It is said that the first public singing of the future National Anthem occurred on the stage here in late September 1814, when the poem of "The Defence of Fort McHenry" written by Francis Scott Key aboard a truce ship downriver from the British fleet as it bombarded Fort McHenry during September 12–14, 1814 several weeks earlier and set to music with the tune "To An Anacreon in Heaven", a so-called English drinking song.
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By the early 1840s, with the addition of a third floor and a flat pediment, the Rooms were occupied by the young men of the Central High School, later renamed the Baltimore City College, founded in 1839 a few blocks away on Courtland Street (now St. Paul Street/Place/Preston Gardens, considered to be the third oldest public high school in America.
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