The history of Lithuanians in Baltimore dates back to the mid-19th century. Thousands of Lithuanians immigrated to Baltimore between the 1880s and 1920s. The Lithuanian American community was mainly centered in what is now the Hollins–Roundhouse Historic District. Baltimore's Lithuanian community has founded several institutions to preserve the Lithuanian heritage of the city, including a Roman Catholic parish, a cultural festival, a dance hall, and a yeshiva.
By 1991, there were an estimated 20,000 Lithuanians living in the Baltimore area.[4]
The Lithuanian community in the Baltimore metropolitan area numbered 11,024 as of 2000, making up 0.4% of the area's population.[5] In the same year Baltimore city's Lithuanian population was 1,519, 0.2% of the city's population.[6]
In 2013, an estimated 1,092 Lithuanian-Americans resided in Baltimore city, 0.2% of the population.[7] As of September 2014, immigrants from Lithuania were the 102nd largest foreign-born population in Baltimore.[8]
Lithuanians began to settle in Baltimore in 1876.[9] The wave increased greatly during the 1880s[10] and continued in large numbers until the 1920s. By 1950, the Lithuanian community numbered around 9,000.[9] These Lithuanians settled primarily in a neighborhood north of Hollins Street that became known as Baltimore's Little Lithuania.[11][12][13]
Three Roman Catholic churches have been designated as Lithuanian parishes: St. Alphonsus' beginning in 1917, St. John the Baptist Church from 1888 to 1917, and St. Wenceslaus beginning in 1872. St. Alphonsus' is the only remaining Lithuanian parish in Baltimore, as St. Wenceslaus was re-designated as a Bohemian parish and St. John the Baptist Church closed in 1989.[15]
From the 1880s to the 1920s, the Hollins-Roundhouse neighborhood became established as the center of Baltimore's Lithuanian immigrant community.[11] Because of the large Lithuanian population in the area north of Hollins Street, the area became known as Little Lithuania. A few remnants of the neighborhood's Lithuanian heritage still remain, such as Lithuanian Hall located on Hollins Street.[17]
While other immigrant ethnic groups in Baltimore founded numerous ethnic building and loan associations between the 1860s and the 1910s, Lithuanians only founded one. This is because many Lithuanians shared the associations of other ethnic groups, especially those of the Polish.[18]
^Facaros, Pauls, Dana, Michael (1982). New York & the Mid-Atlantic States. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway. p. 79. ISBN0895268566.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
St. Alphonse's Lithuanian Church (Baltimore, Md.). Collection, 1928-.
Walsh, Lillian J.; Saint Alphonsus Church (Baltimore, Md.). Saint Alphonsus Lithuanian parish, Baltimore : history of an ethnic parish, [Baltimore : s.n], 1997.