Maryland Business

By: Liz Farmer

Maryland Women’s Heritage Center celebrates its grand opening  Saturday and is located in a beautiful ground floor section of the renovated 39 West Lexington luxury apartment homes in downtown.

If you’re wondering how the nonprofit got such a sweet space (2,400 square feet in the historic Baltimore Gas & Electric building), it’s certainly not because it can afford it. The space is being donated by David Hillman, CEO of Southern Management, which owns the property.

The generosity of local businesses didn’t stop there for the heritage center, which is an educational center featuring exhibits and historical information on dozens of Maryland women (including Harriet Tubman and Shoshana S. Cardin) and their achievements. Take a peak inside, and everywhere you look, you’ll see something that has been donated.

Sherwin-Williams Co. donated the paint, CertaPro Painters did the painting, Signs by Tomorrow of Baltimore donated all the signage. All the construction materials and labor (the space took about four months to complete) was donated by Lewis Contractors, Commercial Interiors Inc., CAM Construction Co. and Wilmot Modular Structures Inc.

Lastly, Cho Benn Holbak+ Associates donated the architectural services.

The center, which began as an idea back in the early 1980s as an outgrowth of the Maryland Women’s History Project, is also entirely staffed by volunteers. Its one paid employee, Executive Director Jill Moss Greenberg, had a lot to do with hustling for all the donations that got the center up and running.

The center’s influential executive board of directors — which includes former First Lady Frances Hughes Glendening, former First Lady Kendel S. Ehrlich and First Lady Katie Curran O’Malley — also doesn’t hurt.

The Maryland Women’s Heritage Center hopes to make its permanent location in a space 10 times as big as the one it’s in now so it can house a theater and permanent exhibits on influential Maryland women. But I think that’s probably gonna take some actual dough…