There was a light in the windows around midnight and the “eerie tramp” of something walking an empty house. The ghost was either a miser or a witch who came down the chimney. That’s the gossip the Baltimore Sun reported in September 1919 about a boarded-up house on Aliceanna Street in Fells Point, between Wolfe and Washington streets.
The Sun ran it on September 11th, 1919, on page 15, under the headline “Seeking House? Here’s One: But It’s Haunted, Neighbors Say, And No One Will Live There.” That was a wink at the times, because Baltimore was badly short of houses that fall. Here’s the whole article.
Despite the shortage of houses, there’s a house in this city in which no one will live. There’s only one thing the matter with the house--it is said to be haunted.
The house is on Aliceanna street, between Wolfe and Washington. Of course, the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be; neither is the house. A few windows are broken, the door is boarded up and the red paint is rather rusty-looking, but that’s probably because no one has lived in the place for two years. It is safe to say, though, that a tenant with the temerity to brave the “ghosts” will not be bothered with high rent, and probably will not have to worry about moving out to allow a better-paying tenant to move in.
Back in the days when Aliceanna street was the leading residential street of that part of the city the house was occupied.
Now the only sound is the eerie tramp of the ghost. Whose ghost it is no one seems to know, but that there is a ghost is common gossip in the neighborhood. The unearthly visitor is said to make periodical pilgrimages to the scene. A light has been seen shining through the windows about midnight, which is the time all ghosts prowl.
At least a half-dozen families are sure about the ghost. They have every reason to know because, at various times, during the past two years, they have moved into the house. But they never stayed long. One or two visits from the ghost was enough and they moved out.
Some say the ghost is that of a miser who lived there in seclusion. Others say the ghost is that of a witch and that she visits the house by coming down the chimney. Both may be right but all who have attempted to live in the house are sure about the ghost.
The Sun couldn’t settle on a miser or a witch, so it happily called it a tie.
Read closely, the story doesn’t quite add up, because the Sun says no one had lived in the house for two years. It also says at least a half-dozen families moved in during those same two years, each leaving after “one or two visits from the ghost.” The tone is playful throughout, and the paper presents the ghost as neighborhood gossip rather than something its reporter saw.
Why an empty house was news
The headline’s joke depended on the housing shortage. In December 1918, builders had estimated that the war left Baltimore needing at least 5,000 new houses. The Sun revisited that figure on October 5th, 1919, a little over three weeks after the ghost story.
The real shortfall, the paper wrote, “appears to have been nearer 10,000,” because of “the large increase in population brought here by war work.” So a house that no family would keep was a genuine oddity. That’s presumably why the Sun added its rent joke about a tenant brave enough to face the “ghosts.”
Which house was it?
The Sun never printed a house number, but “between Wolfe and Washington” narrows it to a single block. That’s the 1900 block of Aliceanna Street, on the eastern side of Fells Point. The Maryland Historical Trust’s listing for the Fells Point Historic District runs east to Chester Street, one block past Washington.
The Sanborn fire insurance map of 1914 shows that block about three years before the house went empty. Most of the lots on both sides are brick dwellings.
There were saloons on the corners at 1900 and 1932 Aliceanna on the north side and at 1935 on the south side. The block also had a club at 1908 and a junk shop at 1914.
The south side was the busier one. Its houses backed onto the Southern Can Company’s works, which ran down to the harbor. The company also had a can storage building right on the street at 1917 to 1919 Aliceanna.
John R. Mitchell’s machine shop stood behind the houses farther east. That may be part of what the Sun meant when it said the neighborhood “isn’t what it used to be.”
The map can’t point to the haunted house, though. The Sun’s best physical clue is the “rusty-looking” red paint, while Sanborn colors show building materials, not paint, so the pink here just means brick. And by the Sun’s count, the house didn’t go empty until about 1917, three years after the survey.
We went looking for anything else. We searched the Sun’s archive from the 1830s on, the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America newspapers and Newspapers.com. We were looking for another report of a ghost on Aliceanna Street, a miser’s death, or a follow-up on the boarded-up house, and found nothing.
As far as we can find, that one short item is all the Sun ever printed about the place. We haven’t checked the 1920 census or the land records, which could name the families living on the block. Even then, without a house number they couldn’t single out the haunted one by themselves.
The block today
Both sides of the 1900 block of Aliceanna Street are still lined with three-story brick rowhouses. Behind the south row, where the 1914 Sanborn shows the can works, a modern apartment building stands today.
If the Sun had it right, at least half a dozen families walked away from one of those rowhouses, by the paper’s account. We couldn’t find which one. In a city desperate for houses, it was the one nobody would keep.
For a look at Fells Point in the Great Depression, see our photo of 1621 Thames Street in July 1936.
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On the AtlasNewSee where this happenedThe 1900 block of Aliceanna Street39.2837° N · 76.5895° W
