3513 Overbrook Road-Dumbarton Historic District - Pikesville MD - NRHP Historic Districts - Contributing Buildings on Waymarking.com

National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

The Dumbarton Historic District is historically significant for its association with the suburbanization of Baltimore City. Developed in the mid-1920s, it represents the northwestward expansion of the city during the period, and the importance of the Park Heights corridor as a center of the city’s Jewish community. Many of Dumbarton’s original residents were prominent Jewish merchants and industrialists who were tacitly denied access to the city’s established suburbs because of their religious and ethnic affiliations.

At the turn of the 19th century, Baltimore’s early Jewish community was concentrated in Oldtown and South Baltimore, in the earliest-settled parts of the city adjacent to the harbor. Solomon Etting, a prominent early Jewish resident, estimated that approximately 150 Jews lived in the city in 1825. Later in the 19th century, Baltimore’s upwardly- and outwardly-mobile Jewish community established a pattern of relocation from the early neighborhoods around the city center along a series of northwesterly routes centering on Park Heights Avenue. By the 1860s, some Jews began to move “uptown” to areas north and west of Oldtown, such as Reservoir Hill and Madison Park/Eutaw Place, near Druid Hill Park, the city’s largest public park. This trend continued into the early 20th century. A social and ethnic stratification began to emerge, separating more prosperous “uptown” Jews of German heritage and less prosperous and more recently arrived “downtown” Jews from Eastern Europe.

In 1901, an especially elite group of wealthy Jews, mostly of Germanic heritage, established the Suburban Club in a location along the Park Heights corridor between Druid Ridge Cemetery and the northwestern boundary of Baltimore City. Built at the considerable cost of $200,000, the Suburban Club not only assessed substantial dues, but also required that its members contribute a certain amount of money annually to Jewish charities. The pattern of Jewish migration through the city was complex, and occurred along several major arteries including Liberty Road, Reisterstown Road, and Park Heights Avenue. Expansion along the Park Heights corridor took place in several stages in the early 20th century. Among the neighborhoods that particularly attracted middle-class Jewish homebuyers were Forest Park and Park Heights. The resources along Lower Park Heights, between Druid Hill Park and the Park Circle neighborhood, consisted primarily of rowhouses and minor commercial buildings, whereas the development just beyond the city limits was decidedly suburban in character.

The most influential enterprise in developing suburban communities for Baltimore’s elite during this period was the Roland Park Company. Beginning in the 1890s with the development of Roland Park in North Baltimore, the Roland Park Company set the standard for suburban residential development. Its projects combined a high degree of quality in design, both of the community and its architecture. As was common at the time, the Roland Park Company employed discriminatory covenants in its property deeds to exclude African-American and Jewish residents from its communities. The Dumbarton Historic District, in part developed as an “alternative” to other suburban developments which excluded Jews, nevertheless was influenced by the design and planning precepts of the Roland Park Company and its emulators.

The layout of the district, with its curvilinear streets, lot configurations, and naturalistic landscaping generally reflect design principles associated with Frederick Law Olmsted which characterized the Roland Park Company’s seminal developments. Architects and builders whose creations contributed to the distinctive character of such Roland Park Company communities as Guilford, Homeland, and The Orchards were hired to design and build houses in Dumbarton as well. The architectural firm of Palmer and Lamdin, long associated with Roland Park Company projects, designed several houses in Dumbarton

Page 6 of the Registration Form-Inventory of Houses in Dumbarton:
3513 Overbrook Road; Tudor Revival; 1934; Slate/Stucco/Stone: Contributing

Name of Historic District (as listed on the NRHP): Dumbarton Historic District Link to nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com page with the Historic District: [Web Link] Address: 3513 Overbrook Road, Pikesville MD 21208 How did you determine the building to be a contributing structure?: Narrative found on the internet (Link provided below) Optional link to narrative or database: [Web Link] NRHP Historic District Waymark (Optional): Not listed

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