Small Farms: A Practical Treatise for Persons Inexperienced in Husbandry, But Desirous of Employing Time and Capital in the Cultivation of the Soil (1855)

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the most impressive sculptural monuments in America were under construction in Baltimore. Before New York, Philadelphia, and even Washington, D.C., the city built a monument to George Washington, and Baltimore constructed the country’s first public monument dedicated to those killed in battle. After touring both these sites in 1827, President John Quincy Adams declared Baltimore ‘the Monumental City’, a moniker still used today. Cindy Kelly has organized more than 250 sculptures found throughout Baltimore into eighteen walking and driving tours, each with accompanying maps to make finding the pieces easy. Beginning with a brief synopsis - including title, location, sculptor, date, medium, donor, and a photograph - Kelly tells the fascinating stories behind Baltimore’s monuments. Kelly mined local archives and conducted interviews with contemporary artists to uncover the details behind the city’s public sculptures. As she talks about how each piece was commissioned, constructed, and dedicated, the rich cultural, economic, and social history of the city unfolds. From the twentieth-century sculpture of the Inner Harbor’s Baltimore Renaissance to the nineteenth-century splendor of Mount Vernon Place, Kelly invites us to see Baltimore in a wholly fresh perspective. Follow her as she guides readers to the extraordinary outdoor art that makes Baltimore ‘the Monumental City’.