Snowfall in Baltimore

Winter, Mount Vernon Place, c. 1930

Mount Vernon Place in winter proved to be a popular subject for artists and printmakers. From its inception as an early subdivision carved out of the John Eager Howard estate, it was a place of culture, refinement, and celebratory events.  In the 1840s, citizens congregated around the Washington Monument to listen “to the soul-stirring eloquence of… many distinguished orators” giving patriotic speeches on the Fourth of July.  The annual Flower Mart, held here almost continuously since 1911, features neighborhood groups selling flowers and plants of wide variety.  In 1929, an “old English Christmas Eve celebration” that featured trumpeters playing carols from atop the Monument was held. Three inches of snow blanketed the ground just before the event, making everything look very much like this etching, a cooperative venture by two artists.  Hungarian-born Andrew Karoly contributed the park and architectural elements, including the Walters Art Gallery on the far left and the Peabody Institute on the right, and Louis Szanto, a Hungarian-American, contributed the seventeen pedestrians.

Digital image from the Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 5980-1-22.