BALTIMORE — A four-story fortress at the corner of St. Paul and East 23rd Street went up in flames Saturday night.
“It survived the Great Baltimore Fire. That house is a fortress,” said artist Scout Roll.
And when someone spotted flames shooting out of the roof of the James E. Hooper House on Saturday night, those inside, including Roll, had no idea they were in danger.
“As we opened the studio door to go check to see what was going on, the firefighters were coming up with a hose yelling, ‘Fire! Fire!’” Roll recounted.
It appears the fire spread from the attic to the roof of the historic building, but damaged a number of the artists’ works down below due to the fire and the smoke and the water used to extinguish the flames.
Almost a dozen artists’ studios and their contents suffered some level of damage, and a longtime health journalist, Logan Plaster, says while he lost half of his print archives, he’s one of the lucky ones.
“I was very worried about a couple of the artists who have lots of paintings,” said Plaster of StartUp Health, “In my mind, I was imagining them all being burned to the ground. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.”
Most of the artwork may be salvageable with professional cleaning or repair, but it’s the shared space under a single roof that is now apparently in jeopardy.
“I’ll have to find a temporary space. I don’t know how long that will take,” said Plaster, “I may come back. I may not.”
“I’m trying to figure out if I should get another studio or what to do,” added Plaster, “but as much as I like this building, I think it’s time to go somewhere a little bit safer for now.”
A fundraising event scheduled at the Hooper House on October 1st will now be moved to ‘Our Time Kitchen’ and money raised will be used to support the artists impacted by the fire.
