Acquiring Fame: Mount Vernon Celebrities

Acquiring Fame: Mount Vernon Celebrities. Mount Vernon Cultural Walk. , In 1903, the Belvedere Hotel became the crowning architectural achievement in the neighborhood. Its signature thirty-five-foot mansard roof has become the symbol for upper Mount Vernon. In the late 1970s, the building was rehabilitated into condominiums, and some of the most striking interior spaces in Baltimore were reopened to the public. Photographs of movie stars, politicians, and other famous hotel guests line the walls of the lobby.

By the early 20th century, many internationally recognized men of medicine resided in Mount Vernon. Dr. Harvey Cushing (107 E. Chase Street) pioneered brain surgery; William Welch (935 St. Paul Street) founded one of the world’s first public health school; and Dr. Thomas Cullen (20 E. Eager Street) helped found the field of gynecology.

In addition, upper Mount Vernon housed some of American’s most dynamic women. Gertrude Stein (212 E. Biddle Street), self-entitled “midwife to the twentieth century,” moved to Paris and tutored Hemingway on writing, helped launch Picasso’s career, and wrote several modern literary classics, such as The Making in Americans. Emily Post (14 E, Chase Street), born in 1872, lived her early years in Baltimore. She became the “social arbiter of polite society,” and her book Etiquette became a national best seller. Edith Hamilton, head mistress of Bryn Mawr School (located at Preston and Cathedral streets) from 1896 to 1922, translated the dialogues of Plato and wrote The Greek Way, the authoritative text on ancient Greece. Royalty; too, graced the area. In 1937 former Baltimore native Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson (215 E. Biddle Street) married the former English King Edward VIII, who gave up the throne for her.

(Inscription under the image in the upper center) , View from Washington Monument ca. 1910.

(Inscription under the image in the lower center) , Doorman at the Belvedere Hotel ca. 1946.

(Inscription under the images on the right) , (1st image)- The Lyceum Theatre, once located in the 1200 block of North Charles Street, was built in 1892 and burned in 1925.

(2nd image)-Interior of the Lyceum Theatre.

(3rd image)-Text not legible

(4th image)-Lisa Hamilton (1867-1963) was born in Dresden, Germany and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1894, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. A year later, she became the first women accepted to graduate school at the German University of Leipzig and Munich. In 1896, she became the head mistress of Bryn Mawr School for Girls, located at Preston and Cathedral streets in Baltimore. In 1922, she retired and moved to New York.

(5th image)-The Duchess of Windsor (1896-1936) was born Bessie Wallis Warfield to an old Maryland family. In 1916, when growing up in Mount Vernon and attending the socially appropriate schools and gatherings, she married Lieutenant Earle Winfield Spencer, who she divorced 11 years later. In 1927, while living in London, she married Ernest Aldrich Simpson, and American businessman. Later, she met Edward, Prince of Wales, who would succeed to the British throne. On December 10, 1936, King Edward VIII announced to Great Britain that he was giving up his throne for “the woman I love.” Following her second divorce, Wallis Warfield married Edward, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor moved to Paris.