-house housing and garden apartments in the northwest: Mount St. Joseph's and Beechfield Elementary surround a smaller section of new row houses south of Frederick.

Irvington spreads over a section of the seventeenth-century, central Maryland estate of Charles Calvert, third Lord Baltimore. The estate was patented into smaller holdings before the end of the century, notably "Maiden's Choice," a 450-acre tract owned by Thomas Coale, an Anne Arundel Quaker, in 1673, including what is today Loudon Park Cemetery. "Athol" was the property of James Murray in 1694; "Morning's Choice" was owned by John Scutt by 1700; and "Buck Ridge" was a holding of Christopher Gardiner in 1720.

Inns and wagon repair shops dotted Frederick Turnpike (today Avenue) after it was opened to Catonsville in 1805. Fairview Inn, known also as Three Mile Inn, sat on the site of Memorial Church. It served variously as a slave quarters, slave jail, and tavern and inn with stables for stage and Conestoga wagon drivers. A milestone, smooth and waist-high and marked "3m to B" stands next to the church.

C. Irving Ditty, collector of the port of Baltimore, developed the "Old Irvington" of Victorian dwellings as a planned suburban village in the 1880s. Married to the granddaughter of Dr. Augustus Schwartze, who owned the stately mansion still extant on Euclid Street, Ditty acquired land west of St. Joseph's Street. He laid out three seventy-foot-wide dirt streets from Frederick to Old Frederick, Loudon, Collins, and Augusta, naming the last for a wife or daughter, and another narrow parallel street, Irving, for himself. Four of the development's first houses were put up by city builder Abraham S. Potter on Augusta near the Schwarz mansion. The eastwest streets facilitated extensive construction on lots marketed by the Irvington Real Estate Company, construction spreading from Augusta to Woodland.

Frame architecture, large wrap-around open porches, and yards in front and on both sides set the neighborhood apart from the brick, city-like row houses soon put up on three sides. The blocks of wooden detached houses with manicured lawns sat closer to the center city than other "planned" suburbs that had begun to ring Baltimore City, including Roland Park. Yard space between homes, and between houses and streets, symbolized and embodied a turn-of-the-century suburban ideal and upheld the values of famiiy and privacy. Its own neighborhood stores along Frederick, many owned by German ethnic residents, were named for the community and fostered neighborhood isolation by relievingdependence on outside market places. The Irvington Pharmacy opened in 1898, the Irvington Savings and Loan Association in 1905, and an ice house, bakery, grocery store, theatre, and bowling alley were all thriving by 1930.

Planned development quickened development nearby, streetfront Italianate homes and bow-shaped, "swell-front" houses put up on Collins and Loudon by 1906. Blocks east of Yale and south of Frederick within the 1888 annex were developed with daylight row houses, some with stylish bedrooms erected over entryways (as on Rosecroft), by the 1920s. The wooded open land west of Athol yielded to garden apartments after World War II, near a florist and property of the Sacred Heart Mission Center, and to Urban Renewal low-rise housing in the 1980's.

Residential developments all sprang up in isolation from an industrial district east of Loudon Park, variously the locale of many enterprises built near the Stafford Street freight depot. Loudon Park Cemetery isolated lumber yards, lime kilns, the Victor Blodke chemical works, and a coal company and coal distribution center from the 1890's.

The 300-acre Loudon Park Cemetery was incorporated in 1853 on the site of "Loudon." the estate of James Carey, a Baltimore merchant, city councilman, and founder of the Maryland National Bank. With a spacious Roman entry-arch on Frederick, it was built on an elevated plateau. Remains were transferred from city cemeteries, notably old St. Peter's, Whatcoat, and Zion graveyards, taken over by urban construction. The Federal government purchased land on the eastern edge after the Civil War, eventually acquiring the entire cemetery. It was re-designated "Loudon National Cemetery" about the time of World War I. Highly accessible, it received remains transported by rail over the Pennsylvania Railway, or on the "Delores," a hearse trolley car on city lines. The Delores delivered caskets to the Frederick Avenue gate that were then transferred by horse carriage or along the cemetery's own trolley line from the Frederick to the Wilkens side of the cemetery.

Veterans' graves distinguish Loudon Park. "Government Lot" was acquired by the Federal Government in 1861 for the remains of Union soldiers, 2300 eventually being buried there. An army sergeant domiciled in a cemetery cottage kept watch over the plot for many years. Some 275 Confederate soldiers were buried in a section designated "Confederate Hill." Burials began when lot holders donated plots in 1862, midway through the Civil War, the Cemetery subsequently exchanging these plots to insure a uniform section. The statue of a Confederate soldier guarded by two angels with wreath and torch was sculpted on the plot in 1870 by Adalsbert J. Volck. A monument to mothers and widows was eventually erected by The Ladies Confederate Memorial and Aid Society. Veterans' organizations held ceremonies and picnics at the "Hill" on Confederate Memorial Day, June 6th, until the early 1930s. William Wilkens, Mary Pickersgill, flag-maker of the banner hoisted over Fort McHenry in 1812, H.L. Mencken, and Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Jr., the World War II hero shot down while piloting a single-seatplane in the Battle of Midway, are also buried here. Notable monuments included the Ottmar Mergenthaler Monument for the German-born Baltimore inventor of the linotype.