Localities
| Old Baltimore | HLM’s Birthplace | HLM’s House | Cigar Factory | HLM and Sara | Mencken Room | |
| Schellhase’s | Marconi’s | St Stephen | Peabody Books | J. F. W. Dorman | Grave | |
Old Baltimore
I hope to have links to detailed, high-quality maps of Baltimore circa the various stages of Mencken’s life. The best I’ve found so far dates eleven years before his birth.
The streets of Baltimore were renumbered in 1886 September through December. Wood’s City Directory for 1887 has a table mapping from the new numbers to the old. In the addresses below, the original number is given with, if applicable, the new number in square parentheses following.
On Sunday, 1904 February 7, at 10:48, Engine Co. 15 received an alarm that there was a fire at John Hurst & Company. When the fire, dubbed “The Great Fire of Baltimore”, was brought under control 31 hours later, 140 acres of central Baltimore, more than seventy blocks, encompassing 1,526 Buildings and accounting for 2,500 business, banks, enterprises and merchants, were destroyed. When the area was rebuilt, streets were renumbered, adding a complication to those who wish to coordinate localities of old with present-day street numbers.
H.L. Mencken’s Birthplace
Location: 380 [811] West Lexington St (Between Freemont and Poppleton), Baltimore, MD.
Remarks: Mencken’s father, August, rented a three story house for $16/mo. “Dr C. L. Buddenbohn, who fetched me into sentience at 9 p.m., precisely, of Sunday, September 12, 1880, apparently made a good (though, as I hear, somewhat rough) job of it, despite the fact that his surviving bill, dated October 2, shows that all he charged “to one confinement” was ten dollars.” (Happy Days, pp. 6-7)
Hours: n/a.
Directions:
Map:
H.L. Mencken’s House
Location: 1524 Hollins Street, Baltimore, MD (Between Stricker and Gilmore Sts, across from Union Square)
Remarks: HLM’s boyhood home, and where he returned to in 1936 and lived out his life with his brother August. August lived in the house until his death in 1967 May 19. HLM’s father, August, bought the house for $2,900 in 1883?. Before becoming a museum, the building was used for office space by the University of Maryland School of Social Work and as a residence for VISTA volunteers. With the closing of the Baltimore’s City Life Museum, which ran the house, the Mencken house is now closed.
The house is not far from Edgar Allan Poe’s house and the wonderful B&O railway museum. Visiting all three makes for a pleasant Sunday.
Hours: Closed indefinitely.
Directions: (1) Take I-95 South. (2) Take right Exit 53: I-395 North / Downtown to Martin Luther King Boulevard and bear right. (3)The road bifurcates: the left goes to I-395 Downtown/Inner Harbor, the right, to M.L. King Jr Blvd/Russell Street. Do not head for the Inner Harbor. Keep right to go to Martin Luther King Boulevard. (4) Once on MLK Blvd, migrate into the left lane. Do not exit onto Russell Street but keep bearing left, to MLK Blvd / I-83. (5) Make a left turn onto West Lombard St. (6) Right turn onto S. Calhoun St. (7) Left onto Hollins St. (8) On your left will be Union Square Park. (9) HLM’s house is near the far end of the street.
Map:
J. F. W. Dorman
Location: 217 East German Street (changed to Redwood St during WW I)
Remarks: “On November 26, 1887 my father sent his bookeeper, Mr. Maass, to the establishment of J. F. W. Dorman, at 217 East German street, Baltimore and there and then, by the said Maass's authorized agence, took title to a Baltimore No. 10 Self-Inker Printing Press and a font of No. 214 type. The press cost $7.50 and the font of type $1.10. These details, which I recover from the receipted bill in my father's file, are of no conceivable interest to anone else on earth, but to e are of a degree of concern bordering upon the super-colossal, for the press determined the whole course of my future life. If it had been a stethoscope or a copy of Dr. Ayer's Almanac I might have gone in for medicine; if it had been a Greek New Testament or a set of baptismal grappling-irons I might have pursued divinity. As it was, I got the smell of printer’s ink up my nose at the tender age of seven, and it has been swirling through my sinuses ever since.”
“The press and type, of course, were laid in by my father against Christmas, and were concealed for the nonce in a cupboard at home, but my brother Charlie and I had a good look at them before early candlelight of November 27.” (Happy Days, p. 202-203)
Map:
Aug. Mencken & Bro. Cigar Factory (I)
Location: 368 [0000] Baltimore Street (This is insufficient information to determine the new address. More information real soon now.)
Remarks: In 1885 August Mencken moved his cigar factory from Baltimore Street to Paca Street.
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
Aug. Mencken & Bro. Cigar Factory (II)
Location: Paca Street
Remarks: The factory burned down in December, 1893.
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
Aug. Mencken & Bro. Cigar Factory (III)
Location: Pratt and Greene Sts.
Remarks: Under the management his Uncle Henry and his son, the firm of Aug. Mencken & Bro. went bankrupt in January 1926. The business was in poor shape for several years, but the precipitating event was Uncle Henry's bad investment in a western mining venture. The building was sold.
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
Episcopal Church of St Stephen the Martyr
Location:2400 West North Avenue (between Moreland Ave. and North Warwick Ave.), Baltimore. The site is now (1999) occupied by St Stephen's Court Apartments.
Remarks: HLM and Sara Powell Haardt were married here on 1930 August 27.
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
Schellhase’s Restaurant
Location: 412 North Howard St (Betw. W. Franklin and W. Mulberry Sts).
Remarks: No longer extant. Schellhase’s back room was the meeting place for the Saturday Night Club from 1918 until its dissolution in 1950.
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
Marconi’s Restaurant
Location: 106 W. Saratoga St (Betw. Park Ave. and Cathederal St).
Remarks: Marconi’s was established in 1920 and is still in business. See a reviewed in Zagat's Guide.
HLM and Sara often ate here when HLM was wooing her starting in 1923.
In 1939, Mencken was acquainted with Clare Leighton, and they dined at Marconi’s.
Mencken also dined at Marconi’s with Marion Bloom.
Hours: Call 410-727-9522.
Directions:
Map: MapQuest
HLM and Sara
Location: 704 Cathedral Street (Between Branch and West Madison Sts)
Remarks: HLM and Sara Haardt Mencken (1898-1935), his bride, set up house in the third-floor apartment in 1930.
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
Peabody Book Shop, Inc.
Location:913 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD. The site is now (1999) a parking lot.
Remarks: The Peabody Book Shop was opened in 1922 by Siegfried Weisberger, a self-educated man who immigrated from Austria in 1912, and his brother. Siegfried took over management of the store in 1931 and expanded it by adding a Beer Stube (“room”). Weisberger shared HLM’s passion for Nietzsche and Beethoven. (Source: Martin, In Defense (1996), pp. 366-367).
Hours: n/a
Directions:
Map:
The Mencken Room at the Enoch Pratt Library
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Location: Enoch Pratt Library, Third Floor, 400 Cathederal St (Betw. Mulberry and Franklin Sts), Baltimore, MD.
Remarks: The Mencken Room is closed to the public except on Mencken Day in September (on or about Mencken’s Birthday, 12 September). The portrait of Mencken hanging on the wall was painted in 1927, when Mencken was at the peak of his career, by Nikol Schattenstein. The suspenders, red with a blue stripe running along the median, were a gift from Rudolph Valentino. Valentino died on 30 August 1926 at the age of thirty-one, about a month after dining with HLM in New York. [For Mencken on Valentino, see “Valentino”, Chrestomathy (NY: Vintage Books, 1982), pp. 281-284.]
Hours: Open during normal hours on Mencken Day in September.
Directions: Enter the library. Go through the gates. On your right you will see an elevator. Take it to the Third Floor. Once on the third floor, go right then immediately to your left. The door to the Mencken Room will be on your left.
Map:
H.L. Mencken’s Grave
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“If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.” — H.L. Mencken |
Location: Loudon Park Cemetery, 3801 Frederick Avenue, Baltimore, MD.
Note: The Cemetery office is now at Wilkens Avenue. Stop there to get a map of the cemetery which notes twenty points of interest. The building at 3801 Frederick Avenue houses offices and is not open to the public. To get to the Administrative offices, follow the yellow line on the road.
Hours: Administrative office: Sun: 10:00-6:00; Mon, Tue and Wed: 8:30-6:30; Thu, Fri and Sat: 8:30-4:30.
Directions to the cemetery: Coming from the North: (1) Take I-95 South (towards DC). (2) Take exit “50 A-B Caton Ave.” (3) Bear right, “Exit 50 B—North—Wilkins Ave”. (4) Merge onto S. Caton Road. (5) Go straight on S. Caton Rd, past St Agnes Hospital on your left, and through the intersection with Wilkins Ave. (6) Continue on Caton Avenue. (7) At the intersection of Caton and Frederick Ave. (there will be a McDonald's restaurant on your right-hand side), make a left turn onto Frederick Ave. (County Route 144). There will be a small bridge and a stop light before you. (8) Go straight on Frederick Ave. (9) The gate to the cemetery will be on your left.
Directions to the gravesite: The Mencken gravesite is in the northeast corner of section “W”. (1) Enter by way of the Frederick Avenue Gate. (2a) The road trifurcates. Take the central road. (2b) Go past the flag pole; do not make a left. (2c) Go straight through the next intersection (diagonally from you, to your left, is the mausoleum of the Textor family). (3) You will come upon a “T” intersection. Make a left turn. (4) You will come to another “T” intersection (in front of you will be a obelisk-style monument to "Samuel Black". Turn right. (5) Keep an eye out on the right side of the road for a dark, stubby granite obelisk-style memorial for “Smith”. (6) Right next to the Smith family plot is the Hensel family plot. (7) The Mencken family plot is behind the Hensel family plot, the headstones facing away from the road. HLM’s ledger-style gravestone is a large plate on the ground.
Remarks: Real fans of HLM may want to bring a brush with stiff plastic or straw bristles in order to sweep out the debris which accumulates in the relief-work of HLM’s ledger-style gravestone.
From HLM: “Her [Sara’s] ashes are buried at the foot of the grave of my mother, and beside her there is room for mine. Thinking of her, I can well understand the great human yearning that makes for a belief in immortality, but I do not believe in it, and neither did she. We have parted forever, though my ashes will soon be mingling with hers. I’ll have her in mind until thought and memory adjourns, but that is all ... We were happy together, but all beautiful things must end.” — HLM, Diary, Entry for 1940-05-31, p. 143.
Memento mori.
Map: Find-a-Grave
Current as of: 1998 Aug 29