The Bard Building, the last remnant of a two-building downtown Baltimore City Community College campus and once a noted architectural feature of the city’s streetscape, will be torn down “to allow for future redevelopment of the property,” under a plan approved on Wednesday by Maryland’s Board of Public Works.
The spending board granted a request to spend $4.2 million so the Berg Corporation can raze the vacant building at 600 East Lombard Street and landscape the property for use as a green space while college leaders come up with a new vision for the property.
The five-story building opened in 1976 as part of a satellite campus for the community college, whose main campus is at 2901 Liberty Heights Avenue. A smaller companion building, the two-story William V. Lockwood building, opened in 1976 and was razed in the 1990s. It has been replaced by a 12-story office, retail and garage development fronting on Pratt Street.
Named after the college’s founder and first president, Harry Bard, the 172,642-square-foot Bard Building contained classrooms, a library, a fashion design studio, student lounge and faculty offices. It has been closed since 2009 and fenced off to keep intruders out.
The community college, which owns the 1.1-acre site, has explored the idea of maintaining a downtown presence, possibly by building a new mixed-use structure on Market Place in partnership with a private developer, but a replacement project has not materialized.
In 2012, the land was considered as a possible site for the Exelon building, now called the Constellation Building, but the utility giant instead moved to the first high-rise constructed at Harbor Point, the former Allied Signal property.
In 2020, then-Governor Larry Hogan supported a plan that called for the building to be razed and replaced with a parking lot. But Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson of Baltimore lobbied for the land to become a green space instead, and plans were changed.
Future redevelopment
A funding request prepared for Tuesday’s Board of Public Works agenda said the Bard Building is being demolished “to allow for future redevelopment of the property” but did not provide specifics about a time frame or replacement structure.
Officials say the property remains a site for future development but the college has no detailed plans other than making it a green space. They say the college has begun community outreach as part of a long-range planning process and that demolishing the building now will eliminate an eyesore and a potential safety hazard, while making it easier for eventual redevelopment later.
On January 5, 2020, the building was the site of a two-alarm fire that took hours to extinguish. According to the city’s fire department, five people were inside the building at the time of the fire and were escorted out.
During the Board of Public Works meeting on Wednesday, Gov. Wes Moore said he looks forward to seeing a new vision for the property.
In the 14 years since the community college ceased operations there, “this building has fallen into significant disrepair,” Moore said. “So today this board is taking a critical step to be able to finally demolish the vacant building” and work with college president Debra McCurdy to think about “the future of that site and what it’s going to mean not just for [the college] but also what it’s going to mean for Baltimore as a whole.”
As planning for the post-demolition use of this property progresses, Moore said his administration will work with all stakeholders to advance the community college’s “mission of providing quality, affordable and accessible education for generations to come. “
“So we’re very excited to see what’s in store for this property, the role that it’s going to play in downtown Baltimore, and to continue the dialogue and the engagement for many, many years to come,” the governor said.
“It’s very clear that the building needs to be demolished,” McCurdy said at the meeting. “We just can’t be more thrilled to move forward and then to begin to introduce to this community…the larger vision of what could happen in the old Bard site.”
“I’m really excited about reimagining it,” said State Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who along with the state treasurer as a member of the public works board.
Rising star from the West Coast
Both the Bard and Lockwood buildings were designed by California-based architect Anthony Lumsden, former director of design for Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall, also known as DMJM.
Part of the architectural and engineering team that worked on Baltimore’s 14-mile subway system, DMJM had opened a Baltimore office in 1973 and was looking to do more work on the East Coast.
Lumsden was a rising star in the profession. Born in England, raised and educated in Australia, Lumsden had moved to America in his 20s and became known for his sculptural and often “futuristic” designs, which were sometimes used as sets for films and TV shows. His Sepulveda Water Reclamation Plant in California doubled as the home of the Starfleet Academy in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In 1976, Lumsden was named one of the ‘LA12,’ a group of 12 distinguished architects based in California, along with Pelli; Frank Gehry; John Lautner and Craig Elwood. In 1979, the New York’s Museum of Modern Art selected him as one of six internationally-recognized architects to participate in an exhibit there, along with Michael Graves; Robert A. M. Stern; James Wines and others.
BCCC hired Lumsden and DMJM at a time when public officials and private developers were looking for big-name Modernist architects from out-of-town to design buildings around Baltimore’s revitalized waterfront.
Tiles falling off
The Bard building wasn’t as well received as some of the other structures taking shape around the harbor. One adjective frequently used to describe it was “hulking.” Phoebe Stanton, the architecture critic for The Baltimore Sun when it opened, gave it a scathing review.
One criticism of the Bard Building was that its main entrance off Market Place was dark and foreboding, with a steep flight of stairs that posed a barrier to people in wheelchairs. The exterior was clad in red tiles that had not been used before locally. They were Lumsdens’ response to the traditional red brick used on nearby structures such as the Candler Building and the Wholesale Fish Market, now the Port Discovery children’s museum.
The building did not weather well. While its ceramic tiles may have been suitable for the climate of Southern California, in Baltimore they began cracking and falling off the side of the building, causing leaks inside. Engineers brought in to assess the situation said Lumsden and his associates didn’t take into account the freeze-thaw cycles common with East Coast winters.
The tiles expanded and contracted at a different rate than the concrete structure to which they were attached, and that caused them to break off. At one point state planners tried reskinning the top floors with a champagne-colored material that gave the building a two-tone look, as if it were wearing a helmet.
DMJM was reorganized in 2000, and its architecture offices became part of the large AECOM design network. Lumsden retired in the 1990s and died of pancreatic cancer in 2011 at the age of 83. The Bard and Lockwood buildings were his only two buildings in Baltimore.
‘Large open lawn’
Berg was one of two bidders that responded to a request for proposals issued in March by the state’s Department of General Services, on behalf of the college. Bids were opened in April. Berg offered 5 percent participation from minority and women-owned enterprises. The second bid, from MacKenzie Contracting Company, was for $6.45 million and offered no participation from minority- and women-owned enterprises.
According to the plan approved by the Board of Public Works, once the building is down, the site will be re-graded as a “large open lawn” with shade trees along Lombard and Water streets and Market Place. Existing sidewalks will be restored and lighting will be provided for public safety.
Berg’s plan also includes abating hazardous materials before demolition; protecting the adjacent Holocaust Memorial while work is underway, and disposing of or recycling “all remaining debris and scrap materials.” The project is expected to take nearly a year to complete.
