Picture This: “Belle Grove” Reflected a Vanished Way of Life

Alfred Brazier Howell, who was born in 1886, gave a detailed account of what life was like growing up on “Belle Grove” estate. His typed remembrance, edited by Jean Walsh in 1998, is among the holdings in the .

This was not their only home for the Howell family spent winters in their three-story home, with stable, on the southeast corner of Madison and Park Avenue in Baltimore, as was the custom among the affluent of the time.

Wrote Howell: “Belle Grove consisted of about 25 acres on a small hill on the south side of Frederick Road. Tollhouses were at the cemetery below Irvington, about five miles from the center of Baltimore, and another, a mile beyond the village of Catonsville. At the time, the entire road from Irvington to Catonsville was lined with country places, some pretentious, with large houses out of sight of the road, and some of modest size close to the road. In that distance of almost three miles, there was no commercial establishment except a blacksmith shop and small country store opposite Belle Grove, and ‘Lager Beer Salon’ opposite Paradise Lane.”

Seems like all the necessities were close at hand. If you turn onto Belle Grove Avenue today, there is a low stone wall. Howell described the estate as having an imposing stonework gateway, and a fancy ironwork summerhouse, where one could wait for the horse car.

As for the home, it appears to be clapboard but, in fact, was constructed of brick that was covered by clapboards. It had a two-story cupola, which can be seen in the accompanying drawing, but one was removed by the time of the photograph. The porches that extended around two-and-a-half sides are still there today. Howell recalled: “The rooms adjoining the porch had high plate glass windows that opened almost to the floor, so that all of them gave access to the porch.” An important distinction for the time, you will learn. 

Before we wax nostalgic, it is good to remember that these homes lacked window screens. That meant that minimal indoor lights were on in the evening, in hopes of keeping out the mosquitoes. Hence, the porches were the gathering places until bedtime when residents retired to their beds—canopied with mosquito netting.

It was also a time when homeowners changed their floor covering, depending upon the season. Wall-to-wall matting in the summer would have to be rolled and stored in a huge wooden bin in the cellar to make way for wall-to-wall carpets in the winter. “What a chore it was to change back and forth every spring and fall,” wrote Howell. 

The cellar did yield one seasonal reward. He observed that, in the fall, a barrel of oysters was always there—a bucket of water poured over them twice a day—as long as they lasted.

Every four years, Howell recalled, the house and stable were painted a light bluish gray that cost $400, which was a considerable amount of money even then.  For example, $400 in 1890 would be about $10,000 today. Fortunately, the roof was pure tin that needed no attention.

Beyond the barnyard sat the gardener’s family home and the greenhouses. The general greenhouse was used to grow everything but roses, chrysanthemums and violets. Those had separate dedicated spaces: a smaller, wider greenhouse for the roses; a chrysanthemum pit, sunken halfway into the ground; and three rows of eight hot beds for raising double-violets.

All of his involved prodigious amounts of labor by hand. “There was endless changing of spent soil with fresh, from a huge pile of alternate layers of loam and cow manure stacked up the year before and sifted before use.”

Surrounding the home were “magnificent” trees—great lindens, silver maples, magnolias, chestnut and oak. In addition, the property included two apple orchards and a “galaxy of pear and peach trees of several kinds” as well as cherry and fig trees.

As for the gardener’s cottage, it was later occupied by the Harmon family, and has been enlarged through the years. It is now a restored residence facing Belle Grove Avenue.

Thanks go to Bryce Rumbles, librarian at the Catonsville Branch, and Lisa Vicari, Catonsville Room volunteer and board member, Friends of the Catonsville Library, for their research assistance. Anyone interested in ordering digital reprints of any of the historical images featured in this series, should contact Bryce Rumbles at brumbles@bcpl.net.