Ghost hunters tip-toe through the dark, dank space beneath the former Westminster Presbyterian Church.
They hope to understand the influential men and women buried there who built and worshipped in Baltimore City.
The hallowed land, now the secular Westminster Hall and Burying Grounds, houses more than 1,000 tombs.
To protect the elaborate graves, including a pyramid vault and obelisks, Baltimore First Presbyterian?s congregation built the church above the burial grounds in 1852.
The history of the church begins almost 100 years earlier.
In 1761, the reigning rich of Baltimore, 10 Presbyterian families, founded the congregation. Mostly Scottish and Irish settlers, they initially worshipped in the Two Steeple Church, “one of the largest and finest in the country,” Westminster Hall and Burial Grounds Director Mary Jo Rodney said.
The congregation created the Westminster Cemetery in 1786 to replace their burial grounds, where eroding land pushed caskets into the Jones Falls? water trails.
James Calhoun, the first mayor of Baltimore City, and other figures critical to Baltimore’s infancy, are buried at the cemetery including generals of the American Revolution and War of 1812.
“If it wasn?t for General John Stricker, buried here, we’d have afternoon tea at 4 every day,” said Lu Ann Marshall, head tour guide of Westminster Preservation Trust, Inc, which maintains Westminster Hall and Burying Grounds. “You?ll recognize the names of founding fathers and mothers buried at Westminster because the city’s streets are named after them.”
One of the most famous laid to rest in the cemetery is Edgar Allan Poe. Baltimore City children collected $600 in pennies for Poe?s second gravestone when a railroad accident destroyed his first marker. A devout Poe fan in New York kept the decaying body of Poe?s wife under his bed for over a year until he could afford a trip to Baltimore to bury her beside his literary hero as a tribute, Marshall said.
Constructed on brick piers above the vaults and graves, the Baltimore firm, Dixon, Balbirnie and Dixon designed the building in English Perpendicular style, with a tall, stuccoed and stenciled tower.
French architect and Baltimore resident, Maximilien Godefroy designed ornate iron gates in an Egyptian motif to surround the simple building, trimmed in brownstone.
The building?s treasures shock visitors, Rodney said.
“People drive by it or walk past it, but never imagine what it would be like inside,” she said. “They can?t believe this exists in Baltimore.”
“This site is much more than an empty building,” Marshall said. “It has a soul.”
Westminster Hall and Burying Grounds
500 W. Baltimore St.
Baltimore
Tours: April through November, first and third Friday of the month at 6:30 p.m. and first and third Saturday at 10 a.m.
Information: 410-706-2072
