“It’s a big problem that the studio is attempting to address.” “Everybody’s history is important, and LGBTQ history has really been neglected for a long time,” said Wells. Students will use methods including drawings, photographs and 3D scans, which together will form a “toolkit” for future preservationists to use. Led by Assistant Professor Jeremy Wells, the students in his studio course are teaming up with Preservation Maryland, an organization that saves places that matter to communities in the state, to document the life of the Hippo. A group of graduate students in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s Historic Preservation Program are making sure the club’s history isn’t forgotten, even if the old signs are gone and the interior is unrecognizable as a CVS Pharmacy. The Hippo nightclub was considered a community center for LGBTQ life from the 1970s until its closing in 2015. Inside, people mingled, danced and felt free to express their identities. On Baltimore’s Eager Street, a building entrance once boasted big silver letters and an illustration of a hippopotamus that lit up when the sun went down.
