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hen I came to the Maryland Institute to teach photography in the late 1960s I was told that the Institute had been teaching photography for about a decade. In 1976 while researching the Institute for an exhibition on stereo photography in the Maryland Historical Society Library I was surprised to discover references to the teaching of photography in the 19th century. This led me to search further for information on what seemed to be a little understood aspect of the Institute's history. The Maryland Institute was established in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanical Arts. It was patterned on the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia which had been organized in 1824. The first permanent home of the Institute was the Athenaeum at the corner of Lexington and St. Paul streets in Baltimore. Here it conducted scientific courses and general lectures and established a fine library. The Institute continued at this location until February 7, 1835 when the Athenaeum and all the Institute's property were destroyed by fire. Sixteen years later in 1851 reorganization was completed and a new home for the Maryland Institute was erected on Market Place at Baltimore Street and Marsh Market. The Market Place building became the home of the school in 1852. Its great Exhibition Hall, said to be the largest clear space in America could seat four thousand people. In this great hall the Maryland Institute held an annual Exhibition of the Mechanical and Fine Arts and awarded medals in Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking, and Photography. The catalogs of the Maryland Institute Exhibition list in detail the exhibitors and awards given. The daguerreotypist Charles Fontayne and William Southgate Porter gained fame when they exhibited an eight whole-plate panorama of Cincinnati at the Franklin Institute, the Maryland Institute, and the Great Exhibition in London. The great hall was not only an artistic and cultural center but also the site of the national conventions of political parties. Four presidential candidates including Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore were nominated in the hall. In 1852 the newly reorganized and revitalized Maryland Institute engaged an Instructor of Drawing, David Acheson Woodward. Woodward was born in Philadelphia in 1823 and moved with his family to Cincinnati, Ohio were he showed a strong interest in Art. He opened portrait painting studios in Cincinnati and then Philadelphia. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy and traveled and painted in the United States until 1847 when he moved to Baltimore. He established a painting studio on the corner of North and Fayette streets. In 1851 he married Josephine Laty, the daughter of a Baltimore shipbuilder. They had five sons and two daughters. In 1853 Woodward was elected Principle of the Drawing Department at the Institute and continued in that position until 1860 when he was elected by the board to be the leader in reorganizing the school. The result was a new School of Art and Design of which he was chosen Principal. He held that position until about 1879.

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