Mount Vernon once was Duchess of Windsor’s home

A Baltimore story with a life of its own is the tale of Wallis Warfield, later the Duchess of Windsor.

It’s a real beauty of how a young woman from Guilford Avenue and Preston Street, not far from the Maryland Penitentiary, would marry a man who was the uncrowned King Edward VIII. He abdicated his throne to marry the woman he loved in 1937. He was re-titled as the Duke of Windsor.

The potential closure of a small, private, all-girls institution, the Oldfields School, where the then-Wallis Warfield was educated in Sparks Glencoe in northern Baltimore County, brought up her name as its most well-known alumna.

But there’s also today’s Flower Mart at Mount Vernon Place, in the very heart of the neighborhood where she spent so much of her early years.

The Mount Vernon neighborhood’s connections to Wallis Warfield remain out in plain sight, often unexpected and unpretentious.

Because of the untimely death of her father Severn Teackle Wallis (he’s buried on a hillside at Green

Mount Cemetery on Greenmount Avenue), Wallis and her mother had a rough go financially to keep up with Baltimore’s blue bloods.

You might expect the future Duchess of Windsor to have resided in one of the neighborhood’s more prepossessing townhouses, say on Charles, Saint Paul or Cathedral streets. No.

She and her widowed mother lived for a good while at the Preston Apartments on Guilford Avenue, toward the industrial side of the neighborhood. As a living, thriving neighborhood, the Preston still functions as it did in 1911.

She also resided in a small flat at Earl Court apartments (Saint Paul) and the Brexton, now a boutique hotel at Park Avenue and Tyson Street.

There were also homes at 9 West Chase Street, 212 East Biddle and 34 East Preston Street. She and her mother moved frequently, as family finances dictated.

The other landmark in her life is the Lyric on Mount Royal Avenue, where Wallis Warfield was presented to Baltimore society when she made her debut.

As a 20-year-old bride, she walked down the aisle of the former Christ Episcopal Church, at Saint

Paul and Chase streets, in 1916, when she wed the first time, to Earl Winfield

Spencer Jr., a Navy aviator.

Their reception was held at the old Stafford Hotel, now an apartment house just to the north of the Washington Monument and in the center of today’s Flower Mart action.

Their marriage was marked by long separations as he was posted overseas and she remained stateside or traveled elsewhere. They were divorced in 1927.

She then married a shipping magnate in 1928 and they lived in London, where she eventually met Edward, the then-Prince of Wales. After Wallis divorced her second husband in 1936, the now-King Edward sought to marry her and keep the throne, but the English establishment wouldn’t accept the king’s marriage to a divorcee, so he abdicated after less than 11 months.

Wallis and Edward married in 1937 and resided in Paris until World War II, when they fled to the Bahamas. After the war they returned to France.

Not long after their marriage, and firmly established as titans of society, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor emerged from the gritty Pennsylvania Station platforms onto the concourse leading their pugs on gold Cartier leads. They were followed by numerous pieces of luggage and reporters.

Lost to history is which pugs they brought to Baltimore. Was it Winston, Davy Crockett, Mr. Chu, Rufus, Minoru, Trooper, Ginseng, Diamond or Dizzy, whose name reflected British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

They also traveled by Baltimore’s own railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, and posed for photos on its observation car.

So when the former King of England and his wife visit Baltimore, where do you quarter them?

Of course, Mount Vernon Place, the epicenter of today’s Flower Mart. And no better address than the stately Mount Vernon Club on the west square of Mount Vernon Place. It’s a double width Greek Revival building painted a creamy lemon shade and would fit in nicely in London.

The roomy house, known as the Tiffany-Fisher House, was built in 1842. By 1942 it was owned by the Mount Vernon Club, a women’s social organization that operates it today.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived for a stay in 1959. The club’s membership contributed their finest linens for the occasion.

But try as you may for a royal visit, not everything is going to work as planned. The Duke complained of his shower’s water pressure in his quarters.