Rippel’s Spring

In the woods between the Wyman Park Dell and Johns Hopkins University sits this old fountain stone. I’ve seen it for years without actually knowing what it was. Apparently this spring was in use for many years but didn’t have a name until the 1930s, when it was refurbished with this stone, which came from a different spring. It reads, “Presented by H.S. Rippel 1895”. Though the spring was heavily used in the 1930s and ‘40s it dried up about 25 years ago. I got some good leads on this fountain stone from Monumental City and went to the Maryland Room at the Pratt expecting to find little or nothing on this fountain. But, I lucked into some old newspaper clippings in the vertical files, mostly from The Baltimore Sun.

H.S. Rippel was a Baltimore businessman who donated money for this spring, which originally belonged to a location in Druid Hill Park. Rippel was the builder who erected an early City College building at Howard and Centre streets. According to the Sun, the fountain stone was likely cut by Rippel’s own workmen. The original Rippel’s spring was in Druid Hill Park and according to an October 19, 1941 Baltimore Sun story, it was shut down in the 1920s by the health department due to contamination. Water pollution was a fear and problem in Baltimore from the beginning of the 1800s, when “progress” began to cause problems with the water supply. In the early to mid-twentieth century, the Baltimore Health Department worked diligently on shutting down unsafe public fountains. Like Rippel, the springs and fountains in Druid Hill Park were shut down but later many were converted to piped in city water.

The spring in the Wyman Park Dell had no name until this stone was moved and the spring refurbished. Photographs from the 1941 Sun story show a “bubble fountain” (what we know as a modern drinking fountain) near the bridge over Stoney Run. This fountain fed from Rippel’s Spring. Also according to that Sun article, Rippel’s Spring was “once popularly regarded as highly valuable for it’s radium content.” Kids often made pocket money bottling and selling this water in the neighborhood. In 1983 The Baltimore Sun Article interviewed a man named Web Kefauver. He related that in 1925, when he was a boy, he lived in the Tudor Arms apartment building and sold water from Rippel’s spring. He bottled the water and loaded up his wagon, taking it to local apartments. The water was then hauled up via the dumbwaiters, a common feature in those old buildings. Mr. Kefauver charged 50 cents a week for his services.

Even though the Wyman Park spring was never shut down, public spring fell from popularity after World War II.A 1947 Sun article warns against drinking from springs and streams because of the threat of typhoid fever. It mentions threats of severe contamination and dysentery, among other things. Officials at that time concluded that even springs like Rippel, which were in wooded areas, were still probably contaminated because they passed through areas of the city with poor sanitation. A 1952 Baltimore American story echoes these fears of contamination and typhoid and was still reporting cases of illness.

The 1983 Sun article also reported Mr. Kefauver’s regrets that the spring was drying up. Then, a representative from Johns Hopkins University said that the water table was dropping. Also, there was a high nitrate content in the water and there were traces of coliform bacteria, probably from animal waste. Currently the spring is no longer working, but it still remains an interesting bit of neighborhood history.

Resources

Monumental City, "Hope Springs Eternal"
The Sunday Sun, October 19, 1941
The Baltimore Sun, February 6, 1983
The Baltimore American, 1952
(Exact authors and article titles will be updated soon.)

Sundials

Recently I was working on an article for my gardening column and I wanted a local tie-in to a sundial. I intended to write about setting a sundial because the summer date and solar conditions are best for this on June 15. (It is also good on April 15, September 1 and December 25.) However, the sundial I dug up was much more interesting instead. The segment in this photograph is from a sundial in Druid Hill Park that is 4 feet high and tells time in 14 different parts of the world, including, as you see here, “Rio Janero”. This sundial was once accurate but with daylight savings time it is no longer so. When it was refurbished during the early part of the 20th century it was covered in bronze. From what I read I guessed that that underneath of the bronze is stone. It was presented to the park buy the sculptor, Peter Hamilton, in 1892. It was moved on at least one occasion, and an old Baltimore Sun article I found in the Pratt Maryland room suggested that a tree was in the way.

Nowadays we don’t have much use for sundials but they are thought of as the first scientific instrument. They officially date back to the Egyptian period. The piece that makes the shadow is called a gnomon. In the old, old, old days, the gnomon was the sundial and it is suggested that Egyptian obelisks served this purpose. Mechanical clocks that we know were invented in the 1300s. They were considered not as reliable as the sundial, which is the true time. It was not until the late 1800s that clocks were considered reliable. Instead, people like had “noon marks” on their kitchen floors to tell when it was time to call the clan in for food. In times past, some did not consider their gardens complete unless a sundial was in it. In Victorian times ornaments such as sundials were very popular, hence the need to include one in Druid Hill Park. I say that lightly because with having to figure out 14 different times around the world for a sundial, Peter Hamilton’s work goes well beyond ornament.

Resources:

Setting an unusual sundial

Sundial history

Magnolias

I’ve always loved magnolia blooms and have a wonderful memory of one. Some years back I was taking classes at a local community college. This was my first summer there and I lived about a ½ hours walk from the place. The long June evenings provided me daylight long after the class was over, so I could walk home. One evening I walked the warm deserted streets past a local house museum. This house had a magnolia tree in the yard and the branches bent low and close to the iron gate that separated the yard from the street. One beautiful magnolia was at about eye level. I could smell the clear lemony smell. What can I say? I plucked it and took it home with me, where it scented our house for three days and then collapsed into a pile of rubbery brown leaves.

Magnolias come in a wide number of varieties. Even though we mostly see white, there are some attractive pink and yellow ones. It is the official state flower of both Louisiana and Mississippi. Yet they grow nicely up north here and can even be grown from seed. Generally magnolias need lots of space and a bit of air around them, but can also do well in part shade. The area should be sheltered but not so sheltered that it gets colder than the surrounding area in winter. The soil should be slightly acidic. They don’t need to be pruned unless damaged by snow and ice. If this happens, prune away the damaged branches and that will allow the rest of the tree to recover.

Resources:

Magnificent Magnolias

How to grow magnolia trees

The Byrd

Recently I paid a visit to the Byrd theatre in Richmond, Virginia. I’m a movie buff so I have to see things like this and I was quite impressed with the Byrd. This theatre was named for William Byrd II, the founder of Richmond. It opened on December 24, 1928 and was intended for use both as a sound and silent theatre, with both types of equipment. Prices then were 25 cents for a matinee and 50 cents for evening, with children paying 10 cents. The first movie shown was a comedy called Waterfront. True to the intented dual sound/silent use for the Byrd, Waterfront was a silent film that was shown with sound added.

The Byrd seats 1,400 seats and has a Wurlitzer organ that rises out of the front of the stage. Originally meant for silent movies, the organ is now played every Saturday night before the evening show. The murals in the lobby depict scenes in Greek mythology and were hand painted in a studio in New York. A humongous chandelier, which hangs over the auditorium, was assembled as the building was constructed. This chandelier weighs two and a half tons. The predominant decor inside the building is very ornate, mainly featuring gold leaf and marble. The Byrd has never been remodeled, but there were a few repairs and adjustments from time to time. Now, it is run by a non-profit organization called The Byrd Theater Foundation. They survive as a second run movie house and it costs only $1.99 to get in, so this allows many people to experience this bit of movie history.

Resources:

Richmond Movie Palace-The Byrd Theater

Byrd Theater and Foundation

Sherwood Gardens

As long as I have lived in Baltimore, I had never been to Sherwood Gardens until recently. I was surprised to find that it is so close that I could walk to it. The area itself is really a large plot of open ground filled mostly with azaleas, trees of all types, and of course, the famous tulips. The look this year is overwhelmingly pink and white, but old newspaper and magazine articles from the Pratt library Maryland room tell of a much greater variety of colors in years past.

Mr. Sherwood, the originator of the garden, was actually quite welcoming to visitors considering that he began the gardens in the 1920s on his private property. He said that he wanted to plant a few plants to cover some bare spots and the garden spread out from there. Ultimately the garden became famous for the many tulips, azaleas and flowering trees. Planting the bulbs was a large undertaking. According to a Style magazine article, in 1937 Sherwood had 42,000 blooming tulips in his garden. Sherwood’s chief gardener, Clarence Hammond, would order the bulbs from Holland at the end of the summer and they were shipped over by boat. It took a month for Hammond and his crew to plant all of the bulbs. That was not the end of the work. Tulips can come back year after year, but they loose their strength and the blossoms become less showy. In spring, after the bulbs bloomed and the foliage died back, Hammond and his assistants would have to dig them up all over again. Now, Sherwood is a free, year round public park maintained by the Guilford Association. There were 80,000 tulips this year. Most of these were dug up and happily carried home during the annual tulip dig, which lets the public remove the spent bulbs for a very small fee.

Resources:

Guilford Association

Sherwood Gardens: cultivating a Baltimore tradition

Forsythia

Every spring I look forward to the forsythia blooming. Here, this blooms on a scruffy patch at the base of the Howard Street Bridge. Usually a homeless person lounges about in this area, but since this was a rare occasion when he wasn’t here so I whipped out my camera. I am partial to forsythia because it reminds me of my childhood. When we were kids we had some that were so big that we used to play house inside of them. There were several different bushes growing in a row and it seemed like there were several “rooms” inside them.

As you could guess by this forsythia bush’s location, forsythia are very easy to grow and require little maintenance or special conditions. They are tolerant of polluted areas. Ideally, they require full sun, well-drained soil. Technically, forsythia are deciduous shrubs and are a member of the olive family. The leaves drop off in late fall but do not turn any exciting colors. Forsythia is of Asian origin and was discovered by Robert Fortune in the 18th century. Forsythia was introduced to America at the turn of the 20th century. The shrub was named in honor of William Forsyth, who was a prominent gardener in England

Forsythia blooms in March and April with yellow blossoms early in the spring and the blossoms are always on the previous year’s growth. As evidenced by my childhood activities, it can grow large, often between 4 and 6 feet tall and with a spread from three to five feet wide. It also grows fast, from 1-2 feet per year. It leafs out nicely and is often used for privacy. Single forsythia look best wild but if they are in groups they should be trimmed. Many gardeners prefer the unruly look and hesitate to prune them. Forsythia can be grown from cuttings. Cut a 3-6 inch branch from an area of new growth and then place is a pot of moist soil, keeping it moist. It will slowly take root over a few weeks.

Resources

How to Grow and Care for Forsythia

Planting and caring for forsythia

About Forsythia

Sweater Trees

One Sunday recently I was reading The Washington Post and they had one of those “wacky things about Baltimore” articles. Well, the quirky sites were typical, such as some oft mentioned shopping and dining sites. But, I stopped dead when I saw a mention for something called “the sweater tree”. Even more amazing, it was only a few blocks from my home, in front of the LovelyYarns shop. She collected abandoned knitting projects from the people who frequent her shop and then stitched them around the trunk. Apparently they also knitted meter cozies but they were quickly removed.

Apparently this is a part of a trend called urban knitting, or even guerilla knitting. Most famous is the Knitta please project began in 2005 as some of the members agonized about what to do with their abandoned knitting projects. Somehow this led to them surreptitiously attaching knitting to mailboxes and street signs in the middle of the night.
They call it “graffiti”, only using knitting materials. Since then, knitters have attached their knitwear to any available public place. Largely this consists of trees and light poles, but like in the case of Finish and Swedish knitters, it can extend to moorings, handrails, and whatnot. Surprisingly, this trend is visible in urban cities all over the world, even if it is not as prevalent as other art forms. Some cities, such as Yellow Springs, Ohio, led an organized effort to beautify their communities with “tree cozies”.

I’ve heard rumors of another sweater tree on 31st between St. Paul and Charles, so I will investigate that soon.


Resources

"Urban Knitting: The World's Most Inoffensive Graffiti" by deputydog

"A Sweater for a Tree" (AP story)

knittaplease.com