Community
Lutherville
Lutherville grew around a women’s seminary and a railroad, with a historic street grid west of York Road and a firefighting museum nearby.
Lutherville’s history is unusually clear in its street names and layout. West of York Road, the older village was planned around a church and a school for women. The residential streets belong to a different stage of suburban growth from the commercial corridor beside them, while a nearby museum tells another part of the Baltimore region’s history.
A village built around education
The Maryland Historical Trust’s district history dates Lutherville’s founding to 1852. John Gottlieb Morris, Benjamin Kurtz and Charles Augustus Morris laid out a grid with streets named for Lutheran clergymen. Sales of village lots helped finance the Lutherville Female Seminary, established the following year.
Rail service made the new community accessible from Baltimore. Architect Thomas Dixon designed both the seminary and the stone railroad station. The historic district includes houses in Gothic Revival, Second Empire, Queen Anne and other styles, giving the neighborhood a varied architectural vocabulary within its common street plan. Its recorded boundary covers the older village; it should not be read as the boundary of every Lutherville address.
Firefighting history off York Road
The Fire Museum of Maryland preserves hand-drawn, horse-drawn and motorized apparatus, including equipment used during Baltimore’s 1904 fire. Its Fire Alarm Office explores changes in emergency communications. In the Discovery Room, children can climb onto a 1938 Mack engine and try on turnout gear, connecting the machinery to the people who used it.
The museum entrance is at 1301 R-York Road, behind the Heaver Plaza office building, with free parking. Public visiting hours differ from weekday office hours, and bells in the exhibits can be loud; the museum provides noise-canceling headphones on request.