National Register of Historic Places 12/23/74
Certified Historic District for Tax Incentives (NR)

Description

Roland Park is an irregularly shaped area in north-central Baltimore. Including some 2,500 residences, the district is primarily characterized by single family houses along narrow, winding roads that conform to the natural topography of the area. With its large tees and curving roads, the area retains a park-like character.

There is a wide range of architectural styles in this garden suburb. The earlier houses of the1890's appear to have been chiefly brown-shingled, faintly Richardsonian frame structures. Stuccoed villas with steeply pitched roofs and picturesque gables punctuated by dormers were popular. Other houses can be characterized as English Tudor half timber and brick mansions. Just after the turn of the century, the first poured concrete houses with insets of colored tile, red-tiled roofs and chimney pots were constructed. There are a few businesses in this area. Most notable is the Roland Park Shopping Center executed by Wyatt and Nolting in stucco and half timber in 1896.

Significance

The Roland Park Historical District is significant as one of America's earliest and best designed garden suburbs. It is a unique suburban residential area from the turn of the century, which was destined to serve as a model for numerous other developments, both in this country and abroad. The early landscape planners for Roland Park laid out the community in the context of the existing topography, leaving the natural beauty of the area undisturbed. Public common areas, deed restrictions on incompatible uses and a community association that maintained public amenities were novel community planning innovations that helped to create and foster the growth of Roland Park as a distinctive Baltimore neighborhood. Roland Park is associated with important architects and landscape planners including: Wyatt and Nolting, the Olmsted Brothers, Ellicott and Emmart, Palmer and Lamdin, and Charles A. Platt