Chapter 8: North
While none of the scenes in this website's "north" section is technically within Roland Park, the area north of Northern Parkway has long been of interest to trolley and train buffs. Through this locale at one time or another ran the Maryland& Pennsylvania Railroad, the National Central Railroad, the Western Maryland Rail Road and the no. 24 streetcar, the latter the greater Roland Park area's last trolley line.
The photo at left shows a southbound Northern Central Railway train at the Hollins Station in Robert E. Lee Park. Beyond the bluff on the right is the popular Relay Hill —often called "dogwalkers' peninsula" — just above Lake Roland dam. The main body of Lake Roland is beyond and to the left. Hollins Station was closed in 1926 and burned down in 1933, so this photo predates at least the latter of those two dates. (The source says c. 1930.) The signal and the telegraph pole are prominent in the 1950s shot at set 10b, below, and the now toppled telegraph pole still survives among the bushes in this nowadays completely overgrown area. (Photo: R.K. Henry, in Jim Holechek. 2004. Two Cross Keys Villages: One Black, One White. New York,N.Y.: iUniverse.) Click photos for larger images.
Religious and Educational Institutions
Set 1
Mapped Scene: The seminary is clearly visible on the Matthews map of 1935. In the photo at right, the photographer is approaching the west wing via the Belvedere Avenue (now Northern Parkway) driveway. The red circle shows the photographer's position.
Scene: As an organization, St. Mary's Seminary was formed in 1791, making it oldest Catholic seminary in the United States. It is operated by the Sulpician Fathers. The seminary's original site was on Paca Street, downtown. The seminary moved to its current Roland Park-area location in 1929. The present building was designed by Maginnis and Walsh of Boston. Here, the building is still under construction.
Commentary: The façade of the seminary has changed remarkably little since 1929, as shown here .There is a new addition immediately west of the old building (part of which can be seen at the far right of this modern shot). Also, a large chapel was added to the rear of the building in the 1940s, though obviously this cannot be seen in this photo.
Set 2
Scene: The scene is what was at one time was the seminary's general assembly room, which took up a large portion of the ground floor of the western end of the building (the part closer to the viewer in the set 1 photos).
Commentary: It is impossible to duplicate the historic photo at left because the old assembly room has long since been divided into comparatively small classrooms. This photo was taken in the westernmost of the classrooms, which it to say at the far end of the scene shown in the old photo (which was shot from the back wall of what is now the eastern most of the classes).
Set 3
Mapped Scene: The seven-acre Tottlelot and house are plainly shown on the 1915 Bromley map, above the "15" at the bottom of the page.
Scene: Longtime Roland Park residents John W. and Helen Doll Tottle moved to Sunset Knoll in 1912. The planation-style house was designed and built for them while they we still living at 8 Longwood Road (see this site's "west" chapter). Mr. Tottle was a wealthy merchant, owning a chain of five-and-dime stores in Baltimore. This photo is undated but, given the scarcity of large trees, we can assume that the land had only fairly recently been cleared at the time this shot was taken. I think a date of the mid-1910s is likely.
Commentary: So much vegetation has grown up on the Sunset Knoll lot that it is virtually impossible to get a clear shot of the house from the same, or at least approximately the same, vantage point as the vintage photo. The house is, however, delightfully preserved.
Set 4
Mapped Scene: The Visitation Convent itself is not shown in the 1935 Matthews map, but is fractionally north of the red circle, which marks the photographer's position.
Scene: Here the photographer is looking north at the east-facing façade of the Visitation Convent. The Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary was founded in 1610 in France. In 1833, the order established its first convent in America, in Georgetown, then a town in its own right in the still quite new District of Columbia. A Baltimore convent followed in 1837. At present, there are 21 Visitation convents in America. The original Baltimore location was a house at the corner of Green and Mulberry streets, with a subsequent, larger convent/school building at Park Avenue and Centre Street. The order moved its Baltimore establishment to 5712 Roland Avenue in New North Roland Park on June 16, 1927, going onto sell the building to a developer in the late 1970s, who turned it into condominiums.
Commentary: The developer that bought the Visitation Convent building in 1977, James Ward III, did a nice job retaining the historic appearance of the exterior, though the development of the land behind the building for townhouses caused resentment among local residents. In addition to being a convent, the Visitation center also housed the Baltimore Academy of the Visitation, which boasted of bein gthe first Catholic school in Baltimore to have a kindergarten. The school was situated behind the convent. Initially for girls only, the school later took girls from kindergarten through the 8th grade and boys through the 5th grade. The 1977 sale of the convent did not include the school, which continued operating until it burned down on March 16, 1981.
Set 5
Mapped Scene: This section of the 1922 Baltimore City topographical map shows the Gordon estate before Bryn Mawr's purchase of the part of the estate south of Melrose Avenue and also before the development of the northern part, which became The Orchards neighborhood. The current schoolgate house is known to be a remnant of the old estate and it is clearly visible on this map excerpt.
Scene: Looking south at the old Gordon estate gatehouse, now part of Bryn Mawr. The Bryn Mawr School for girls was established in 1885 and the original campus was on Cathedral Street. In 1928, the school bought 26 acres of the Douglas Gordon estate known as "The Orchards" (still the name of the surrounding neighborhood). The school spent the next several years developing the campus. The gatehouse pictured here is a remnant of the old Gordon property. A number of the earlier schoolbuildings on the campus were purposefully built with stone from the same quarry as had provided the stone for the gatehouse.
Commentary: The old Gordon estate gatehouse has been dramatically altered over the decades. The north-side chimney has been removed and an attic dormer added in its place. The attractive terra cotta roof tiles have been replaced by asphalt shingles. On the north side (to the left), three second-floor windows have been inserted. Most radically, the Gordons' modest two-column portico has been supplanted by an extensive porch/balcony on the west façade.
Along the Tracks
Set 6
Mapped Scene: The Ma & Pa line is clearly shown on the 1935 Matthews map.
Scene: Belvedere Avenue (now Northern Parkway), looking west by northwest at the former Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. exchange, now part of the Bryn Mawr School. Its address is 600 W. Northern Parkway. Today, the Gilman-to-Bryn Mawrfoot bridge stands above this site. The single-track line in the foreground is that of the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad, known as the "Ma & Pa." A half-mile or so north of here, the line swung east around the top of the Elkridge golf course and went on through Towson, eventually ending up in York, Pennsylvania. In Towson, it passed immediately south of where the public library now stands. The bridge that carried the tracks across York Road was demolished in 1959 but its abutments remain.
Commentary: The old C&P telephone exchange became a private house after it was no longer needed for phone purposes. It was bought in 1998 by the Bryn Mawr school, which turned it into administrative offices. The train tracks used to run along what is currently the driveway to the parking lot at the rear of the building. Visible at the extreme right of this modern photo is the underside of the footbridge to the Gilman School.
Set 7
Scene: The scene is again of 600 W. Northern Parkway, the old C&P telephone exchange. This shot was taken from more or less the same position as that in the set above, but a couple of decades later. The photo is from the Baltimore County Public Library's website, which gives it a 1983 date. However, this must be incorrect, for reasons explained below.
Commentary: The new Gilman-to-Bryn Mawrfoot bridge is plainly visible from this angle. In the old photo, the photographer is rather closer to the C&P building than is the photographer of this modern shot. This is because Northern Parkway is about twice as wide as Belvedere Avenue used to be, with the additional pavement having been added on the south (eastbound) side. The photographer of the old image was actually standing about where the white lane-separating line is in the middle of the modern photo.
The historic photo can with certainty be placed in a four-year window. The Ma & Pa line to downtown Baltimore fell into disuse in summer 1958. Belvedere Avenue was widened into Northern Parkway in 1962. Here, the Ma & Pa tracks across the road are still present, but the line is obviously no longer used: nearer to the photographer, the ties are still extant but the rails have gone. On the other hand, the road is just as obviously the non-divided Belvedere Avenue and not the divided, multi-lane Northern Parkway. Without doubt, therefore, the photo was taken between 1958 and 1962, perhaps in about 1960.
Set 8a
Mapped Scene: For the photo below, photographer James Gallagher stood at the lower end of the Bryn Mawr campus and faced south, looking toward Belvedere Avenue (now Northern Parkway).
Scene: This scene is immediately to the southwest of the Bryn Mawr School campus, where the train track curved slightly westward, as shown here (in other words, a little to the north of the C&P building that is the subject of the previous two sets). This photo was taken a few seconds after that shown in the set below. The house in the background, with the dormer windows and at the right of the image, is 608 Northern Parkway (then Belvedere Avenue). Because of double lots, number 608 is the next building to the west of number 600 (C&P), there being no intervening houses. The low slate-roofed structure between the house and the locomotive is a shed that used to stand behind and between 600 and 608 W. Northern Parkway (formerly Belvedere Avenue). The source for this photo gives a date of 1954, but the photo below, taken at the same time, is dated 1952. Presumably either 1952 or 1954 is correct.
Commentary: This is the same scene as that pictured at right. The Ma & Pa ran along here, just this side of the old C&P exchange building visible in the distance at left. The right-of-way is the slightly depressed area in the shadow of the trees, running from the middle left to the lower right of the photo. Number 608 W. Northern Parkway is the house in the background at right. Its dormer windows are wholly unchanged seven decades on, though in this view they are slightly obscured by the twisted sapling in the middle distance, right. The now demolished shed whose roof is so prominent in the vintage photo stood on about the spot of this sapling.
Set 8b
Scene: This photo was taken at the same Bryn Mawr location as that in the set above, but a few seconds earlier. The photographer again is James Gallagher. A group of children is shown, two girls and two boys. In the fractionally later set above, the two girls shown in this set here are not visible: they must by then already had walked across the tracks, leaving only the two boys. The item of white litter at the childrens' feet is visible in both photos.
Commentary: Readers familiar with this area may object that the old and modern shots cannot have been taken at the same spot. In the two vintage photos, the land plainly falls away to the left. This same falling away is not apparent in the modern photo at 8a, where the terrain is obviously more level. The explanation is this. As is made evident by the1958 aerial shot above, back in the 1950s there was no south access road to the Bryn Mawr campus from Belvedere. In those days, immediately east of the tracks the land fell fairly steeply to meet Stony Run. In this aerial photo, Stony Run is the meandering dark line that, at the bottom of the photo, is immediately to the right of the rails (the curved white streak). Immediately above Belvedere, however, Stony Run diverges to the right, ending up to the right of the playing fields at the top of the image. In the 1950s, the land between the tracks and the stream was lightly wooded and fairly steep, as shown at right. In recent times, this topography has been greatly altered as the result of the grading necessary to permit the construction of the south access road to campus from Northern Parkway. This access road now runs between the stream and the old rail right-of-way.
Set 9
Mapped Scene: The Homeland Station is shown on this portion of an undated Ma & Pa route map. Wikipedia says of this map,"Route map of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad (the 'Ma andPa') in the 1930s-1950s, which appeared in numerous non-copyrighted timetables and publications before 1958."
Scene: The photo shows the southwest corner of the old Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad Homeland Station. The photographer is facing northeast, looking toward Lake Avenue (which is beyond the building). The façade to the right is the back of the building. The porch to the left is on the west side of the building, from which passengers emerged and boarded the train. The tracks, below the line of view, ran parallel to the west side of the building and are here between it and the photographer. The building fronted onto Lake Avenue, where the entrance was.
Commentary: The Homeland Station building is currently a most pleasing private home north of Roland Park. The rail right-of-way is now the property's driveway. The current (2010) owner has kept the building's interior reminiscent of a train station. As a matter of interest, it has long been known that the Roland Park Co. built a second water tower near the Lake and Roland avenues intersection, in addition to the water tower it built near the Roland Park fire house. Now long demolished, this tower's exact whereabouts have been elusive. It was in fact located immediately south of this, the Homeland Ma& Pa station.
Set 10a
Mapped Scene: This detail from the1898 Bromley map shows the Lake Roland area, with Hollins Station clearly marked. This is the same scene as the banner photo at the top of the page.
Scene: Looking north from the western bluff of "dogwalkers' peninsula" in Robert E. Lee Park toward the main body of Lake Roland and the Hollins Station. The former Northern Central Railway (NCR) line in the foreground is now used by the Baltimore area Light Rail system (having been relaid). The line to the left is the Greenspring branch of the NCR, which was also used by the Western Maryland Rail Road (WMRR) to connect trains to its station at Owings Mills. This branch trackage, despite falling into disuse decades ago, is still extant, if overgrown, running from near this vantage point about a mile around the western shore of the lake before petering out. Of the station building shown here, there is now barely a trace, though a few marble blocks may still be found in the underbrush.
Commentary: The photographer of this modern shot is standing at same rocky outcrop shown at the right of the historic photo, though the rock is today coverned in a mass of tangled vegetation. The Greenspring branch's actual junction, as in the old photo, was to the left and just out of the photo. The site of the Hollins Station itself was between the two utility poles on the left side of the tracks.
Set 10b
Scene: This is the same scene as that shown above. The original caption of the 1880s shot above refers to a "photo below." I believe this is it. This 1950s photo was taken about 70 years after the 1880s shot above and 20-odd years after the station building had burned down. Whereas in the 1880s there had been two tracks and a siding on the westward-heading branch of the WMRR (to the left), by the 1950s there was but one line (a mile or so of which is still in place).
Commentary: In the 1880s photo at 10a, the station is more or less surrounded by a wooden boardwalk. In later years, this seems to have been replaced by a paved sidewalk. This sidewalk's curb can been seen in the 1950s photo, immediately this side of the curved Greenspring branch line leading off to the left. Heavily overgrown today, beating about the bushes reveals that history is still to be found here. This modern photo shows the section of the Greenspring line in the vicinity of the old station and, to the right, the curb of the paved sidewalk. This modern photo was taken from a spot a litttle beyond the six-pin utility pole shown at left. The now toppled pole is still there, too, albeit almost wholly covered by dense foliage.
Set 11
Mapped Scene: The 1915 Bromley map from which this section is excerpted was made at about the same time as the 1917 photo.
Scene: Looking east from the Greenspring branch back toward the back of Hollins Station. The southern shore of the main body of Lake Roland is out of sight but immediately to the left. (In the 1880s photo of Hollins Station at 10a, there is a boxcar to the left in the background. This photo here was taken from approximately that place.) The back of the station building can be seen behind the last of this train's cars. The line along which this train is traveling is the left-turning line shown images above. Rusted and overgrown, a certain amount of this track remains, starting approximately here and extending to the left about a mile (back over the photographer's left shoulder).
Commentary: A stroll around the western shore of the main body of Lake Roland will quickly bring one to a mile or so of inexplicable railroad trackage, visible at the lower left of this shot. This is all that is left of the Greenspring branch of the NCR. This photo was taken about a quarter of a mile west of the old Hollins Station site and is therefore approximately the scene of the photo at left. The old photo shows three tracks, also depicted on the map. However, as the 1950s shot in set 10b reveals, the trackage was at some point reduced to a single line, which is what remains today.
Set 12
Mapped Scene: The map shows that the photographer is standing on the north bank of the small body of Lake Roland. The Walters mansion referred to in the original caption at right had by the late 1890s been bought by the Leakins.
Scene: Looking south from the north shore of the small body of Lake Roland at the Hollins Station causeway. Hollins Station is in the background and the causeway that today carries the Light Rail is plainly visible. When this photo was taken, the causeway carried the NCR tracks. The main body of Lake Roland is beyond the causeway.
Commentary: If instead of turning west along the Greenspring branch at Hollins Station a train were to have carried straight on, the NCR line would have carried it over the Lake Roland causeway and bridge, which separated — and still separates — the main (western) body of the lake from this, the small (eastern body) immediately above the dam. The scene today is considerably more overgrown than it was in 1886 but is recognizable nevertheless. The causeway is no different, though the bridge itself is a modern replacement. Hollins station stood about where the very dark foliage is at the far end of the causeway. Of the Walters/Leakin mansion on the hill, there is now no sign.
Set 13
Scene: Looking south from the NCR's Brightside stop back toward the Hollins Station. The Brightside stop was a quarter of a mile north of Hollins, just on the northern side of the rail causeway. It is shown at the bottom left of the map in the set below this one. The photographer and date of this image are not recorded. However, the photo is similar in style to a number of A.H. Brinkmann images included on this page, all taken in 1886. This photo is quite possibly one of the same series.
Commentary: As with the Lake stop shown in the set below, there is now not a trace left of the Brightside stop. However, the distinctive S curve of the tracks is as readily apparent in this modern photo as in the vintage one. The causeway leading south to the site of the old Hollins Station is just beyond the curve. The main body of Lake Roland is to the photographer's right.
Set 14
Mapped Scene: The Lake stop is shown on the 1915 Bromley map as having been at more or less the foot of Rolandvue Road (then Roland View) at its intersection with Bellona Avenue.
Scene: Looking at the Lake stop and west across the main body of Lake Roland. The photographer has his back to Bellona Avenue, a few feet behind him. There is now no trace of this structure, known as the Lakestop. This photo is dated 1958. If the man is a passenger, he is one of the last; in 1959 passenger service was almost entirely eliminated and the trackage reduced to a single line. Freight service continued until 1972, when the company went under.
Commentary: The NCR Lake stop was nothing more than a shelter at the side of the tracks. There is not a scrap of it remaining today and so we cannot be certain of its precise location, save to say that it was approximately at the intersection of Bellona Avenue and Rolandvue Road, on the west side of the tracks. Suffice it to say that it was at about this spot, though the scene now looks very different from in the vintage picture. This is because the entire northern end of Lake Roland is now silted over. What was water in the 19th and 20th centuries is land now. The Light Rail tracks are in the foreground.
Lake Roland/Lakeside
Set 15
Mapped Scene: The bridge, dam and valve house (here called the gatehouse) are all plainly visible on the 1915 Bromley map.
Scene: Looking northeast at the Lake Roland dam from what was then the iron truss footbridge across the Jones Falls River. The land for Lake Roland and its watershed was bought by the Baltimore City municipal government in the mid-1850s from the Baltimore Water Co. The dam and valve house were built in 1858, with the lake behind subsequently filling up. Originally, the lake covered some 100 acres. Now, over a century and half later, silting has reduced the water-covered area to 54 acres.
Commentary: In its fundamentals, the dam is largely the same as it was in the 1880s. Though now hidden by trees, the overflow system visible at the right of the historical photo is still there. On the other hand, the house behind and to the left of the valvehouse on the old photo has long since been demolished. The dam as it currently appears is the result of extensive restoration work in the 1980s and 1990s, after the dam and park were taken over by the city Parks and Recreation Department. Prior to this, the dam had fallen into disrepair, as Lake Roland had ceased being a source of municipal water in 1915. The restoration work was given urgency after damage suffered by the dam as the result of Tropical Storm David in 1979. Eventual repairs required the draining of Lake Roland in 1992, which was refilled in June 1994.
Set 16
Update 2009: In the fall of 2009, the 1952 Lake Roland dam bridge was demolished as the result of concerns about its safety.
Scene: Looking south from the north bank of the Jones Falls across the iron bridge just below the dam. The road leading left to the valve station can be seen in the background.
Commentary: The historic photo of the Lake Roland dam (set above) was taken from the historic iron truss bridge shown above, just as the new photo of the dam was taken from the (comparatively) modern bridge shown above. Built in 1952, the modern bridge was deemed unsafe in 2008 and closed in the fall of that year. It was demolished in fall 2009, subsequently to be replaced by an attractive modern bridge.
Set 17
Scene: Looking south from the northern toward the southern side of the Lake Roland dam. The white building is the valve house.
Commentary: Assuming the old photo to have been taken in the mid-1910s, this would have been around the time Lake Roland ceased to be a water supply for the city. If the lake was still in use as a water supply when the postcard photo was taken, this perhaps explains the low water level in the picture above — because so much water was being channeled daily to the city's water mains. The only noticeable differences between the old and new shots are that (a) the new photo's white retaining wall beyond and to the right of the valvehouse is absent on the 1919 photo and (b) the iron railings at the end of the dam's promenade wall in the old photo are not there in the new.
Set 18
Mapped Scene: The map shows the photographer's approximate position in the modern photo. There is no way of telling precisely where the old photo was taken, though it must have been broadly speaking in this vicinity.
Scene: This unattributed photo shows the very northern end of the no. 24 trolley route, through the exact location cannot be determined. The 24 route initially, in the 1890s, got to Roland Avenue through Hampden and then proceeded up Roland Avenue's full length and beyond to Lake Roland. Subsequently the route was shortened such that it just shuttled between Lake Roland and the Roland Park carhouse on Upland Road. (The no. 10 line still came to Roland Park via Hampden.) From 1940 to 1947, the route was extended to the Roland Water Tower in the south. At the other end of the line, beyond Lake Avenue, it bore northwest to a turning loop somewhere in the vicinity of what was once a leisure park near the Lake Roland dam. This photo cannot be dated precisely, but a window can be established. The photo was taken by the same unknown photographer that took the historic image shown in set 4 of the "south" page of this site. The subject is the same car (no. 5388) and the handwriting on the back of the photo is the same. Because set 4 in "south" can be placed between 1940 and 1947, so it can reasonably be supposed that this photo above was probably taken in that timeframe too. The photo cannot have been taken later than early 1947 because after that time only car no. 5687 ran on this section of line.
Commentary: The Lakeside line was abandoned in early 1950. By this time only one car ran on it (no.5687) and the line was no longer linked in with the rest of the city streetcar system. This was because the lower part of the 24 route, from Lake Avenue southward, had been closed and its trackage removed in 1947, leaving only a small rump north of Lake Avenue. With only one car running on this, there was no need for two tracks. Accordingly, the southbound track was torn up and car 5687 ran forlornly up and down the northbound track from Lake Avenue to Lakeside for a couple of years. On January 28, 1950 it made its last run and was thereafter dismantled on the spot, there being no means of taking it to one of the carhouses downtown. The remaining track was then taken out. Much of its right-of-way is now lost within the Elkridge Apartments complex at the top of Roland Avenue. Northwest of this community, certain areas of graded land can still be found, such as that shown above, though there is no way to say with certainty if this modern photo was taken in the same place as the historic photo.
Set 19
Scene: Looking south along Lake Roland toward the dam. This is the view from the southern end of the M.E. Posey "Bright Side" estate (see the old map at set 20). The view is looking downstream toward the dam, which is not visible here. The trees on the right in the middle distance, on the other side of the water, are were Paw Point dog park now sits.
Commentary: The southern half of the old Posey estate is now far more tree covered than it was in 1886, precluding an exact replication of the Brinkmann image at left. The modern photographer stood further down the hill, closer to the lake, than did Brinkmann. All the same, the scene is recognizable.
Set 20
Scene: Looking southwest at the Brightside mansion. This is the house at the center of the estate referred to in the set above. This photo was taken in 1886 by A.H. Brinkmann as part of his series of photos shot around Lake Roland. I do not know who owned the estate in the mid-1880s. In the 1876 map above, the owner of "Bright Side" (two words) is given as M.E. Posey. By the time of the 1898 Bromley map, the owner of of the "Brightside" estate (one word) was a certain Professor Brooks (see set 21).
Commentary: The old Brightside house sat on the graded land down in the partially shaded dell shown in the middle of the picture. There is absolutely no trace of the old structure nowadays, though the current owner of the lot tells me that he occasionally unearths broken bottles and plates in this general vicinity.
Set 21
Sense of the Scene: The Stumps, of whom Mrs. Stump is portrayed at right, lived in the Lippincott Cottage in Ruxton. The modern street address for this lot is 1018 Wagner Road, though the cottage itself was pulled down long ago andr eplaced by the current house. This photo's original caption was, "Lippincott Cottage, our first home." The photo is undated but is stuck in an album surrounded by photos dated November 1900, so this likely was when this snap was taken too. The photographer was probably husband Bertram N. Stump.
Scene: Looking north from the intersection of Bellona Avenue and Rolandvue Road. This photo and the one in the set below were sent to me in 2017 via the old version of this website. They were kindly sent by the granddaughter of the Stumps, Mrs. Stump being the subject of the image above. The photographer was likely her husband, Bertram N. Stump. Bertram was the U.S. commissioner of immigration in Baltimore. The Stumps lived in the house shown at left before moving to Harford County, where their grandaughter still lives. The scene shows Mrs. Stump heading north, but looking south, on Bellona Avenue. Rolandvue Road — then Roland View Road — is just behind the photographer's right shoulder. The NCR rails are to the left. Though double-tracked a little to the south at Brightside Station (see set 13), note that here the line is only single-tracked.
Commentary: The modern photographer is standing fractionally further south than was photographer Bertram Stump in the vintage image. All the same, the general lie of the land is just as it was over a century ago. Despite widening and paving, the shape of Bellona Avenue is the same, as is the tree line at right. The big difference is that what are now the Light Rail tracks at left are today double-tracked, whereas the NCR trackage in 1900 was a single line only (though it, too, was subsequently double tracked).
Set 22
Mapped Scene: The 1898 Bromley map shows the Stumps' house, given here as being owned by Samuel W. Lippincott (from whom the Stumps bought it). The photographer of the old photo at right, likely Bertram Stump, stood with his back to the Lippincott cottage and took his photo looking west over the then mostly undeveloped Nimmo estate.
Scene: Looking westward over the northern end of Lake Roland. This is another photo from the Stumps' album of the early 20th century. The view is looking west from what is now the Wagner Road ridge over Lake Roland. This part of Wagner Road runs above,
and parallel to, Bellona Avenue. Coming in at the left, beyond the middle-distance trees, is the Jones Falls. The large stream flowing from the right into the lake is Roland Run. Today, this area of the lake is completely silted over. Though now not much more than a marshy trickle, Roland Run was once a serious stream. As most readers likely know, Roland Run flows past L'Hirondelle Club in Ruxton, over a third of a mile upstream from here. Now known primarily as a racquet club, L'Hirondelle was upon its founding in 1872 a boating club. Boat access to the lake was in those days perfectly easy via Roland Run. This would be quite impossible today.
Commentary: Nowadays, the old Stump photo at left cannot be replicated because the once bare and undeveloped Nimmo estate — over which the vintage photo looks — is now developed and tree covered. The closest match one can make is to look in the same direction from Rolandvue Road, as shown here. In the antique photo, there is a white rail fence at the far right of the image. That fence marks the border between Rolandvue Road and the estate to its north (the William E. Elliot estate on the map above). That white fence has been replaced by the black chain-link fence shown in the picture above. In other words, this modern photographer is standing at a position just south of the white fence shown in the 1900 photo. Note that the distant tree line in both photos is identical.