The unincorporated town of Dundalk sits just southeast of the city of Baltimore, adjacent to the massive Bethlehem Steel works at Sparrows Point. Prior to World War I, it was a small settlement mainly known for the McShane Bell Foundry established in 1856. It was owner Henry McShane who named the local depot of the Baltimore and Sparrows Point Railroad Dundalk after his birthplace in Ireland. In 1916 Bethlehem Steel purchased approximately a thousand acres of farmland near the McShane Foundry and formed a subsidiary, the Dundalk Company, to develop housing for its steel mill and shipyard workers. During World War I Dundalk became the site of the only two U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) projects in Maryland and a significant early example of a federal planned community embracing Garden City principles. Dundalk was one of a small handful of EFC projects to reach full development.
In 1918 Bethlehem Steel entered into an agreement with the EFC to develop the St. Helena and Dundalk projects. St. Helena was located on the west side of Dundalk Avenue and included 284 row houses for unmarried shipyard workers and a mess hall (now demolished) on grid-plan streets. Directly east across Dundalk Avenue was the Dundalk project of 531 houses intended for families, now referred to as Old Dundalk. Baltimore architect Edward L. Palmer, known for his work with the Roland Park Company, was hired to design the mix of row, semidetached, and detached houses arranged on curvilinear streets. In keeping with the Garden City model promoted by English planner Ebenezer Howard, Dundalk included communal green space and strategically placed commercial and school buildings to serve the residential community. Also consistent with the Garden City model, Dundalk buildings displayed one of Palmer’s preferred designs—an Arts and Crafts movement interpretation of English vernacular.
The Armistice in November 1918 ended the EFC’s short-lived foray into community building, although the Dundalk projects were far enough along that they were almost completed. By 1920, the EFC houses were sold to private owners or the Dundalk Company, under the management of former Roland Park Company president Edward H. Bouton. The artful designs and community planning, as well as the continued involvement of Palmer and Bouton, combined to give Dundalk a reputation as “the workingman’s Roland Park.”
Writing Credits
If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.