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Preservationists rally to save 119-year-old church in Remington

February 13, 2010 at 12:16 pm 10

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Royer's Hill Methodist Episcopal Church. (Photo by Dottie Campbell)

by FERN SHEN

An old stone church on 24th Street in Remington that is threatened by a proposed Lowe’s mixed-use development just got a new champion: the Baltimore preservation community.

It may be in a somewhat gritty area and not used as a church since at least the 1950s, but the former Royer’s Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1891, has a rich history as a mission of the famed Lovely Lane Methodist Church, according to Baltimore Heritage.

In a new blog post,  the group says the dark stone church building “which retains significant historic character,  should be preserved and utilized to help establish a successful transition between the commercial development and the historic residential Remingotn neighborhood.”

The controversial proposal unveiled last fall to redevelop the site of the former Anderson Automotive (with a Lowe’s Home Improvement store and other structures) appears to assume the demolition of the church.

Baltimore Heritage’s blog post has some fascinating history that explains the church’s role in Baltimore-area urban-suburban issues that date back more than a century.

The Brew has a photo slideshow about the neighborhood and the proposed development.

This SlideShowPro photo gallery requires the Flash Player plugin and a web browser with JavaScript enabled.

((All photos in this online gallery are by Baltimore photographer/videographer John Dean, who has a larger slideshow about the Remington project here.))

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  • Tom

    Such are the treasures that make a city like Baltimore special. They should be preserved and incorporated into smart and neighborhood-friendly redevelopment.

  • Fritz

    I think it’d be nice to save this… but I think it’s much more important to have some good street facing on Howard (not just some on Maryland) rather than a huge parking log and a cinder block wall to the street. I think they should be encouraged to use this building by all means but I don’t think this is particularly more important a landmark than any of the hundreds of derelict row homes in Baltimore.

  • Steve

    I’m all in favor of preserving that which is truly significant. But why, may I ask, was nobody interested in this building until a developer came along? It has been almost a junkyard for as long as I can remember. The community has had fifty years to find another congregation to use the space, with no takers. It is only reasonable to believe that the furor is more about obstructing the proposed development than meeting the need for historic worship space.

  • http://www.BaltimoreInnerSpace.blogspot.com Gerald Neily

    To answer Steve’s question, preservation and destruction both respond to quests to increases in economic value. As long as value is low, historic ruins just sit there and rot. When someone tries to increase value, they deal with it. The developer and community must now decide whether overall value is increased more by knocking the building down for parking or truck loading or whatever, or doing something with the building to make it an asset to the development and the community – perhaps a restaurant or a Lowe’s Garden Center. Almost all preservation and destruction works that way. Baltimore is full of old rotting buildings that would be either treasured or torn down if they were in higher value areas.

  • Ed Hopkins

    To give another response to Steve’s comments.

    The only time the question of preserving any building comes up is when it is slated to be torn down. The new development plans to tear the church down and put a hole in the ground where it stands.

    There is not an effort that I know of to “obstruct” the proposed development but an effort to soften its impact on the adjacent residential area.

    There is no question but that the development, in general, is good for the area and for the city. But with every development, there are issues about softening its impact on the surrounding community.

    The developer, by the way, has made great pains to ensure that the new development blends in along the eastern/Maryland avenue side. Preserving the church would be one step towards a smoother transition to the residential community adjacent to the southwest corner of the new development.

    I would also like to see a way for the people to walk from their community–in the southwest corner–right into the mall. As it is, that part of the development will just be a pit with a cinder block wall. People living down there will have to walk several blocks to get to the food store in the upper part of the mall which they will be able to see from their house.

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