Old Hamilton Firehouse Building 3015 Hamilton Avenue

Call it the little building that could.

The small, unassuming structure has sat for a century at the crossroads of the Hamilton business district. Its many transformations tell the story of one of Baltimore’s most enduring neighborhoods. Initially built as a modest wood structure at 3015 Hamilton Avenue, it was later replaced after a fire with two-stories of handsome, deep red brick. It stands on the south side of Hamilton Avenue, just east of Harford Road. The land was sold to the Hamilton Veteran Volunteer Fire Company not long after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 destroyed downtown Baltimore. The first telephones had just come to Hamilton and electric lights were finally  coming into fashion.  Thanks to neighborhood fundraisers, the fire company bought a fire truck with an innovative gasoline engine, so residents could proudly watch it race down the Harford Turnpike at 25 miles an hour.

Back then, the firehouswasn’t even part of Baltimore City; It was still a suburb in Baltimore County until it was eventually annexed by the city, along with the rest of the larger Hamilton community. The buildings adjacent to the firehouse -- including a theater and bowling alley -- were demolished, leaving the little building standing alone like a steadfast sentry reminding Hamilton residents of the past. In the following years, the building’s occupants reinvented it many times. It became a center for political activists when the Hamilton Democratic Club purchased it in 1950 (paying all of $29.60 a month mortgage). That was when Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., a popular democrat -- and immigrant -- was mayor.

In 2012, the leaders of Hamilton Lauraville Mainstreet were so concerned the building might be demolished that they raised $55,000 in just two days, from local businesses and others in the community, to purchase it. They renovated the first floor for new business ‘incubators’ to try out their retail ideas. Now it is a music store, Hamiltone Music. In the front the owner sells guitars, sheet music and ukuleles. In the back rooms students take music lessons.

By 2018, more than a century after the building’s bricks were laid, contractors were at work, building new offices upstairs for the Hamilton-Lauraville Mainstreet office. On the roof of the building where electric lights were once installed as a great technological wonder, there are now solar panels. Today, the little building that could can create its own power.

Joan Jacobs