Bolton Hill is a neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, with 20 blocks of mostly preserved buildings from the late 19th century. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, preserved as a Baltimore City Historic District, and included within the boundaries of Baltimore National Heritage Area. The neighborhood is bounded by North Avenue, Mount Royal Avenue, Cathedral Street, Dolphin Street, and Eutaw Place.

As of the 2020 Census, there were 5,034 people residing in the neighborhood. The racial makeup was 46.7% non-Hispanic White, 29.7% Black, 11.8% Asian, 0.1% Native American, 0.7% some other race, and 4.8% two or more races. The Hispanic or Latino population of any race was 6.1%. Among all housing units, 27.7% were owner-occupied, whilst 16% of units were vacant.

History

thumb|upright=1.2|[[Eutaw Place Temple]]

The name Bolton Hill is derived from Bolton-le-Moors, the English locality after which the Baltimore merchant, George Grundy, named his original estate house. Grundy's estate house, Bolton, stood on the current site of the Fifth Regiment Armory. In 1832, The Northern Central Railroad built Bolton Station which was the terminal of the line until 1850 when Calvert Street Station opened. Around 1850, the area began to transition from large estate to traditional Baltimore row houses, which were built along a diagonal street grid, unlike the traditional north–south grid of most Baltimore neighborhoods. This grid was constructed by Thomas Poppleton to follow what is now Pennsylvania Avenue and the Jones Falls. Early row houses featured plain brick facades with decorative cornices, door surrounds, and window lintels. Later, row houses were constructed featuring more ornate designs. Construction of row houses continued until the end of the 19th century, but a few large apartments were constructed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Unlike other prominent neighborhoods in Baltimore at the end of the 19th century, which had restrictive covenants against African-Americans, Jews, and Asians, Bolton Hill was a relatively diverse neighborhood. Although socially segregated, many African-American servants for the mansions of wealthy Bolton Hill residents lived in the alley houses of Bolton Hill. At the end of the 19th century, Baltimore's German Jewish community moved to Bolton Hill. Jews had moved to the western edge of Bolton Hill, and many synagogues, such as Baltimore Hebrew, Chizuk Amuno, and Shearith Israel, moved to McCullough Street and Madison Avenue just west of Bolton Hill. Furthermore, two large temples were built within Bolton hill. Eutaw Place Temple was built by Temple Oheb Shalom on Eutaw Place in 1892, and the Har Sinai Congregation built a large temple on Bolton Street in 1894—now the oldest Reform congregation in the United States.

Beginning in 2012, the Netflix series House of Cards filmed the exterior of a home in Bolton Hill to represent the fictitious Underwoods' Washington, D.C., home, also creating a set for interior scenes modeled after the same house.

Notable residents

  • James M. Cain (2418 Linden Ave.), Author of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald (1307 Park Ave.), American author who published Tender is the Night while living in Bolton Hill from 1933 to 1935. His wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, stayed in this home on weekends while receiving weekday treatment at The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, and Scott Fitzgerald is known to have entertained other famous literary icons, such as Gertrude Stein and John Dos Passos, in his Bolton Hill rowhouse. Biologist, psychobiologist and geneticist at Johns Hopkins University.
  • Louis Rukeyser lived in 1200 and 1400 blocks of Bolton Street, host of PBS' long-running weekly show on business and finance, "Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser."
  • Florence Rena Sabin (1431 and 1325 Park Ave.), pioneering medical researcher, first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
  • Woodrow Wilson (1210 Eutaw Pl.), President of the United States, President of Princeton University and Governor of New Jersey. Wilson lived in Bolton Hill during his doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins.