How a Cylburn carriage house moved along with the times
Baltimore’s Cylburn Arboretum is a precious and almost unworldly sanctuary. It’s easy to have the rolling hills and forest hiking paths to yourself, yet still be in the middle of Northwest Baltimore.
But don’t think you are alone.
This is a not-so-secret rendezvous for those who love a chance to spread out, in a green and leafy woodland preserve, just around the corner from Sinai Hospital.
This city-owned park, once the private preserve of industrialist Jesse
Tyson and his wife Edyth (a debutante known for her beauty and equestrian skill) is about to embark upon a new venture. In the next few weeks work will begin to remake Cylburn’s venerable stone carriage house as the Nature Education Center.
Students from the nearby Pimlico Middle/ Elementary School and Park Heights Academy, among other schools, will experience nature close-up when the educational facility opens.
“Our hope for our students is for them to discover the joy of discovery,” said Patricia Foster, director of Cylburn Arboretum Friends, the nonprofit group that supports Baltimore City in the care and maintenance of the 200-acre garden and mansion surrounded by woodland and trails.
“This is a place for them to become naturally curious about the world around them. There were children [here], first graders, [and] many of them had never been in the woods.
“The children were hugely exuberant and excited, [though] some were terrified. [But] each time they [have] visited Cylburn, they want to come back for more.”
Perhaps calling this substantial stone building a carriage house is inaccurate.
It has a history, like everything in old Baltimore. Yes, it once housed his horses for transportation and carriages for the Tysons, who started building Cylburn Mansion in 1863. Jesse Tyson also had his own railroad station, aptly named Cylburn, on what is now the light rail line a bit above the present-day Cold Spring Lane stop.
Tyson’s architect was George Aloysius Frederick, who is best-known for designing City Hall and scores of public park buildings. But falling trees and fires took a toll, and by 1912 the carriage house was reconstructed as a garage.
The mistress of Cylburn was Tyson’s much younger wife, Edyth Johns, who remarried in 1910 after his death.
Her likeness was painted at the Johns Hopkins
University’s Shriver Hall.
“She was forward-thinking,” Foster said. “The mansion house was electrified and the plumbing brought inside.
“She was a progressive, and by 1912 she owned a car. She and her new husband, Bruce Cotten, liked to travel, and on one of her visits to Europe they brought the four marble lions that adorn the home’s east porch and formal gardens.
The Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks coexists nicely here in a bank of greenhouses filled with flowering pots and other annuals ready to be planted in ornamental beds throughout the city.
The grand Tyson mansion, which the old carriage house served, was completed in 1888. The home is quite a presence (although it’s not easily visible from Greenspring Avenue) and, like all the Cylburn buildings, is constructed of the attractive light-gray stone known as “gneiss.”
Tyson had a quarry and mineral operation at Bare Hills. He shipped his mineral deposits downtown to what is now known as “Harbor Point.” His waterfront plant was the Baltimore Chrome Works.
The city bought the estate in 1943, and it became the Cylburn Wildflower Preserve and Garden Center in 1954. In 1982 it was renamed the Cylburn Arboretum.
The estate’s old carriage house served for a while as a nature center but over time fell into disrepair.
The reborn building
— it will get a substantial barn-style addition made partially of rusting steel — will cost nearly $7 million, supported by $350,000 from the state of Maryland, a BURNI grant and gifts from private donors and foundations, including the France-Merrick Foundation and the Capital Funding Group.
“Our new exhibits there will be interactive, discoverable and designed to make you curious,” said Foster, director of the Cylburn Friends group.
The times have changed. The Sun once called Cylburn “the rendezvous of the city’s most exclusive set.”
“Cylburn’s beautiful and fanciful gardens echoed the strains of quiet musicales,” The Sun reported in a 1942 article. “The rustle of formal attire, satin gowns and brocaded trains, dinner clothes, and pumps was heard almost nightly in its famous dining rooms.”
It all changed when Edyth Johns Tyson
Cotten died. The city acquired the property for $42,000 and the mansion’s contents were auctioned.
“‘I hate to see this place torn up,’ commented
Mary Roach, the Irishborn parlor maid who served the household for 30 years,” The Sun’s account said. “‘Mrs. Cotten always said she would like this place as a museum or a park.’ ”