Johns Hopkins, the nineteenth century entrepreneur who would go on to baffle generations with his confusingly plural first name, was born in 1795 at a tobacco plantation in what’s now Anne Arundel County.
Given the huge importance that Hopkins had in shaping Baltimore — most notably by founding Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University — you’d think his birthplace would be a place of pilgrimage, or at least a historical site. But the once grand plantation has fallen into disrepair. Its doors and windows are boarded up, and it’s being encroached upon by townhouses and a golf course. The 1,800 acre parcel has dwindled to 13 acres. It is one of the few remaining historic structures in the area, historian Joseph L. Browne told the Sun.
And now, a development company has applied for a permit to demolish the historic White’s Hall; it plans to build an assisted living facility on a nearby parcel. The Hopkins birthplace is designated as a historic site, but that won’t save it from demolition, the Capital Gazette reports.
