Modernist Oasis
In 1967, a time just before Baltimore’s riots and the full onset of white flight, Baltimore City’s Department of Urban Renewal razed several blocks of deteriorating cityscape next to the historic neighborhood of Bolton Hill and held a competition for…more
In 1967, a time just before Baltimore’s riots and the full onset of white flight, Baltimore City’s Department of Urban Renewal razed several blocks of deteriorating cityscape next to the historic neighborhood of Bolton Hill and held a competition for the right to redevelop it. Baltimore developer Stanley Panitz and celebrated D.C.-based architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen won the competition with their design for the unique community of Bolton Square: 36 contemporary rowhomes with semi-private backyard gardens facing an oval common.
In addition to reviving a deteriorating block of cityscape, Panitz and Jacobsen believed Bolton Square would foster a sense of middle-class community in a modern design setting. As Bolton Square residents prepare to mark its 40th anniversary, they say it remains true to that mission.
At the time Panitz sought him out in 1966, Jacobsen was already well-known in architectural circles, having won 30 awards and been featured on the cover of Architectural Record— despite being only 38 years old. “He’s a man with exceptional taste and imagination,” says Panitz, a developer of many residential projects throughout the city. “I could tell that he not only knew construction, but he knew design.”
Jacobsen, who has gone on to design the restoration of two Smithsonian museums, additions to the U.S. Capitol and numerous high-end residential projects, is known for his skill with minimalist abstraction: taking a form and stripping it to the bare essentials. With Bolton Square, he took the traditional materials of the classic 19th-century homes of Bolton Hill— brick and slate— and used them in a contemporary way. Inside, there were no mouldings, doors were flat plains without extraneous doorjambs and windows stretched from floor to ceiling.
“I’ve long believed that good architecture, like a well-mannered lady, never shouts at the neighbors,” says Jacobsen. “I wanted that project to sit down and shut up and make the street look better.”
In 1969, Jacobsen’s work on Bolton Square earned him the highest award in architectural design, the American Institute of Architects Honor Award. Yet even as Jacobsen’s design was garnering awards, current events of the day— namely the riots— meant Panitz was struggling to persuade people to buy, or even rent, in Bolton Square. “The National Guard was walking through Bolton Hill. From the roof of my house I could see the city burning,” says Panitz, who’d moved into a double unit at Bolton Square with his then-wife and their children. “Half the people who had bought backed out.” As the city stabilized, so too did Bolton Square, attracting diverse, middle-class, urban sophisticates, much the same as it does today.
It was a love of open space and the no-frills aspect of mid-century modern architecture that drew Joel Pearson and Jon A. Kaplan to Bolton Square from Mount Vernon in 2006. The pair added a floating staircase and removed interior walls from the original structure to make an open plan that maximizes the wall of windows looking into the garden at the back of the home. They also tried to echo Jacobsen in their selection of clean-lined kitchen cabinetry and minimalist interior design.
“It’s not very big,” says Pearson, an architect with Melville Thomas Architects who recalls studying Jacobsen’s work in school. “But you can see how our living space moves into the garden. It’s such a clean-cut transition that I can live in a smaller space.”
The private, safe common at the heart of Bolton Square also lured Pearson and Kaplan. “We moved from a condo where no one integrated,” says Pearson. “Here, people are out watering their gardens, or walking in the common, so there’s lot of interaction. Architecture can make that happen.”
It was their house at Bolton Square that turned Majid Jelveh and Marybeth Shaw into permanent Baltimoreans. The couple and their young son originally moved from New York City to Canton, but felt out of place in their waterfront condo. As partners in Shaw-Jelveh Design, the two integrate modernism and aestheticism into all aspects of their lives. When they saw the Bolton Square double unit that had once belonged to Panitz, it was in disrepair, but they recognized its potential and loved that the neighborhood had the feel of communities they enjoyed in Brooklyn. And like the couple, Bolton Square was resolutely modern. “This is a natural fit for us,” says Shaw. “It feels like home.”
Although the couple wanted to preserve most of the home— the gorgeous parquet floors, the juxtaposition of curved and straight walls, the spiral staircase accented by a slim, two-story vertical window and the sunken living room and den— they also wanted to add modern amenities. The major renovation took place in the kitchen, where a vinyl floor was replaced with cork and uninterrupted white subway tiles offset blue cabinetry. The couple invested in granite countertops and unique fixtures, but the actual kitchen came from Ikea. “It looks like an Italian kitchen, but it’s really a well-installed Ikea kitchen,” says Shaw.
Jelveh says his favorite aspect of the house is the “architectural promenade.”
“We have public space, which is the street, private space, semi-private space, which is the common green, and transition from those private and semi-private spaces, which are the walled gardens with vertical openings,” he says. “This layering is a lesson in how to do architecture and good cities.”
Jacobsen calls this layering concept the “Jesus Christ” of the project. “When you first see a building, the form makes all sorts of promises and you wonder what the hell is going on inside there,” he says. “Once you’re inside, you have to fulfill those promises. You can walk into any of those [Bolton Square] houses and by the time you walk through the living room and you sense the garden you’ll hear someone say ‘Jesus Christ.’ It’s where you fulfill that thing.”
As Bolton Square prepares to turn 40, the community is marking the milestone with a house tour and reception— along with a recent successful bid to gain landmark status for the development from the city’s Commission on Historic and Architectural Preservation. Jacobsen, who will attend the tour and reception along with Panitz, says Bolton Square remains one of his favorite projects. “You can tell whether a building is loved or not by how it is maintained,” he says. “That building has held very well.”
BOLTON SQUARE HOME & GARDEN TOUR
Sept. 8. Self-guided home tours, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Wine and cheese reception, including remarks by Stanley Panitz and Hugh Newell Jacobsen, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets available day of tour at W.Lafayette Street between Mason and Jordan streets. For more information, contact Jon A. Kaplan, 410-241-8444, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
