Dr. Giering House

The house of German-American Dr. Giering is now a private residence. Although Dr. Anna Giering and her son were Baltimore-based physicians, they practiced throughout the region. Dr. Anna specialized in "diseases of women only".

In May 1897, she placed the following issue of The Review, a newspaper published in Lonaconing, Maryland. It reads:

DR. ANNA GIERING
REGISTERED PHYSICIAN
Twenty-five years’ experience.
Specialist in Diseases of Women Only.
Private Sanitarium of high repute.
Absolute privacy afforded.
Female Regulative Pills $2.00 per box
Advice by mail.
1603 EAST BALTIMORE STREET, BALTIMORE, MD.

A similar ad for Dr. Giering in a November 1909 issue of the Delmarva Journal read:
“Twenty-five years’ experience. Specialist in Diseases of Woman only. Private Sanitarium of high repute. Absolute privacy afforded. Female Regulative Pills: $2.00 per box. Advice by mail. 603 East Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Md. Vegetable Compound for Female Complaints: $1.00. Wives without Children, consult me.”

Similar ads were placed in the Baltimore Sunday Herald of December 10, 1896, The Journal of Denton, Maryland in 1900 and even the Virginian-Pilot out of Norfolk, Virginia in 1905.

Anna Giering was listed in the 1895 Medical, Pharmaceutical and Dental Registry with her office located at 1603 E. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Maryland. A 1903 article in the Maryland Medical Journal notes that Dr. Robert Giering and his mother, Dr. Anna Giering, “have been indicted by the grand jury of Baltimore city for making improper publications in a medical paper which they print.”

The land was owned by Gottlieb Heckel, a cobbler from Gay Street, who purchased it in the late nineteenth century. He built a log cabin in the vicinity of Parkside Drive and Prior Avenues for himself and the nearby stone house
for Dr. Giering. This fieldstone house is five bays wide, with the gable end facing Parkside
Drive. It features a central arched entrance and semi-circular attic window. The size of the
house and native materials reflect a lone outpost in a wooded area, rather than the community
oriented domestic architecture that predominates in the district. The house is listed as a landmark by the State of Maryland.