Maryland Casualty Company building
701 West 40th Street, Baltimore
ca. 1920-1930
Unidentified photographer
8x10 inch print
Julius Anderson Photograph Collection
Baltimore City Life Museum Collection
Maryland Historical Society
1995.62.071
Full image and detail. Click to enlarge.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the land where these buildings stand belonged to the Dulin family before its sale to the Maryland Casualty Company. The insurance firm moved into architect Otto G. Simonson’s building in 1922 and vacated in the late 1960s. After vacating, architect Donald Lee Sickler was hired to turn the ground floor into a shopping mall, connecting the H shaped buildings you see here. The renovation gave the building an added 40,000 square feet and a new name, The Rotunda, which opened in 1973 with a grocery store, drugstore, cafeteria, and movie theater.
