President Street Station

The state Board of Public Works has approved a $50,000 preservation grant for ramshackle President Street Station, a long-overdue rescue effort for the oldest surviving metropolitan rail terminal in the country and a major Civil War landmark.The $50,000 stabilization grant approved yesterday, coupled with $42,000 in city funds, will pay for $92,000 worth of construction to keep the fragile walls and roof of the 141-year-old station from caving in. The station is city property.Located at President and Fleet streets, near Little Italy, the terminal was once the starting point for all rail passengers bound for Wilmington, Del., and Philadelphia.

One hundred forty-seven years ago Monday, Abraham Lincoln made his only appearance in Baltimore as president, when he stepped off a special B&O train at Camden Station to address the Sanitary Fair Commission, whose purpose was raising funds for wounded Union soldiers. Shortly after 6 p.m. on April 18, 1864, as the presidential special braked to a stop at Camden Station, Lincoln prepared to get off and be welcomed to the city by a large crowd that had gathered outside the station and on the platform and cheered him for 20 minutes.

Baltimore is set to designate President Street Station, an 1850s train depot with chapters in the histories of both the Underground Railroad and the Civil War, as a city landmark. But the city's plan to also seek a long-term tenant to revitalize the vacant building has a group of history buffs fearful that the building's past will get swallowed up in any future use. This summer, the Planning Department expects to issue a request for proposals on how to reuse what is believed to be the oldest surviving urban train station in the country.

This Saturday, the upcoming 150th Anniversary of the Pratt Street Riot will be remembered with what the city of Baltimore is calling "a grand procession. " Union re-enactors, fife and drum corps, contemporary military units and representative color guards will "step off" from President Street Station at 11 a.m. and march up Pratt Street to Camden Yards. On that bloody Friday a century and a half ago, members of the Sixth Massachusetts, on their way to defend Washington, detrained at President Street Station and started up Pratt Street to continue their journey south, only to confront an agitated, pro-secessionist crowd of civilians.

ONE HUNDRED AND thirty-two years have erased all direct Maryland recollections of the Civil War and slavery. Starting tomorrow, though, those memories will be rekindled with the opening of Baltimore's President Street Station as the first museum documenting the city's life during the Civil War and slavery years.Although Maryland resisted secessionist pressures, it was a slave-holding state where a considerable segment of the VTC population sympathized with the Confederacy. This became evident on April 19, 1861.

When visitors come to Baltimore's President Street train station, starting with the grand opening at noon today, they won't find the building restored to the exact appearance it had when Abraham Lincoln passed through. The ghosts are gone, and so is much of the patina.Instead of taking the 1852 depot back to its original appearance, the owners and architects made a conscious decision to transform it into a different kind of structure -- a multimedia Civil War Museum intended to bring history alive for today's visitors and generations still to come.

Long before the vagrants took up residence, before the roof caved in, before the fires turned it into a charred shell, the President Street Station earned its place in history.Abraham Lincoln sneaked through the station in the middle of the night, to avoid Southern sympathizers as he headed to Washington on the eve of his inauguration.Slaves -- wearing disguises, carrying fake papers, even traveling in crates -- boarded trains to freedom at one of the few Underground Railroad stops that really was a railroad.

Archaeologists digging Sunday beside Baltimore's historic President Street Station uncovered 2 1/2 feet of iron rail dating to the earliest period of American railroad construction."

Mayor Martin O'Malley is expected to announce today that the Maryland Historical Society will take over operations at the city-owned Baltimore Civil War Museum in historic President Street Station - an effort to help the struggling museum. Attendance at the museum, which opened three years ago, has been hurt by construction and the lack of parking in the area, east of the Inner Harbor, officials said. It has been run by President Street Station Inc., a private nonprofit organization supported by donations and admissions.

Friends of the President Street Station -- a group of Civil War enthusiasts -- will celebrate the 140th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Civil War address in Baltimore with a parade, memorial service and walking tours Saturday. Lincoln addressed a crowd of Baltimoreans on April 18, 1864, three years after Southern sympathizers clashed with Union troops near the President Street Station. The incident -- known as the Pratt Street riot -- came less than a week after South Carolina forces attacked Fort Sumter.

Baltimore is set to designate President Street Station, an 1850s train depot with chapters in the histories of both the Underground Railroad and the Civil War, as a city landmark. But the city's plan to also seek a long-term tenant to revitalize the vacant building has a group of history buffs fearful that the building's past will get swallowed up in any future use. This summer, the Planning Department expects to issue a request for proposals on how to reuse what is believed to be the oldest surviving urban train station in the country.

City's found money demands investigation It's time for the City Council to start asking some serious questions about the $39.7 million in improperly recorded tax receipts which recently surfaced ("City Council should keep its hands off Baltimore's surplus," May 7). So far, it has acted like a bunch of kids finding a pile of presents under the Christmas tree. They can't open them fast enough and could care less as to whether any were produced by slave labor. Where did the money reside all these years?

activities events 32nd Street Farmers' Market: Open year-round, 7 a.m.-noon Saturdays at 32nd Street in Waverly. Shoppers will find fresh produce, plants, breads, ethnic foods and more. Go to 32ndstreetmarket.org. Baltimore Farmers' Market: Open Sundays from 8 a.m. until sellout, usually noon, through Dec. 21. At Saratoga Street between Holliday and Gay streets, under the Jones Falls Expressway. Go to promotionandarts.com. Car cruise: The Centre at Glen Burnie, at Ritchie Highway and Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie, hosts weekly Street Survivors of Maryland Classic and Custom Car Cruise shows 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Fridays through Oct. 31. Free for spectators.

Preservation planners in Baltimore have found a temporary occupant to reopen the historic but shuttered President Street Station this spring, while the city seeks a long-term tenant. The office of Mayor Sheila Dixon has offered to lease the former train station to the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, a three-year-old advocacy and service organization that needs work space near the downtown shoreline. The Waterfront Partnership will use the city-owned building at 601 President St. as its headquarters and base of operations for nine safety guides and 11 hospitality guides who patrol the harbor promenade, according to managing consultant Laurie Schwartz.

President Street Station in Baltimore is the oldest surviving big city railroad terminal in the United States. The property was a stop on the Underground Railroad used by slaves fleeing from the South. The building played a key role in the first fatalities of the Civil War. It's also sitting vacant in an area of intense commercial development on Baltimore's waterfront. So when members of Baltimore's preservation commission learned that Mayor Sheila Dixon plans to seek proposals from groups interested in redeveloping the city-owned property at 601 President St., they decided to take steps to protect the former train station from disappearing altogether.

Preserve a piece of Civil War history The Sun's editorial describing the tenuous status of the President Street station and urging immediate action to ensure its survival was on the mark ("Save the station," Dec. 29). The loss of this significant landmark of our nation's Civil War - where, as The Sun notes, the first fatalities of the conflict occurred - would deprive all Americans of the opportunity to visualize and appreciate firsthand the momentous events that took place in Baltimore on April 19, 1861.

Baltimore was a divided city in the Civil War. Its allegiance may have been to the Union, but many residents' sympathies were with the Confederacy.This was strikingly demonstrated on April 19, 1861 -- one week after Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.Marching from President Street Station toward Camden Station, the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was confronted by a stone-throwing mob of Southern sympathizers on Pratt Street. At least nine civilians and three soldiers died in the fighting that ensued.

A group of amateur historians hopes the historic President Street Station, where Union troops clashed with an angry mob of Baltimoreans in one of the first skirmishes of the Civil War, will once again welcome trains if the state expands downtown rail service. At President and Fleet streets, the head house of the 152-year-old station stands today in the shadow of the glimmering new Marriott hotel. From 1850 to 1922, trains carried passengers to the station from points north and east. A group of history buffs, the Friends of the President Street Station, hopes that will happen once more.

The glass and steel of the Harbor East skyline dwarf the rundown brick station. Its size, relative to the gleaming office towers and pricey condominiums, by no means reflects its stature or significance, which lie in its history. And that history should be at the center of any effort to rescue the President Street station from indifference and decay. It looks so out of place on its oddly shaped plot of land, sandwiched on the eastern side of the harbor between the restaurants of Little Italy, the Public Works Museum, a trendy Irish pub and the Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

The little red building is dwarfed by the looming hotels and restaurants filling Inner Harbor East. Once home to the little-known Baltimore Civil War Museum, the former President Street train station will soon be on the auction block. Owned by the city, the Baltimore Development Corp. will put out a request for proposals to buy or lease the building this spring, said Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon.