Mount Washington: Baltimore's First Suburb

In eighteen fifty-four, a businessman named George Gelbach and a partner purchased three hundred and fourteen acres north of the city with the idea of building a rural retreat for Baltimore professionals. The key selling point was the train. Mount Washington sat fifteen minutes from downtown on the Northern Central Railroad, close enough for a daily commute, far enough to escape the summer heat and the smell of the harbor.

In the early years the houses here were summer homes only. After the Civil War, improvements to rail service made year-round living practical, and the neighborhood became what historians consider Baltimore's first streetcar suburb. The architecture reflects a century of suburban fashions: Gothic Revival, Italianate, and Colonial Revival houses stand along streets that follow the contours of the Piney Branch valley. The city annexed Mount Washington in the early twentieth century. The No. Twenty-Five streetcar line ran from downtown to the Mount Washington station until mid-century.