There’s probably nobody who knows the nooks, crannies, and secrets of Davidge Hall better than Larry Pitrof, executive director of the University of Maryland School of Medicine Alumni Association for nearly 25 years.

And if Pitrof has his way, all University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) students, faculty, and staff will get to know about the iconic building with the distinctive pillars that are featured in the University’s logo.

Toward that end, on April 24, Pitrof led a group of 30 from UMB through three levels of the West Lombard Street treasure, which dates to 1812 and is the oldest building in the Western Hemisphere continuously used for medical education. It’s a tour he regularly leads, but he’d like to do more.

“If you get a large enough group, I’d be happy to give a personal tour with some advance notice,” said Pitrof, an expert on the venue that was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. “We are the heirs to this incredible tradition of excellence. Whether it’s medical, dental, law … we are all part of a proud, rich history.”

Pitrof offered notes on that history and the origins of Davidge Hall during the lunchtime tour, which was sponsored by the UMB Council for the Arts & Culture. Visitors left enlightened and enthralled. In fact, several who previously had been in Chemical Hall on the first floor were not aware of the room above it, Anatomical Hall, which sits below the building’s distinctive dome.

“This is fantastic. I had no idea this hall was in the dome,” said Nicole Willhide, MS, director of student services in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at the School of Medicine. “We do our white coat ceremony downstairs, and I didn’t know there was a second lecture hall on top of the first one. This is wild.”

Brian Sturdivant, MSW, director of strategic initiatives and community partnerships in the UMB Office of Community Engagement, agreed. “I’ve heard bits and pieces of these stories but never the whole presentation, which was great,” he said. “I’ve brought plenty of groups of children here, and the kids love it. It’s awesome.”

Kicking Off in Chemical Hall

The tour started in Chemical Hall, where Pitrof spoke while participants ate boxed lunches and sat in the semicircular theater that features 212 numbered wooden seats. Behind him were kiln-like niches built into the front wall that had two purposes — to help medical students conduct experiments (pre-Bunsen burner) and to heat the building.

Pitrof introduced a six-minute video about Davidge Hall, which is named after Dr. John Beale Davidge, the first dean of what originally was called the College of Medicine of Maryland. Pitrof discussed the state of medicine in the United States over two centuries ago, saying it wasn’t a respected field and it was difficult to acquire dead bodies for medical study, so grave-robbing was a common practice.

“Most people at the time believed that when you died, your body served as a repository for your soul and needed to be buried until the end of the world when your fate was decided,” Pitrof said. “Yet here were these crazy medical doctors who were dissecting cadavers, cutting up bodies to educate their students.”

The dissecting room, where those cadavers were worked on, was the next stop on the tour, but now there are live bodies working there, because it serves as the Medical Alumni Association office. The group entered through a door, though originally there was no door there – and no easy entry, which was by design, Pitrof said.

“They wanted to keep this area secret. There were no windows on the side, and the only illumination we had was from the skylights,” he said. “To get into this room, you had to continue going up the stairwell, into Anatomical Hall, and then through a series of doors and a winding stairwell, we believe, that led people down here. Very few suspected there was a room like this.”

Anatomy of a Lecture Hall

The tour moved another 10 steps up to Anatomical Hall, which features rising rows of circular seating, an antique lectern at its center point, and a plaque below that marked the day in October 1824 when Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette received an honorary degree.

“This hall was used for anatomical instruction,” Pitrof said. “You can imagine the value of a room like this, where a professor could meet a relatively large group of students or physicians and give them a demonstration where virtually everyone would have the same vantage point.”

Pitrof discussed the history of Anatomical Hall’s design, tracing it back to Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol, and Maximilian Godefroy, a French architect who designed First Unitarian Church of Baltimore. Pitrof then had tour members take turns standing at the lectern, noting that the hall had “incredible acoustics” and they would experience a sensation as they spoke – and they did.

“The reverberations are all focused right on the center, and you can actually feel it when you stand there and talk,” Pitrof said. “So it was very important for the faculty member to be dead-center in the room, and he could be heard literally whispering if you were in one of the top rows. That’s how well designed it is.”

In the hallways surrounding this area, there are glass-enclosed displays attached to the walls featuring, among other things, Civil War surgical kits, antique eyeglasses, and a cadaver that was used at a 1960 conference at the School of Medicine. “It was so well-preserved, we decided to keep it here,” Pitrof said.

Preservation Efforts

Looking around Anatomical Hall and throughout the building, it’s clear that Davidge Hall needs renovations, with ceiling areas peeling or cracked and visible water damage. A fundraising effort is underway, with the goal of raising $5 million in private donations before asking the state legislature for additional support.

“Our goal is to restore this building to its original, fabulous appearance,” Pitrof said, and the visitors agreed that was a terrific idea.

“This is a very cool place. It’s so awesome,” Willhide said. “Yes, we need to preserve it. It’s really, really important for the history of Baltimore and for the history of the School of Medicine.”

— Lou Cortina

Read more about the UMB Council for the Arts & Culture, its events, and its programs.

Read more about Davidge Hall and the Medical Alumni Association.

A tour of the Hippodrome Theatre was running 20 minutes overtime on April 19, yet guide Danyela Marks was still enlightening the group of 20 from UMB that had gathered for the latest edition of “Behind the Red Curtain,” a Broadway 101 lunchtime event organized by the University’s Council for the Arts & Culture. (See a photo gallery.)

Marks, who has worked at the Hippodrome since 2006 and been its assistant house electrician for the past three years, was discussing all types of jobs associated with the theater, stressing that you don’t need to act, sing, or dance to work in the industry. For instance, if there’s a show that includes kids, such as when School of Rock was performed there in March, an adult must be assigned to shadow each child while they’re in the theater.

“These people are called ‘child wranglers,’” she said, a phrase that drew laughter from the group. “That is their technical term. And they’re basically a baby sitter. Anyone who is a minor in the theater cannot go unescorted anywhere. They cannot be left to go from their dressing room to the stage – even if it’s 20 feet away.”

This was just one interesting tidbit from the Hippodrome tour, which started on the historic venue’s stage, moved up to its “fly floor,” and escalated even higher to a floor 80 feet above stage, where riggers ply their trade. The group moved back into the theater, just above the balcony seating, and climbed one by one up a metal ladder and into a cramped room where three spotlights operate during a show. All the way through, Marks shined a light on the Hippodrome’s history and what it takes to produce a Broadway show.

She noted that the original building was a hotel but burned down and was converted in 1914 to a movie house that also hosted vaudeville performances. Business boomed for decades but slowed in the 1970s and ’80s, leading to the theater’s closure in 1990. A renovation was undertaken in the early 2000s, merging it with the Western National Bank Building and the Eutaw Savings Bank Building to form the Hippodrome Theatre at The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center in 2004.

“When it opened in 1914, the Hippodrome was the leading vaudeville house in Baltimore and the largest theater south of Philadelphia,” said Marks, who pointed out that two rows of seats – the grand suites – below the balcony are from the original venue. “These seats were restored and are much more comfortable with more room to them than the other seats — they’re also more expensive,” she said with a laugh. “Usually the best view of the show is from those two rows.”

Ropes, Rigging, and Spotlights

On the fly floor, tour participants learned how “fly men” and “fly women” operate synthetic ropes to lower and raise such things as set pieces, backdrops, or borders that help frame the show’s scenery. This part of the tour sparked several questions from the group, as Marks described how these items are attached to a series of pipes and that one to eight people could be manipulating the ropes during a show, depending on how fast or how many pieces need to move at a time.

“Any sort of flying set piece that needs to move in and out is attached to a pipe,” Marks said. “Electrics with lights on them, even though they don’t move during the show, have to get hung and flown up in the air at some point. So there’s a wide variety of things that will get hung on these pipes.”

The operators label the ropes with numbers, and the Hippodrome crew must quickly learn the show’s cues. “There will be a head fly man that comes along with the show, and the rest will be locals,” she said. “The cues are different every show, but pulling a rope is pulling a rope. It’s just a matter of when and how fast. So you have your cue sheet, and you follow it.”

The tour moved up several levels to the floor where riggers work. They are responsible for hanging any motors that a show will use, and anywhere from 10 to 80 could be used during a show, said Marks, who added that once the rigs are set up, this level is generally unoccupied during a show. “If there is someone up here, that means something’s wrong.”

Heading back down into the theater, the tour made its way to the spotlight room, where three 3,000-watt spotlights are operated. The spotlights have a housing area up top where operators can use frames to emit six colors, and the spot can be widened or narrowed.

“They manipulate the spotlights throughout the show,” Marks said. “The operators will use a cue sheet but also will be on a headset, with someone telling them who to pick up and in what color and what size.”

A Laundry List of Jobs

The tour’s final two stops took the group down into the basement for a look at the green room – it used to be painted purple, but now it’s white — and rooms where cast members can dress, get their wigs fitted or hair done, or take a break. Then there was the laundry room, where Marks again dropped some interesting theater terminology.

Costumes are sent out for dry cleaning, but cast members’ undergarments such as socks or bras need to be washed on-site. Each item is tagged with a number that corresponds to the cast member and put into a “ditty bag” that is sent to the laundry room. The person who washes all these clothes? That would be the “laundry wench” or “laundry warlock.”

“Those undergarments have to get cleaned every night, so their whole job when a show is in town is to do the laundry,” Marks said. “So that’s another non-theatrical job, and they live in this room.”

Theaters also need masseuses, physical therapists, seamstresses, and staff that make travel, hotel, and catering arrangements. As for her theater role, Marks says she’s thrilled to be working in the industry.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to work on every Broadway show that’s out there,” she said. “It’s always changing and there’s always something new. It’s a very exciting job.”

— Lou Cortina

Visit the UMB Council for the Arts & Culture website to learn more about its events and programs.