In Mount Vernon, Loyola School’s expansion plans trigger preservation concerns

A parochial school’s expansion plans in Mount Vernon are drawing opposition from preservationists, who warn that five 1850s-era rowhouses will be partially demolished if the project moves ahead.

The property owner that wants to expand is the Loyola School, formerly known as the Loyola Early Learning Center, an affiliate of St. Ignatius Church at 740 North Calvert Street.

Loyola School recently became the owner of five three-story rowhouses at 104, 106, 108, 110 and 112 E. Madison Street, all donated by the St. Ignatius Historic Trust.

Drew Rieger, a Mount Vernon resident, said his research shows the buildings are the work of John Rudolph Niernsee and James Crawford Neilson, one of the most highly-regarded architectural partnerships practicing in Baltimore in the 1800s. He points to a definitive book about the firms’ work, ‘Niernsee and Neilson, Architects of Baltimore,’ by Randolph Chalfont and Charles Belfoure. It contains a photo of the six houses with the caption: “Row Houses, Madison Street, Baltimore.”

“These houses are in the Italianate style, which was all the rage for the fashionable set in Baltimore in the 1850s,” he said. “Wealthy Baltimoreans were just beginning to take the Grand Tour and discover Italy, so they were turning away from the predominant Greek Revival style of the previous two decades.”

Caitlin Audette, a preservation planner with CHAP, said she has not been able to verify that the houses were designed by Niernsee and Neilson. She said she found Baltimore Sun reports about Madison Street row houses designed by Niernsee and Neilson, but they had different addresses.

Rieger said some street numbers in Mount Vernon were changed in the 1800s. He noted that the book by Chalfont and Belfoure specifically states on Page 18 that property owner John Gittings in 1851 “commissioned six row houses for him at 104-112 East Madison Street, spacious three-story, three-bay-wide buildings with Italianate cornices.”

Niernsee and Neilson designed the domed Billings Building at the Johns Hopkins Hospital; Clifton Mansion in Clifton Park; Camden Station; Villa Anneslie and Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church and Hackerman House in Mount Vernon, among other local landmarks.

According to a June 18 letter on file with Baltimore’s preservation commission, the Loyola School is currently based at 801 St. Paul Street, just west of the five houses, and directors would like to expand by demolishing the back half of each house on Madison Street and constructing in place of the razed sections one new structure covering all five lots.

“The Loyola Early Learning Center (LELC) has served the community since 2017, building on the long-term commitment of the St. Ignatius Parish to Mt. Vernon,” states the letter, from project architect Jeremy Harrissmith of Banta Campbell Architects in Columbia, Maryland.

“After many successful years, the Loyola Early Learning Center looks to expand the capacity to grades K-4 as The Loyola School, to provide a high-quality education for low-income children in Baltimore City,” Harrissmith said. “In so doing, The Loyola School will bring elementary education back to the Mt. Vernon Community.”

According to a project description and drawings submitted by the architect, the new building would be three stories tall plus a basement and contain several spaces larger than would fit in any of the row houses, including a “multipurpose room,” a “learning commons” and a suite of staff offices.

The salvaged front portions of the five truncated houses would be linked to the new rear structure by an “interconnecting corridor” and would be part of the school. Uses for front rooms in the original buildings would include classrooms, a conference area, a nurse’s office and a teacher’s lounge.

The new and older portions would be consolidated into one property with a main entrance off Calvert Street. The front doors on Madison Street, formerly main entrances to the residences would remain but would not be operable.

A sixth row house, at 102 E. Madison Street, “is not included in the project other than the removal of the existing small contemporary vinyl clad shed addition on the rear,” according to the project description.

The school is seeking concept approval from the city’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, which has authority to review and approve exterior changes because the buildings are in the Mount Vernon historic district.

“The proposed project will provide new life to five structures, bring needed education to the community, and respect the historic character, scale and architectural style of the block,” Harrissmith said in his letter to CHAP.

The plan has been questioned by preservationists who say the houses are excellent examples of row house architecture from the 1850s and that they don’t want to see any part of them torn down.

“Demolition alert! 104-110 Madison in Mount Vernon,” reads a message posted and shared on at least two preservation-oriented sites on Facebook. “We cannot let developers nibble away at our history.”

Rieger compared The Loyola School’s proposal to the Peabody Institute’s construction of a music library behind the fronts of several 19th century houses on East Mount Vernon Place in the 1980s. In that project, designed by Richter Cornbrooks Gribble, Peabody kept the front rooms of the houses as usable spaces but tore down the backs of the houses to make way for a larger structure behind them. It was one of several early versions of “façadism” or “façadectomies” that owners were exploring to save parts of historic buildings when they weren’t prepared to save them in their entirety.

Rieger said he doesn’t believe projects such as Peabody’s are good examples of preservation because the houses aren’t as full of life and activity as when they were residences. He said the corner of Mount Vernon Place and St. Paul Street, where the Peabody house fragments stand, has become less safe because the houses haven’t been occupied during the COVID-19 pandemic, the doors don’t open, and no one is looking out the windows for possible illegal activity.

Beyond that, he said, he wouldn’t want to see Niernsee and Nielson houses altered if there are other options. He pointed to The Wilkes School at Grace & St. Peters, an Episcopal elementary school that Grace & St. Peter’s Church closed on June 30, 2020, as a dormant space in Mount Vernon that’s already set up for elementary-level education.

The vacant Wilkes School is part of the church property at 707 Park Avenue, several blocks from St. Ignatius church. “They should move there if they need more space, rather than demolish historic structures,” he argues.

Rieger also said he’s opposed to tearing off the back service wings of historic houses, because they are important reminders of an area’s history.

“The service wings help tell the story of Mount Vernon – they housed the working class people who cooked for, cleaned and maintained the fancier front houses of the wealthy owners,” he said. “Without the service wings, the houses make no sense historically. This is one of the few blocks in [Mount Vernon] that never had later additions to the original 1850s structure. The back houses are original to the Niernsee and Neilson era.”

In his letter to CHAP, Harrissmith said the Madison Street houses work well for the school’s expansion because the row is just east of the current school on St. Paul Street, directly across Madison Street from St. Ignatius Church and directly across Calvert Street from the Mount Vernon Children’s Park.

“This forms an ideal location to create a small central building footprint while taking advantage of existing historic buildings and local amenities,” he said.

Harrissmith acknowledged in his letter to CHAP that “102-112 E. Madison is a set of six stately brick masonry row homes.” But he noted that the houses have been altered over the years and that the rear portions are in worse condition than the fronts.

“While the arrangement of the primary south and east façades appear to be the original condition,” he said, “most of the windows and doors have been replaced with contemporary materials.” The rear facades, he said, “are secondary and very utilitarian in nature; brick masonry or stucco in a varying level of conditions, with deterioration evident throughout.”

Harrissmith said the design team explored reusing the entire buildings but couldn’t accommodate certain larger spaces needed to meet the programmatic needs of an elementary school, including two stair towers required by the building code and an elevator shaft. By retaining the fronts, he said, the school will be saving the most significant portions of the five houses and preserving the buildings’ historic appearance. They “will maintain the primary, ornamental facades of E. Madison and N. Calvert streets,” he promised.

The addition will be designed to fit in with the rest of the block, he added.

“It is proposed that the new addition be connected on the east façade with a translucent type material, creating a clear separation from the historic structure,” he said. “The remainder of the addition will be shorter in height than the building immediately to the north and be detailed in a way that is complementary to the surrounding architecture. Materials and openings, at a human scale, will serve to blend, but not replicate, a contemporary structure with the adjacent architecture. Proposed mechanical equipment, located on the roof, will be screened from street view by location to the northwest section of the roof.”

Audette, the preservation planner with CHAP, said the commission was prepared to review the proposal at its meeting on August 10 but the applicant this week asked to withdraw the item from the August agenda. When it does come up for review, she said, the proposal will be treated as an addition rather than a demolition. She said CHAP took a similar approach when it reviewed a developer’s plans to construct an eight-story office building east of the former Grand Central nightclub at 1001 North Charles Street.