Baltimore, MD 6/14/14 and 6/15/14

We left Washington DC on 6/14 and headed north to Baltimore.  We found the burial plot for the family of John Wilkes Booth in Green Mount Cemetery.  Immediately following Lincoln’s assassination, John Wilkes was buried in a Federal Penitentiary by order of the Secretary of War.  Several years later, the Booth family requested that he be interred in the family plot in Baltimore.  They determined that there would be no headstone to mark the exact location of his grave.

Since the minting of the Lincoln penny in 1909, the custom has evolved of leaving a penny on a headstone or on the family monument at the Booth family burial plot.

 

We visited Westminster Presbyterian Church and Burying Ground established in 1786 where Edgar Allen Poe is buried.

 

We crossed a colorful bridge…

to the Baltimore Museum of Art where we saw:

ancient Roman mosaics,

 

a bust of Victor Hugo by August Rodin, 1883,

 

Rafael’s painting Emilia Pia da Montefeltro, c 1502,

 

Tiepolo’s painting A Philosopher with a Book, 1754,

 

Botticelli’s Madonna Adoring the Child with Five Angels, 1485, (a detail follows),

 

a plaster cast of August Preault’s Le Silence, 1843.  The marble original of this cast adorns a tomb in a Paris cemetery.  The figure’s index finger held to his lips signifies that life is forever silenced by death, and dates back to ancient Roman and Greek representations of the goddess of secrecy and the god of silence.

We also saw Picasso’s painting Mother and Child, 1922, 

 

Max Bill’s granite sculpture Endless Ribbon, 1935,

 

Gauguin’s painting The Player Schneklud, 1894,

Matisse’s painting Interior with Dog, 1932,

 

 

Henry Moore’s marble sculpture The Three Rings, 1966,

 

Andy Warhol’s paint/silkscreen Self Portrait, 1986,

 

 

Renoir’s painting on a linen napkin On the Shore of the Seine, 1879, and

 

other goodies.

 

 

 

While in Baltimore on 6/15, we photographed a few of Baltimore’s many murals.

 

 

We also took a water taxi across the harbor

in order to visit Fort McHenry.  Near the end of the War of 1812, the British Navy fought its way north through Chesapeake Bay destroying villages, terrorizing citizens and burning Washington DC along the way.  When the British reached Fort McHenry, which protected Baltimore Harbor, they poured cannon balls on it through the night of September 13-14, 1814.  When the bombardment stopped in the morning and the mist rose, everyone including Francis Scott Key, could see the US flag still flying over the fort, inspiring him to write The Star Spangled Banner.  The flag which flies over the fort today is the same size as the flag seen by Key.

 

 

 

 

Part of the fort wall as seen from a tunnel leading up from underground ammunition storage.

 





 

Part of the interior garrison which housed soldiers, officers, and ammunition.

 

The original cross beams buried deep underground which stabilized the massive flagpole.  They were unearthed in excavations during the mid 20^th century.

 

A map showing the fort surrounded by hospitals and other construction from World War I.

 

 

The fort was named in honor of James McHenry, a signer of the US Constitution from Maryland.  McHenry is buried in the same cemetery as Edgar Allen Poe.

A Baltimore city fire boat.

 

 

A lighthouse in the Baltimore Harbor.

 

The USS Constellation, the only Civil-war era vessel still afloat.

 

For lunch we feasted on crab cakes.

 

 

A building near the waterfront.

 

 

No trip to Baltimore is complete without a visit to the…

 

where we saw tattoo designs from the early to mid 20^th century,

 

 

sculptural representations of tattooing, and

 

 

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Jim decided to get a makeover.