Baldwin Common

Commons began in England as open areas within settlements where people grazed livestock. In colonial America, they became village greens where people assembled, troops drilled, and games were played, and later many gained bandstands, benches, and gardens as pleasure parks. For thousands of years, this area was the domain of Algonquian-speaking people. In 1608, Captain John Smith sailed up the Pawtuxent River and visited tribal villages along its shores. In 1632, the King of England claimed this land and chartered it to Cecil Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, naming the colony Maryland after Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I. In 1659, this land formed part of 6,000 acres granted to Henry Ridgely of Devonshire, England, and in 1665 he surveyed it and named it Ridgely's Forest. Over the next 100 years the property changed hands many times, and in 1759 Joseph White included it in a parcel called White's Contrivance; on adjacent Mill Land he built White's Mill. In 1822, John Savage of Philadelphia partnered with the Williams brothers of Baltimore to charter the Savage Manufacturing Company, and the next year he bought White's Contrivance from Gideon White for land to house millworkers, creating the company town of Savage. By 1921, after the town's population had grown, Savage Elementary School was built on this site. A ravine on the lot had long been used as a dumping ground, and after it was filled with soil, buried trash caused the ground to settle, the school walls to crack, and the building to be condemned. The school was torn down in 1937, younger children then attended temporary classes in Memorial Hall, and the grounds remained in use for community events such as Savage Days and carnivals. In 1977, Howard County purchased the lot next to Memorial Hall and built Baldwin Common, which opened on August 26, 1978, designed to resemble a village green for Savage. This land has been part of Baltimore County from 1659 to 1726, Anne Arundel County from 1726 to 1851, and Howard County from 1851 to the present.

Savage, Maryland · United States