Explore Baltimore Heritage 101

How to research the history of your house or neighborhood

Are you interested in learning more about the history of your house or your neighborhood? This guide provides a quick introduction on how to use archival sources to learn more about the history of Baltimore houses, buildings, and neighborhoods. Don’t miss our companion resource on digital sources for local history!

Your House Has a History

Researching the history of your house or neighborhood can be an educational and entertaining activity for home-owners, students or any interested local historians. Building history research can included:

• Finding information on the history of the neighborhood
• Locating original plans and identifying an architect
• Documenting changes to the building over time
• Learning who lived in your house
• Events that took place in your neighborhood
• This guide is designed to provide a starting place for figuring out what questions to ask and where to find the answers. If * you have questions or suggestions on how we can improve this guide, please get in touch!

Who are you?

We’re Baltimore Heritage, a citywide historic preservation advocacy nonprofit in Baltimore, Maryland. We share local history through projects, programs, and partnerships including: Explore Baltimore Heritage, Baltimore 1814, and Northeast Baltimore History Roundtable. We like to experiment with using the web to help save historic places, celebrate local history and build a stronger, and more inclusive sense, of community identity for Baltimore neighborhoods. This new online course was started by Eli Pousson, Director of Preservation & Outreach.