2008-00-00
The end of May [2008] marks the seventy-third anniversary of the passing of Sara Powell Mencken, neé Haardt.
The two met May 8, 1923. Mencken was speaking to the students of Goucher College, then on St Paul Street and 23rd Street, where Sara was an instuctor in English. Afterwards, she was part of a small party from the school who had dinner with Mr Mencken.
Henry and Sara announced their engagement on August 2, 1930, in Montgomery, Alabama and exchanged vows on August 27 in the Episcopal Church of St Stephen the Martyr on West North Avenue (between Moreland Ave. and North Warwick Ave.) in Baltimore. After the wedding and a brief honeymoon the couple moved into an apartment at 704 Cathedral Street. The marriage lasted 1,738 days, just slightly over four-and-three-quarters years, ending at 6:30 PM on May 31, 1935, when Sara died of tubercular meningitis at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her funeral, held June 3rd, was attended by about forty people. Mencken, stoic outwardly, was terribly upset by the death and did not go. Sarah’s remains were cremated.
H. L. Mencken remained in the apartment at Cathedral Street until late March, 1936, when he began a month-long move back to the House on Hollins Street.
A good short (20 pages) introduction to Sara is Gail Shivel, Sara Haardt: The Neglected Contributions of a Unique Voice in the Literature of the New South. (Note that Sara went to Hollywood in the fall and early winter of 1927, not 1926, to produce screenplays for Famous Players-Lasky at $250 per week). Those interested in getting a sense of Sara as a writer should start with the collection Southern Souvenirs: Selected Stories and Essays of Sara Haardt (University Alabama Press, 1999). For Sara’s relationship with Henry Mencken, see Mencken and Sara: A Life In Letters (1987) and Mencken: The American Iconoclast (2005), both by Marion E. Rodgers.
The Church of St. Stephen the Martyr, built in 1900, closed its doors in July 1969. The non-profit corporation St. Stephen’s Court Apartments caused the Church to be demolished after Christmas, 1969, to be replaced with seventy-two apartment units. Work constructing the apartments finished in the middle of July, 1970.
The Baltimore School for the Arts acquired 704 Cathedral Street in April 2003. At one time the property was owned by Gen. George B. Brown (1834-1890), banker, of Alexander Brown & Sons.