Humanities Center (Loyola University Maryland)

About

The Francis Xavier Knott, S.J. Knott Humanities Center, commonly known as the Humanities Center, is the oldest building on the campus of Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. The Tudor Revival building was originally built as a private residence in 1896 by New York architecture firm Renwick, Aspinwall & Renwick.

Alice Whitridge Garret, the widowed heiress to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad fortune, had the house built on the southern edge of the Garret Family’s Evergreen estate in Baltimore. It was to be a wedding present for her son Horatio and his bride Charlotte Garrett and serve as their “cottage” home. The house was nicknamed “Evergreen junior” and cost $85,000 to build. However, Horatio would die of cancer while traveling in Europe in 1896 and never see the house completed. It sat unoccupied until 1919, when the Garret Family lent the house to the Red Cross as an institution for blinded servicemen in World War I.