Home of the Friendless

The Home of the Friendless at 1313 Druid Hill Avenue was built as a home for orphaned boys in 1870. It was the second of three buildings built by the Home of the Friendless on Druid Hill Avenue south of Lafayette Avenue. A nearly identical home for girls had been completed ten years earlier just to the north. Later, in 1900, a third building housing a hospital for the orphanage was constructed at the corner of Druid Hill and Lafayette Avenues.  

In the early nineteenth century, industrialization, immigration, and urbanization increased the number of needy children and, at the same time, decreased the aid and support that families and small communities traditionally extended to them. Reform movements inspired by Charles Dickens’ description of children’s lives in workhouses led to the large-scale building of separate institutions for children. Orphanages were established to care for children with one or two deceased parents, as well as children who were abandoned, neglected, or abused. Between 1778 and 1856, twelve orphanages were founded in Baltimore, all of which were private institutions. 

On December 20, 1854, the “Home of Friendless Vagrant Girls” was chartered. Organized by a dozen ladies, the purpose of the institution was to provide refuge and a Christian home for homeless, vagrant young girls. If parents were “vicious” or utterly destitute, girls became permanent residents of the Home of the Friendless. If parents were virtuous and industrious, but unable to afford support, the girls were received in daily attendance, clothed, and provided with one good meal. Girls at the Home were taught a rudimentary English education, the use of needle and thread, and general housework – the objective of the organization was to train and prepare the children to enter the domestic service of Christian families. The home also provided an early form of daycare in a nursery where women who worked outside of the home during the day could leave their young children and have them kindly cared for. Poor women also found employment in a sewing room for approximately twelve cents a day. 

Some of the children brought to the Home of the Friendless were enticed from the streets by the ladies who established the institution, while others were brought in by police officers or missionaries. Sometimes destitute parents brought their children to the Home themselves. Most of the children came from the streets of Baltimore and about half were foreign born. Each year, the Home of the Friendless cared for approximately two hundred children. Many children were placed in Christian homes, but about half remained in the institution on a continuing basis from year to year. The Home of the Friendless was supported by donations of money and goods. An annual floral fair was established in 1855 to raise funds for the Home. By 1860, the institution began receiving government support in the form of appropriations from the Maryland General Assembly and the Baltimore City Council.  

In the mid 1920s, the Home of the Friendless joined other charitable organizations as a member of the Community Fund to raise funds for other operations. The Home acquired property in Mount Washington, but merged in 1931 with another Community Fund agency, the Baltimore Orphan Asylum, to form the Children’s Home of Baltimore, Inc. Eventually the institution merged into the Woodbourne Center. Today, Woodbourne serves over five thousand at-risk children and their families providing psychiatric, educational, and social work services. 

Home of the Friendless, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 15th 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/106776602.

Home of the Friendless (Baltimore, Maryland), Wikipedia. Accessed January 21st 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_of_the_Friendless_(Baltimore,_Maryland).