City-owned vacant mansion demolished by fire in West Baltimore has century-worth of history

BALTIMORE - Investigators are working to determine what caused a vacant city-owned historic mansion in West Baltimore to go up in flames Monday afternoon.

The massive three-alarm fire reduced the Victorian mansion, which was built in 1920, to rubble on Old Frederick Road.

Firefighters arrived to find the mansion fully engulfed in flames.

"This is the biggest fire I've ever seen," one neighbor said. 

Baltimore fire officials said it took nearly 100 firefighters to contain the blaze. No injuries were reported.

"I saw the fire, the flames, I looked out the bedroom window then I could see it on the porch," neighbor Stephanie Allman said. "It was really intense." 

"A whole fire coming out off the trees, went to my phone, channel surfing and saw the Uplands mansion was on fire," neighbor Joe Hemler said. "I could believe it." 

Socialite and philanthropist Mary Frick Garrett Jacobs left the home to the Episcopal Church when she died in 1936.

Since then, it has served as the Uplands Home for Church Women and then New Psalmist Baptist Church.

The building had 13,200 square feet of living space and 19.6400 acres of land. 

"This mansion was a staple back in its day," Baltimore Fire spokesperson Kevin Cartwright said. "Many of its neighbors where found of as being one of the largest properties in this area."

"We lost another grand ole girl to fire, and it's now just a pile of whatever," Hemler said. 

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.