page_title: History of Czechs in Baltimore
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: History of Czechs in Baltimore / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: English: Row-houses in East Monument Historic District, Baltimore, Maryland.
context_page_description: The history of Czechs in Baltimore dates back to the mid-19th century. Thousands of Czechs immigrated to East Baltimore during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, becoming an important component of Baltimore's ethnic and cultural heritage. The Czech community has founded a number of cultural institutions to preserve the city's Czech heritage, including a Roman Catholic church, a heritage association, a gymnastics association, an annual festival, a language school, and a cemetery. During the height of the Czech community in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Baltimore was home to 12,000 to 15,000 people of Czech birth or heritage. The population began to decline during the mid-to-late 20th century, as the community assimilated and aged and many Czech Americans moved to the suburbs of Baltimore. By the 1980s and early 1990s, the former Czech community in East Baltimore had been almost entirely dispersed, though a few remnants of the city's Czech cultural legacy still remain.
context_section_description: By 1870, there were approximately 1,000 Czech Catholics in Baltimore. Within a decade that number increased to over 5,000. In 1870 there were 766 Bohemian-born residents of Baltimore, making Bohemia the third largest source of immigration to Baltimore after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Germany.
  In 1880, Bohemians made up a small portion of the foreign-born population of Baltimore at 2% of all foreign born residents. 16.9% (56,354) of Baltimore was foreign born, 1,127 of them Bohemian.
  According to the US Immigration Office, the Baltimore Czech community numbered around 10,000 people between 1882 and 1910.
  In the 1920 United States Census, there were 7,750 Czechs, making Baltimore the fifth largest city for Czechs in the United States. Only Chicago, New York City, Cleveland, and St. Louis had larger Czech populations. In the same year 3,348 people spoke the Czech language, making Czech the third most commonly spoken Slavic or Eastern European language after Polish and Russian. During the same year, 7,000 Czech Roman Catholics belonged to the St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic parish.
  By the 1930 United States Census, the Baltimore Czech population decreased slightly to number 7,652 people.
  In 1940, 1,816 immigrants from Czechoslovakia lived in Baltimore. These immigrants comprised 3% of the city's foreign-born white population. In total, 4,031 people of Czech birth or descent lived in the city, comprising 2.9% of the foreign-stock white population.
  In the 1960 United States Census, Czech-Americans comprised 57.5% of the foreign-born population in Southeast Baltimore's tract 7-3. The Czech community was then centered in Baltimore's Ward 7. The city as a whole was home to 4,077 people of Czechoslovakian origin.
  According to the 1990 United States Census almost 22,000 Americans of fully Czech or Slovak ancestry lived in Maryland, most of whom lived in or near Baltimore.
  The Czech community in the Baltimore metropolitan area numbered 17,798 as of 2000, making up 0.7% of the area's population. In the same year Baltimore city's Czech population was 2,206, 0.3% of the city's population. 27,603 people of Czech descent lived in the greater Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area.
  In 2013, an estimated 1,290 Czech-Americans resided in Baltimore city, 0.2% of the population.
  As of September 2014, immigrants from the Czech Republic were the fifty-eight largest foreign-born population in Baltimore.
caption: Baltimore's former Little Bohemia, East Monument Historic District, June 2014.
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