The Surprising F. Scott Fitzgerald Sights in Maryland

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were the Kardashians of the Jazz Age. 

The Fitzgeralds were the embodiment of the Flapper lifestyle that took the US and Europe by storm in the 1920s. In fact, F. Scott is even credited with inventing the term “Flapper,” and Zelda is known as the very first Flapper. 

The literary pair famously drank and danced their way across the US and Europe. As such, there are lots of literary sights associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald and his enigmatic wife Zelda in Paris, New York City, and other glamorous places, but did you know that several are located in random suburbs in Maryland?

The Fitzgeralds spent most of the last years of their lives in Maryland, and turbulent years they were. Today, in Maryland, you can visit the location of their last home together, a hotel where F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed while Zelda was treated for mental illness, as well as their final resting places. That’s right, the F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald graves are in Maryland. 

If you’re a fan of literary travel or history, you will definitely want to check out these hidden literary locations in Maryland. I lived there for years without even realizing they were there! 

Don’t make the same mistake. Let’s go back in time to the Jazz Age and explore these places together. 

Don’t forget to pin this post for later.

Whenever possible, I recommend buying books at local bookshops or through Bookshop.org, because shopping there puts the profits right into the hands of indie bookstores all over the country.

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The Fitzgeralds in Baltimore 

“I love Baltimore more than I thought— …it is nice to look up the street and see the statue of my great uncle & to know that Poe is buried here… I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite. And I wouldn’t mind a bit if in a few years Zelda & I could snuggle up together under a stone in some old graveyard here. That is really a happy thought and not melancholy at all.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald to his secretary, 1936

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived in Baltimore from 1932 to 1937, during a turbulent time for both of them. Fitzgerald was only 36, but his alcoholism was at an all-time peak, and Zelda’s mental health at an unsettling low. 

One of the Fitzgeralds’ friends remarked in 1934, “the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance.”

Plus, Fitzgerald’s writing career wasn’t at all where he hoped it would be. When they moved here, Fitzgerald was pulling in less than half of the salary he’d made just a couple of years earlier. He hadn’t completed a novel in ten years, when The Great Gatsby rocketed him to literary fame. 

Initially, Scott and Zelda rented a charming Victorian house in Towson, Maryland, known as La Paix. They lived here for about a year before Zelda (accidentally?) started a house fire when burning papers. The damage made the home unlivable, so they relocated to a row house at 1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore. 

Fun fact: La Paix survived the fire and even was a preschool for a time. However, it was finally torn down in 1961. 

Related: Another literary sight in Baltimore you shouldn’t miss out on is the Horse You Came In On Saloon, which is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Fitzgeralds at 1307 Park Avenue, Baltimore

On a peaceful street in Baltimore, you can visit the final home in which Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald lived together. With their daughter, Scottie, they moved here in August, 1933, after the house fire at La Paix. 

At this Baltimore home, F. Scott Fitzgerald finally finished Tender is the Night (1935), his first published novel since The Great Gatsby a decade earlier. The Gatsby author hoped for Tender is the Night to improve his financial position and get his career back on track, but the novel was a flop and barely sold any copies. 

Zelda was in and out of psychiatric care facilities while they lived in this Baltimore home, including the nearby Sheppard Pratt Hospital and the Henry Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins. While in treatment, Zelda finished her autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, which only deepened the Fitzgeralds’ marital divide (F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to be the only writer in the family and actively discouraged her from writing). 

After two years in this Baltimore home, the Fitzgeralds never lived together again. Zelda went into residential psychiatric treatment, and Scott moved into the Cambridge Arms Hotel. 

While this F. Scott Fitzgerald home is now a private residence, the blue plaque at 1307 Park Avenue serves as a reminder of the couple’s time and struggles here in Baltimore. 

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Related: I love when authors homes become museums. Check out these writers’ houses that you can visit either in-person or virtually.

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F. Scott’s home at the Cambridge Arms Apartments, Baltimore

52 East 34th Street, Baltimore MD

F. Scott Fitzgerald moved into this apartment in 1935 while Zelda was in residential psychiatric treatment. He lived here for one year while undergoing treatment at Hopkins for alcoholism. 

After one year here, in 1936, Fitzgerald moved Zelda to a live-in psychiatric help center at the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina (she died there 12 years later when the hospital burned down). F. Scott Fitzgerald had trouble paying the rent at the Cambridge Arms, so he moved on to stay at the Stafford Hotel in Baltimore.

Like the home at 1307 Park Avenue, this former Fitzgerald residence is also privately owned, so you can just see the exterior and the surrounding environment in which Fitzgerald spent this challenging time. 

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Related: If you’re visiting Boston, check out another historic hotel with a strong literary connection: the Omni Parker Hotel, which is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Charles Dickens

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s home at the Stafford Hotel, Baltimore

716 Washington Place, Baltimore MD

The Stafford Hotel was once a luxury hotel in Baltimore, the choice of visiting celebrities and high profile guests, like Katharine Hepburn. The Stafford Hotel was also the last place F. Scott Fitzgerald lived before calling his literary career quits and moving to Hollywood to try his hand at screenwriting. 

Needless to say, Fitzgeralds’s treatment at Hopkins for alcoholism hadn’t stuck; one anecdote from his time at the Stafford was when he racked up a tab of $22.36 at the hotel’s exclusive bar (the equivalent of about $370 today). 

Now, the former Stafford Hotel is the Stafford Apartments, student housing owned by Johns Hopkins. You won’t be able to stay here or run up an astronomical bar tab in Fitzgeralds’s honor, but fans of his writing can view the building from the outside. 

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Related: While you’re in Baltimore, don’t miss the stunning library at the Peabody Institute (it’s one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen!)

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The F. Scott Fitzgerald Grave in Rockville, Maryland

The story of how the Fitzgeralds came to be buried in obscurity in Rockville, Maryland is, unsurprisingly, an unusual one. 

When we last left the Fitzgeralds, Zelda left Baltimore to be institutionalized in North Carolina. Scott had run to California in hopes of making it as a screenwriter. Sadly, the tale does not get any happier from here. After only three years in California, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at age 44 in 1940. 

When F. Scott Fitzgerald died, Zelda requested for his body to be buried in Rockville, Maryland, at St. Mary’s Church, as they had previously discussed. However, the leaders of St. Mary’s church rejected the idea, as Fitzgerald was far from a practicing Catholic. So, Zelda found another church in Rockville that would allow for his burial — the Rockville Church. 

When Zelda died in the psychiatric hospital’s tragic fire eight years later, she was buried on top of Scott, in the same plot, as she had only purchased one. 

In the 1970s, members of the Rockville Women’s Club along with Scottie, their daughter, laid a petition to the Archbishop of Washington to have them relocated at last to his final resting place of choice at St. Mary’s Church. This time, their request was granted, and Scott and Zelda’s remains were relocated. 

There, they remain to this day, in an unassuming but beautiful spot in the shade of a large tree behind the church. They share a tomb stone, which quotes from his famous novel, The Great Gatsby: 

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 

Each year on Fitzgerald’s birthday, or on other days throughout the years, bookish fans leave mementos on the Fitzgerald grave: flowers, gin bottles, handwritten notes, martini glasses, cigarettes, pencils, or other meaningful items. 

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Related: Fitzgerald’s best known work, The Great Gatsby, is one of the books included in the Audible Plus library, and it’s also one of my recommended classics for beginners.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Annual Literary Festival in Rockville

In 1996, to commemorate the 100th birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the City of Rockville began hosting an annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival. The festival takes place each fall with the purpose of commemorating the famous American writer as well as recognizing and honoring emerging writers. 

Over the years, they have honored such writers as Joyce Carol Oats, E.L. Doctorow, Julia Alvarez, Alice McDermott, Annie Proulx, Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Jonathan Franzen. 

But one draw that makes the F. Scott Fitzgeral Literary Festival unique is the number of speakers they’ve hosted who have had personal connections to the Fitzgeralds. They have hosted the Fitzgeralds’s granddaughters and great-granddaughter, Scott’s personal secretary, and family friends of the couple. 

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Did you learn anything about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald that surprised you? While their time in Maryland may not have been the easiest or the happiest times, they were undeniably pivotal in the couple’s lives. Next time you’re in Baltimore, make a point to stop by some of these sights and imagine what their life might have been like.

Don’t forget to pin this post for later Maryland travels.