West Baltimore’s Sellers Mansion demolished after three-alarm fire
A three-alarm blaze raged through West Baltimore’s historic Sellers Mansion on Friday morning, causing a nearby rowhouse to catch fire and sending a firefighter to the hospital with minor injuries.
Demolition crews leveled the fire-ravaged mansion later in the day because the damage made the building structurally unsound.
About 70 Baltimore firefighters arrived just after 9 a.m. at 801 N. Arlington Ave. in Harlem Park to a heavy fire on the top floor of the vacant three-story structure. Built in 1868, the mansion overlooks the neatly trimmed Lafayette Square Park but has sat abandoned for decades. A fire in the building in October 2021 was quickly extinguished.
Friday’s blaze was a harder fight. Strong wind gusts fueled the flames that consumed the mansion’s top-floor windows and roof. Firefighters doused the flames with water hosed from two ladder trucks, crumpling what remained of the roof and sending water cascading down the home’s stone steps.
Embers from Sellers Mansion blew onto the roof of a rowhouse across West Lanvale Street and ignited another fire. Crews moved down the street to put out the blaze, where a firefighter was injured when he was struck by a window frame he worked to remove.
Both fires were declared under control more than two hours later, said Chief Roman Clark, a fire department spokesperson. The cause of the blaze on the third floor of the Sellers Mansion is under investigation, he said.
Arlene Fisher, president of the Lafayette Square Association, said crews were in the process of demolishing the mansion after the morning fire. Fisher, who’s tried for more than 25 years to find funding and developers to preserve the mansion, said it’s a shame that the historic building is being destroyed after its promised renovations never materialized.
“There’s nothing left,” she said.
The 155-year-old, Victorian-style home, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was occupied originally by Matthew Bacon Sellers, the wealthy president of the Northern Central Railway. The former slave owner moved to Baltimore from Louisiana after the Civil War. The building’s designation as a historic place made it eligible for federal rehabilitation tax credits and any businesses, nonprofit groups and homeowners there eligible for state grants.
The Sellers owned the 18-room house until 1955 when the reclusive Samuel Seller, Matthew’s son, died of old age inside the home. Ownership has changed hands numerous times since. Grand plans to transform the old mansion into a nightclub, doctors’ offices or senior living apartments never materialized while the ashen house continued to age.
Various entities related to the St. James Church, one of four 19th-century stone churches located on the square, owned the house in the 1960s. The building served as a community center until the early 1990s when it was abandoned.
Mark Woodard remembers when the mansion was used for a boys and girls recreational club called “Operation CHAMP.” Growing up in Harlem Park, the building offered a nice, large space to spend time in as a kid, he said.
Over the decades, the Sellers Mansion has become an eyesore and a hazard that some neighbors want redeveloped or torn down.
“It’s just a fire situation waiting to happen,” Woodard said as he stood Friday watching the fire scene from Lafayette Square Park as chilly gusts of wind punctuated the sunny weather.
“Someone had to be up there to set that,” he said, suggesting someone broke in for warmth during the winter.
In its prime, the Harlem Park neighborhood was accentuated by stone churches and grand rowhouses and populated by Black upper-middleclass professionals. But as residents moved away from Harlem Park and other West Baltimore neighborhoods, the dilapidated Sellers Mansion has become a symbol of abandonment.
There are nearly 590 vacant houses in Harlem
Park, several of which are marked with red placards that signal to firefighters that there are hazardous conditions inside. The house on West Lanvale Street that also caught fire stands in a row separated by a vacant lot where a home was demolished.
“The city is catching up, knocking down whole blocks,” said Woodard, referring to the neighborhood’s vacant rowhouses.
There are more than 14,000 vacant buildings in Baltimore.
Developer Ernst Valery bought the Sellers Mansion out of receivership in 2019 for $10,000. He planned to convert the house into senior apartments by 2020 to complement the St. James Terrace Apartments next door.
Valery said he received approval from the city Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation and federal tax credits to move forward with the renovation in 2019 but was blocked by the Maryland Historical Trust. The state agency wanted Valery to “preserve so much of the interior that it wasn’t financially feasible,” in addition to the exterior preservation, he said.
Maryland Historical Trust said the agency considered Valery’s application for the competitive commercial tax credit incomplete for that funding round.
“When you let buildings like this sit, this is what happens,” Valery said.