For history detectives who search around the Memorial Stadium site there are visible chunks of concrete, a brick or two and rebar west of third base. It’s a reminder of the Baltimore sports arena that served the Orioles, Colts and Ravens in a stretch of history that goes back to 1922.
The old Stadium is gone now, but a new community flourishes on its footprint between 33rd and 36th street at Ellerslie Avenue, largely the work of the neighborhood-based Govans Ecumenical Development Corp.
There’s a lot going on here. Sports history first.
Walking the site, sports historian David Stinson (“Deadball: A Metaphysical Baseball Novel”) located the remains of our stadium built in 1953 and 1954. He noted the Memorial Stadium that generations of sports fans knew was constructed atop an earlier, more primitive stadium on parkland nobody remembers.
“It’s almost like the baseball guys left us a gift,” he said of the bits of masonry he found between a parking lot and a roadway.
The first stadium was excavated by steam shovels in a short period of time in 1922. It was a dug out, depressed earthen bowl, with wooden seats and white concrete entrance portal outfitted with classical appointments facing 33rd Street.
Its first big game was the Marine Corps against the Army. It was built for football, although aviator and national hero Charles Lindbergh also appeared here after his solo flight to Paris. The old Baltimore Stadium hosted many Navy/Notre Dame and Baltimore City College/Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Loyola Blakefield/Calvert Hall contests.
The then minor league Orioles arrived in a hurry in 1944, after their wooden ballpark burned in the early morning hours of July 4. That ballpark, a set of wooden grandstands at 29th and Barclay streets, was a bonfire waiting to happen.
This chapter in Baltimore sports history moved quickly. All of a sudden the Orioles had a much larger arena on 33rd Street and Birds’ fans took notice.
“So did Major League Baseball,” Stinson said. “The Orioles were then in the minor leagues but once they got to 33rd Street, they began drawing crowds. By the 1950s they were outdrawing the St. Louis Browns.”
Baltimore, always thrifty, may have built the Baltimore Stadium quickly, and on the cheap, but by the early 1950s the administration of Mayor Thomas J. D’Alesandro Jr. was on a building kick. A new design was created and each year, as funds allowed and Baltimore’s tax base expanded, a chunk of a new stadium was completed. It was a memorial to those who fought in the recent world war.
By the time Baltimore secured the Browns franchise in 1953, the frame of a real new stadium was well underway. By opening day, 1954, some of the concrete was still unfinished, but it worked.
The Ravens played their final game at Memorial Stadium in 1997 and it was fully demolished in 2002. Now, 22 years later, the spot has transitioned nicely, strengthening the adjacent neighborhoods of Waverly and Ednor Gardens-Lakeside.
The site was returned to neighborhood use. Several buildings for fixed-income residents and others rose along the Ednor Road site of the property. Leadership at Govans Presbyterian Church prevailed to keep the spot a community residential asset with nice amenities.
There’s a well maintained 60-foot baseball diamond that doubles as a football field where soccer and lacrosse can be played, a gift of the Cal Ripkin Sr. Foundation. It is run by the adjacent Weinberg Y in Waverly, at 33rd and Ellerslie, with its pool and fitness center. On a summer morning, the Waverly Y is a happening, busy destination.
Against the old 36th Street northern stadium boundary is the William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Gilchrist Center Baltimore, which opened in 2021. It is a hospice with a broad mission — to serve the homeless, underserved and people who lack a caregiver. The facility cares for anyone eligible for hospice service regardless of their ability to pay.
William “Little Willie” Adams, was an African-American businessman and venture capitalist. Known for his early days in the numbers game, he championed Black businesses and was an early backer of Henry Parks, of Parks Sausages fame. His wife, Victorine Quille Adams, was the first Black female member of the Baltimore City Council. She set up the Baltimore Fuel Fund to help the poor with utilities payments.
The Adams family foundation, along with philanthropist and developer Theo Rogers, was a leading benefactor of the hospice.
The Adams/Rogers gift and other community donors meet a real need.
“We serve an underserved population. And it is the only Gilchrist hospice center with a waiting list for admission,” said Shannon Wollman, Gilchrist’s chief philanthropy and marketing officer. “It helps those most in need.”