Baltimore Self-Guided (GPS) Audio Driving Tour, Maryland - Maryland Universities & Where to live tour

Let’s kick this off at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. Go ahead and drive through the campus and listen up while you take in the beauty of America’s oldest research university.

Nineteenth-century Baltimore entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist Johns Hopkins made the bulk of his fortune investing in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first railroad in the United States.

A practicing Quaker instilled with a strong sense of social duty, and a life-long resident of Maryland’s largest city, Hopkins saw firsthand the impact of the American Civil War upon his hometown – scourges such as orphaned children, rampant cholera, and yellow fever. He then set aside seven million dollars of B&O Railroad stock for the construction of a free hospital and various training colleges.

A reoccurring April Fool’s Day prank is a formal announcement proclaiming that Johns Hopkins University has eliminated the confusing letter “s” at the end of “Johns.” The founder acquired this awkward moniker through a combination of his mother’s name, Margaret Johns, with that of his father, Gerard Hopkins.

Equally confounding, in some ways, is the magnitude of the University, organized, as it is, into 10 divisions, spread from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to international centers in Italy and China. As the first research university in the United States, Johns Hopkins is also a leading school of advanced international studies, located on historic Massachusetts Avenue in our nation’s capital.

The Homewood Campus, where you find yourself today, is a 140-acre grounds of red-brick buildings and tree-lined pathways. There’s the iconic Gilman Hall Clock Tower that has served as the symbol of Johns Hopkins for nearly a century, two dozen research facilities, two libraries, residence halls, and expansive green quads.

Since 1876, students and staff here have churned out some pretty amazing discoveries that have improved the lives of people around the globe. Inventions such as water purification, CPR, and the supersonic ramjet engine owe their inception to Hopkins.

Johns Hopkins University has also developed life-changing surgical procedures to correct heart defects in infants. To date, the school has produced 29 Nobel Prize winners in Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, and Physiology. That’s more than some continents have received overall.

Johns Hopkins offers nine academic divisions with more than 400 programs in arts and music, the humanities, the social and natural sciences, international studies, engineering, education, business, and the health professions.

So how about campus life here at Johns Hopkins? Well with more than 400 student-led clubs and organizations, there is no shortage of things to do. If you are into kayaking, photography, discussing international relations, or even playing Quidditch, there’s a club for you.

Students and faculty come together once a year for Spring Fair, the largest student-run festival in the United States. This three-day celebration is NOT to be missed, with lawn games, food trucks, organized activities, and an art market.

Housing and dining? Well, you’ve got traditional residence halls suitable for two, suite-style living for one to three people, and off-campus houses and apartments. As far as on-campus food goes, Johns Hopkins’s menus are mouth-watering, ranked sixth in the nation for “Best Colleges for Food”.

Additionally, arts and culture abound here with the Peabody Institute, the United States’ first conservatory. And, let’s not forget Baltimore sports! Oriole Park at Camden Yards is Major League Baseball’s first “retro” ballpark, and M&T Bank Stadium is home to the Baltimore Ravens.

When you feel like you’ve seen enough, go ahead and follow the GPS directions to our next stop, Morgan State University.

Morgan State University is ahead on your right. Again, feel free to turn down any road into campus and explore as I talk.

Like many of the east coast’s major cities, Baltimore was settled on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line. This 900-mile ridge stretches from New Jersey to Alabama and separates the flat tidewater region from the rolling hills of the piedmont. Morgan State was built on two such slopes, giving a picturesque appeal to this historically black college founded two years after the end of the Civil War.

The campus buildings of MSU complement the rolling landscape. Each has a story to tell. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has deemed 20 structures within the MSU campus as being eligible for listing in its National Register.

These include buildings designed by noted African American architects such as MSU Professor Leon Bridges, a graduate of nearby Loyola University Maryland; Albert Cassell of Towson, Maryland, a creator of buildings on the Georgetown University campus in Washington, D.C., as well as those of many other academic institutions across the country; and Louis Fry, Jr., whose designs included buildings for Tuskegee University and other historically black schools.

In 1998, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Historically Black Colleges and Universities, such as MSU, on its 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list. From a joining of forces between the National Trust and MSU has sprung a campus heritage preservation plan, promoting the University’s rich historical and architectural standing.

Not all the noteworthy buildings adorning the sloping hills of MSU are relics of another era. At the northern end of the campus stands the striking, $54-million, Center for the Built Environment & Infrastructure Studies, an award-winning facility linking the urban landscape with the natural. Its 34 classrooms, 100 offices, atrium, and green roof systems rank among the most impressive environmentally friendly university buildings in the world.

Most iconic of all MSU buildings, however, is the classically designed Holmes Hall, constructed in 1949 at what was then the center of the campus. With its stately clock tower, a rendering of which features prominently in the MSU logo, the building honors the sixth president of the University, Dr. Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes who led the University during its crucial post-WWII period.

Underlining this logo lies the MSU motto which reads: “Growing the Future, Leading the World.” It is a fitting description of the type of school envisioned by Dr. Holmes, and captures the sentiments of its current president, David Wilson, who deems MSU “one of the most consequential universities in the history of American higher education,” enrolling students and making them “competitive with anyone, anywhere, anyplace.”

Though viewed as a distinctively African American institution, MSU, via its Division of International Affairs, boasts a vigorous program of growing the University’s engagement with the continents of Africa and Asia. Of its 850+ international students, some 80% originate from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, propelling forward not only the University but also a Biden White House initiative the advancement of educational excellence of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

From a school whose stated mission is preparing diverse graduates in helping to lead the world, we’ll make our way west to a school dedicated to “the pursuit of truth” – Loyola University Maryland.