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(Alexander Heilner) -
(HABS) -
(Alexander Heilner)
When opened in 1928, this was the largest hotel ever built in the state of Maryland and a prime example of up-to-date hotel construction. New York City architect Stoddart specialized in hotel architecture, having worked early in his career for George B. Post and Sons, the firm largely responsible for creating the early-twentieth-century urban hotel building type. The scale and form of the urban hotel had shifted from a single tower such as the Belvedere Hotel to multitower forms rising from a base several stories high. Advances in structural engineering allowed ballrooms and other large spaces to be located on the lower floors, such as the second-floor ballroom at the Lord Baltimore. This arrangement was now considered preferable to moving large groups up and down on elevators to ballrooms on the top floor.
Stoddart designed hotels and commercial buildings for many smaller cities, mainly in the South, but the Lord Baltimore stands out as one of his largest projects. This twenty-three-story structure has a U-shaped plan for the guestroom floors with a decorative mansard roof tower crowning the center, creating a distinctive profile on the Baltimore skyline. The inventive combination of stylized Renaissance Revival and classical motifs was highly fashionable in hotel design of the late 1920s. Operated by the Radisson chain for many decades, the Lord Baltimore was renovated in 2014 and is now independently operated.