It is generally known that Roland Park, Guilford, Homeland and Northwood were all planned and built by the same developer, the Roland Park Co. In these troubled times, the fate of the Roland Park Co. serves as a cautionary example of fatefully wrong bets in the middle of an economic crisis.
Most Baltimoreans have no idea about what an 800-pound gorilla that company used to be. Bankrolled by British investors and developed by Kansas City speculators starting in 1891, it was the king of Baltimore real estate.
The company planned and developed prestigious garden districts. Its founder, Edward Bouton, was a sought-after expert throughout the nation. He participated in the development of the Sage Foundation’s important Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, N.Y., doubling as its general manager.
The Roland Park Co. weathered several financial downturns, including the country’s worst economic crisis up to that point, the 1895 Depression. So when the stock market crashed in 1929, Bouton regarded it as just the latest temporary setback. Instead of curtailing operations and increasing liquidity, as many competitors did, he made rosy public predictions about a turnaround just around the corner.
Then he gambled.
Bouton went on an acquisition binge. In 1931, two years into the economic collapse, he added 520 contiguous acres in Northwood to the 1,500 acres that the company controlled in Roland Park, Guilford and Homeland.
This was sheer madness. Plenty of lots languished unsold in Homeland, and several properties had been repossessed because buyers were in no position to make payments. Nevertheless, Bouton insisted that the worst was over and that Northwood was different, intended “for the man of average means.” Such discerning men were not buying homes, of course; they could hardly feed their families.
By 1933, the situation had grown so dire that the company and its subsidiaries were at the mercy of creditors. With the company facing liquidation, Bouton was at his wits’ end.
The Roland Park Co. barred blacks and Jews from its communities. During the 1895 economic calamity, Bouton had sold a handful of lots to Jews as a last resort. This time he ruled out that option. “It must be recognized that the value of the properties of each Company depend primarily on the active operation, policies and restrictions of The Roland Park Company. Any weakening of these factors would be directly reflected in loss of prestige, confidence and values,” he wrote.
Instead, Bouton struck a deal with Joseph Meyerhoff, who would later emerge as one of the nation’s leading builders of residential communities and shopping centers, a philanthropist and a major fundraiser for Jewish and Israeli causes.
Meyerhoff “was broke and we were broke, so the company let him have the land,” Aurine B. Morsell, a longtime company sales agent, told writer James F. Waesche. “He built houses; then, after he sold them, he paid for the land. The company had gotten really burned when they developed in Homeland. He saved it!”
In all, Meyerhoff took 350 lots in Homeland and Northwood. Whenever he signed a contract, the Roland Park Co., which controlled the subdivision plans and covenants, vetted the buyer, denying approval to Jewish purchasers.
A big controversy eventually erupted about Meyerhoff’s complicity in anti-Jewish discrimination. When the Roland Park Co. was dissolved in 1959, it had not sold a single lot to a Jew from 1913, a practice that slowly disappeared. Today, so many Roland Park homeowners are Jewish that two synagogues serve the area.
The Roland Park Co. never recovered from Bouton’s bad gamble. Even after World War II ended and a huge homebuilding boom began, Northwood never quite took. By that time, most buyers in its intended market segment preferred Baltimore County suburbs, away from racial change.
Antero Pietila is writing a book about how bigotry shaped Baltimore between 1910 and 1975. His e-mail address is [email protected].
