SAVAGE MILL VILLAGE

Savage Mill Village was a paternalistic company town typical of the textile industry, with workers renting houses built nearby from their employer. The mill village is arranged on a roughly five-by-three block grid of streets just north of the mill. Extant housing ranges from semidetached brick houses likely built in the 1830s to typical 1920s bungalows on the east side of the neighborhood. The early semidetached worker houses at 9040, 9050, and 9060 Washington Street are six bays wide, with the entrances at the end bays and a shared central chimney. The building at 9078 Washington has six narrow bays with entrances paired at the center, and smaller variants are at 9051–9053 and 9063–9065 Baltimore Street. Later semidetached house variations include the shed-roofed, Italianate-inspired 9114–9115 Baltimore Street and the wood, shared-porch houses on the 8400 block of Commercial Street. Single-family wood houses built in the third quarter of the nineteenth century are found on the 8900 block of Baltimore Street.

A large, late-nineteenth-century house with a mansard roof sits on a spacious lot at 8502 Fair Street. Typical of the hierarchy of mill towns, this impressive structure housed the Savage Mill manager, while the owner’s house (9110 Washington), dubbed The Mansion, was used as a summer house by the Baldwins. Built between 1859 and 1878, this Italianate dwelling features a cupola on its hipped roof.

The former company store and post office is a two-and-a-half-story brick building at 8520 Commercial, and the two-story brick Masonic lodge (1897; 9140 Washington) was built by the company. Carroll Baldwin Memorial Hall (9035 Foundry Street), a rubble stone one-story community building, was erected in 1921 in memory of the longtime Savage Manufacturing Company director. Unlike communities associated with larger mills in Baltimore City, Savage Mill village remained a company town until after World War II, with the mill company providing electricity, sewerage, and other municipal functions. Today it is an unincorporated town in Howard County.