From the time I was a young girl, I have maintained a keen interest in genealogy, starting with family history and later expanding that interest to the history of time and place, which has helped to provide context and greater meaning to the personal narratives that I have assembled.
And a funny thought crossed my mind as I began to explore the history of my home and neighborhood: It can be said that a house can also have a genealogy, a provenance of sorts, similar to that of a piece of estate jewelry or a work of art. These thoughts intrigued me, and led me to discover some fascinating lore about some of the homes in our neighborhood, including my own, and about the people who had once lived in them.
Mysteries Solved!
Why was there a sundial painted on the side of my house? Who did that, and why? I thought I would never solve that riddle. This past week, I successfully tracked down the daughter of the original owners of my house, and all my questions were finally resolved. Apparently, her mother, Mrs. Margery Singer, was an avid gardener and an admitted “sundial freak.” The Singers built a brick patio in the backyard and adorned it with a beautiful, ornate garden which was Mrs. Singer’s pride and joy. She was an active member of the City-County Garden Club, which held meetings in her lovely backyard – in my backyard! One such meeting was announced in a June 1960 edition of the Sun as follows: “Mrs. Wendell Allen will speak on the ‘History of Flowers.’ Mrs. Seymour Fensterwald will speak on ‘Planting Window Boxes.’” I had heard about the elaborate garden from an old-time neighbor, but by the time I bought the property, every vestige of the garden and patio had all but disappeared. Still, knowing a bit more about my home’s history gives me a little thrill.
Mrs. Singer also happens to be the daughter of Lee L. Dopkin, of the Lee L. Dopkin Wholesale Plumbing Supply Company, which explains why I was told that “plumbers had built the house.” But here is where I came up against what I call Little-H-Meets-Big-H, that is, where the “small H” of personal history comes up against the “big H” of communal or national history. Lee Dopkin’s story is just one of the big H’s tangentially connected to my house.
Of Lives and Legacies
Not only was Mr. Dopkin a very successful businessman, he was also active for 25 years in Maryland state welfare administration. In November of 1934, he was appointed by Governor-elect Harry Nice to draft mandatory old age pension laws for the coming session of the Legislature. His fight for this bill, which at the time was truly revolutionary, is reminiscent of the heated rhetoric of our more recent Affordable Care Act. Old-age pension reform was then an equally controversial and hotly debated topic, similarly occurring during an economic downturn.
A New Deal activist, chairman of the Maryland Old-Age Pension Committee, and later, elected vice-president of the American Association for Social Security, Mr. Dopkin championed the cause, insisting that “American people do not want doles or charity.” Due to his efforts, the bill was passed in 1935, and Maryland became the first state to enact unemployment insurance. Lee Dopkin is considered a pioneer in Maryland welfare work.
Another big-H factlet that I unearthed relating to the Singer family involves Mrs. Singer’s second husband, Martin Dannenberg, who is credited with having discovered the Nuremberg Laws in 1945.
A counterintelligence officer in General George S. Patton’s Third Army, he found himself in Germany at the end of the war. Days after witnessing the horrors of the newly liberated death camp at Dachau, he encountered a stranger in a beer hall who took him to a bank vault in the town of Eichstatt and handed him an envelope. It was sealed with red swastika embossments and contained four typed pages signed by A. Hitler, y”sh, proclaiming the Nuremberg laws.
“I had the most peculiar feeling when I had this in my hand, that I should be the one who should uncover this,” Mr. Dannenberg was quoted in a 1999 Sun interview. “Because here is this thing that begins the persecution of the Jews. And a Jewish person has found it.” He took photos of it with his Minox spy camera and then turned them over to General Patton, under whom he served. Unbeknownst to him, Patton kept the documents for himself, before donating them to the Huntington Library in California, which secreted them from the public for over a half century.
Mr. Dannenberg’s photographs were the only copies available to be offered as evidence of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. Shortly after his death in 2010, the Huntington donated the originals to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where they now reside. Martin Dannenberg’s actions left an incredible legacy for all of humanity.
History around the Corner
It’s a quick hop from Cross Country Boulevard to Park Heights Avenue, and there are many ways to get there, but the most beautiful one, without question, is via Bancroft Road. It’s convenient, centrally located, and has a grandeur all its own. But I doubt that too many people are aware that this singular artery is actually the historic enclave of Bancroft Park, and that it has been officially designated a Historical and Architectural Preservation District. With landmark status, the community is now under the supervision of the Baltimore City Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP), which regulates any exterior changes to the houses and lots (a fact that some homeowners appreciate and others find stifling).
Bancroft Park is the first entirely 20th century neighborhood in Baltimore to receive local historic district status. The district is formally comprised of 30 properties, 28 fronting Bancroft Road and two fronting Wirt Avenue. Its distinctiveness is partly owed to the variety of architectural styles, among them Colonial Revival (3406, 3411, and 3505 Bancroft), Four-Square (3500 Bancroft), Tudor Revival (3320 Bancroft), Spanish Eclectic (3311 Bancroft), French Eclectic (Symmetrical: 3401 Bancroft; and Towered: 3213 Bancroft), and Modern (3305 Bancroft). Unlike other homes in the neighborhood, in Bancroft Park, no two homes look quite alike.
In February 1906, the Bancroft Park Company was formed for the purpose of improving a vast tract of unimproved land comprising nearly 150 acres, in the style of Roland Park. Roland Park, developed in the 1890s, was then the most successful planned community in Baltimore, and it spurred many imitators and great demand for the services of the Olmsted Brothers, who were responsible for most of its design.
The Olmsted name is legion in public landscape architecture. Frederick Law Olmsted, considered America’s first landscape architect, is best known for creating some of the most memorable public spaces in the country, among them Central Park in New York City and the Capital grounds in Washington, D.C.; locally, he designed the Mount Vernon Place parks and the suburb of Sudbrook Park. After his retirement in 1895, his sons John Charles and Frederick Law Jr. continued his legacy under Olmsted Brother Landscaping Services (OBLA).
The Bancroft Park Company hired OBLA to design the tract. The original plan called for a park on both sides of Western Run, with wide streets that followed the contours of the land. Had the original plan been implemented, the development would have encompassed an area from Park Heights on the south, Strathmore to the east, Falstaff to the west, and touching Pickwick to the north. (This is just an approximation; I can’t really do justice to these borders, as many of those streets had yet be developed, let alone, named. Suffice it to say, it was a huge parcel. And it would have been beautiful.)
In the end, a number of factors contributed to the failure of the original plan, whose demise began to be felt by 1912. According to Stuart Macklin, a local architect and long-time Bancroft Park resident, some of these included the developers’ unhappiness with OBLA’s fees; dissatisfaction with the irregular, curvy lot lines; and a sense that wide streets and public parks meant “wasted” space. They tampered with the OBLA design, reducing the width of the streets to reduce construction costs. The building of Cross Country Boulevard in 1912 along the stream valley destroyed any hope for the vaunted green space, thereby shattering the OBLA vision for the original “grand plan.”
What has remained of the original OBLA plan is what distinguishes this street from all of its neighbors: its various deed restrictions, including a requirement that only one residence be built on a lot, that the house on the lot had to cost at least $5,000 (a sizable sum at the time), and that it had to have a setback of at least 50 feet from the road. These covenants have served to preserve the beauty and character of the development to this day.
The less attractive side of the Bancroft Park story hints at a history of racism and entrenched anti-Semitism. The Roland Park Company had created a system to keep “undesirables” (code for Blacks and Jews) out of their development. They used what today we would we call a “multimedia campaign” to signal their true intent: a mix of advertising, signage, and an unspoken “gentleman’s agreement” among real estate agents to steer Jews away. A common term that appeared in ads and signs was the word “restricted.”
Wealthy Jews, however, who found no welcome in Roland Park, soon discovered that they could get access to Bancroft Park. By 1920, with a recession underway, economic realities intruded on prejudicial preference, and the Jewish community stood to benefit.
A Baltimore Who’s Who
Nathan Adler was apparently the first Jewish owner of a Bancroft Park property and, as such, in Mr. Macklin’s words, “broke the restriction.” He built his home in 1923 for the then-kingly sum of $27,000, and watched other Jewish families settle in, until the neighborhood became predominantly Jewish by the decade’s end.
Soon, the early gentile owners, like the Whittinghams, the Slingluffs, and the Lamps, gave way to prominent Jewish families like the Kriegers, Hoffbergers, and Eliasbergs. Zanvyl Krieger was a philanthropist, who donated large sums to Johns Hopkins and Kennedy Krieger, and was a co-owner of the Orioles with Jerrold Hoffberger. Jerrold Hoffberger was owner of the National Brewing Company, maker of Baltimore’s classic brew, National Bohemian Beer or, as it’s better known, Natty Boh. (Natty Boh, the brew of choice at Memorial Stadium, became the “official” beer of Baltimore in the late 1960s). And Louis Eliasberg, a banker and numismatist, was best known for having assembled the only complete collection of United States minted coins ever. He was also such an avid bridge player that he reportedly had a room built at the back of his home solely for the use of the Bancroft Park bridge club.
The neighborhood has undergone a series of transformations over the years. But there is one remarkable family which has witnessed them all – that of Nathan Adler and his progeny. Mr. Ben Adler was born in the house that his parents built and he has resided there his entire life. He raised his own children there and now welcomes his grandchildren and great-grandchildren when they come to visit. He has witnessed the cultural shifts that have taken place in the neighborhood, and has an uncanny ability to recall just about every family that has passed through it. Asked to comment on his beautiful home, he replied simply, “I’ve been good to it, and it’s been good to me.”
Bancroft Park Trivia
When the Bancroft Park Company formally opened for business in 1906, they installed a sales office where they could meet with prospective buyers. An ad that ran in the June 27, 1909 edition of the Sun was one of many to highlight this fact: “Office on the property at Park Heights Avenue and Bancroft Road. Salesman every afternoon.”
When the company moved on, the “office” (basically, a small shack) stayed, and it was eventually moved down the street, onto the property then owned by Isaac Potts (founder of the Little Potts furniture store). It is still there, at the back of the house, where it faces the Wallis Avenue alley. (Most people who use that alley to cut through from Bancroft Road to Clark’s Lane probably never give that historic shack a second thought.) Mr. Potts used it as a playhouse for his children, and Ben Adler, who was friends with them, recalls playing in there as a little boy.
A Judge and his Garden
For a time, the much respected Judge Joseph Sherbow was a resident of Bancroft Park. He was prominent on both the judicial and political scenes, was a staunch supporter of Israel, traveled there in September 1948 to meet with officials of the Weizmann Institute about how best to spur agriculture and industry in the fledgling state, and was on the board of many Jewish institutions, including The Associated and Talmudical Academy. As an appointee to the Public Service Commission, he succeeded in reducing the rates of all major utilities in the State. But nothing gave him more pleasure than working in his garden. His garden was so noteworthy “that people came from all over to see his azaleas and tulips – they called the place another Sherwood Gardens,” according to a comment by Mrs. Sherbow, in a 1983 Sun reminiscence of her husband.
According to Karyn Toso, who currently resides in the old Sherbow house, it seems that when the judge was sentencing juvenile offenders, he gave them the option to either go to jail or work on his garden. He believed the hard work would help rehabilitate them.
He was so passionate about his avocation that in July 1956, the judge helped form the exclusive Pioneer Camellia Society of Maryland, whose officers were all men. The Sun described them as “a group of eight ardent admirers of the flower.”
In the Shadow of the Holocaust
Ben Adler recalls that his parents always seemed to have guests and boarders living in their house. One of these was a German immigrant who had just fled the Holocaust.
Down the street, after the war, a pair of Holocaust survivors – expert carpenters – were hired by Judge Sherbow to build a handcrafted cherry-wood library in his home. These two men had apparently survived the war by carving wooden toys for the children of the SS. The Sherbow library they created is a testament to their skill and imbues the home with a singular warmth that has been enjoyed by several generations of homeowners.
When Hollywood Came Knocking
This is the weirdest Bancroft Park story of all. In the late 1970s, Alan Alda chose to film a movie in Baltimore, and some of the scenes were shot on Bancroft Road, including in Judge Sherbow’s famous backyard. In one scene, a character pushes a piano through a window and has it roll down one of the driveways on Bancroft Road. In order to prevent the piano from toppling over, the crew etched a groove down the length of the driveway. That groove can be seen to this day.
One-of-a-Kind Features
In one home, a prior owner suffered a stroke and could no longer walk up the stairs, so he converted one of the home’s two staircases into an elevator, which is still functional. Another home has an ornately carved marble mantel with high relief figurines that was shipped to Baltimore from France, supposedly as a surprise wedding gift from a father to his daughter. But another father topped them all: When his son married, the father, Judge Sherbow, subdivided his property and built his son a near-replica of his own home, where it graciously sits today, fronting Cross Country Boulevard.
Home for Sale!
During my travels up and down Bancroft, as I met with and interviewed the various homeowners, I discovered that there is currently a distinctive Bancroft Park property for sale. Owned by the Benzers, it is a French provincial style, built in 1929, and features three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, on the first floor, in addition to two more bedrooms upstairs. There are beautifully landscaped gardens in the backyard, within a brick wall enclosure. If anyone is interesting in forming the next link in the chain of Bancroft Park history, they can email 3418bancroftroad@gmail.com.
That’s enough for this time. There’s always more to learn and explore. I hope to return another time with more stories and histories. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to share their stories with me.
