Five Minute Histories: Hillside Park

Added: 2026-05-07

[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 on that what I think is Baltimore's most recent park, Hillside Park. I'm here off of Falls Road just north of Cold Spring across from Poly and Western High Schools if you know where those are. This park opened in the summer of 2025 and it's thanks to a non-profit organization called the Roland Park Community Association which was able to raise money and buy this part of a former golf course that was run by the Roland Park Country Club.

[00:00:45]We're going to talk about the park here in a second but let's start with the country club and the golf course that it was part of.

[00:00:52]The Roland Park Community got it's start in the 1890s when a gentleman named William Edmonds decided he wanted to build big. Not just a house or two but a whole community. For that he turned to another gentleman out in Kansas City named Edward Bouton who was doing development on a grand scale out there.

[00:01:10]When Bouton came over he started to think through how to do this plan community and turned to landscape architecture firm the Frederick Law Olmsted firm. Think Central Park with its winding paths and sort of picturesque scenes. And that's how Roland Park was designed on those same principles with winding streets and tree-lined sidewalks, footpaths and whatnot. If you're curious to know where Roland comes from it came from a long-standing English property owner in Baltimore County named Roland Thornberry. So they took his first name and turned it into the name of this neighborhood, this community. In the 1890s Baltimore and America were going through a little bit of a recession. So the developers needed things to lure people out to the county. So these wonderful houses and tree-lined streets were one thing. A second thing was one of the nation's first shopping malls that's still going strong off of Roland Avenue with some restaurants and whatnot in there.

[00:02:06]And the third was this golf course to lure people out. The golf course got going in 1898 with when the Roland Park Country Club was formed and it was a huge success with over 600 members I believe in its first year. Now we're going to have to do a whole video just on this topic but when the country club developed the golf course on both sides of Falls Road here and on the west side.

[00:02:31]That along with the developments for Poly and Western High Schools along with the development of Cross Keys, the residential and shopping area, really all but destroyed a historically black community that had been here for decades and decades before that centered on an inn on Falls Road. There are a few houses, those historic houses that remain up on Falls Road by Bear Hills if you know where that is. But again, we're going to have to do a whole video just on that. The golf course opened in 1898 and in and in its second year it hosted the US Open. And that was groundbreaking in a number of ways. First, this was the first US Open held south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It was held on this 18-hole golf course which was the first 18-hole golf course in Maryland.

[00:03:18]And it was the first held in a city and the winner of that first US Open was a Scottish gentleman named Willie Smith who won by an amazing 11 strokes. I played golf for the first time in my life last weekend so I now know what 11 strokes means and maybe what a huge feat that was. That record lasted by something like 98 years not broken until 1997 when Tiger Woods won a Masters tournament by a whopping 12 strokes.

[00:03:46]The golf course was going strong but in the 1920s the country club wanted to have a a second golf course out in Baltimore County, purchased a parcel called Five Farms and operated two golf courses for a number of years. But in the 1960s, I believe 1962, they decided they no longer wanted the upkeep of this course so closed it down, sold parcels on the west side of Falls Road again for Poly and Western High Schools and for Cross Keys.

[00:04:14]So the country club then owned this enormous 20-plus acre green space that didn't really have a whole lot going on for many many years. But several years ago the Roland Park Community Foundation was able to raise money to bid on the property.

[00:04:31]Roland Park Country Club let it be known they were willing to sell. There were a number of potential buyers and potential uses ranging from private homes, development for private homes, to a retirement community that were more or less liked or hated by the neighbors here in Roland Park. But the community foundation was able to raise money and purchase this property to dedicate it to open space, to green space for the neighborhood and for for the city. Their goal in creating a park was to design it along the same principles as the Frederick Law Olmsted designs of Central Park in the Roland Park neighborhood to keep it as what what we call passive recreation. So frisbees and picnics and flying kites.

[00:05:13]So it is not like for example Druid Hill Park with tennis courts and a swimming pool. And it's not like Leakin Park with its miles and miles of hiking trails.

[00:05:24]But it is a fantastic place to come out and even if you don't have a kite or a frisbee bring a picnic basket and I can assure you on a nice sunny Saturday or Sunday afternoon it is fabulous people watching out here. Thanks so much and we'll see you next time.