Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

History

B.P.I. was founded in 1883, after Baltimorean Joshua Plaskitt petitioned the Baltimore municipal and school authorities to establish a school for instruction in engineering. The original school was named the Baltimore Manual Training School, and its first class was made up of about sixty students, all of them male. The official name of the new high school was changed a decade later in 1893 to "The Baltimore Polytechnic Institute" by the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners of the Baltimore City Public Schools. The first principals at the B.M.T.S. were Dr. Richard Grady, followed by two American naval officers, Lieutenant John D. Ford (U.S.N.), and Lieutenant William King (U.S.N.). Lt. King had such long lasting beginning influence on the new technical high school's academic rigor and traditions giving the school a naval flavor in its early decades. Because of this seminal influence, the connecting structure at the new 1967 campus at Cold Spring and Falls (with a distinctive outside stone facade and engraving with the school name) between the two new building wings of the academic and engineering halls (future also renamed "Dehuff" and "Burkert Halls") which contains the hallowed Memorial Corridor filled with Poly historical and biographical wall plaques, displays and glass exhibit floor cabinets along with at the west end of the stained glass window, statue head bust and B.P.I. bronze seal imbedded in the floor (all imported from the old North Avenue building of 1913–1967) is situated here. This wing was renamed after him as "King Memorial Hall" as one of the three new main 1967 campus structures along with the others in the 1980s after the Institute's centennial celebration.

The first building location designated in 1883 for the new manual training / technical school was located in part of a former grammar (elementary) school building on the earlier former site of the old central City Spring and small surrounding pocket park from colonial era days of old Baltimore Town on now disappeared Courtland Street just north of East Saratoga Street. This area was three blocks northwest of the Baltimore City Courthouse and the adjacent historic Battle Monument square (commemorating from the British naval and land attack in the famous Battle of Baltimore and bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 in September 1814).

It was unfortunately later contained in Baltimore's first "urban renewal" plan with the tearing down of five square blocks in this then northern reaches of Downtown Baltimore of what today would be architecturally significant and historic residential townhouses along old Courtland Street and the original Saint Paul Street (which paralleled it to the west), between Calvert Street to the east and Charles Street up the hill to the west. This major demolition project was to permit the construction of new terraced "Preston Gardens" and adjacent Saint Paul Place which ran from East Centre Street in the north to East Lexington Street in the south occurred at the end of the mayoral administration of James H. Preston in 1919–1920. It was occupied by numerous African American black professionals and commercial offices in this downtown district and the razing and creation of the terraced gardens was to protect the nearby wealthy cultural Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood on the heights to the west and north around the historic Washington Monument from any unwanted racial encroachment.

Relocation

Due to continued growth of the student population of the City's Public Schools system in the early 20th century and especially in the growing demand for higher secondary education at high schools like at the B.P.I.and the rival B.C.C. and the two girls high schools of Eastern and Western, the City's technical school relocated after a long public campaign for larger better facilities ten blocks further north from downtown in 1913 to Calvert Street and North Avenue (formerly known as Boundary Avenue, of the old City / County line of 1818–1888. The former old 1860s era converted mansion of French Second Empire style architecture of the former Maryland School for the Blind was purchased. It was sitting on a slight hill above the avenue in a then rural / suburban setting. Two additional massive three-story wings on the east and west sides of the center mansion were constructed and added by the City with a Greek Revival architecture

with Classical style columns on the front facade. Now for the first time in its 30 years history "Tech" had a suitable building expansive enough to handle both its academic and technical education requirements. But the growth of "The Institute" was so much that in only a decade and a half by 1930, the old original central wing of "The Mansion" from the Blind School was razed after only 17 years and replaced by a simpler center three-story wing between the two flanking earlier 1913 structures with an additional large enormous auditorium / gymnasium in a further east wing facing North Avenue and towards adjacent Guilford Avenue were constructed. This massive assembly hall and physical education building with swimming pool was the largest built at the time in the city and the auditorium served many secular / civic / cultural occasions and events in town for decades into the mid-1980s. While at this location, the high school expanded both its academic, technical and athletic programs under the extensive longtime leadership of legendary Dr. Wilmer Dehuff, who was the fourth principal from 1921 to 1958.

Principal Dehuff despite his many accomplishments in his long educational career and his devotion and love of Poly, unfortunately in his view opposed and reluctantly (see below) oversaw the racial integration of the technology high school in September 1952, the first instance in the American Upper South region with the City of Baltimore public schools admitting African-American – then called "Negro"

/ "Colored" students. The Baltimore City Public Schools (founded 1829), had maintained racially segregated schools since first beginning public education for its black minority in Baltimore in 1870. The nationally famous precedent occurred two years before the rest of the nation took up this serious issue of inequality and discrimination addressed finally by the Supreme Court of the United States in May 1954 in the famous case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Previous black students in Baltimore City (and from adjacent Baltimore County also) had attended the Frederick Douglass High School (formerly named the "Colored High School" up to 1923 – second oldest in the nation – founded the same year as Poly – 1883) on the westside of town and the later opening Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in East Baltimore. Dr. Dehuff later after his retirement in 1958 and his 37 years career at the Polytechnic Institute, became the president and dean of faculty at the then private institution, the University of Baltimore on Mount Royal Avenue.

Integration/desegregation

Most Baltimore City public schools since 1870

were not integrated until after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of May 1954 in the following September / Fall semester. B.P.I. since the 1920s had an unusually advanced and difficult college-level mathematics, engineering and technology oriented "A" Course, the "Advanced College Preparatory Curriculum" instituted back in the 1920s as part of then Public Schools reform and improvement program. It included calculus, analytical chemistry, electricity, mechanics and surveying; these subjects were not offered at the black high schools in the city before 1952. But a parallel "A" Course centered on the

humanities / social studies / liberal arts was also

longtime since the '20s offered at arch-rival City College with a similar degree of rigorous quality. But its focus was in different fields. Other "A" Courses were similarly available at the two also all-white and all-girls Eastern and Western High Schools, both founded 1844. B.P.I. was a whites-only school but supported by municipal taxes on the general population. No black schools in the city (black students could not attend whites-only schools) offered such courses, nor did they have classrooms, labs, libraries or teachers comparable to those at B.P.I. or at the similar level of The Baltimore City College.

Because of this, a group of 16 Baltimoreans African American students, with help and support from their parents, along with the Baltimore Urban League, and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) applied for the mathematics / engineering "A" Course at the Poly; the applications were initially denied and so the students sued in local Maryland state circuit court.

The subsequent trial began on June 16, 1952. The NAACP's intentions were to end segregation at the 70-year-old public high school. In the B.P.I. case they argued that BPI's offerings of specialized engineering courses violated the "separate but equal" clause because these courses were not offered in high schools for black students. To avoid integration, an out-of-court proposal was made to the Baltimore School Board to start an equivalent "A" Course at the "colored" (for non-whites) of Frederick Douglass High School. This hearing on the "Douglass" plan lasted for hours, with longtime Poly Principal Dehuff and others arguing that separate but equal "A" Courses would satisfy constitutional requirements and NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall (soon to be later famous appointed Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967), arguing that the plan was a gamble and additional cost that the city should not take. By a vote of 5–3, the board decided that a separate "A" course would not provide the same educational opportunities for African American students, and that, starting that fall, African American students could attend Poly. The vote vindicated the NAACP national strategy of raising the economic cost of 'separate but equal' schools beyond what taxpayers and their government bureaucracy were willing to pay. Thirteen African American students, Leonard Cephas, Carl Clark, William Clark, Milton Cornish, Clarence Daly, Victor Dates, Alvin Giles, Bucky Hawkins, Linwood Jones, Edward Savage, Everett Sherman, Robert Young, and Silas Young, finally entered the Polytechnic Institute that fall. They were unfortunately faced daily with racial epithets, threats of violence and isolation from many of the more than 2,000 fellow students then at the school on North Avenue. But they endured, kept their cool and composure, knowing what was at stake. The first of those students to graduate from Poly was Dr. Carl O. Clark in June 1955. Dr. Clark went on to become the first African-American to graduate from the University of South Carolina with a degree in physics in 1976.

Modern campus (1960s–present)

In September 1967, after a multi-year planning and construction project, then-fifth principal Claude Burkert (1958–1969) oversaw the relocation of his school after 54 years at North Avenue and Calvert Street to its current location at 1400 West Cold Spring Lane, a fifty-three-acre tract of land bordering the

Jones Falls stream to the west (and adjacent elevated Jones Falls Expressway (Interstate 83) and with Falls Road (Maryland Route 25} and the heights of the Roland Park residential planned community from the 1890s to the east along Cold Spring Lane, and to the south is the Hampden and Woodberry neighborhoods. Further to the north along Falls Road is the Village of Cross Keys shopping mall and planned residential community also developed during the 1960s by the noted James Rouse.

At the time of the 1965–1967 building of the "New Poly-Western", it was considered one of the largest and most expensive school construction projects in the nation up to that time. A century before, this site along the Jones Falls was occupied by earthworks fortifications for the Union Army, then militarily occupying Southern-sympathizing Baltimore City during the American Civil War.

Also occupying this site on its east side facing Falls Road is the new Western High School, an all-girls school founded in 1844.

Notable buildings on the B.P.I. campus include Dehuff Hall, also known formerly as the Academic Hall building, named for the longtime fourth principal where students attend normal classes, and Burkert Hall, also previously called the Engineering Hall building, remembering the fifth principal, where students attend classes in the Willard Hackerman Engineering Program. (Hackerman, a noted Poly alumnus and local / regional engineering / construction firm founder). Both Western High girls and Poly students make use of the auditorium/cafeteria complex in-between the two high schools, and likewise share the swimming pool and sports fields. Although the two schools share these facilities, their respective academic programs and classrooms are completely separate from one another.

In 1974 after some controversy and a local court case, the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute officially became coeducational when it began admitting female students for the first time in almost 90 years. The first female to enroll and successfully graduate from the "A" Course was an African-American named Cindy White (1974–1978).

Academics

Poly is a longtime "magnet school" for over 141 years, with specialized courses drawing students from across Baltimore's regular district boundaries in the Baltimore City Public Schools system (including a number of additional students from surrounding suburban counties in Maryland paying supplemental tuition). Admission to the Polytechnic Institute is highly competitive. Course concentrations include: the Honors S.T.E.M. Program; the Ingenuity Project offering advanced science, math, and academic research courses; AP Capstone emphasizing Social Sciences and Humanities; Computer Science; and the United States Air Force-sponsored Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). In its 2019 nationwide survey of STEM programs spanning 2015–2019, Newsweek magazine ranked Poly No. 36 among U.S. high schools.

Athletics

In addition to the school's football program, Poly's sports include basketball, soccer, cross-country, track and field, lacrosse, baseball, hockey, swimming, tennis, volleyball, and wrestling. The boys' basketball team won three state championship titles in a row between 2016 and 2019. The Poly "Engineers" baseball team has won nine Baltimore City championships since 2005 under head coach Corey Goodwin.

Football

Since the early 1900s the "Engineers" of the Polytechnic Institute, along with longtime arch-rival The Baltimore City College's, "Collegians" / "Black Knights" had dominated the old public – private schools athletic league of the Maryland Scholastic Association (M.S.A.) which existed 1919 to 1993 in the local prep sports scene. However, since joining the newer state-wide Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSAA – founded 1946) in 1993, Poly made it to the final playoff football game once in 1993, the semi-finals once in 1997 and the quarterfinals in 1994 and 1998.

The Poly-City football rivalry is the oldest American football rivalry in Maryland and one of the oldest public school rivalries in the United States.

The rivalry here in "The Monumental City" began in the Autumn of 1889, when a team from The Baltimore City College ("City" "Collegians") then situated at North Howard and West Centre Streets since 1875 with its first structure of two (which unfortunately collapsed in August 1892 because of undermining from construction of the underground Howard Street Tunnel bypassing congested Downtown Baltimore for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad). After seven years of temporary exile in a former elementary school building they returned again to the same site at Howard and Centre to a new larger home followed in 1899, remaining there although increasingly overcrowded until the move to the "Castle" in 1928. The City College is reputed to be the third oldest public high school / secondary school in the nation, established 1839. and had unofficial student teams playing rugby and various earlier versions of American football starting back in the 1870s. Meanwhile, the B.M.T.S. / B.P.I. was in its also cramped quarters on Courtland Street (today's Saint Paul Street / Place / "Preston Gardens" site) and both public secondary schools in those days were with no campus or athletic fields, so forced to use nearby municipal parks like newly purchased Clifton or older Patterson or Druid Hill Parks. The two teams from neighboring all-boys high schools which were seven blocks apart in Downtown Baltimore, met in the new municipal Clifton Park (of the late noted Baltimore merchant / banker / philanthropist Johns Hopkins (1795–1873) summer / country estate and mansion "Clifton") against a team of "scrubs" from the new Baltimore Manual Training School (the future renamed Baltimore Polytechnic Institute ("Poly") four years later in 1893), then located on the northeast corner of the former Courtland / now St. Paul Street and East Saratoga Street in Downtown Baltimore. It has continued annually every Fall season in numerous locations, parks and fields, most notably at the new Homewood Field of the "Blue Jays" of The Johns Hopkins University at their new spacious campus off North Charles Street and University Parkway, where they moved in 1914. City leads the series with the record standing at 66–62–6.

Basketball

In February 2020, ESPN ranked the boys basketball team in the top 25 in the country.

Principals / directors of the B.M.T.S. / B.P.I.

1st – Dr. Richard Grady (1883–1886)

2nd – Lt. John D. Ford, U.S.N. (1886–1890)

3rd – Lt. William King, U.S.N. (1890–1921)

4th – Dr. Wilmer Dehuff (1921–1958)

5th – Claude Burkert (1958–1969)

6th – William J. Gerardi (1969–1980)

7th – Zeney P. Jacobs (1980–1984)

8th – Gary Thrift (1984–1985)

9th – John Dohler (1985–1990)

10th – Barbara Stricklin ^ (1990–1991)

11th – Dr. Albert Strickland (1991–1994)

12th – Ian Cohen (1994–2003)

13th – Sharon Kanter ^ (2003–2004)

14th – Dr. Barney Wilson (2004–2010)

15th – Matthew Woolston ^ (2010–2011)

16th – Jacqueline Williams (2011–2023)

17th – Mark Sawyer (2023–present)

^ Denotes interim director while a search for a permanent director was occurring or ongoing at the time

Notable alumni

Arts, literature, and entertainment

H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken, 1896 – writer/author/reporter/editor/columnist, The Baltimore Morning Herald, The Baltimore Sun (The Sun [morning] and The Evening Sun)

Stavros Halkias, 2007 – comedian/actor/podcaster

Jae Deal – Hollywood composer/producer

William J. Murray – son of atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Edward Wilson – British writer of spy novels

Ta-Nehisi Coates – writer

Dashiell Hammett – writer/author/screenwriter

Alex Scally, 2000 – guitarist of dream-pop band Beach House

Business

Alonzo G. Decker Jr., 1926 – former chairman, Black and Decker Corporation (power tools manufacturer).

Education

John Corcoran, PhD, DHC, 1956 – logician, philosopher, mathematician, historian of logic.

Rev. Joseph Allan Panuska, S.J., 1945 – president of the University of Scranton (1982–1998), academic vice president and dean of faculties at Boston College (1979–1982), provincial of the seven state Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus (1973–1979), a biology professor and director of the Jesuit community at Georgetown University (1963–1973), and Jesuit priest.

Raynard S. Kington, MD, PhD, president of Grinell College.

Government

William "Billy" Murphy Jr., Baltimore Circuit Court.

Thomas L. Bromwell, 1967 – (D), Maryland State Senator, District 8, Baltimore County, (1983–2002).

Andrew J. Burns Jr., 1945 – (D), Maryland State Delegate, District 43, Baltimore (1967–1982).

Luke Clippinger, 1990 – (D), Maryland State Delegate, District 46, Baltimore (2011–present)

Cornell Dypski, 1950 – (D), Maryland State Delegate, District 46, Baltimore (1987–2003).

Edward A. Garmatz – U.S. Representative (Congressman) representing Maryland's 3rd District, (1947–1973).

Joe Hayes (1988), member of the Alaska House of Representatives (2001–2003).

A. Wade Kach – 1966 (R) Maryland State Delegate, (1975–2014), Baltimore County Councilman, (2014–present), US Presidential Elector (1972)

Clarence M. Mitchell, IV – (D), Maryland State Senator, District 39, Baltimore, (1999–2003).

Nick J. Mosby, 1997 – (D), City Councilman, District 7, Baltimore, (2011–present).

Charles E. Sydnor III, 1992 – (D), Maryland State Delegate, District 44B, Baltimore County (2015–present)

Military

Paul J. Wiedorfer, 1939 – won Medal of Honor at Battle of the Bulge

Brian W. Cavanaugh, 1986 – lieutenant general, United States Marine Corps

Sciences

Don L. Anderson – Geophysicist, winner of the Crafoord Prize and the National Medal of Science

John Clauser – winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics

Scarlin Hernandez – astronautical engineer for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

John Rettaliata – fluid dynamicist, former president at Illinois Institute of Technology

Robert H. Roy – mechanical engineer, dean of engineering and science at Johns Hopkins University

Robert Ulanowicz (1961) – noted theoretical ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory

Sports

Antonio Freeman, 1990 – former wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers, and Philadelphia Eagles

Harry L. Lawrence, 1927 – head football coach at The Baltimore City College "Collegians" (1934–1941, 1946) and Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (1947–1957) "Bisons", Guidance Counselor, Faculty, The Baltimore City College, 1957–1973, also inductee in the B.C.C. Hall of Fame

Justin Lewis, 2020 – current forward for the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA)

Jim Ostendarp – former National Football League (NFL) player and head coach at Amherst College for 33 years from 1959 to 1991

Mike Pitts, 1978 – played 12 seasons at defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons, Philadelphia Eagles, and New England Patriots, National Football League (NFL)

Jack Scarbath – former quarterback for the Washington Redskins and Pittsburgh Steelers, National Football League (NFL]), enshrined in College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 for All-American career at University of Maryland at College Park "Terrapins"

Greg Schaum – former defensive lineman with the Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots, National Football League (NFL)

Ricardo Silva, 2006 – former NFL safety

David Robert "Bob" Fetters, 1939 – multi-sport athlete at the University of Maryland, College Park, 1946 winner of the Schmeisser Award, and World War II veteran

Jack Turnbull – three-time The Johns Hopkins University "Blue Jays" All-American and 1932 Olympics lacrosse player, 1936 Olympics field hockey player, and World War II fighter pilot

Justin Wells, 2006 – current guard for the Arena Football League

School songs and hymns

Poly Fight Song

The Polytechnic Hymn, written by James Sagerholm, Class of 1946 (tune of "The Navy Hymn" / a.k.a. "Eternal Father, Strong to Save"):