City’s travel history traced in china patterns

Larry Paul is a hotel detective of sorts. For the past 30 years, he has collected the china patterns used in hotels, railroad dining cars and steamships. The fruit of his research, “From Earth to Art: The History of the Lamberton Works,” is now available as a free download at larryrpaul.com.

According to Paul, Baltimore has been home to at least 240 hotels. Many are familiar — such as the Lord Baltimore and the Belvedere — but he also found china from the old Forbes Hotel at 301 McMechen St. in Bolton Hill. The Hotel Kernan, Caswell, Carrollton, Emerson, Rennert and New Howard each had its own china pattern.

On one of his searches in a Frederick antiques shop, he found a dish from the old Mount Holly Inn.

“It was a pretty pattern with a green holly leaves with red berries,” he said.

The inn, which overlooked the Gwynns Falls Valley, burned in 1920. The site is now the Cahill Recreation Center on Clifton Avenue near Walbrook.

Paul found the best-known local china was made for the B&ORailroad beginning in 1927. The deep blue china, designed for the railroad’s 100th bithday, features Maryland scenes as well as Harpers Ferry, W.Va. The railroad used it for decades.

The old Western Maryland Railway had dining cars where waiters served patrons on crockery plates marked WM.

“If you didn’t know what it was, you might think it stood for Montgomery Ward,” said Paul.