Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

The Maryland Institute College of Art is one of the top art schools in the United States, and its campus in the Bolton Hill and Station North neighbourhoods is worth seeking out for its architecture and its galleries. The Beaux-Arts station building is the centrepiece, but the surrounding buildings include several significant early 20th-century industrial conversions.

Student and faculty exhibitions are frequently open to the public and free. The Bolton Hill neighbourhood around the college has handsome Victorian rowhouses and is an interesting area to walk through between the Mount Vernon museums and the Charles Village strip to the north.

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A story
MICA was founded in 1826, making it one of the oldest continuously operating art colleges in the United States. The main building on Mount Royal Avenue — the Mount Royal Station gallery space — is housed in a converted Beaux-Arts railroad terminus. Trains once ran through where student exhibitions are now held, and the vaulted waiting room has been repurposed as one of the more unusual gallery spaces in the country.