Cylburn House and Park District - Baltimore MD - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM

Cylburn House and Park have great significance to the citizens of Baltimore as park land, as an area for the study of horticulture and as a small museum of natural history. It represents an educational alternative use for a large nineteenth-century house and its extensive grounds in any city. It typifies status as constructed for a late nineteenth century owner of exceptional wealth, and the success resulting from engaging a good architect. The house is significant as an example of a post-Civil War "mansion" many of which have already been demolished. Its designer, George A. Frederick (1842-1924), was one of the most important late nineteenth-century architects working in Baltimore.

In the fields of science and education the park in the historic district at Cylburn with its numerous gardens, nature trails and the museum in the house as well as the active program of the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks provide an opportunity for the study of botany in an urban area. The one-hundred to two-hundred-a-day visitation illustrates that these resources are used by the community.

The builder of Cylburn was Jesse Tyson, a mining magnate and President of the Baltimore Chrome Works. Tyson had inherited a controlling interest in the company from his father Isaac Tyson, Jr., who pioneered the development of chrome processing. In the 1860's Tyson began amassing small tracts of land along the Jones Falls stream for a country house which he envisioned as the "finest house in Maryland."

The impressive stone structure was furnished with pieces of furniture custom made for him in Florence, Italy. The furniture in the drawing room won a prize at a Paris exhibition. A bachelor until his sixties, Tyson married Edyth Johns, a debutant, and a descendant of the seventeenth-century Johns family that settled in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Edyth Tyson and her husband made several trips to Europe in order to complete the furnishings for Cylburn House. While the Tysons lived there the house was a model of the conspicuous "Guilded Age."

Street address: 4915 Green Spring Ave Baltimore, MD United States 21209 County / Borough / Parish: Baltimore (Independent City) Year listed: 1972 Historic (Areas of) Significance: Architecture/Engineering Periods of significance: 1875-1899, 1850-1874 Historic function: Domestic, Landscape Current function: Government, Landscape, Recreation And Culture Privately owned?: no Primary Web Site: [Web Link] Secondary Website 1: [Web Link] Season start / Season finish: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Secondary Website 2: Not listed National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   09/06/2021 Don.Morfe visited it 03/21/2010 Searcher28 visited it

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