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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Work Stay of the Day

Last week was my company's strategic planning session.

We strategically used the facilities at the Mount Washington Conference Center, strategically located in Mount Washington, just a few minutes from downtown Baltimore.

Mount Washington is a cute little area, lined with serious looking Victorians and well cut lawns. Of course, you'll only see that if you go there during the day because Mount Washington is the darkest neighborhood in the city. As I mentioned to my boss last week, as we stumbled through the parking lot looking for the pedestrian exit, Mount Washington is like Iowa on a cloudy night.

When the sun came up the next day, I had a great view of this building:

The Mount Washington Octagon was built in 1855, under the direction of the Reverend Elias Heiner of the German Reformed Church. It was used until 1861 as the Mt. Washington Female Academy.

After the Civil War the college failed and the building was bought by the Sisters of Mercy, who opened Mount St. Agnes College.

My father-in-law remembers hazing freshman in the building's steep parking lot when he was a senior at Loyola High School. (They made the froshs take their school jackets off and tie them around their waists like skirts. Oooh. Nasty.)

In 1971, Mt. St. Agnes merged with Loyola College and moved from the Mt. Washington site. USF and G then bought the property, and did a bunch of renovation to the Octagon. Today, Hopkins owns the place.

They have not added any lights since the original building was finished in 1855, as far as I could tell.

Incidentally, the building was never a private home. This is historic fact even though someone on our management team--someone who acts as if s/he knows such things--confidently told one of our directors during the second morning that "Yes, it was private originally." Really, if anyone is going to answer those kinds of questions, it should be Historic Travel Girl. Non-historic senior management dude/dudette should stick to answering questions about tax codes and annualized earnings. Or whatever it is that s/he really does know about.

I srategically kept my mouth shut.