Originally an estate of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Reservoir Hill developed as an upscale residential community in the last three decades of the 19th century, as streetcar lines made the area accessible and the newly created Druid Hill Park made it attractive and desirable. Homeowners were well-to-do business owners who were nevertheless not accepted by Baltimore?s social elites ? people like Captain Emerson, founder of the Bromo-Seltzer Company, and German Jewish merchants and industrialists such as the Blausteins, Hechts, Hochschilds, Hendlers, and Hamburgers. The famed writer Gertrude Stein lived there at the turn of the century. Through the 1930s, it was a predominantly middle-class Jewish community peppered with synagogues, delis, schools and shops.

As World War II attracted hundreds of thousands of new workers to Baltimore, Reservoir Hill homes were subdivided and a slow decline began. The Jewish residents were replaced first by working class whites, then by working class blacks. In the 1970s a wave of new "urban pioneers" entered the neighborhood, attracted by the grand historic residences and the promise of a revitalized city community. Though the renaissance fell short of its promise, many homesteaders stayed, lending the neighborhood diversity.