Carroll Baldwin Memorial Hall

Carroll Baldwin Memorial Hall, a stone building on Baltimore Street in Savage constructed from river rocks hauled from the nearby Little Patuxent River, has been a town landmark since 1922. Its Romanesque Revival style blends Queen Anne and Beaux Arts elements and features large windows with stone arches, a massive chimney, and a slate roof. The building contains a main hall used for graduation ceremonies, meetings, parties, and musical events, with a stage at the east end where plays and movies were presented and residents accompanied silent movies on piano or drums in the 1920s; it also had a radio listening apparatus and hosted dances. A west-end room with a large fireplace housed Savage's first library from 1922 until the new Savage Branch of the Howard Public Library opened on Gorman Road in 1991, and the basement provided a kitchen, pool table, and bowling alley while also serving for a time as the local branch of the Health Department. As Savage prospered as a mill town, the hall served many purposes, then after Savage Mill stopped manufacturing cotton duck canvas and was sold after World War II to Harry Heim, it became a toy shop displaying toys and Christmas ornaments made by the factory. When Santa Novelties closed in 1950, the building fell into disrepair, but in 1955 concerned citizens led by the Savage Home-makers Club raised funds for repairs and revived the Carroll Baldwin Memorial Institute. After further decades of use, the aging building received a Community Legacy Grant in 2010 for restoration so it could continue serving residents into the 21st century. The hall was created as a tribute to Carroll Baldwin, president of the Savage Manufacturing Company from 1905 until his death in 1918 at age 46, who was remembered as a friend of his fellow workers and praised for generosity to partners, associates, relatives, and employees. His sister Sallie wished to establish a memorial that would benefit the people of the town where he worked and where the Baldwin family had a summer home, so family members began the building, laid the cornerstone in 1921, and formed a nonprofit corporation to develop and maintain a public library and community hall for the town's meetings, entertainments, and amusements. Chartered on June 23, 1922, with a board of managers and $30,000 in stocks, the Carroll Baldwin Memorial Institute, Inc., was supported by gifts, dues, and memberships, and Carroll's second cousin Rignal W. Baldwin, who succeeded him as company president, served on the board. The memorial was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, November 30, 1922, when the Reverend Charles W. Baldwin delivered a tribute, a plaque was unveiled, hymns were sung, and 500 people shared a turkey dinner provided by the Savage Manufacturing Company, a Baldwin family-owned business since 1859.

Savage, Maryland · United States