A defunct secular college founded in Baltimore in 1804, later merged into the University of Maryland.
Baltimore College was established in 1804 as a secular, private non-sectarian college in Baltimore, Maryland. Although the president of its board of directors was John Carroll, the first ordained Roman Catholic bishop and archbishop in America, the institution maintained a non-sectarian character. The college was strategically located on West Mulberry Street, near Cathedral Street, in proximity to the Baltimore Cathedral (now the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), which was under construction from 1806 to 1821.
The institution struggled operationally in its early years. By the early 1820s, L.H. Gerardin, a native of France, served as principal. In a significant institutional change, Baltimore College merged with the University of Maryland (founded 1807), which had established a School of Medicine. Following this merger, Baltimore College became the undergraduate college of arts and letters for the University of Maryland, a role it maintained for several decades until the 1830s, when it ceased to exist as a separate entity.