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Belvedere Hotel
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Belvedere Condominiums, July 2005
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| Location: | 1 E. Chase St., Baltimore, Maryland |
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| Area: | 0.1 acres (0.040 ha) |
| Built: | 1903 |
| Architect: | Parker & Thomas; W.A. & E.A. Wells |
| Architectural style: | Beaux Arts |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: |
77001529 [1] |
| Added to NRHP: | August 29, 1977 |
The Belvedere Hotel is a Beaux Arts style building in Baltimore, Maryland. Designed by the Boston architectural firm of Thomas and Parker and built in 1903, the Belvedere is a Baltimore landmark in the city's fashionable Mount Vernon neighborhood. The eleven-story building rises 118 feet (36 m) from a rusticated base to an elaborately-detailed Second Empire crown.[2]
The hotel is named for its site on the former "Belvidere" estate of John Eager Howard. The hotel was known as the premier lodging in Baltimore during the first half of the twentieth century, hosting U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson, among others, along with such celebrities as Wallis Warfield Simpson (the Duchess of Windsor), Douglas MacArthur, Clark Gable, and others.[3]
The hotel was converted to condominiums in 1991, although the building's ballrooms, restaurants, and lounges remain open to the public. The Belvedere's Suite Ultralounge, a BYOB club which opened in 2008 was closed by police on November 25, 2009, after being declared a "public nuisance".[4] The club had given rise to a "host of assaults" in the neighborhood, Baltimore police said in May, 2009.[5][6] At a June 16, 2009, meeting attended by Mt. Vernon neighborhood residents, city officials, and lounge management, citizens voiced complaints of assaults and intimidation that they attributed to the Belvedere's Suite Ultralounge patrons.[7] In announcing the closing following an administrative hearing officer's ruling in November, 2009, that the club posed an "unsafe environment", police said they padlocked the Suite Ultralounge for a year due to "several violent incidents in and around the bar over the past 18 months".[4]
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