Fan keeps museum dream alive

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Baltimore’s “half man” Johnny Eck was born without legs and “stood” only 18 inches. – Courtesy photo

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - When Jeff Gordon had an 800-pound, half-inch steel door supported by an angle-iron jamb installed in the Johnny Eck house on North Milton Avenue, one of the locals walked by.

Fascinated, the young man asked: “Can the police get in there?”

“Not with dynamite,” said Chris Rhoten, the guy who made the door and similar shields for the windows.

“Man, give me your card,” said the pedestrian. “I’m gonna need three of ’em.”

That little exchange, what passes for passing conversation in neighborhoods across the city, is just part of what Gordon is up against in his determination to turn the house where the fabled Eck lived into a museum.

“People come to this town just to go to one restaurant,” said Gordon, a “compulsive collector” who has spent some $100,000 — a fraction of it for the house itself — on all things Eck. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t come to see another quirky part of our history.”

Pink flamingoes in an Orangeville front yard are quirky. Johnny Eck is something else indeed.

In the front room on the second floor of 622 North Milton Ave., Amelia Dippel Eckhardt gave birth to twins on Aug. 27, 1911. Robert, born first, was what every parent hopes for, a healthy child. Then came John, with nothing below the rib cage, a “broken doll” in a midwife’s words who would find fame as “Johnny Eck, the half man.”

Over the next 79 years, before his death in that same row house, John Eckhardt, Jr. — a legless man with a height of 18 inches — would achieve more than any 10 “normal” humans.

First off, he learned to walk on his hands. He carved and painted toy circuses, perfected magic tricks and participated in a whopper hoax or two by other magicians. He spent 10 years performing in a traveling sideshow and worked as a sideshow performer, photographer and Punch and Judy operator. He drove race cars, kept in shape with gymnastics, swam for the weightless fun of it, was one of the city’s best-known screen painters, and acted in several of Hollywood’s early Tarzan films. His most memorable role was as “Half Boy” in Tod Browning’s haunting 1932 film “Freaks.”

Oh yeah, he also owned and operated his own railroad from 1957 through the early 1970s: a miniature train with an engine, three cars — Alladin, Robin Hood and Treasure Island — and 300 feet of track. A youngster’s delight, it carried 20 kids at a time.

“I have the largest collection of Eck material in the world,” said Gordon, who never met the man. “You couldn’t be more Baltimore than Johnny Eck.”

Gordon’s dream got a boost last year when the City Council designated the house a historic landmark. That means that if nearby Johns Hopkins Hospital wakes up hungry for more blocks of eastside real estate tomorrow, the Eck house is safe.

But now he has to get nonprofit status for the Johnny Eck Museum project, find a financial backer or two in addition to his small army of friends who know how to do things, like fabricate 800-pound steel doors, and get the house in shape.

Museums typically do not generate money. Witness the shame of the shuttered City Life museums, which includes the Mencken House and the Peale Museum on Holliday Street.

The privately run Irish Shrine near the B&O museum on Lemmon Street finds a way to stay open, albeit by arrangement and special events, without employees. Even the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum has to hustle like Pete Rose to stay solvent.

If Jeff Gordon sees his way to thusly honoring Eck, a trickle of folks will come from around the world to see it, as certain Swedes and Japanese and Germans obsessed with Americana are wont. The locals won’t care unless they’re giving something away.

Why bother?

When someone asked Simon Rodia why he built 17 towers out of broken crockery in the Watts section of Los Angeles — two of which reach heights of 99 feet — the Italian artisan said: “You gotta do something they ain’t never got’em in this world.”

Translated into Balwmer-ese, the 40-year-old Gordon says: “I’m doing it because I’m nuts.”

Johnny Eck, who was once robbed and beaten in the North Milton Street house he called home all his life, died of a heart attack on Jan. 5, 1991. His beloved twin, Robert, passed away in 1995.

To honor them while Jeff Gordon gets their house in order, make some kid smile and pay your respects at Green Mount Cemetery.

Rafael Alvarez is an author and screenwriter based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. His books — fiction, journalism and essays — include “The Fountain of Highlandtown” and “Storyteller.” He can be reached at ralvarez@baltimoreexaminer.com.

SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY

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69 days ago: Playing a Gotham game of ‘Give & Take’

169 days ago: Highlandtown hot dogs — from the heart

176 days ago: Rotary’s commitment to peace

183 days ago: Centennial quilt patches together Linthicum’s suburban history

190 days ago: Once lost, an old sailor has found his bearings

197 days ago: Hope springs eternal, except in Birdland

» 204 days ago: Fan keeps museum dream alive «

211 days ago: Good ideas to put a spring in our step

218 days ago: Old neighborhood exchange lives on

225 days ago: Music for working, blue-collar cats