Nonprofit created to save Johns Hopkins childhood home shut down by state

A nonprofit that spent years fundraising trying to save Johns Hopkins’ childhood home was shut down by the state last fall, according to files obtained by Baltimore Sun Media.

Documentation from Maryland’s secretary of state alleges that the Johns Hopkins House Inc. misled donors by soliciting contributions under the pretense that the nonprofit was financially stable when it faced thousands of dollars of debt and a foreclosure lawsuit.

Robert Brown, the nonprofit’s executive director, responded in a statement that the violations laid out by the state were “entirely without any merit whatsoever.” The organization wasn’t able to do any preservation due to insufficient funds, Brown wrote.

“Could I, as executive director, have done a better job? Probably. Did I do my best and devote six years and 60 hours a week to the project? Yes,” he wrote.

Johns Hopkins House Inc. was formed in 2017 with the mission to save the house and early plans to make it a museum, tavern and inn.

Brown grew up in Massachusetts, according to the nonprofit’s website, but he had a personal connection to the home. His grandfather M.M. Stewart lived there and his mother was born there, he told Baltimore Sun Media in 2018 . Baltimore Sun Media found no evidence of the Stewarts possessing the property going back to 1851.

Neighbors were excited when Brown arrived in town and spoke of returning the home to a state of good repair, said Valerie Shea, who’s lived in the neighborhood for more than 40 years.

“A lot of people cared about it,” she said.

Brown reported fundraising to be successful at the start. He received a $100,000 donation from a member of the Allyn family of Welch Allyn Medical Instruments and hosted regular beer garden fundraisers for members. Neighbors said these were well-attended.

In 2021, Brown said the organization had about 1,500 to 2,000 donors and reported $310,000 in funds raised on a 2023 grant application.

However, it’s unclear how much total cash the nonprofit acquired in its tenure and where it went. The nonprofit filed financial disclosures to the IRS for only two of its roughly six years of fundraising, despite reports being due annually . The reports noted a total of less than $121,000 raised.

In the spring of 2022, the nonprofit purchased the property from 2173 Hopkins Road LLC.

Local developer Richard Polm, who owned the home in the 2010s, planned to demolish it in 2016 but soon announced intentions to find a buyer. He handed management reins over to the LLC in 2018 and entered into semiretirement around that time.

Brown’s nonprofit bought it for $1.75 million, according to land records. However, most of that, $1.12 million came from a donation from the LLC, according to documents submitted in court. The LLC’s manager, Avery Eisenreich, didn’t return a request for comment.

Much of the rest came from a $595,000 loan provided by Jay Baldwin of LOBS Capital Group, according to land records. Baldwin also didn’t return a request for comment.

Community member Cynthia Camus lent $8,000 to finalize the sale, according to legal filings.

Those three contributions alone totaled $1.725 million, the majority of the sale price. All that remained was for the nonprofit to repay the seller a $168,027 loan by mid-2022, according to court documents.

Operations chugged along. Brown convened a board for the nonprofit in the summer of 2022. Don Bailey was made chair.

For Bailey, who lived nearby and was recently retired, the Hopkins House project seemed the perfect opportunity for a history lover to get involved in something special for his neighborhood.

Board members learned that the nonprofit had received a state grant to pay off the loan in May 2022. To release the funds, the state needed documentation from the organization, including affidavits, insurance certificates and tax filings. That disclosure to the state hadn’t occurred by the summer of 2022. A year later, documents had still not been provided , according to a state spokesperson.

“We decided we were going to ask [Brown] for some financial statements,” Bailey said. “He flipped his lid.”

Things quickly became confrontational, said Bailey and Phil Evers, another neighbor on the board.

After a series of increasingly heated correspondences between board members and Brown, everyone resigned from the board on Aug. 20, 2022, aside from Bailey who left soon after. Bailey said the first board meeting became the last.

“It went downhill quick,” Evers added.

Ten days later, Camus sued Brown and the nonprofit for her $8,000 loan. She declined to comment due to litigation still ongoing two years later.

The same summer, the organization was found to have forged a signature on its liquor license, leading to it being revoked, according to a letter from the Anne Arundel liquor board. Despite that, Brown continued to advertise for fundraisers featuring alcohol, according to the secretary of state’s letter.

Meanwhile, Brown continued to live in the house for part of the year, splitting time between Gambrills and New York, neighbors said.

Bailey and Evers said the property became increasingly cluttered. Bailey said he made 78 trips to the landfill from the property’s garage during his involvement as Brown let hundreds of empty beer boxes accumulate.

The kitchen featured two unusable dirty refrigerators and a mini fridge where food was stocked for beer gardens.

“There were two boxes of doughnuts. I swear to God I thought they were dog toys,” Bailey said of the petrified desserts.

In his time at the home, Brown’s only contributions were installing window air conditioners, a security system and outdoor lighting, Bailey said.

Brown said most of the available money went toward leasing and mortgage payments. “If we did little to make improvements it had to do with a limitation of funds,” he wrote.

Other work, mostly done around the yard, was completed by Bailey, said Bailey and Evers. When Bailey left the nonprofit, Evers said the property reverted to the cluttered mess it was before.

By mid-2023 the nonprofit had defaulted on the loan and was in foreclosure court, according to land records. That enabled 2173 Hopkins Road LLC to schedule the property for auction, according to the terms of the loan.

Brown promised the lenders that the money would be in their hands soon, so the auction was postponed . Two months later, Maryland’s secretary of state ordered Johns Hopkins House Inc. to stop fundraising via a cease and desist order.

The letter laid out six violations of state law. The nonprofit had allegedly failed to disclose financial information to the board, advertised events with alcohol after its liquor license was revoked, fundraised on the promise of events that never occurred, misled donors about the organization’s financial and legal well-being, used donations for purposes other than the stated mission, and used the Johns Hopkins University insignia to fundraise without university consent.

In January 2024, the LLC held the auction and sold the property for $915,000 to Sam Asgari.

Asgari found Brown still living there, despite his nonprofit foreclosing on it months prior. An eviction was carried out in June, said Anne Arundel County Sheriff Everett Sesker.

Two days later couches, benches, dog beds, alcohol and books were strewn across the lawn.

Sentiment among the community is still divided on Brown and the work he did and didn’t do.

“Was he an operator?” Evers said, or was he simply “in way over his head?”

“I couldn’t say,” he added.

Aug. 20, 2024: The Johns Hopkins House: Built in circa 1780, Whites Hall, also referred to as Whiteshall or Whites Hall Farm, is the birthplace and boyhood home of famous Maryland native Johns Hopkins., who went on to found the world-renowned university and hospital that bear his name. (Jeffrey F. Bill/Staff photo)