FORMER AFRO-AMERICAN PLANT INCLUDED IN HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY

I've been looking through some of the digitized images available at the Library of Congress as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey.

This vast archive documents notable achievements in architecture, engineering and landscape design in the United States, ranging from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Its been going since the early 1930s - part of a set of cooperative agreements between the National Parks Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector - and to date has produced more than half-a-million drawings, photographs, and written histories.

Included in this eye-watering collection is a series of photographs of the former Afro-American publishing plant at 628 N. Eutaw Street in Baltimore. There is some conflicting data on exactly when the paper vacated the property, but to the best of my knowledge it was somewhere between 1990 and 1993. The date at which these images were taken is also unclear, although I would guess it was pretty soon after the newspaper left.

626-628 N. Eutaw Street Exterior, date unknown. Library of Congress

A big part of my interest in the relationship between the Black Press and the built environment is what happens to Black media buildings after Black media leaves, and these images contain their own story - of economic decline and the Black press' modern struggles, but also of a proud history and rich legacy stretching back over 125 years.

So far as I can tell from looking on Google Maps it appears that the main building no longer exists, leaving images such as these the last memory of a Black publishing plant which was once once of the largest in the nation.

626-628 N. Eutaw Street Interior, date unknown. Library of Congress

626-628 N. Eutaw Street Interior, date unknown. Library of Congress

626-628 N. Eustaw Street Interior, date unknown. Library of Congress