Baltimore Florists' Exchange - An American First

Florists' Exchange Building,
Corner of Franklin and St. Paul Streets
Aug 2013

   The now abandoned building at 17 E. Franklin (southwest corner of Franklin and St. Paul Streets) was built on a lot that was once owned by the Safe Deposit and Trust Company.  The lot was purchased for $6,000 by the Baltimore Florists' Exchange building committee in January 1906 for the purpose of erecting their own building sizable enough to accommodate its cadre of 40 members that was too large for its 505 North Eutaw Street location.

   Architect J. Edward Laferty was commissioned and construction was completed during the late summer of 1906 by William H. Porter & Son for the sum of $15,000 according to Baltimore Sun articles of the time such that by November 13-16, the Gardeners' Club was able to hold its annual chrysanthemum and horticultural exhibition on the first and second floors. In addition to photographic representations, live palms and ferns were shown, but the most of the exhibition was devoted to public showing of chrysanthemums, roses, and evergreens.  Contests for "best in vase," "best brides' hand bouquet," "best distinct design," "best
basket," and "best wreath"where judged and yielded prizes of $1 to $10.

   The Florists' Exchange roots had been planted as early as 1889 during a time when Baltimore had a plentitude of hobby and interest clubs.  In the area of horticulture, there existed a Florists' Club, Gardeners' Club, and a Maryland Horticultural Society of which an Annapolis florist by the name of Edwin A. Seidewitz had been on the Executive Committee.

   While the many Baltimore clubs served their purpose of bringing people of the day together having a common interest in cultivating or appreciating flowers, Mr. Seidewitz, who had become a well respected florist in Baltimore realized a more specialized need for florists within the trade. Unlike the He conceptualized the idea of a mutual florists' association where local floral dealers could conduct wholesale business by distributing their stock amongst each other regardless of the size of their dealership.

   As a result of this idea, the Baltimore Florists' Exchange was formed having elected the man to conceptualize it as its President.   By February 1890, the Exchange was incorporated and located its first offices in the basement of a building at 120 N. Liberty Street (and later the 505 N. Eutaw Street location) as a depot for cut flowers exclusive to dealers.  It was said to be the first organization in America dedicated to the exchange of trees, plants, flowers, and seeds in addition to the general sharing of horticultural knowledge among horticulturalists and tradesmen who bought and sold flowers.

The hall space inside the
Florists' Exchange

   The building's upper floor was at times used by the Gardners' and Florists' Clubs, often interspersed by meeting locations for everything from lectures on the writings of Edward FitzGerald by the Baltimore Progressive Thought Center (The Sun, April 1908) to a temporary meeting location for the First Spiritual Church (The Sun, Sep 1908), Royal Order of the Moose (The Sun, Jan 1909), National Union (The Sun, June 1909), Knights of Phythia (The Sun, Dec 1909), Retail Grocers' Association (The Sun, Oct 1916), International Bible Students' Association (The Sun, Jul 1917).

   In the preparation of this article, it was perplexing that, beyond 1918, no public documentation exists on the building or the Florists' Exchange itself until May 1942 when it was sold into private hands in the amount of $25,000.

   Perhaps, for historical completeness, we have to pick up with the life of Mr. Seidewitz.  Things were well for Mr. Seidewitz who had become an accomplished Baltimore florist, considered one of the "livest" men in the organization he became President of the Rotary Club, and one of the most prosperous citizens of Baltimore.  By April 1890, he married Adele Wattensheidt and the next year cited in the "Annals of Horticulture" as having registering the introduction of 33 new varieties with the American Chrysanthemum Society: one was called the Adele and the other the Lord Baltimore. Though born in Baltimore County in 1866, he was a resident of Annapolis and eventually served as Mayor of that city from July 1899 to 1901.

Hotel Junker
22 E. Fayette Street

   Unfortunately, Mr. Seidewitz became a cruel victim of a form of bullying by Baltimore Society during the War I period. According to the book "The Illusion of Victory: America in WWI" by Thomas J. Fleming, it all began one night at the Hotel Junker (currently at 22 E. Fayette St.), "shortly after war was declared, the florist met some officers from several German ships that had been trapped in Baltimore's harbor since 1914. They were in a gloomy mood, lamenting their long separation from friends and family and the prospect of internment as enemy aliens until the war ended. Seidewitz bough them beer, and they drank together.  Touched by their plight, the florist kissed one of them on the forehead in an attempt to comfort the man. Word soon swept Baltimore that Seidewitz had "kissed a German." His floral business collapsed. He was expelled from the Rotary Club, after directors refused to let him speak to the members in his own defense."

   Apparently, according to those that knew him intimately, he was said to have suffered for some time with mental and nervous disorders since the United States entered the war, and that conditions had preyed on his mind.  Saddest of all, was his fate when at 52 years old Edwin, on August 24, 1918 he decided upon suicide with a revolver while his family was downstairs in their home on Old Pimlico Road.  It would appear that with his life, so went the Baltimore Florists' Exchange.  Its success, however, having been demonstrated by florists in Baltimore, precipitated similar exchange organizations in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago.

(Sources: Baltimore Sun Newspaper articles; Annals of Horticulture; "The Illusion of Victory: America in WWI" by Thomas J. Fleming; 

Historical Impressions of Baltimore (1849-1981)

   Recently, it was my one year anniversary of being back in Baltimore City as a resident and I decided to provide some updated thoughts about the City, I decided to set out to capture some of the good and the bad impressions from the famous and not-so-famous over Baltimore's earlier years.  Brace yourself for the bad, it ain't too pretty.  Mid-nineteenth Century literary personalities were candid and cold in capturing their thoughts about Baltimore at the time.

North Point Battle (1814) Monument

   Robert Baird (1798-1863), an American clergyman and author, wrote in his book "Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America in 1849" that "unquestionably the town of Baltimore is finely situated, and the ladies of Baltimore are very beautiful." Of the 1814 Battle Monument, he stated it "appeared to me a work too elaborate in its design, wanting in simplicity, and displaying little taste."  He had higher favor upon Baltimore's Washington Monument stating that it "is worthy of the state that reared it, and of the great man whose patriotic services it is designed to commemorate." Oddly enough, he found it necessary to point out "of late years, several instances have occurred of persons throwing themselves from the top of the Washington Monument at Baltimore.  In the majority of instances, these victims of madness or of misery have been females."

   George Rose (1817-1882), who according to Wikisource was a dramatist, novelist, and humorous entertainer of London, and wrote under the name of "Arthur Sketchley" in his book "The Great Country: or Impressions of America" of 1868 provided some stark commentary on Baltimore.  "Baltimore takes its name from Lord Baltimore, and is one of the most uphill cities I ever visited.  A line of the great national anthem, "Yankee Doodle" - I am quoting from memory -- states that "Baltimore is the dandy."  I do not know what the American laureate of that day may have meant by this expression, but am happy to endorse the statement as far as saying that the city is well built and very clean.  In spite of its title the City of Monuments, I did not think much of the public buildings.  The Catholic cathedral struck me as a marvel of ugliness; though it boasts the finest organ in America.  I do not think that, rich though Baltimore be in monuments, they would repay the trouble of visiting them.  As national works, they are doubtless very great but, artistically, the less said about them the better."

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

   A February 1874 article in the Baltimore Sun accounted what English Victorian era author Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote of Baltimore in his second visit to America: They are very handsome women," he says of the Baltimore ladies, "with an Eastern touch to them, and dress brilliantly I have seen so fine an audience. They are bright responsive people." Owing to the times, he further writes "It is remarkable how the ghost of slavery haunts the town..."  Commenting on the contrast and the comparative state of black americans at that point in Baltimore history, "I strongly believe that they (the negroes) will die out of the country fast.  It seems looking at them, so manifestly absurd to suppose it possible that they can even hold their own against a restless, shifty, striving, stronger race."

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)

   By May 1891, a beautifully dressed, white-bearded, 50 year old visitor by the name of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the world famous Russian composer commented that "Baltimore is a pretty, clean town" in his diary during a one day tour of Baltimore and its Peabody Institute.

   At the turn of the 20th Century, the Baltimore Harbor, as in the case of New York City's Hudson riverfront, was lined with commercial property buildings and wharfs, becoming virtually inaccessible to the common citizenry. There was of course, Federal Hill, one of the only vantage points from where all the industrial city could be seen in near full panorama.  The Kent News of Chestertown, Maryland in August 1898 described it this way: "Every visitor to Baltimore is astonished that the foulness of the harbor if that great city is allowed to continue.  Its offensiveness, its unsightliness, its menace to health--all reflect upon the city authorities."

James W. Rouse, City Planner,
(1914-1996)

   The northwest branch of the Patapsco River took some heavy use and abuse over the several hundred years of development.  Thanks to the genius of men like Mr.James W. Rouse, master city planner, Baltimore's "Inner Harbor" emerged from a dark period with a renaissance opening of Harborplace in 1988.

   In 1913, Dr. Werner Hegemann, the German expert on city planning commented on Baltimore during his visit as captured in the Baltimore Sun. He was enthusiastic over Broadway and could not get enough of the view he got of it as he looked south. Over and over again, he would say "Let me get another look at this beautiful street!"  In East Baltimore, the cleaning of the white marble steps in front of the homes by the housewives or the housemaids.  He was surprised and delighted that were so many marble steps in front of even the modest homes in Baltimore.

   A witty English visitor to Baltimore in 1925 commented in The Sun, "If a Baltimore man asks you to dinner and says that his house is the one with the white marble steps in front, you will know that he has not asked you to dinner, for every house has white steps in front of it." Even the "poorer people have wooden steps and are always painting them white."

   The downtown city streets and its slums webbed out toward the city's northwest perimeter. As late as June 1948, Richard Feldman, a Government official from the Union of South Africa was quoted in the Baltimore Sun as describing their condition being quite strikingly worse than conditions in slums of his own country and in English cities like London and Manchester. "Even 'darkest Africa' was never like this.  I have not seen anything anywhere quite so shockingly bad as I saw this morning." On a brighter note, he expressed delight over the housing projects known as McCulloh and Gilmor Homes.

Today, decades after these comments were made in the 1980's regarding Baltimore's architecture, city planners might want to take a step back to note how well Baltimore has developed over the years.

In February 1981, Paul Goldberger, New York Times architecture critic while not seeing an ideal city he did have high praise for Baltimore as noted in The Sun.  "I hadn't been here for a decade, and my impressions of Baltimore are so positive that I'm a little suspicious. The hills are wonderful...I loved Roland Park too-there's a fabulous fabric of city here."  Of the Charles Center buildings, Mr. Goldberger described the Morris Mechanic Theatre as a "wowed-look-at-me-I'm-funny" building. He praised Mount Vernon square for its cruciform plan incorporating "an extraordinary balance."

Historic Charles Street,
Baltimore MD

  In July 1980, a group of six architects from across the world converged on Baltimore to give the following Baltimore Sun captured commentary: "I was impressed with such an enormous investment of energy and people in the Inner Harbor area, but I felt a kind of disproportion," stated Abu Aldenberg of the Netherlands.  Mr. Drazen Juracic of Yugoslavia commented, "The big mistake in the design concept of the Inner Harbor is that it's not linked to Charles Street" which he thought were "extraordinarily beautiful," reflecting Baltimore's rolling topography.  Mr. Fumio Okuyama of Japan found little harmony between old and new architecture in the city and pointed to lack of green spaces downtown.

  As Earl Arnett of the Baltimore Sun once aptly stated "...perspectives on the visual attractions of our city have always been a mixed bag--perhaps because the city is a mixed bag.  Like America itself, Baltimore is a curious mixture of beauty, richness and poverty--still a bit unsure of itself in a new land whose vastness and significance is not yet fully comprehended."

(Sources: Baltimore Sun Newspaper articles)