Glass House of Dreams: Baltimore's Victorian Glass Palace in the Park
Photo credit: David Simpson
"Glass House of Dreams" is an extraordinary pictorial history of Baltimore's Conservatory in Druid Hill Park, extolling the beauty of what might be the second oldest such structure in the United States.
Written by Margaret Stansbury, who was instrumental in the preservation of the conservatory, and with photographs by David Simpson, the coffee table book tells the story of the Victorian structure of glass and steel that opened in 1888 and, with its exotic and tropical plants, was a refuge for city dwellers.
My colleague, Fred Rasmussen, describes the book and the history of the conservatory in his column in The Sun.
In addition, The Sun has posted a gallery of photos from the book.
Build on the land sold to the city by Lloyd Nicholas Rogers in 1860, the conservatory, Rasmussen writes, may, for a moment, trick the visitor into thinking "he has gotten lost and ended up instead in Belle Epoque London, Vienna or Paris."
