How Baltimore’s vacant homes wound up recycled into City Hall

The last time Baltimore City Hall underwent a major renovation, William Donald Schaefer was in charge, and Mayor Brandon Scott was not yet born.

As the building’s long-awaited restoration effort got underway starting in 2020, Baltimore’s historic preservationists scoured the region for a comparable match to the 19th century building’s handsome marble facade. Quarried at Baltimore County’s Beaver Dam, it’s all but disappeared from marble and granite shops.

They sourced it just a stone’s throw away — in West Baltimore neighborhoods slated for substantial demolition work.

Some 300 marble steps salvaged from 75 vacant homes in Harlem Park, Sandtown-Winchester, Franklin Square and Carrollton Ridge have been used to fill cracks in the building’s facade, said Jackson Gilman-Forlini, a preservation officer with the city’s Department of General Services.

Of the repairs completed, about 80% came from the vacant houses, leading to unexpected project savings of about $235,000. It’s also a point of pride for a city government that’s trying to tackle the generations-long problem of vacant buildings.

“It’s so important to give it a second life,” Gilman-Forlini said about the marble’s reuse. Vacants, he added, “are ingrained in the history of the city and ingrained in our culture.”

With City Hall’s renovation set to wrap up this year, officials said the irony of leaning on vacant homes to support the work isn’t lost on them.

“In any restoration project, you just dream of having a perfect match,” Christine Djuric, the general services department’s architectural conservator.

Built by the young Baltimore architect George Aloysius Frederick, the six-story facility cost $2.3 million, around $60 million in today’s dollars.

Marble procured from the Cockeysville quarry is also baked into other notable landmarks, including the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol. By the 1930s, Beaver Dam had been abandoned and naturally filled with water.

Last rededicated in 1977, City Hall, built with mansard roofing and two connected lateral wings, has occasionally been compared to a white tiered wedding cake. The late Baltimore historian Frank R. Shivers Jr. likened its insides to the Louvre.

“Notable are the scagliola plasters (half columns that were hand-painted on plaster to resemble marble),” Shivers wrote in 1995, describing the building’s stained glass ceiling and marble floors as optical signals of “soaring space.”

Schaefer, who authorized the last 1975 rehabilitation, had less positive reviews. “When I first came here more than 20 years ago,” he told Shivers, “it was old, dimly lit, cold in the winter and hot in the summer.”

Mayor Catherine Pugh pushed for a comprehensive renovation of the building in 2017, after an engineering study found rapid deterioration of the outer stonework. By then, the building was considered one of the oldest working city halls in the country.

The six-year, $16,047,000 project has so far come in about $1.5 million under budget. The reuse of marble has played a small role in that savings.

Walking about the scaffolding one bright Friday morning, Djuric said the original stonework has held up remarkably well and admired the degree of the artistry that went into the original design. It’s worth noting, she added, that City Hall came to be without so much as a crane.

The appeal of reusing Cockeysville marble for the exterior stems from more than just sentimental value.

Finding a match ensures longevity, Gilman-Forlini said, citing a field of study called materials science. Two stones blended together should have similar hardness, porousness and minerality so as to keep architectural structures cohesive and more durable.

In 2021, Baltimore’s housing department helped identify West Baltimore properties with the compatible stone that were already scheduled for demolition. Gilman-Forlini said the material wouldn’t have been valuable at resale and likely would have wound up in landfills.

The upcycling covered all but about 20% of what was needed for the restoration. The remainder was purchased and salvaged from Dorset Mountain near Danby, Vermont.

Once architecturally salvaged, the marble from the homes’ front stoops is carved, drilled and pinned into place, and then set with epoxy and a mortar joint, a type of repair job in stonework called a Dutchman.

The team completed touch-ups large and small, simple and ornate, spanning every level of the building.

Gilman-Forlini said incorporating vacant homes is one way to bring the city into modern times while honoring Baltimore’s proud industrial past.

“As a preservationist, the first choice is to rehabilitate,” he said. “This is a small way to give the history a second life when rehabilitation isn’t feasible anymore.”