Using the history of the Baltimore YMCA as a vehicle, I will explore the ideas, people, and institutions at work in the rise of modern civic culture. I intend to employ the story of the Baltimore YMCA (and its leaders and members) both as the subject and the vehicle of my analysis. By doing so I hope to show how religious sensibility, ethnicity, views of male obligation and impulse, and the idea of public ordering through private institutions gave shape not only to Baltimore but to some of the salient tendencies of the modern United States.

In six thematic chapters I will argue that the Baltimore YMCA, an important component of the institutional configuration of mainstream Protestantism, has been both a flexible vessel able to successfully retain its fundamental commitment to a catholic worldview, and concomitantly, an important component in the creation of civic culture. I will explore the changing urban power structure and the YMCA’s Integral relationship to it; the relationship of the YMCA to formal churches; the nurturing provided by men for men in housing programs at the YMCA; the YMCA’s role as conservator of moral and ethical values for men; its impact on the educational scene; and, finally, the role of the YMCA in the history of philanthropy.