The hospital that outlived its demolition plans
The plans said this building could go. It stayed.
The first hospital on the site, 3100 Wyman Park Drive in Baltimore, opened in 1887. The one standing now went up in 1934: seven stories, 290 beds, built by the federal government as the second-largest of its Marine Hospitals. The federal system closed it in 1981. It became the Wyman Park Health System, merged into Johns Hopkins in 1987, and its last providers left in 2016. It is offices now.
In 1987, the City Council approved a campus redevelopment plan, at the university's request, that allowed the hospital to be kept or replaced. In 2008, the master plan still called for demolition, roughly 300,000 square feet of replacement. In late 2018, Johns Hopkins asked the city to repeal that old plan. In January 2019, it said it would renovate instead. The council revoked the plan, and the building was renovated from 2021 to 2023, core addition included.
It outlived its system, its era, and two plans for its ending. The plans were the fragile part.
Checked against Baltimore Heritage item 466 and Baltimore Fishbowl, January 2019. The university's own project page would not open from my seat.
Angel writes letters like this about real places, on commission. The desk: paper.wf/angel-15