A Surprising Piece of Chicago Preserved in Baltimore

Countless visitors to the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland pass through a pair of monumental wrought iron gates coming and going each day. Somewhat hidden from view when the gates are open during the day they present a beautiful appearance when closed.

These gates are an historic remnant of the once palatial Grand Central Station of the B&O Railroad in Chicago, Illinois. Salvaged from scrap when the great station was demolished in 1971, they were re-configured and installed at the Museum in 1985 during the last renovation of the Museum’s campus by the Chessie System Railroads under Hays T. Watkins, one of the museum’s most important benefactors.

The Northwest corner of the B&O Railroad's Grand Central Station in Chicago

Grand Central Station, located in downtown Chicago, Illinois was constructed in 1890 and ceased operations in 1969. It was located at 201 W. Harrison Street in the south-western part of the Chicago Loop, the block bounded by Harrison Street, Wells Street, Polk Street and the Chicago River. Grand Central Station was designed by architect Solon Spencer Beman for the Wisconsin Central Railway, and was completed by the Chicago and Northern Pacific Railroad.

Grand Central Station was eventually purchased by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which used the station as the Chicago terminus for its passenger rail service, including its glamorous Capitol Limited to Washington, D.C. Major tenant railroads included the Soo Line Railroad, successor to the Wisconsin Central, the Chicago Great Western Railway, and the Pere Marquette Railway.

The station was executed in the Norman Castellated architectural style by architect Solon S. Beman, who had gained notoriety as the designer of the Pullman company neighborhood. Constructed of brick, brownstone and granite, it was 228 feet wide and 482 feet long. Imposing arches, crenellations, a spacious arched carriage-court and a multitude of towers dominated the walls. Its most famous feature, however, was an impressive 247-foot tower at the northeast corner of the property. The interior of the Grand Central Station was decorated as extravagantly as the exterior. The waiting room had marble floors, Corinthian-style columns, stained-glass windows and a marble fireplace, and a restaurant. The station also had a 100-room hotel, but accommodations ended late in 1901.

Grand Central Station's monumental arched train shed.

Not as famous as the clocktower but equally architecturally unique was Grand Central Station's self-supporting glass and steel train shed, 555 feet long, 156 feet wide and 78 feet tall, among the largest in the world at the time it was constructed. The trainshed, considered an architectural gem and a marvel of engineering long after it was built, housed six tracks and had platforms long enough to accommodate fifteen-car passenger trains. When it was finally completed, the station had cost its railroad owners one million dollars to build.

Original decorative wrought iron gates in the Grand Central train shed

At the track terminus inside the great train shed where the shed met the head house of the station were the great wrought iron gates. Millions of passengers passed through these gates to board their trains just as visitors do today at the Museum.

When installed at the Museum, the gates were reconfigured combining two gates, one on top of the other, to achieve the necessary height for the Museum entrance. There is no record of who salvaged these great wonders of iron mongering, or whose idea it was to bring them to Baltimore for installation at the Museum. You will know, next time you visit, that you are passing through a remarkable piece of B&O history transformed and transported from Chicago to Baltimore.

Courtney B. Wilson, Executive Director

Who came through.....

Former General Robert E. Lee as he appeared as President of Washington College in 1869

On two occasions, following the Civil War the Ellicott City Station played host to former General Robert E. Lee. During his post-war tenure as President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, Lee saw a critical need for a railroad connection to Lexington. When a visitor to Lexington once asked Lee about the best route to travel out of the town Lee replied: “It makes but little difference, for whichever route you select, you will wish you had taken the other.”

He and a delegation from Virginia came to Baltimore on April 20, 1869 to visit with John Work Garrett, president of the B&O and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore to seek support for a rail connection. Three years prior, the B&O had summoned Col. James Randolph to survey possible routes down the Shenandoah Valley.

Following several meetings and affairs in Baltimore Lee took an afternoon train on April 28, 1869 from Camden Station to Ellicott City Station to visit relatives. From the station he took a carriage out the Frederick turnpike west of town to see Mrs. Samuel George or “Ella” as he called her. Ella was the daughter of Lee’s first cousin Charles Henry Carter. The next morning he was ushered back into Ellicott City, up Maryland Avenue on the heights above the railroad to the estate known as “Linwood” the home of Major Washington Peter. Major Peter was the first cousin of General Lee’s wife Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee.

"Linwood" the estate of Major Washington Peter as it appears today. The former mansion is now the Linwood Children's Center

Linwood, which still stands, was an imposing stone mansion originally built approximately 1835 and enlarged several times. Lee spent the morning with Major Peter before going down the hill to Ellicott City Station for the mid-day Baltimore-bound train.

Lee would return to “Linwood” about three and a half months prior to his death. On June 30, 1870 Lee arrived in Baltimore alone to consult a leading physician Dr. Thomas Hepburn Buckler concerning his failing health. Following various medical examinations he left from Camden Station on July 4, 1870 for Ellicott City Station to stay with his wife’s cousin Washington Peter. This time he lingered quietly in the countryside at the beautiful estate and on the morning of July 14^th he took the early train from Ellicott City to Baltimore and then South to Lexington as General Robert E. Lee would cross the Potomac River for the last time. Lee passed away on October 12, 1870.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

"I heard that lonesome whistle..."

American music icon Johnny Cash was no stranger railroading or to the B&O Railroad Museum. Throughout his career the lyrics of his country and rockabilly songs wove trains, railroads and railroad workers in and out of his American ballads. Album covers sported names like All Aboard the Blue Train and Ride This Train and many of the songs recorded therein were themed around the railroad. Familiar lyrics to Wreck of the Old ’97, Rock Island Line, Train of Love, and Hey Porter! will live in American musicology forever. His back up band “Tennessee Three” that accompanied him for more than 40 years even developed a unique “chicka-boom” freight train sound inextricably linked to Cash’s music.

Cash rode on the B&O many times in his career going from engagement to engagement. In 1962 while on an East Coast concert tour, Cash visited the Museum, then called the “B&O Transportation Museum.” In 1986, officers of the Chessie System (about to become CSX) invited Cash to join the Museum’s replica locomotive “Tom Thumb” at SteamExpo 1986 in Vancouver British Columbia. The Vancouver expo featured 21 historic early steam locomotives and one crane all under live steam for the event held in May and June of 1986.

Johnny Cash poses in front of the replica steam locomotives "Best Friend of Charleston and the B&O's Museum's "Tom Thumb."

As the B&O Railroad Museum prepared to celebrate the 175^th anniversary of American railroading 2003-2004, the Smithsonian’s senior curator of transportation Bill Withuhn, working closely with Museum officials successfully engaged Johnny Cash to be the spokesperson for the crown jewel of the celebration The Fair of the Iron Horse 175.

Publicity photograph of Johnny Cash authorized for use by the B&O Railroad Museum for the celebration of the 175th anniversary of American railroading 2002-2003.

In that role and with his health rapidly deteriorating Cash wrote several letters on behalf of the museum and the celebration and had agreed to appear at the Fair scheduled for the summer of 2004. The Fair of the Iron Horse 175 and the remainder of the celebration was cancelled due to the tragic collapse of the Museum’s roundhouse roof during the President’s Day snowstorm February 16-17, 2003.

Johnny Cash passed away on September 12, 2003 leaving a legacy of railroad music to the ages.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

A Rare Peek Into the Past

Rare 19th century photography, portraiture, and fine art affords historians an opportunity to gather a glimpse of many aspects of American life. Presented here (with reference numbers added) is the earliest known photograph of the Ellicott City Station and the surrounding buildings and structures in Ellicott's Mills. While the photographer is unknown, this view was taken atop the roof of the Gambrill Flour Mill once located on the Baltimore County side of the Patapsco River roughly where the large concrete Washington Flour Mill stands today (built in 1918 as The Patapsco Flouring Mills). The Gambrill and Carroll family bought the Ellicott's mill in 1832 and operated it for nearly 100 years.

The image has many charactertistics of either a Daguerreotype (invented 1839) or an Ambrotype (invented 1854) but this view was re-published by E&HT Anthony of New York (1862-1902) as a stereoview. Stereoviews were popular throughout the mid to late 19th century as a form of home entertainment. They were two side by side paper photographs mounted on cardboard (often with a descriptive narrative printed on the reverse) and designed to be seen through the use of a stereopticon. When placed in the view, the image appears in 3-D.

Stereopticon

Let’s take a rare peek into the past and see if we can gather some clues that might date the photograph!

Ellicott City

1) The B&O Railroad Ellicott City Station (1831) is seen here with its long roof and cupola but without the long trackside overhang and the addition of fancy timbered eaves that were added when architect E. Francis Baldwin designed and installed decorative additions to modernize the Station in 1880.

2) The Patapsco Hotel (1830) with its multi-storied piazzas actually served as the second railroad passenger station in America (the first was at Mt. Clare). The Ellicott City Station (1) was designed by the B&O Railroad as a freight station. This hotel, located directly across Main Street had a second floor passenger waiting rooms and a trackside platform for boarding. The old hotel served passengers until the Ellicott City Station was remodeled by Baldwin in 1880. In 1887 the building became the printing plant for the town's newspaper. By 1912 it was a warehouse for ice when the B&O locomotive de-railed and structurally damaged the building in 1925. Abandoned after the accident, the hotel collapsed in April 1926 and was re-built in its current form.

3) In the foreground of the images is Jonathon Ellicott's home (1790). One of three large stone residences at the mill built by George and Jonathon Ellicott, it was severely damaged in the 1868 flood (along with the Gambrill Mill and many of the other houses seen in front of the Ellicott house) and completely destroyed by Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

4) Perched in the distance atop the hill is Howard County Courthouse (1843). Construction began in 1841 and was completed in 1843.

Taking all of this evidence and information about the structures depicted into account, we definitely date the photograph before the 1869 flood and after the invention of this type of photography (1839). Characteristics of the original image (present when copied to a stereoview) show some discoloration, and scratching that is typical of Daguerreotype and Ambrotype photographs that used silver emulsion on the surface of a glass plate. This type of photography was most prevalent in America from about 1850-1865. Short of a miraculous discovery of a dated specimen, we will probably never know the exact date the unknown photographer climbed atop the Gambrill Mill to take this picturesque view. But we can be confident that it was taken in the decade preceding the Great Flood of 1868.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Cool Passengers on the B&O

On April 23, 1930, the B&O Railroad debuted a new richly appointed dining car named Martha Washington. One of its series of “Colonial” diners, this heavyweight car was adorned with shield back mahogany chairs, fancy architectural details, and crystal lighting. Its menus were branded as “tavern fare” and featured specialties of Chesapeake regional cuisine not unlike our forefathers would have known in colonial times. The Martha Washington, however, had a feature that no other passenger car in the world had ever had before; air conditioning!

Interior of the B&O "Colonial" dining car "Martha Washington". The world's first air conditioned railroad car, 1930.

During the preceding two years, B&O mechanical and electrical engineers spent many sequestered dark days in a tin sided wooden shed appended to the rear of the Mt. Clare Roundhouse with an inventor and engineer named Willis Haviland Carrier and his team to design and install a system of passenger car air conditioning that would, one day, serve the world of trains.

Mt. Clare Air Conditioning Test Shed 1934

Carrier was born in New York in 1875 and graduated with an engineering degree from Cornell in 1901. A 1902 Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” article titled “While Walking in a Fog” detailed Carrier’s inspiration to invent air conditioning while waiting for a train in Pittsburgh amidst a dense fog. His first patent was in 1906 and he successfully air conditioned the first building in America in Minneapolis in 1914.

Willis Haviland Carrier, the father of modern air conditioning

Much secrecy surrounded the development of railroad car air conditioning at Mt. Clare. Once designed and installed in the prototype diner hidden away in the little test shed, B&O engineers heated the interior of the car to a temperature of 93 degrees, turned off the heat and then turned on the newly installed air conditioning to test it capabilities. On the first attempt, the interior of the car reached 73 degrees in 19 minutes and 30 seconds.

Successfully launched and another “first” in the long line of B&O Railroad’s legendary innovations, the B&O went about applying Carrier’s adapted invention to an entire train. On May 24, 1934 the B&O inaugurated the World’s first fully air conditioned train The Columbian for its maiden run from Washington D.C. to New York.

Courtney B. Wilson
Executive Director

A Notable Neighbor

John Pendleton Kennedy

A Notable Neighbor and Railroad Passenger in Ellicott’s Mills

Spending many of his summers in a small cottage perched on the hillside high above The B&O Railroad Station in Ellicott’s Mills, John Pendleton Kennedy was the scion of a cultivated Baltimore, Md., family. Born in 1795 he graduated from Baltimore College in 1812 and served for 2 years in the Maryland militia. In 1816 he began practicing law. It is said he disliked practicing law, however, and by 1829 (thanks to a generous legacy from a wealthy uncle) he was able to withdraw from the courtroom and begin a long literary and public career. Early on Kennedy contributed sketches and satires to various publications. In 1832 he published his first book, Swallow Barn, a series of sketches depicting plantation life in Virginia, written under the pseudonym Mark Littleton. Under the same name he published his most successful novel, Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835).

With regular passenger service between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills well established, Kennedy purchase a small plot of land and built a neat little summer cottage above the B&O Station down on Main Street. Throughout his creative career, he lodged in his small retreat in Ellicott’s Mills far away from the dismal, humid Baltimore summer. No stranger to the B&O Railroad or Ellicott City Station, Kennedy rode back and forth to Baltimore on a regular basis maintaining a household in the City for business and winter lodging. On several occasions, Edgar Allen Poe debarked the B&O on Main Street and made his way up to Kennedy’s summer retreat.

Kennedy was also a friend of B&O Railroad director and general counsel John H.B. Latrobe. On an evening in October, 1833, three of Baltimore's most discerning gentlemen were gathered around a table in the back parlor of Latrobe’s house. Fortified with “some old wine and some good cigars,” John Pendleton Kennedy, James H. Miller and John H. B. Latrobe poured over manuscripts submitted in a literary contest sponsored by the Baltimore Sunday Visitor. Their unanimous choice for best prose tale was “MS. Found in a Bottle,” a curious and haunting tale of annihilation. The fifty dollar prize was awarded to the story’s heretofore unknown and, at the time, penniless author; Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1838 he not only produced another novel, Rob of the Bowl, but was also elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Whig. He lost and regained the seat several times. During this period he began to turn from fiction to more overtly political writing. A close friend and colleague of Edgar Allen Poe, many letters between the two are preserved at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1840 Kennedy's satire on Jacksonian democracy was published. In 1843 his Defense of the Whigs attacked John Tyler's defection from party policy on assuming the presidency after the death of William Henry Harrison. Kennedy produced his last important literary effort, a two-volume biography of the great lawyer William Wirt, in 1849.

In 1852, now a well known figure in America, Kennedy was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Millard Fillmore. During his 8-month tenure he helped organize Adm. Matthew Perry's expedition to Japan and dispatch the search party trying to find the missing explorer Sir John Franklin and his expedition.

At the outset of the Civil War, Kennedy, who had fought secession on the one hand and republicanism on the other, finally cast his lot with the Union. At the end of the War he published Mr. Ambrose's Letters on the Rebellion, in which he pleaded for compassion toward the fallen South. Occasional Addresses, Political and Official Papers, and At Home and Abroad (all 1872) were published posthumously. He died peacefully in his sleep on August 10, 1870 and is buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Courtney B. Wilson, Executive Director

Beast Butler Asks A Favor

“Beast Butler” Asks a Favor

A letter is presented here dated April 11, 1867 from former Major General Benjamin F. Butler to John Work Garrett, president of the B&O Railroad Company. Butler, a politically appointed Massachusetts general, occupied Baltimore in May 1861 thus quelling continued southern resistance under a heavy military force. With occupation troops stationed all along the B&O’s lines between Washington and Baltimore, no doubt Garrett and Butler became well acquainted with one another in the opening months of the Civil War. Later while in command of New Orleans he issued General Order No. 28 after some provocation by the citizens which stated that if any woman should insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a "woman of the town plying her avocation", i.e., a prostitute. This order provoked protests both in the North and the South, and also abroad, particularly in England and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal from command of the Department of the Gulf on December 17, 1862. He was nicknamed "Beast Butler," and "Spoons," for his alleged habit of pilfering the silverware of Southern homes in which he stayed. Not all bad, Butler was an unrepentant abolitionist and post-war civil rights activist.

In the post war years Butler was elected a Republican Member of Congress and also assumed the presidency of an agency authorized by Congress that established and oversaw “The National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers” known colloquially as the “Old Soldier’s Home.”

In this interesting letter Butler writes to Garrett requesting that he “…aid this noble charity, who are only maimed and disabled soldiers…” by providing passenger fares for them at half the published rate. Butler continued to make his case by telling Garrett that his “…well known liberality and public spirit…” as well as the fact that the B&O received such “…liberal compensation during the War…and much protection…” for its movement of troops should certainly consider taking the case of the “…maimed relics of the Army of the Republic.” Who could resist such a request! Unfortunately we don’t know Garrett’s answer but given the compelling nature of this letter, Butler’s position in the House of Representatives and other evidence of his charity, my guess is that John Work Garrett wrote back a resounding “yes!”

Courtney B. Wilson
Executive Director

Former Congressman Benjamin F. Butler

B&O Railroad President John Work Garrett