Brass Elephant
The Brass Elephant was a restaurant in the Mount Vernon neighborhood in Baltimore. It opened in the early 1980s, and closed in 2009 due to financial hardship.
History
In the 1850s, Benjamin Chew Howard, a four term Congressman and son of John Eager Howard, and his wife Janet Gilmore, built and resided in the mansion now addressed at 924 N. Charles Street, which was a parcel of his father’s Belvedere Estate. Later, Charles Morton Stewart, a Brazilian coffee importer and his wife, Josephine Lurman, purchased the building as their winter residence, raising 14 children between the mansion and their summer home in Green [Spring Valley Historic District|Greenspring Valley], Maryland.In the late 1890s, George Wroth Knapp, Jr.a local merchant, purchased and used the mansion as his second home during his Baltimore work weeks. He and his wife, Sara Gilfry invested $100,000 on decorative items such as crystal, marble, teak and stained glass. In the 1930s, the space was converted into a retail establishment. Potthast Brothers Furniture purchased the building for retail purposes. They reconfigured the first floor that fronts N. Charles Street with stairs leading from the front salon down to a lower level to serve as a furniture showcase to attract passersby. In the late 1970s, William Paley, Jr., the son of William S. Paley who grew CBS from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the nation, led a group of investors to purchase and re-purpose the mansion into a new restaurant. The building formerly occupied by The Brass Elephant was sold at a public auction on August 3, 2010.