Baltimore Living
Best Overlooked Landmark
Frederick Douglass House
Published: September 19, 2012
He traveled from Baltimore in 1838, under the name Fred Bailey, an Eastern Shore slave on loan to a family in Baltimore. He returned to Baltimore in 1870 as a free man, known by his iconic new name, Frederick Douglass. The story of one of Baltimore’s most historically important residents is told at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, at the foot of Fells Point, where the freeman disembarked to a new life. But did you know there’s another landmark a few blocks away that demonstrates how far the orator, writer, and famed abolitionist rose from slave to intelligentsia? The so-called Frederick Douglass House at the corner of Aliceanna and South Durham streets in Fells, was where Douglass lived as a house slave to his master’s brother, Hugh Auld. At this location Douglass learned to read and eventually worked as a shipbuilder. The home is now occupied, but a small plaque commemorates the man who went from Baltimore slave to one of the most important figures in American history.
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