Baltimore S White Marble Steps

The marble found there is of such quality that it was preferred over the products of the much closer potomac marble quarries for many public structures in washington d c including the.

Baltimore s white marble steps. Baltimore is known far and wide as the city of white steps the sun reported in 1947. The use of marble for steps is due to the presence of high quality white marble in cockeysville a town 17 miles north of baltimore s inner harbor by highway. Petrucci estimates that in the early 1900 s at least 80 of baltimore s stoops were made of white marble. And they paint scenes on the door screens too in baltimore md.

Upon their installation in the 1900 s white marble steps were felt to add an instant element of class and swankiness to otherwise working class homes. It was among the purest whitest marble ever mined in the united states and was the first used for the city s marble steps and for monuments to george washington in baltimore and washington. Countless stone steps in baltimore city md. White marble steps a trademark of baltimore architecture are a common element among baltimore s rowhouses.

The marble steps of baltimore rowhomes only a few cities in the northeast part of the country boast these marble steps philadelphia also has them both of my grandmothers homes had marble steps and i remember them scrubbing them to keep them white. Clustered around the green hills of. Beaver dam is estimated to have supplied 60 of the city s marble steps but local builders also purchased stone from georgia alabama vermont and pennsylvania. More than most cities this is a city of distinct close knit neighborhoods 237 by one count and few are more distinct than those of southeast baltimore.

Marble steps became status symbols for baltimorean s in the early 1900 s. Such prominent buildings that exhibit this fancy mineral are. Despite the challenge of keeping them white they ornament the face of many rowhomes and city buildings. A 1913 story proclaimed no other city in the country perhaps the world has the universal white marble.