Young Men's Christian Association Of Central Maryland Collection ( YMCA)
"On 15 November 1852, at invitation of the Maryland Baptist Union, the Baltimore YMCA was organized. The Baltimore YMCA was, in many regards, typical of those created in large American industrial cities. Over the course of 150 years, it has had only two "association firsts" - in 1859 the West Baltimore YMCA designed and erected the first building in the country exclusively for association use, and in the early 1980s, as the logical outcome of character building and ecumenical programing, the YMCA of Central Maryland was the first to remove Jesus from the mission statement. Despite these "firsts," little of the Baltimore YMCA's varied programs was truly original. Instead, much of it consisted of initiatives transplanted (and perhaps adapted) to Baltimore from other associations across the country. In part this cross-pollination resulted from the professionalization of YMCA work. In the mid-1880s, Springfield College was created for the express purpose of training men as professional YMCA secretaries, a development that surely contributed to the prevalence of shared association strategies.
Despite shared information and expertise, local differences affected the YMCA's role as city builder. Perhaps the most unusual and important facet of Baltimore exceptionlism began when the YMCA became involved with Johns Hopkins University (JHU) at the time of its creation in 1876. Levering Hall, the campus YMCA at JHU, became a conduit through which passed much of the work of the university's Department of History, Political Economy, and Poltical Science. The partnership that resulted between Levering Hall, JHU, the Charity Organization Society (COS), and Johns Hopkins Hospital allowed the YMCA to play a critical role in the making of modern philanthrophy from 1880 to 1900, the impact of which was felt across the country for years to come.
The most important key to the YMCA's success, however, was its willingness to maintain linkages with the public and private sectors. The YMCA continued to address concerns we now typically associate with the public arena, including job training, summer camp programs for disadvantaged youth, and affordable training housing, as well as services for the private sector such as customized corporate wellness programs. In forging and maintaining such connections between the public and private sectors, the YMCA acted counter to the disengaging tendencies of modern American life. The story of the Baltimore YMCA reveals that the association was a conduit through which both public and corporate funds were channeled to provide programs with relative efficiency and flexibility."
Jessica I. Elfenbein, The Making of a Modern City: Philanthropy, Civic Culture, and the Baltimore YMCA. University Press of Florida, 2001.