Many fundraising parties are held in certain venues just because it works for the party. In the case of Baltimore Heritage's 50th Anniversary Gala, the party's location at the Engineers Club was significant.

"We were founded in part in an effort to save this mansion. There was really the one place to have our anniversary, and this is it," explained Baltimore Heritage executive director Johns Hopkins, who was accompanied by his wife, Mary Cox, Communities Committee executive director.

Hopkins noted that among the 400 people attending, there were three founding members: Bo Kelly, Porter Hopkins CQ and Richard Gatchell.

"Celebrating 50 years of anything is always a good idea," noted Will Backstrom, the board president.

Certainly the usefulness of a preserved building was confirmed, as almost every room in the building was put to good use. There were bars in some, food stations or dining tables in others, and a silent auction set up in the atrium, where lots of architectural history buffs mingled, including Tom McCracken, McCracken Consulting; Abby Lattes, Johns Hopkins Engineering marketing director; Sandye Manekin Sirota, former antiques dealer/artist; Dick Horne, Baltimore-based artist; Shauntee Daniels, Baltimore National Heritage Area education outreach administrator; Lisa Crawley, Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History resource center manager; and Bill Struever, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse president/CEO.

If you needed any further confirmation that this was an organization that had made its mark on Baltimore's cityscape, all you needed to do was scan the premises. There were Patrick Turner, Turner Development Group president, and wife/artist Jeanine TurnerCQ checking out the silent auction in one area, while a group of local architects — Walter Schamu, AMG Architects president; George Holback, Cho Benn Holback principal; and Tom Liebel, Marks, Thomas Architects principal —huddled in another.