It was just about 100 years ago that carpenters, roofers and plumbers resumed construction of Oakenshawe's weathered-brick homes and gray slate roofs after a hiatus during World War I.
Dennis J. Wilson, a retired University of Maryland molecular biologist, shows the how what was once a leafy summer estate became a brick-and-mortar urban neighborhood in his well-researched “Baltimore’s Historic Oakenshawe: From Colonial Land Grant to Streetcar Suburb,” which is newly published.
Old maps show the property as Okenshaw, with or without a final “e.”
One family, beginning with William Wilson, born in Limerick, Ireland, and his children and their children, once owned a string of mansions and surrounding gardens and forests that would extend from Charles Village to Stevenson Lane in Towson. The Wilson family lent names to numerous neighborhoods — places such as Anneslie, Stoneleigh, the Orchards and Kernewood. Among their holdings was Oakenshawe, an early 19th-century frame home that stood a block north of Union Memorial Hospital.
William Wilson was an early Baltimore settler who made a fortune in shipping. While he lived on Baltimore Street, his descendants had winter homes on streets like Charles or Park Avenue, but in the summer, they took off to their country retreats. This book, in considerable detail, unravels a confusing story — of how one family once owned huge tracts of North Baltimore, with individual members each being the master or mistress of a handsome 100-acre estate.
The value of the Wilsons’ Baltimore landholdings increased as the city grew and electrically powered streetcars could get you to a downtown job quickly. It’s no coincidence that the No. 29 line along St. Paul Street and University Parkway opened in 1908 and by 1916 the steam shovels were grading the Oakenshawe property for more than 350 houses on Calvert Street, University Parkway, Guilford and Homewood terraces, University, Oakenshaw and Birkwood places. A pair of architect brothers named Flournoy created a terrace design with nice grace notes of architectural detailing that made the Oakenshawe homes less matter-of-fact than the rowhouses being sold by competitors.
If the Wilsons were adept at property acquisition, the Mueller Construction Co. was a master at creating a Baltimore rowhouse neighborhood. The family patriarch, Matthias Mueller, a native of Bavaria in southern Germany, had 10 children, and his children built much of Southeast Baltimore’s Brewer’s Hill
For Oakenshawe, which borders the pricier Guilford neighborhood, the Muellers did it all. They owned a building supply business near Patterson Park and made the doors and windows that went into their homes. They sold buyers a nice new residence and held — or sold — the ground rents. The Muellers were well connected to savings and loan associations for the mortgages.
The firm pitched sales toward upper-middle-class residents — lawyers and Johns Hopkins University professors. University Place was once known informally as Lawyers Row. When new, the homes sold for $5,000 to $7,000.
The woodwork is exceptional and the stairways are stunning,” said Dennis Wilson. “The disappointing thing is a tiny kitchen in a house of five bedrooms and two bathrooms.”
Despite a small kitchen, 1917 newspaper ads noted, “The kitchen has a generous-sized white enameled one-piece sink and drain board, a white enamel gas range, a white enameled kitchen cabinet and a pantry and broom closet.”
The book also details the histories of adjoining areas — the Victorian cottages along Barclay Street and Venable Avenue, which are older than the World War I-era Mueller-built homes. There are a few apartment houses dotted along University Parkway. Their story is told too — like one in court records about William Y. Goldsborough. who moved in before the Temple Court apartment was completed and then sued the owner over a non-operating furnace.
Other local Oakenshawe builders, including James Keelty, who developed a block along University Parkway, would go on to construct another Oakenshawe-like community. About eight years after the final Oakenshawe home was sold, his Rodgers Forge opened.