In reviewing plans for the building, the influential "The Sun" newspaper descriptively wrote at the time of February 1892, that "it would be one of the most prominent structures in that part of the city" and continued, "Economy, durability and simplicity are the controlling motives of the design, and a practical power-house, with a proper regard for architectural proportions and effect, without unnecessary ornamentation, is expected to be the result.
[1] In the same year that the Jonestown cable-car powerhouse was built, Gott also designed in the northern area of the expanding city, the currently named Charles Theatre building on North Charles Street by East Lanvale Street (few blocks south of North Avenue, previously named Boundary Avenue as the old northern city limits from 1818 to 1888), also for the B.C.P.R.
The structure later served for several purposes including a dance hall as the Famous Ballroom through the 20th century until presently renovated into a prominent multi-screen movie theater in the recently renamed Mid-Town Station North neighborhood.
According to the Maryland Historical Trust, the building powered the run of cable from Gay Street to North Avenue, using two Reynolds compound non-condensing Corliss steam engines, 24" + 38" x 60".
Cables were removed immediately, but the expense of extracting the underground pulleys, sheaves and other steel/iron fittings was too much, and in most instances they were just covered over as streets were gradually repaired and resurfaced with bricks, cobblestones / Belgian blocks or later concrete / asphalt.
UREC held onto the landmark industrial building with its electric generators connected to great furnaces and boilers for steam power with four parallel smokestacks and conveyor belt system for loading coal ore fuel from moored harbor barges connected to waterfront terminal facilities further south in the Baltimore Harbor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Western Maryland Railway trains from the mines in the Appalachian Mountains to the West, for a few decades, using the rear half as a "trouble station" for trolleys and renting out the front to the U.S. Navy (Maryland) Naval Reserves for use as a drill-room.
For the most part these structures evidenced utilitarian, warehouse style construction, which can be seen clearly in the still extant LaSalle Street Cable Car Powerhouse in Chicago, Illinois.
It is a lesson in a site's metamorphoses: going from a church to a powerhouse to a dry cleaning plant, and finally, after demolition, to a high-rise apartment building standing today.
After the replacement of the cable car by electric trolleys, the Hendler Creamery was then converted into a performance space by Baltimore-born James Lawrence Kernan (1838-1912).
He was a theater manager, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, who earlier in his life had fought for the Confederates, been captured and held as a prisoner till the war's end at the brutal Point Lookout Prisoner-of-War Camp at the confluence of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River.
Returning to civilian life, among other ventures, he started a combination hotel and German Rathskeller and founded a hospital, which survives today as the University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute.
The adjoining building at 1107 East Fayette Street, built in the 1920s as part of the Hendler Creamery complex, is also significant, notably in the creation of one of the nation's first ice cream delivery systems by refrigerated truck.
The project includes exclusive amenities such as multiple outdoor courtyards, a pool deck overlooking the Baltimore skyline, basketball courts, and a yoga studio.
“Albermarle Square [about four blocks away] is this incredibly progressive mixed-income project that came as the result of some HUD money and federal support, and it’s really helped expand Little Italy and Fells Point further north.