3704 N. Charles St. Phillipshurst, Buckingham Arms, St. James

3704 N. Charles St.

• Phillipshurst Estate
• Buckingham Arms, 1920
• St. James, 1989

George Phillips, president of a Baltimore cannery, spent $40,000 (approximately half a million dollars today) and built another extravagant houses, Phillipshurst Estate.  There was a bathroom for every two bedrooms – and there were 15 bedrooms and many balconies.  There was a garage connected by a bridge to the house.  When the Phillipshurst estate burned in the 1920’s it was replaced by the Buckingham Arms apartment building which also burned in 1983.

The St. James was built in 1989 and is likely to endure the ages. The new building is spare and angular, of dark brick, and different from any of the surrounding buildings and reflects the modernism of the times.  The interior is especially well designed without the long corridors, a bane of other apartment houses.