The history of Czechs in Baltimore dates back to the mid-19th century. Thousands of Czechs immigrated to East Baltimore during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, becoming an important component of Baltimore's ethnic and cultural heritage. The Czech community has founded a number of cultural institutions to preserve the city's Czech heritage, including a Roman Catholic church, a heritage association, a gymnastics association, an annual festival, a language school, and a cemetery. During the height of the Czech community in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Baltimore was home to 12,000 to 15,000 people of Czech birth or heritage. The population began to decline during the mid-to-late 20th century, as the community assimilated and aged, while many Czech Americans moved to the suburbs of Baltimore. By the 1980s and early 1990s, the former Czech community in East Baltimore had been almost entirely dispersed, though a few remnants of the city's Czech cultural legacy still remain.
Demographics Czech population in Baltimore Year Number 1870 1,000 1880 5,000 1920 7,750 1930 7,652 1940 4,031 2000 2,206 2013 1,290
The first wave of Czech immigrants arrived in Baltimore in 1850.
By 1870, there were approximately 1,000 Czech Catholics in Baltimore. Within a decade that number increased to over 5,000. In 1870 there were 766 Bohemian-born residents of Baltimore, making Bohemia the third largest source of immigration to Baltimore after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Germany.
In 1880, Bohemians made up a small portion of the foreign-born population of Baltimore at 2% of all foreign born residents. 16.9% (56,354) of Baltimore was foreign born, 1,127 of them Bohemian.
According to the US Immigration Office, the Baltimore Czech community numbered around 10,000 people between 1882 and 1910.
In the 1920 United States census, there were 7,750 Czechs, making Baltimore the fifth largest city for Czechs in the United States. Only Chicago, New York City, Cleveland, and St. Louis had larger Czech populations. In the same year 3,348 foreign-born white people in Baltimore spoke Czech as their mother tongue, making Czech the third most common mother tongue of immigrants among Slavic and Baltic languages, after Polish and Russian. During the same year, 7,000 Czech Roman Catholics belonged to the St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic parish.
By the 1930 United States census, the Baltimore Czech population decreased slightly to number 7,652 people.
In 1940, 1,816 immigrants from Czechoslovakia lived in Baltimore. These immigrants comprised 3% of the city's foreign-born white population. In total, 4,031 people of Czech birth or descent lived in the city, comprising 2.9% of the foreign-stock white population.
In the 1960 United States census, Czech-Americans comprised 57.5% of the foreign-born population in Southeast Baltimore's tract 7–3. The Czech community was then centered in Baltimore's Ward 7. The city as a whole was home to 4,077 people of Czechoslovak origin.
According to the 1990 United States census almost 22,000 Americans of fully Czech or Slovak ancestry lived in Maryland, most of whom lived in or near Baltimore.
The Czech community in the Baltimore metropolitan area numbered 17,798 as of 2000, making up 0.7% of the area's population. In the same year Baltimore city's Czech population was 2,206, 0.3% of the city's population. 27,603 people of Czech descent lived in the greater Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area.
As of 2011, immigrants from the Czech Republic were the fifty-eighth largest foreign-born population in Baltimore.
In 2013, an estimated 1,290 Czech-Americans resided in Baltimore city, 0.2% of the population.
History 18th and 19th centuries The first Bohemian Jew to arrive in Baltimore, Jacob Block (originally Bloch), immigrated in the late 1700s. The Bloch family were from the village of Švihov in Central Bohemia. The second Bohemian Jew in Maryland was Levi Collmus, a dry goods dealer from Prague, who arrived at the Port of Baltimore in September, 1806. Collmus was an elector to the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, a treasurer of the United Hebrew Benevolent Society, and veteran of the War of 1812. Collmus was buried at Green Mount Cemetery according to Orthodox Jewish ritual. Between 1820 and the Civil War, around 300,000 Central European Jews arrived in the United States, many of whom were Bohemian Jews. Around 10,000 of these Jews, many of them Bohemian, passed through Fell's Point and settled in Baltimore.
In 1853, Temple Oheb Shalom was founded by Jewish immigrants from Central Europe, including Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Hungary. The pioneer Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, born in Plesná, Bohemia, played an influential role in the establishment of the synagogue.Kerry M. Olitzky, The American Synagogue: A Historical Dictionary and Sourcebook (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), , pp. 165–167. Excerpts available at Google Books.
Early Czech immigrants to Baltimore came from the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, which at the time were part of the Austrian Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because the United States Census Bureau counted the Czechs as "Austrians" until 1881, it is difficult to know an accurate count for Czech immigrants before that time. Even after 1881, many Czechs were still listed as Austrians or "Austro-Bohemians" because of their Austrian citizenship.
These early Bohemian immigrants to Baltimore in the years following the Civil War first settled in Fell's Point, then moved further north along Barnes and Abbott Streets near Broadway, eventually settling in large numbers along Collington Avenue near the Northeast Market.
The largest great wave of Czech immigrants occurred from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Enough Czechs had immigrated by 1860 that a small colony was formed. The developing community was thriving by the 1870s (construction had commenced in 1867), which was known then as Little Bohemia or Bohemia Village. According to the Painted Screen Society of Baltimore, Little Bohemia was bounded by North Washington Street on the west, East Eager Street to the north, Jefferson Street to the south, and North Linwood Avenue to the east. Numerous rowhouses were built to accommodate the growing Bohemian community, which continued to grow throughout the 1880s and 1890s. The homes were constructed by Bohemian immigrants, most notably the architect Frank Novak (1877–1945).Maryland Historical Trust: Listing for Baltimore East Monument Historic District Many of the immigrants who settled here worked as weavers and tailors or owned market stalls. Novak did not want any streets named after him, but his partner fooled him by naming a street "Kavon", Novak spelled backwards. Kavon Street presently runs parallel to Bel Air Road directly north and south of Herring Run Park.
Prior to the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, racially restrictive covenants were used in Baltimore to exclude African-Americans and other minority groups. A 1923 article in the Baltimore Sun mentions that Frank Novak built "restricted" houses in the Montebello neighborhood. A 1926 advertisement in the Baltimore Sun describes Novak's Lakeside development as a "carefully restricted suburban home development".
Between the 1860s and the 1910s, Bohemians chartered at least 20 building and loan associations. The first Bohemian organization was chartered in 1877, around 20 years after Bohemians started to arrive in the city in large numbers. Some of these associations were Jednota "Blesk", "Vlastimila" (sisters' benevolent union), the "Ctirada", the "Jaromíra", and the "Zlatá Praha" ("Golden Prague").
The majority of the Baltimore Bohemians were Roman Catholics. In 1870, there were around 1,000 Bohemian Catholics and within a decade that number had increased to over 5,000. The St. Wenceslaus parish was organized in 1872, in order to serve the needs of the growing population, becoming the Bohemian National Parish of the Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore.John Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County (1881) p 543
Sokol Jednota Blesk (now called Sokol Baltimore), a Czech gymnastics association, was founded in 1872. Members met on Frederick Street near Fell's Point. Sokol (, falcon) was originally a Czech nationalist organization created to train members to fight for the independence of Czechoslovakia and in some ways resembled the German Turnverein, German-American gymnastic clubs that promoted liberalism and German nationalism.
In August 1879, the Fairmount and Chapel Streets Permanent Building, Savings and Loan Association No 1 Inc. was founded to serve the needs of Czech immigrants. The bank was located on the second floor of Anton Rytina's Bar at 1919 East Fairmount Avenue. All bank records were written in Czech until 1948.
On November 8, 1880, the politician Vaclav Joseph Shimek helped establish the Grand Lodge Č.S.P.S. of Baltimore, the Baltimore chapter of the Czech-Slovak Protective Society. Shimek was the owner of the Bohemian Hall and the six-time president of Sokol Baltimore; he was also instrumental in helping found the National Sokol Organization. Shimek's Bohemian Hall, now the United Baptist Church at Barnes Street and Broadway, was located in the heart of Little Bohemia and was established as a meeting place for the Czech community. Shimek allowed the Hall to be used to hold Knights of Labor meetings for working-class Czech tailors and garment workers.
In 1884, the Grand Lodge Č.S.P.S. of Baltimore constructed the Bohemian National Cemetery, a cemetery for irreligious and Protestant Czechs and Slovaks. While the majority of Baltimore's Bohemians were Catholic, the Czech-Slovak Protective Society was largely composed of secular and religious freethinkers. The cemetery served as an alternative to the Catholic cemeteries where other Bohemians were buried.
During the 1890s, there were over 300 sweatshops in Baltimore, many providing sewing rooms for immigrants working in the garment industry. Most of the workers toiling in these squalid sweatshops were of Bohemian, Italian, Lithuanian, and Russian-Jewish ancestry. Around half of the garment workers were women and girls, many in their early teens.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Bohemian stronghold north of Johns Hopkins Hospital along the Baltimore to New York Amtrak line all the way to Frank C Bocek Park was known by the now long-forgotten name of "Swampoodle". Frank C Bocek Park was nicknamed the "clay hill". There was a swamp behind the clay hill, the source of the neighborhood being named Swampoodle. The heart of the Bohemian "hollow" of Swampoodle was located just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital along the tiny side streets of Barnes and Abbott.
20th century During the early 1900s and mid-1900s, Little Bohemia was an ethnically diverse neighborhood, with many European immigrants such as Germans, Irish, and Italians living side by side with and intermarrying Czechs and Slovaks. One Slovak-American woman from a multiethnic family on North Bradford Street described her kitchen as "a league of nations around that dining-room table."
A newspaper geared towards the Czech community titled Palecek was established in 1902. The same year Sokol Baltimore moved to a new location at Shimek's Hall on North Broadway.