Five Minute Histories: The Hawley Hutzler House

[00:00:13]Hello everybody. This is Johns Hopkins with Baltimore Heritage and we're back with another of our 5-minute history videos. And today I'm on Utah Place in Bolton Hill and behind me is one of Baltimore's signature houses. You don't have to look very hard to know that. Not every house has main pink granite. Not every house has a name. This one, the Holly Hudson House. And if you go inside, you definitely know it's special with 13 bedrooms, seven and a half bathrooms, 12 fireplaces, stained glass, and a belvedere, an open-air cupola that you can see behind me. And luckily it's recently been restored by Ward Bucher and Lisa Johnson, a husband and wife team that also call this home. We're going to go inside and peek around with Ward in just a moment, but let me say a few words about the house's history. It was built in 1887 for a lumber magnet named Martin Hawley. He grew up in Binghamton, New York and made a fortune in the lumber business with his brother.

[00:01:07]And sort of as an aside, one interesting thing about this house is that the rooms feature different kind of woods. I guess you can do that if you're a lumber magnet. He built this house with part of his fortune. Another part of his fortune he built a summer home in the then developing resort town of Blue Ridge Summit in Pennsylvania. His house was called Monte Vista. Now it's a bed and breakfast you can go and stay there. And if you're so inclined, you can go across the street and worship at the Hawley Memorial Presbyterian Church. I think it's safe to say he was a leading citizen of Blue Ridge Summit. As for the architect for both here and up in Pennsylvania, he chose an architect Thomas Kennedy that I just learned was sort of the go-to church architect in Baltimore at the time, but also did a few houses including this one. I'm going to let uh talk about architecture and I'm going to get back to Holly.

[00:01:58]Unfortunately, he died shortly after the house was completed. He didn't get to enjoy it very much. Um his wife Mary lived here another 10 years until 1897 when she passed away. And then the house went up for auction and it was purchased the winning bidder was David Hutzler, one of the three Hutzler brothers who grew the Hutzler Department Store into an empire. About 8 years before they had uh built their signature building on Howard Street, the Hutzler Palace that was as it was called. Um and then uh he moved in here. He got a little bit more time to enjoy the house than uh Holly did, but he died in around 1915, I believe. His wife Ella uh lived long after that up until the 1940s. After that it was turned into offices. For a time in the 1970s, it was a place called uh an orphanage called Boys uh Boys Town Home. Offices again, and then apartments.

[00:02:50]And then Ward and Lisa purchased it.

[00:02:53]They were no strangers to historic preservation and restoration projects.

[00:02:57]Among other things, uh they did the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, the Bell North Theater in Patterson Park that's now home to Casa of Maryland. And I believe restored an African-American historic African-American schoolhouse on the Eastern Shore where they called home for a little while also. But with that, I'm going to stop talking and we're going to go inside and uh talk with Ward about what's going on. We'll see you inside.

[00:03:20]>> Okay, I'm Ward Booker and with my wife Lisa, current stewards of the Holly Hutzler House here on Utah Place. And I want to welcome you to the Gilded Age.

[00:03:31]The name Gilded Age came from a book written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley uh Warner um and was an amusing story.

[00:03:40]The Gilded Age itself ran from the end of reconstruction late 1870s to the big panic of 1893 which was a huge depression much worse than the Great Depression in the 20th century.

[00:03:54]But during that period, wealthy people were building wonderful houses. They had a lot of money flowing. This house was original owners were Martin and Mary Hawley and it was built by Benjamin Franklin Bennett, who was a very active contractor in Baltimore. Mostly institutional buildings. And it has all the Gilded Age features of the time. It was very modern by comparison. So it had steam heating with gilded radiators. It had gilded cornices. In part, the suddenly on the market was very cheap bronze gilding. And this space is particularly interesting to me because it was the height of fashion in Victorian architecture to have a stair hall.

[00:04:58]Combined the living room and a grand stair. As you can see, the stair is particularly wide here. I think that's in part because Kennedy mostly designed church buildings. And so one of the features of stair hall was a grand fireplace and out of stone.

[00:05:21]The paneling of course every wall in here is paneled. And in fact every room on the first floor was paneled and each with a different kind of wood.

[00:05:33]Quarter sawn oak here, cherry, eucalyptus, calico ash. I think Martin was kind of showing off his goods. And each room also has a different parquet floor pattern. Okay, we're here in the library which is paneled with cherry wood and we have this wonderful surround around the fireplace built-in bookshelves all in cherry of course and one of the really interesting things is the small fireplace size that you see here because it had steam heating they didn't really need the fireplaces to heat and the fuel of choice was pieces of coal so you can see in the fireplace is a cast iron fire great where the coal pieces would be. Over in the bay window you'll see that there is a pair of round stone topped radiators which we use as lamp stands but originally they were the radiators for the space.

[00:06:45]Okay, we are here in the parlor the Hustlers called it the music room and upright piano in the corner. This is handled with what they called white mahogany what we would call eucalyptus wood today.

[00:07:00]It has an interesting fireplace with a grand pier mirror we're not sure if that's early but it was there by 1905 for sure and you notice the fireplace surround there are these tiles that appear to be quartz that might be some other semi-precious stone and the interior of the firebox is decorative ceramic tile as are the hearth and that's typical of almost all the fireplaces in the house.

[00:07:51]>> Mhm.