Baltimore City College - History

History

The creation of an alien high school "in which the higher branches of English and classical literature only should be taught" was authorized unanimously by the City Council of Baltimore, Maryland, on March 7, 1839. Accordingly, a building on what was then Courtland Street (now Preston Gardens at St. Paul Place) was acquired to serve as the new high school. The school opened its doors on October 20, 1839, with 46 students and one teacher, Nathan C. Brooks. The school was housed in three different locations in its first three years of existence before returning to the original building on Courtland Street. Finally, in 1843 the city council allocated $23,000 to acquire the Assembly Rooms at the northwestern corner of Fayette and Holliday Streets for the school. In 1850, the city council granted the board of school commissioners the right to confer graduates of the school with certificates, and the following year the school held its first commencement ceremony.

In 1865, in accordance with a recommendation from the Board of Commissioners of the Baltimore City public schools, the school began offering a five-year track, as part of a process aimed at elevating the school to the status of a college so that it could grant its graduates baccalaureate degrees. The following year on October 9, 1866, as another part of this process, the school was renamed "The Baltimore City College" (BCC) by act of the city council. The city council failed to take any further action, and although the school changed nominally, it was never granted the power to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees.

The building on Fayette and Holliday Streets had been in a state of decline for two decades. It was not until 1873, when a fire spread from the Holliday Street Theater to the "Assembly Rooms", that the city council finally decided to expend the resources to erect a building for City College. A lot was acquired on Howard Street opposite Centre Street and the city council allocated $150,000 for the construction of the new building. The new English Gothic revival-styled building was dedicated on February 1, 1875, and the school moved in the following week.

The Tudor Gothic building which housed the school lasted until 1892, when it was undermined by the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tunnel from Camden Station to Mount Royal Station and collapsed. In 1895, a new structure, designed by the architects Baldwin and Pennington, was erected on the site. This new building quickly became overcrowded and an annex was established on 26th Street. The addition did not help with the increase in school-aged youth beginning to attend City College by World War I. During the 1920s, alumni began a campaign to provide the school with a more suitable building, and in 1926 ground was broken for a massive Collegiate Gothic stone castle at 33rd Street and The Alameda. This new structure cost almost $3 million.

The school began admitting African American students following the landmark ruling Brown v. Board of Education. In September 1954, 10 African-American students entered City College. The administration also sent two African American men, Eugene Parker and Pierre Davis, to teach at the school in 1956. Parker taught at City College for 30 years and Davis, after teaching for one year, returned as the school's first black principal in 1971.

In 1978, at the urging of concerned alumni, City College underwent its first major capital renovations. When the campus reopened, the high school welcomed women for the first time. The all-male tradition did not end easily; alumni had argued for the uniqueness of a single-sex educational system and convinced the task force studying the issue to vote 11–6 in favor of keeping the all-male tradition. The Board of School Commissioners, in a reversal, voted to admit women citing constitutional concerns.