Babe’s Family on the
Move
Babe’s father operated the saloon
on Camden Street for only two years. By
April 15, 1903 he applied for a liquor license at 712 South Hanover Street, a
few blocks further to the south and to the east of Camden Yards.1 The storefront at 712 South Hanover Street
still stands, although it appears that its brick facade has been rebuilt. Today the house is exclusively residential
along the southern edge of the Otterbein Historic District. Houses in Otterbein were condemned in the 1970s
for a planned highway and urban renewal.
Highway plans were altered and the neighborhood underwent rehabilitation
in the early 1980s under Baltimore’s urban homesteading program. Today, Otterbein is a well-to-do neighborhood
just a few blocks from the Inner Harbor.
In 1903, it was just an older
neighborhood that had experienced a population shift from white to
predominately African-American. From the
antebellum period to around the 1890s, most Baltimore neighborhoods had blacks
and whites living in close proximity. Generally
whites lived on the main streets, and blacks (as well as poor immigrants) lived
in narrow alleyways. In the late
nineteenth century, with much growth in the black population due to migration
from the South, African-American populations in some older neighborhoods pushed
out from the alleys and onto the main streets.
This was the case in Otterbein and the Sharp-Leadenhall neighborhood to
the south.
Not only did African-Americans live
along narrow Hughes Street and Welcome Alley in this neighborhood, but on such
main streets as Hill Street and Hanover Street.
A Colored School (public schools in Baltimore were segregated until the
mid-twentieth century) stood on Hill Street, not far from George H. Ruth’s second
saloon. Most of the houses on Hanover
Street south of Hughes Street, a block from the saloon, were occupied by African-American
families as indicated in 1900 census field books.2
The storefront at 712 South Hanover
Street was a notions store prior to 1894.3 By 1897, there was an
application to sell liquor at that address.
Between 1897 and 1908, ten different people are listed on liquor license
applications for 712 South Hanover Street.
It is not known why there was such a great turn over for saloons at this
location, but an ad appeared in the Baltimore Sun, a year and a week after Babe’s
father originally applied for a liquor license:
“SALOON FOR SALE – Doing good business; License granted. 712 Hanover
Street.”4 While Babe’s father is listed at 712 South Hanover Street
in the 1904 Baltimore City Directory, in 1905 he is listed at 527 East Clement
Street.
Babe Ruth may have spent a
Christmas vacation at 712 South Hanover Street.
He had been sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School a year before his
father and family moved from Camden Street to Hanover Street.
The move to 527 East Clement Street
was brief, but in August 1905, Katie gave birth to another son, William E.
Ruth. Katie was said to have given birth
to eight children, including two sets of twins. It is likely that a pair of twins may also
have been born sometime between 1901 and 1904 either at Camden Street or
Hanover Street but neither child survived beyond infancy.
Clement Street is about a mile southeast
from Camden Yards. Back in the early
twentieth century, the area was just known as South Baltimore. Today it is on the cusp between Federal Hill
and Locust Point, two gentrified neighborhoods overlooking Baltimore’s
waterfront. Although Babe’s father is
listed in city directories as a bar keeper at Clement Street, this mid-block
rowhouse was no bar. The house was owned
by Babe’s Aunt Augusta and Uncle William E. Brundige.5 Perhaps,
George, Katie, Mamie, and possibly the Babe (if he was not at St. Mary’s) moved
in with family when Babe’s father was between owning bars and Katie was about
to give birth. The stay on Clement
Street was short-lived. In November
1905, Babe’s father bought another bar at 406 West Conway Street – around the
corner from his original bar on Camden Street, and the family moved once
again.
Today 406 West Conway Street is the
best known Ruth saloon. In 1992, Oriole
Park at Camden Yards was completed on a site which once included the saloon. Modern day major leaguers routinely hit fly
balls through center field where 406 West Conway Street once stood. During an October 8, 1995 visit to Baltimore,
Pope John Paul II celebrated mass at an altar erected in the ballpark, near the
site of Ruth’s Conway Street Saloon. The
church would not have been pleased with what took place there in March 1906.
|
1 Baltimore Sun, April 15,
1903, p. 5
|
|
2 U. S. Census Records 1900;
Baltimore (Independent City), Maryland; Ward 1, District 11; Enumeration
District 11; Sheet 5
|
|
3 Baltimore Sun, November 9, 1894, p. 3
|
|
4 Baltimore Sun, April 24, 1904, p. 3
|
|
5 Baltimore City Land
Records, Liber RO 1954, Folio 225, April 28, 1902
|
