When Baltimore School for the Arts was the Alcazar

The bones of an old hotel and Great Gatsby-era ballroom sit within the walls of the Baltimore School for the Arts, the institution that earned a five-star rating this week from the Maryland Report Card, the state’s public school accountability system.

The school was founded in 1979, and moved soon thereafter into a 1926 building at the corner of Cathedral and Madison streets. It was called the Alcazar, a Spanish word, based on an older Arabic word, for fortress or palace. Architect George Callis designed it as a small hotel with a beautiful ballroom in the Mount Vernon neighborhood.

A Roman Catholic fraternal order, the Knights of Columbus, built and operated the complex. There were similar hotels with meeting rooms and halls constructed by the Knights in other cities. Many shared touches of Mediterranean architectural details.

Baltimore’s version sat on the site of one of the homes owned by prominent financier and society figure Alexander Brown.

The Knights of Columbus arrived in their plumed hats, silk capes and ceremonial swords for the cornerstone-laying ceremonies Oct. 12, 1924. Irish-born Archbishop J. Michael Curley officiated that day.

Rabbi William Rosenau of the Eutaw Place Temple spoke at the 1926 opening night.

The building had ties to the Catholic church and the fraternal order, but its functions were secular. It was a hotel, meeting and social gathering space.

One of its attractions was a basement swimming pool, a place where schools competed and others learned to swim. A swimming coach, Arthur “Reds” Hucht, trained generations of swimmers at the old Alcazar pool.

The building’s best known component was the Alcazar Ballroom, with its hardwood dance floor and stage topped by a fancy plaster ceiling and crystal-beaded chandeliers. It’s now nearly a century old and still used by the arts school. The ballroom holds its own as a dance studio and recital venue.

The ballroom floor also could be covered with banquet tables and chairs if the occasion called for it.

Charles Lindbergh, whose first successful solo flight from New York to Paris made headlines in 1927, was a speaker at the Alcazar for the assembled barons of Baltimore business and politics not long after he returned from France.

The ballroom holds a sentimental place in the hearts of Baltimoreans of a certain age. How many dances were held under the revolving glass ball? In 1939 the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra played for the then Loyola College senior prom here. The Paint and Powder Club held its annual revues here for decades.

The Alcazar had its own house orchestra. It was led by Joe Dowling, who serenaded dancers during World War II and for evenings thereafter.

The men-only hotel portion of the building (toward West Madison Street) evolved into a permanent home for elderly pensioners by the 1960s. Men lived here and took their meals in the coffee shops and restaurants scattered throughout the Mount Vernon neighborhood and along Howard Street.

Arguably the bestknown residents were the Conway twins, who dressed identically and walked throughout downtown Baltimore, often stopping to chat along the blocks of variety stores on West Lexington Street.

They were identical. When one of the Conways started a sentence, his brother completed it.

By the 1970s, the building was aging and put up for public auction. The city of Baltimore stepped in and acquired it for the arts school. The hotel lobby, though dusty and a relic of another era, holds a small art collection.

There was active bidding on a huge Hudson River School landscape painting that was the reputed work of artist Frederic Edwin Church. Artist Marie deFord Keller’s portrait of Cardinal James Gibbons sold for much less.

The building required changes for the students, but, by the 1980s, a completely transformed Alcazar was bursting with energy and creativity.