Maybe it’s because when the pandemic hit there was a rush to stock up on canned foods, or maybe it’s because people have gotten into pickling and preserving. Whatever the reason, at area restaurants, from Dylan’s Oyster Cellar to Annapolis’s Sailor Oyster Bar, tin is in.

So why is tin fish making a splash on local menus?

“I equate tin fish to a lot of other preservation methods that have become more a part of what people have learned to love,” says Ben Lefenfeld, chef-owner of La Cuchara, which has a section of its menu devoted to “conservas” (preserved food). “It’s one of those ubiquitous things that started out of necessity but has really grown into a culture all its own.”

This centuries-old way of preserving fish has been around for eons in Portugal, Spain, and South America, where it’s part of the daily diet. Now, it’s finally catching on in Baltimore.

“It’s an opportunity to try different types of seafood you might never have been exposed to,” says Lefenfeld, “and a great way to taste something that was prepared at the prime of the season.”

Enrique Pallares, co-owner of The Wine Collective, enjoys educating his guests about the specialty seafood he grew up eating in his native Ecuador.

“When people ask me about tin fish, I tell them to think of tin fish less in the context of Chicken of the Sea and more in the context of caviar—both are preserved and come in a tin or a jar,” he says of the wine bar’s fare, including calamari in ragout and sardines with lemon and olive oil. “In Europe and South America, it’s just part of the way of life to have an aperitivo and sit and have your glass of vermouth, while you accompany it with olives, tin fish, or charcuterie. In America, people are catching on to the idea of eating smaller bites over a longer period rather than eating giant entrees.”

Given that the property that once housed The Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, has been vacant for 20 years, it’s fair to assert that there are those in the city with limited knowledge as to just who he was. Even those overseeing a new project to turn the house into a museum—as well as an office space for the Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA)—acknowledge that there is a bit of forgotten history to the writer and journalist beloved by academics and scholars alike.

“As we get further in time, Mencken and his work is less and less well known,” says Jackson Gilman-Forlini, a historic preservation officer for the Baltimore City Department of General Services. “And what’s important is we have a museum that is relevant for contemporary people.”

Though widely recognized as a deeply talented writer of novels like The American Language and autobiography Happy Days, as well as a long-time columnist for the The Baltimore Sun and the The Evening Sun, Mencken is a controversial figure for his views that have often been called racist, misogynistic, and Anti-Semitic. Excerpts from his diary published by the Baltimore Evening Sun in the late ’80s revealed hateful language toward minorities, and there is much debate on his legacy and his place in history.

With this in mind, the museum that will occupy the first floor and half of the second floor of the H.L. Mencken House on Union Square in Southwest Baltimore will showcase his personal belongings and life inside the place he called home for most of his life, but it will also be a thoughtful consideration of how his ideas fit within a modern landscape.

To achieve this, the BNHA is partnering with the Society to Preserve the Legacy of H.L. Mencken—a local organization which holds the writer in high esteem—to find a consultant who will mediate and curate an all-encompassing experience and ensure that all sides of Mencken’s story are told.

“We want to use the space to start a dialogue,” says BNHA’s executive director Shauntee Daniels. “We want to shine a light on who he was, and show how people thought at that time.”

Though the house has been abandoned for an extended period of time, Gilman-Forlini says it is in decent shape compared to other preservation projects—thanks to a loyal group of neighbors who have tended to it. Interestingly, the house has only changed hands two times in its 140- year existence (after Mencken, it was taken over by the University of Maryland and later by the city). As such, its original architecture largely remains intact, serving as a time capsule for the tastes of that time.

“It’s a very elegant home,” Gilman-Forlini says. “It also is representative of how people in the city lived at that time and up to the present. We want to tell that story and preserve that.”

It’s also important to note that all preservation is being done through a private bequeathment. No taxpayer dollars were used in the project, which organizers are hopeful can be fully operational by next year, with the potential for the house itself to open to the public later this year. Baltimore has no shortage of historical homes—the Poe House and the Carroll Mansion are a few examples. The plan is for the H.L. Mencken house to also serve as the main office for the BNHA, where it can operate and work on other preservation initiatives throughout the city.

“We need to bring attention to neighborhoods that are long forgotten,” Daniels says. “It’s unreasonable to leave the house derelict. And for the Heritage Area, it’s a great opportunity to be in a historic property and to make sure it remains open to the public.”

A placard hangs in the foyer of the historic Arch Social Club that reads: “We are strong, moral men who believe in service to our community, preservation of our culture, friendship, and brotherly love.” Founded in 1905 by African-American professionals Raymond Coates, Samuel Barney, and Jeremiah S. Hill, the club is one of the oldest b men’s social clubs in the U.S., and one of the few remaining black-owned organizations to have operated while Pennsylvania Avenue was still nationally recognized as a hub for arts, culture, and entrepreneurship.

The club—which continues to serve as a cornerstone of culture, civics, and commerce for African-American communities in Baltimore City—recently won a $118,000 financial award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to restore parts of the building back to its original grandeur.

Kaleb Tshamba, chairman of the Board of Trustees, gave me a tour of the club, which he hopes the city will support more in the future. “We’ve always been a part of the community, never left the community,” Tshamba said. “That’s why during the Uprising, we stayed open.”

The foyer also features a small exhibit of archival prints and articles about historic achievements made by black Baltimoreans. “They were doctors, lawyers, organizers, activists, Arabbers, carpenters—we had all of them,” Tshamba shared about club membership. “A lot of [us] were in the military,” he points to several pictures of young servicemen in their uniforms. “That’s me there!” he beams at a handsome image of himself in his early 20s. “We are warriors.”

Many of the portraits displayed are of founders and early members of the club who were prominent leaders in Baltimore City. Well known figures include Harry Syth Cummings, Baltimore’s first black City Councilman who was instrumental in getting segregated African-American K-12 schools renamed after prominent figures, and raising awareness about the importance of black voters. Then there was A. Philip Randolph, a civil rights activist, organizer of the March on Washington Movement, and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

Of course, Paul Coates, founder of the Black Classic Press publishing company and father of scholar Ta-Nehisi Coates, is among the many important figures recognized. “To be a member of our club you could be a Democrat, Republican, atheist, Black Nationalist, we didn’t discriminate,” Tshamba continues, “As long as you were about community building, uplifting our community, that is what we all had in common.” That the 113-year-old institution survived Jim Crow, redlining, the Baltimore riot of 1968, or contemporary gentrification, is nothing short of miraculous.

Tshamba points to a portrait of John Kier, another early member of the club, who was the conductor of the big band, the Melody Boys. “Cab Calloway played with the Melody Boys before he went to New York and became famous,” he notes. We walk through the Raymond Coates Lounge and enter the Billie Holiday Room, a small ballroom with tables, seating and a large stage, a larger ballroom on the second floor is named for Calloway.

“Bands would be playing right here,” Tshamba points towards the stage in the Billie Holiday Room where legends like Holiday, Calloway, and Duke Ellington once performed. “Every time Duke Ellington would come to town, they would come here to play. All the black entertainers from all over the United States came here to Baltimore.” he continued. “All the black movie stars came here to Baltimore [and] to the Royal Theater. All of that is torn down now. It should have never been torn down.”

There is an old West African Proverb that notes, paraphrasing here, when an old man dies, a library burns to the ground. The Arch Social Club is one of the last standing archives dedicated to the preservation of critical local histories about early affluent African Americans. The club is part of an on-going initiative, led by “Lady” Brion Gill, cultural curator for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), to reestablish an African-American Arts and Entertainment District on Pennsylvania Avenue. “To lift up a nation,” Tshamba said, “you have to lift up your people.”

In 92 square miles, Baltimore has more than 250 distinct neighborhoods, each incorporating its own unique architecture, characters, and cultures into our city’s sense of self. “We really are a neighborhood-based city,” says Johns Hopkins, director of Baltimore Heritage, citing Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods in a metropolis more than twice our size. “Having these dense, historic, rowhouse neighborhoods has helped create a sense of community.”

But what if these close-knit communities also have some intrinsic flaws? “There are really good things about having tight-knit neighborhoods,” says Hopkins, such as inciting enough civic pride in local residents to save Fells Point from death by a trifecta of highways, “but there can be some downsides, too.”

In the early 1800s, Baltimore’s neighborhoods were far more fluid—diverse in race, ethnicity, and even economic status, largely due to density in a smaller city. Ethnic concentrations did exist, but many wouldn’t take root until transportation advances such as streetcars allowed them to segregate.

By the mid-20th century, Baltimoreans “were definitely sticking to their own neighborhoods,” says University of Baltimore historian Betsy Nix, “not really mixing with people who weren’t their nationality, religion, or race,” which was further entrenched, of course, by the racist practices of redlining and blockbusting in the previous decades.

Some neighborhoods are now reckoning with this history head-on, like Bolton Hill—whose community association renamed itself in April to both acknowledge its exclusionary past and embrace its surrounding diversity—and Central West Baltimore—where for the past decade, the No Boundaries Coalition has been working to unify across race, class, and neighborhood. But “the legacy is still there today,” says Hopkins, “in how [some] neighborhoods look, in their demographic composition, and how much investment they have been able to attract over the last 50 or 60 years.”

“We’re no longer looking at just the four walls of the community we’re in,” says Thibault Manekin of Seawall Development, who is hoping to connect the company’s redevelopment success in Remington across I-83 to Reservoir Hill. “How can we open up our arms to the communities around us that haven’t had as much investment? How do we bring them in, so they feel that same sense of pride and ownership? Real estate, maybe more than anything on the planet, has the ability to unite.”

In other words, our neighborhoods should always remain a source of pride. But not too much pride. There’s a big city out there worth connecting with.

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IN THE DETAILS
Long live our architectural dream team.

FORMSTONE

Once fashionable, this déclassé faux fieldstone remains an iconic symbol of blue-collar Baltimore, with the “polyester of brick,” as Waters once put it, still gracing façades like a badge of honor.

MARBLE STEPS

Born in a Baltimore County quarry in the 1800s, marble stoops long elicited a deep sense of pride, with residents making a ritual out of hand-scrubbing their steps on Saturday mornings.

PAINTED SCREENS

Pioneered here in the 1910s, this once-prolific urban folk art has become harder to come by, but keep your eyes peeled: it can still be found around Highlandtown, Little Italy, and Fells Point.

One of the bricks used in the early 1800s to build Ami Howard’s house has a dog’s paw print on it.

Just how Fido’s signature got there is part of the building’s bloodline, telling, in this case, the story of early 19th-century Redemptionist indentured servants, brought from the British Isles, who made bricks on site and laid them in the sun to dry. And before that brick could dry, Fido apparently made his mark.

It was a handy clue for Howard, but for an owner of an older home who wants to know the full history of the place, discovering the property’s pedigree is a bit more complicated than buying a home DNA kit and sending a swab to be analyzed. There are usually plenty of telltale signs, however, that can reveal much about not only its architecture, but also about the people who built it, those who lived there before, and what life in the home was like over generations.

When Howard went to compile the house’s history, she was fortunate: She had plenty of oral history and papers scattered about the house, including ledgers detailing a previous owner’s elaborate purchases. Harford County historian Christopher Weeks also helped by providing more research and expertise, particularly on historic construction details. But there was more homework to do.

Her home, Olney Farm, sits on 135 acres in Harford County and has been in her husband’s family since 1855. It was built about 1810 for a Quaker family. They sold it to a family from Philadelphia to use as a summer home. And when that owner died, his widow sold it to the Howards (née Shrivers).

“They bought it as an investment after the Civil War,” Howard explains. “Then the son of the buyer, J. Alexis Shriver, either was deeded the house or bought it from his father. He moved in, had a family, and undertook many projects on the farm. He was also a unique salvager.”

“Unique” is an overused word, but it certainly applies in the case of the Shriver son: He collected marble fireplaces, ornate bookcases, and even an entire mirrored and paneled room from a home on Thames Street. He had a vault (most likely a Prohibition-era closet) hidden behind a secret bookcase in his bedroom. And, most famously, he hauled four massive columns from a house in Mt. Vernon by train and ox cart and erected them at the back of the house.

And then there are those clues: It’s apparent from the different brick patterns on the building’s exterior, for example, that the parlor was a later addition. That matches with family lore that the addition was built about 1850 to host a wedding.

“The internet, and this was years ago, really helped a lot,” says Howard. “Because I had a lot of information to start with, I was able to go to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and look up references. But you can do a search for just ‘old house’ and you’d be amazed what resources come up.”

Where to begin doing the same sort of detective work on your own home? Eli Pousson, director of preservation and outreach at the nonprofit historical group Baltimore Heritage, offers a few pointers.

“We live in a golden era of historical research, whether you’re doing a family genealogy using DNA testing or you’re researching your neighborhood,” says Pousson. “The mass digitization of records has placed many resources you need for free online.”

Like Howard’s home, with its readily apparent addition, researching a home can start with an examination of the building itself. What is its architectural style? Can you see the outline of an old structure that was once attached? Is there evidence that windows have been bricked in? What materials are used? If you break through a wall and find newspaper used for insulation, what’s the date on them?

“There’s history in the structure itself,” says historian and author Jean Russo, PhD, who holds workshops on home research for the nonprofit Historic Annapolis. “You can go to the public records and track that information and relate it to the families who lived there.”

Researching architectural history isn’t a guarantee that anything interesting will turn up, though. Julie Saylor, a library associate with the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, researched her own home in Moravia-Walther, which was built around 1904.

“One fellow had lived in the house for a very long time and, using the library’s criss-cross directories, I found a symbol that is used to indicate the owner is low-income,” she says. “Which didn’t shock me, because there was a lot in the house that looked to have not been maintained for a long time.” Beyond that, though, her hopes of uncovering anything juicy were dashed.

The experts will tell you that uncovering home history is a process and history isn’t always stuff to be proud about. Old newspapers may reveal society-page stories of weddings hosted in a home—or violent deaths. Homes tell the stories of history, good and bad, including things like neighborhood segregation and fires.

“Home research is a winding road full of wrong turns, cul-de-sacs, and dead ends,” says Pousson. “I recommend people approach it less with the idea that they’re going to find certain specific facts and more with the idea that this is something they’re going to dip into and see what can be learned.”

Ami Howard made her own mark on her home’s history when she enclosed an existing Victorian folly—an ornamental structure—and added a patio to create her own secret garden. Generations from now, some future owner of the property may be able to figure out when that was done and by whom. But, ironically, she admits that if she were to build her own house, it would be nothing like the gracious old home she’s in now. She’d prefer something very modern and European, with lots of glass and very little clutter.

“But I love this house because of the history,” she explains. “I wonder about them, how things looked over the history, how they lived. Knowing the history makes it more of a home.”

The best place to start record-searching is the home’s deed. The nonprofit Baltimore Heritage has an extensive tutorial online that explains how to trace the history of the title using the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation real property search. Those results provide a book number and a page number (sometimes known as a “liber” and “folio”) that can be searched in the open land records.

Deeds provide information such as the dates the property changed hands and surveyors’ “metes and bounds” descriptions. If you’re lucky, it will also have the name of the previous owner and the book and page number of their deed that will allow you to hop back through time.

“If you have owners’ names, you can go to the census records and see what you can find out about them,” says Jean Russo, PhD, who leads workshops on home research for the nonprofit Historic Annapolis.

In Annapolis and Baltimore City, in addition to census records, there are city directories that often provide information by address. Julie Saylor, a library associate with the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, says the library has “criss-cross” directories back to the 1930s and city directories back to the 1790s.

And if you have the surnames of previous owners, The Baltimore Sun archives at the Pratt can also be useful.

“You can often find newsworthy events associated with the house by using The Baltimore Sun index,” says Saylor. “Sun articles are a very good source of information and could cover all sorts of interesting information, such as crimes associated with the house, classified ads for the sale or rent of the house, deaths associated with it, and so on.”

Maps, too, can help fill in some blanks, says Eli Pousson, director of preservation and outreach at Baltimore Heritage. “You learn different things from different sources,” he says. “Deeds tell you the names of who owned a property and details like when it changed hands, but it won’t tell you if your house was a boarding house or who the household members were beyond Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

The U.S. Geological Survey has maps back to 1884, and both E. Sachse Bird’s Eye View of The City of Baltimore (1869) and Bromley Atlases for Baltimore City and County (covering the 1880s through 1915) are available through the Pratt.

A treasure trove of information can also often be found in an unlikely place: the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. From 1879 to about 1960, the map company, which allowed insurance firms to use their products, issued maps that were a record of everything in the city, particularly anything that could start a fire. The maps often note if a rowhouse had a business on the first floor, such as a blacksmith or shoemaker, and a residence above.

When it comes to being your own home’s genealogist, you just need to know where to look.