MD -- Baltimore -- Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- BABE_061210_092.JPG: Baltimore: 1895
Population: 472,000
Size: 6th largest city in the U.S.
Industry: Seaport trade
Nickname: "Gateway to the South"
Housing: Typical city rowhouse -- $1,500
Ethnicity: Germans comprise largest ethnic group
Leading the way: B&O runs first electric locomotives
Baseball: Orioles win 2nd straight national league pennant
Mayor: Ferdinand C. Latrobe
Governor of Maryland: Frank Brown
President of the USA: Grover Cleveland
- BABE_061210_097.JPG: Ruth Family:
Family tradition says the Ruths were originally Pennsylvania Dutch. Peter Ruth was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1801. His wife, Kaziah Reeger, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1805. Records indicate that their son John had a lightning rod business in Baltimore in 1873. His son, George (Babe Ruth's father), also worked in the lightning rod business. He then became successively a horse driver, a salesman, a gripman on streetcars and a bartender. In the 1890s, George worked in the family grocery store and saloon in Baltimore, and was still living there when he married Katherine Schamberger and became a father. He owned and operated various saloons in Baltimore starting in 1902, and died in 1918 attempting to break up a fight outside his tavern at the corner of Eutaw and Lombard streets.
- BABE_061210_115.JPG: Babe Ruth's Real "Home":
He entered St. Mary's Industrial School in June, 1902, on a Friday the 13th. Appropriate, perhaps, for a youngster that had proved too tough for his parents, too absent for the school system, and too incorrigible for everybody else. But prior to his departure more than a decade later, George Herman Ruth had learned about respect, and love, and caring. And he had learned enough about playing baseball to go on to become the most celebrated player in the history of the game.
Under the guidance of Xaverian Brothers (in particular brothers Matthias and Paul and Gilbert), young Ruth got a good dose of discipline and religion at St. Mary's, and learned how to get along with others. For the better part of twelve years, Ruth followed the daily regimen prescribed for all St. Mary's "inmates": up at 6, breakfast and mass by 7:30, classes and workshops until late afternoon, and then an hour or so of recreational activities in the "yard". After supper, there was a short period for fraternizing, and then lights out by 8. Through it all, the Babe came to love his home away from home, and considered Brother Matthias "the greatest man I've ever known."
- BABE_061210_123.JPG: The Babe from Baltimore:
George Herman "Babe" Ruth was born in this room on February 6, 1895. His mother Kate came to the home of her father, Pius Schamberger, to escape the lusty atmosphere of the apartment she and husband George lived in overtop the Ruth family saloon a few blocks away.
In the first seven years, Ruth took on the rough, blue-collar characteristics of the southside neighborhood where he was raised, called "Pigtown." With his friends, he roamed the streets, hooked school, and played baseball. He hid in alleyways and avoided authority figures, including his parents, who -- on Friday, June 13, 1902 -- finally threw in the towel and trotted their "incorrigible" toughian off to St. Mary's Industrial School, a home for orphans and delinquents.
Two things are certain about the St. Mary's chapter of Babe Ruth's life story: the date of his arrival and the date of his ultimate departure (February 27, 1914). In between, there are reports of give occasions when he left the school to return home for periods ranging from one month to more than a year, plus stories from his sister Margaret of brief furloughs "for Christmas and other holidays, and our mother's funeral in 1910."
- BABE_061210_127.JPG: The $600 Baseball Career:
Orioles' owner/manager Jack Dunn knew all about the southpaw pitching phenom from St. Mary's, George Ruth. The boy's amateur successes had been well documented in a series of glowing newspaper and grapevine reports over the summer of 1913. So it came as no surprise when Dunn went to St. Mary's the following February and signed the groping lad to a $600 a year contract.
The owner's "baby" made spring training headlines in March and then made the team in April. He pitched and won his first game on April 22, earning a 6-0 shutout over the Buffalo Bisons.
But Dunn's minor league Orioles couldn't complete with the Federal League Baltimore Terrapins, who played across the street and were considered "major league" by many. By early July, Dunn was forced to sell off his best players just to stay in business, and this despite having a 47-22 record. On July 9, Ruth, with a 14 and 6 mark, along with fellow pitchers Ben Egan and Ernie Shore, were sold to the Boston Red Sox for $25,000.
Babe returned home in the off-season to help his father tend bar, but more importantly to wed Helen Woodford, a pretty young waitress he had met three months earlier in Boston. On October 17, the two were married in St. Paul's Catholic Church in Ellicott City, just west of Baltimore. Babe and Helen lived overtop the family saloon on Conway Street the rest of that winter. But by 1915, and the jumpstart of his big league career, Babe Ruth's days in Baltimore had pretty much come to an end.
- BABE_061210_219.JPG: Babe: Husband, Friend & Father:
To his millions of fans, he was the "Sultan of Swat," "The Bambino" or "The Babe." But, to his family, he was just "Daddy."
Babe Ruth was a boisterous, hard-living, jovial man who loved the center of attention. He basked in the adoration of a crowd and the flashbulbs of reporters. He called most of his friends "Kid" since he seldom remembered a name and they called him "Jidge," short for George. Kids were his favorite and he never missed an opportunity to sign an autograph or pose for a picture with a "dirty-faced kid."
However, that larger-than-life persona masked the protective and caring husband and father he was privately. His daughters, Dorothy and Julia, were the center of his life. When his daughters first started to date, he'd exchange greetings with the young man with one hand while clutching a bat with the other.
His second wife, Claire, learned to tame the free-spirited playboy and was seldom away from his side. After his death in 1948, Claire, Dorothy, and Julia continued to promote and protect the legend that was Babe Ruth. According to Julia, "no daughter ever had a more caring, loving, natural father than my father was to me."
- Description of Subject Matter: George Herman “Babe” Ruth was born February 6, 1895 at 216 Emory Street, a Baltimore row house that is now just a long fly ball from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The property was leased by Babe’s grandfather, Pius Schamberger, who made his living as an upholsterer.
The historic Babe Ruth Birthplace was, in 1895, the home of Pius Schamberger, father of Katherine, "Babe" Ruth's mother. Little is known of the family other than that Pius was born in Germany in 1833 and that he had moved to Baltimore just before the Civil War. What is certain is that he made his way first as a grocer and saloonkeeper, and after that, as an upholsterer. Schamberger moved to Emory Street in 1887. Eight years later, daughter Kate went there (Emory Street was only a few blocks from the apartment she and husband George lived in over the Ruth family grocery and saloon) to give birth to son George on February 6, 1895. Neighborhood midwife Minnie Graf helped with the delivery. Kate gave birth to eight children in all, but only two, George and a younger sister, Margaret, survived early infancy. Margaret, nicknamed "Mamie" by her brother, was born in August, 1900, and lived in Hagerstown, Maryland, before passing away in 1992. Mother Kate, who was often tired and chronically ill, died in 1910. Pius Schamberger leased the Emory Street row house until 1904.
1895 Baltimore was an industrious, bustling, and rowdy town where sail was for the first time introduced to rail. Investment giant Alex Brown & Sons held forth in the business district, smartly scouring its bullish future by having faith in the city's maritime industry... and in the B&O Railroad. Pratt Street was clogged with the back and forth wagon traffic of farmers and merchants, and with those still curious over its reputation as the site of the first bloodshed in the Civil War. In the rose-gray hours of morning, one could hear shouts of street vendors, nicknamed "A-rabs," as they peddled their wares through the cobbled ways of neighborhoods like "Pigtown" and Canton. On the north side, trolleys carrying baseball teams from Boston and Brooklyn were getting pelted with rotten fruit, courtesy of the hometown faithful, as they made their way to Union Park to challenge the champion Orioles. And the city's "blue-collar" label was no more proudly worn than by its watermen, railroaders and other "cogs" of industry as they gathered after-hours at local hangouts like the Ruth Family Saloon, 622 Frederick Avenue.
By the late 1960s the property and adjoining three row-house structures had fallen into disrepair and were scheduled for demolition. Hirsh Goldberg, press secretary for Baltimore’s Mayor Theodore McKeldin, launched a successful campaign to save and restore the Birthplace, which opened to the public as a national shrine in 1974. The not-for-profit Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation, Inc. was formed to govern the operation. Exhibits depicting the Historic House and the life and times of Babe Ruth were installed with the help of Babe’s widow, Claire; his two daughters, Dorothy and Julia; and his sister, Mamie, who was also born at 216 Emory Street.
In 1983 the operation expanded to become the official museum of the Baltimore Orioles, the team that signed Ruth to his first professional contract. At that time, the Foundation began formally operating as the Babe Ruth Museum. In 1985 the Mayor of Baltimore, William Donald Schaefer, designated the Museum as the official archives of the Baltimore Colts, who had departed the previous year for Indianapolis.
Museum attendance soared to over 60,000 annually with the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992, and Museum officials knew that the tiny Birthplace facility could not sufficiently house the large numbers of visitors or the increased number of displays it needed to interpret its multiple sports themes.
Over the course of its 30-year history, the Babe Ruth Museum’s mission has evolved to not only feature the greatest baseball player ever, but also to present the rich and storied histories of Baltimore’s Orioles and Colts. Upon the opening of Sports Legends at Camden Yards on May 14, 2005, those artifacts moved into a new and larger home at Camden Station. Meanwhile, the Birthplace has reverted to its original mission to feature exhibits on the life and times of George Herman “Babe” Ruth.
The Babe Ruth Birthplace dates to 1967 when the City of Baltimore planned to demolish the historic house as part of an urban redevelopment project. Community leaders banded together to save the structure and create a shrine to Babe Ruth. Cosmetic renovations were made in the 1980s, but the facility is in need of considerable upgrading.
The Museum’s Board of Directors recently contracted with a design/build team headed by an established historic-preservation architect to make the Babe Ruth Birthplace a true jewel for sports fans. Without essential renovations, wheelchair-bound fans have no way of gaining access to the facility’s second floor to visit the bedroom where George Herman Ruth was born. With the installation of an elevator and larger bathrooms, the space will become handicapped accessible. Plans also include an expansion of the facility’s third floor to accommodate the Museum’s growing staff.
The renovations, which will be partially funded by $250,000 in state funding, will include new exhibits. A renovated Birthplace will be a fitting showcase for the priceless artifacts the Babe Ruth Museum holds in its collections: items like a near-complete team set of 1914 International League Baltimore Orioles baseball cards (including the rookie card of a 19-year-old pitcher named George Ruth, Jr.) or a baseball bat given to Ruth by Shoeless Joe Jackson sometime between 1915 and 1916. This thick-handled, 38 3?4 ounces of baseball history is the only one known to exist — a game-used bat shared by Shoeless Joe and the Babe.
A capital campaign drive to fund the $750,000 in renovations will launch this summer. This effort will bring the Museum into compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act regulations, including the addition of a handicapped accessible entrance, restrooms, and elevator; add needed fire suppression systems and egress stairs, bringing the Museum into compliance with Life Safety Codes; allow for the reconstruction of the 4,000-square-foot gallery space to better utilize the small rowhouses; and reconfigure the Museum’s office floor to house additional employees by adding 950 square feet of space.
The Birthplace is scheduled to undergo its full renovation in Fall 2006 and will be closed to the public through the winter. The historic portion of the Museum will remain as is. The grand re-opening is slated for Spring 2007 in conjunction with the Major League baseball season.
The renovated Babe Ruth Birthplace, coupled with Sports Legends at Camden Yards, will preserve America’s common ground of sports heritage, so that we may educate and enlighten future generations at the best sports museum in America!
The above was from the official site at http://www.baberuthmuseum.com/museum/birth.cfm
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