This program is hosted on Zoom and Facebook Live. Upon registering you will receive an email confirmation and a Zoom link. If you do not receive a link, please contact ndennies@aiabalt.com. If you do not contact us at least 1 hour prior to the start of the program, we cannot guarantee admittance.

The Baltimore Architecture Foundation (BAF) and Baltimore Heritage present a series of 30 minute live virtual tours and presentations focusing on Baltimore architecture, preservation and history.

Tickets are donation based. We encourage you to give what you can to support BAF and Baltimore Heritage. Your support helps us make up for lost tour and program revenue from COVID-19 and create more virtual programs like this.

Join author Jean Baker to learn about the life and works of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, America’s first professional architect. Most of the lecture will focus on his work in Baltimore especially the Basilica and the Merchants Exchange.

The presentation is based off Baker’s new book, Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. The book traces the life of Latrobe and his rise to fame designing treasures like the US Capitol and the Baltimore Basilica. The themes that emerge in this biography are the critical role Latrobe played in the culture of the early republic through his buildings and his genius in neoclassical design.

“With this fine biography, historian Baker rescues Benjamin Henry Latrobe from obscurity and restores his reputation as the ‘Father of American Architecture.” -National Book Review

About the Presenter

Jean H. Baker is Bennett-Harwood Professor of History Emerita at Goucher College. An eminent political historian and biographer, she is the author of Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists, James Buchanan, and Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, among other titles.