Today, the parking lot of the West Baltimore MARC Station and the concrete highway lanes to the east dominate this site, symbols both of the weight of the past and prospects for the future.
In the 1970s major demolition occurred in the corridor to the east to build the first leg in a proposed East-West expressway, envisioned as the eastern extension of Interstate 70. The route was to proceed west along a corridor directly through the Greater Rosemont communities and continue on through the heart of Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park. African American residents in this section of the city fought the road plan under the banner of RAM (Relocation Action Movement). The organization joined with city-wide expressway opponents under the umbrella of MAD (the Movement Against Destruction), a coalition that cut across lines of race, class, and differing interests in opposition to various sections of the proposed expressway system. In the late 1960s, the city condemned hundreds of houses along the corridor to the west of this site for the proposed highway. However, mounting protests initially forced the decision to designate an alternate route and eventually to abandon the section through Greater Rosemont and the parks to the west altogether. Soon, the one-mile stretch of expressway that was completed with such controversy and such cost鈥攅conomic as well as social鈥攚as being called 鈥淭he Road to Nowhere.鈥
To the west of the station, between Franklin Street and Edmondson Avenue stand 880 houses condemned by Baltimore officials for the proposed construction of the East-West Expressway in the late 1960s, little more than a decade after African Americans had seized the opportunity to acquire homes in neighborhoods formerly closed to them. Witnessing the process immediately to the east where condemnation already had occurred (and demolition was imminent) for the artery to be built between Franklin and Mulberry Streets, Greater Rosemont residents became active in the Relocation Action Movement, which united with others opposing various sections of the proposed expressway system across the city under the banner of MAD.
In April 1968, civil disturbances convulsed the city in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., adding to the general climate of heightened social tension between Baltimore鈥檚 citizens and its officials. For RAM, the highway threat was a civil rights issue. As an example, when the group鈥檚 proposal for an underground roadway to spare residences was rejected on the grounds that it would be too expensive, a member exclaimed, 鈥淚t always has been expensive to operate a segregated society.鈥 James Dilts, in a series of articles in the Sun that year, decried the logic of the expressway plan, which he believed amounted to destroying parts of the city and harming its residents, even as it promised to improve the city.
Late in 1968, mounting opposition to the Greater Rosemont route led Mayor Thomas D鈥橝lesandro, III, to propose an alternative that would bypass the affected neighborhoods by following a route along the railroad line to the south. However, the following year, when the city announced a plan to sell the formerly condemned houses back to their original owners, only half took up the offer, the remainder having decided to move out for good. A 1970 Sun article referred to Rosemont as 鈥渁 once stable middle-class Negro community which was devastated by plans to build the East-West Expressway through its core.鈥
Organized in 1875 by Samuel H. Cummings at Gilmore and Mulberry Streets, the Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church relocated to Harlem Park in 1880 under the leadership of John F. Goucher. The church constructed a new building in 1906 under the leadership of Rev. E.L. Watson and then moved again to Harlem Avenue and Warwick Avenue under the leadership of Rev. E.P. Fellenbaum. The new building was described:
鈥淕othic in design, with an auditorium seating 800 persons. In addition, there will be an educational building, equipped with 10 rooms for Sunday-school work. In the basement will be a social hall. A recreation room with bowling alleys and a lecture room that may be converted into a gymnasium also are planned.鈥
At a mortgage burning ceremony in 1947, Fellenbaum recalled that some criticized the project, and the $100,000 mortgage, as 鈥淔ellenbaum鈥檚 Folly.鈥 The congregation laid the cornerstone for the new building at 4:00 PM on May 2, 1925. The Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church was dedicated at 3:00 PM on November 21, 1926 with Bishop William Fraser McDowell officiating.
In May 1953, the Harlem Park Methodist Church merged with the Grove Methodist Chapel, erected in 1857 on Johnnycake Road in 91桃色视频 County, to form the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in Catonsville, Maryland. Their building was offered for sale at $210,000. Bishop E.A. Love of the Washington Conference appointed the Reverend N.B. Carrington as the leader of the Union Memorial United Methodist Church and assisted in securing help from the Washington and 91桃色视频 Conferences and the Board of Missions to purchase the property.
The church had previously moved from Pine and Franklin Streets to North and Madison Avenues in 1951 and had fewer than 100 members when it moved to Harlem Avenue in 1953. By the time of Rev. Carrington鈥檚 retirement in 1961, however, the church had grown to over 600 members. Carrigton began pastoring at Union Memorial United Methodist in 1952, and also worked as the supervisor of the AFRO鈥檚 pressroom. He later commented, 鈥淚 married, baptized and buried many of them down there 鈥 matter of fact they call me the AFRO鈥檚 chaplain.鈥 Commenting on the success of the church in paying off the building鈥檚 $225,000 mortgage in 8 years, Carrington noted, 鈥淭hose are the kind of people we have in our congregation. They wanted to get it out of the way and they worked hard to do it.鈥
In 1967, the Baltimore Afro-American called the home in the 2500 block of Harlem Avenue "a typical slice of Baltimore:"
"The 2500 block of Harlem Avenue is a microcosm of middle-class Baltimore. . . . A visit to the neighborhood on a late summer afternoon caught the block in a typical setting. The tall, majestic greystone Union Memorial Church dominates the northwest corner of Harlem and Warwick Avenues. The row homes are separated from the tree-lined streets by carefully tended shrubbery and small neatly trimmed plots of lawn..."
"Warren Peck, at 2507, is an arts and crafts teacher for the Department of Education... He has lived in the area since 1952 when he was discharged from the Army [as a World War II and Korean War veteran] ... Like most of the residents in the block, he is a native Baltimorean... He worked as a Pullman porter for several years before he was drafted into the army, and later returned to the railroad. 鈥淭here was good money in those days,鈥 Mr. Peck maintains. As a matter of fact, it was primarily money saved up from his railroad work that enabled him to buy the home in 1952, he said. He paid $11,500 for the house when the neighborhood was undergoing a racial change... Mr. Peck is one of 11 teachers living in the 2500 block of Harlem Ave. Among the residents are at least two ministers, a nurse, two proprietors of beauty salons, three Social Security Administration employees, and a number of retired persons."
The article reported the statements of one of the only two white residents who remained on the block in 1967:
"Miss Julia Knoerr has lived with her two bachelor brothers there since 1926: 'The real estate people used to call me all the time, but I settled them鈥揑 made it clear that I didn鈥檛 intend to move anywhere. . . . I thought it was silly the way people began to move out [in the early 1950s], but some people will complain about anything.' . . . Contrary to claims of opponents of fair housing who say property value drops when integration comes, Miss Knoerr believes that property values have improved in the block over the past 15 years. 'Everybody takes more interest in keeping their places nicer than people used to,' she noted.鈥
Dr. J. Welfred Holmes, a Morgan State College (now University) professor of English lived at 2559 Harlem Ave. from the early 1950s to his death in 1968. The obituary in the Sun noted that he had earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh, then taught at several historically black colleges before coming to Morgan in 1946. One of the co-founders of the Evergreen Protective Association, he also was active in Baltimore Neighborhoods, Inc. (a fair housing advocacy group) and the American Civil Liberties Union.
James Mosher Elementary (#144) was built in 1933. The original brick structure, facing Wheeler Avenue, was constructed in simple Art Deco style. In an era of segregation, it was designated a 鈥渨hite鈥 school; children still were required to travel outside the neighborhood for junior high and high school.
In the early 1950s, Baltimore school officials were described as stunned by the scale and pace of racial change on the west side. A September 1952, Sun article reported a spokesperson as saying that 鈥淏altimore never has known anything such as the population shift within the summer months.鈥 The reporter went on to write:
鈥淭he ingress of Negro home owners and dwellers in hitherto white neighborhoods in northwest and northeast Baltimore during the summer months has presented a problem which is bound to perplex the School Board until some kind of relief can be obtained either through construction of new facilities or through the use of portables.鈥
School #144 was specifically identified as one of several schools where there had been 鈥渢remendous turnover鈥 from white to black. By 1953 James Mosher鈥揵y then designated officially as a 鈥渃olored鈥 school鈥搘as reported to be tremendously overcrowded.
In 1954, immediately following the Supreme Court ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional, Baltimore public schools became the first formerly segregated major urban system to adopt a desegregation policy. The change had little practical effect on schools already virtually all-black, like James Mosher. In 1955 a much-needed addition was completed along Mosher Street in contemporary architectural style. By then school enrollment had surpassed 900, up from less than 400 a few years earlier.
Two new schools, built nearby in the 1960s, provided further evidence of the dramatic growth in the area鈥檚 school-age population. In 1960, Calverton Junior High was constructed on the western edge of the neighborhood. The massive complex housed four nearly self-contained units, each conceived as a 鈥渟chool within a school.鈥 In 1963, Lafayette Elementary School was built, also on the west side. It closed as a standard elementary school in 2003 and reopened as the Empowerment Academy, a public charter school.
Built in the 1830s, the 600 block of Stirling Street was home to free working people, both African-American and white, living in modest Federal style rowhouses. Some residents worked in the industrial and commercial businesses that grew up around the nearby Jones Falls鈥攕awyers, carters, cigarmakers, and tailors. Nearly 180 years later, these houses appear much as they did to their original inhabitants.
By the 1960s, like much of Oldtown, the houses of Stirling Street had fallen into disrepair. As part of an urban renewal project to repurpose the Gay Street commercial corridor into a pedestrian mall, the Baltimore Urban Renewal Agency planned to raze Stirling Street, along with 97% of Oldtown鈥檚 housing. Local preservationists, led by state Senator Julian Lapides and Peale Museum director Wilbur Hunter, launched a campaign to preserve the buildings.
Senator Lapides led a bus tour, bringing residents of Stirling Street to see well-preserved historic homes on Baltimore鈥檚 Tyson Street and Seton Hill. Hunter provided research to refute the claim that the rowhouses should be demolished because they were 鈥渟lave鈥檚 quarters鈥 and to prove their historic value. One afternoon in October 1972, over hamburgers at the office of Housing and Community Development Commissioner Robert Embry, Jr., Julian Lapides and his wife persuaded Embry to allow them to find a way to save the houses. Embry agreed, providing Lapides could show there was an economically feasible way to do so.
After a consultant with a national reputation in historic preservation offered to buy and develop the entire block, Embry relented. The houses were offered for $1.00 to individuals who agreed to undertake the expense of restoring the houses. This 鈥渦rban homesteading" project was one of the first in the nation. The 24 owners were selected from over 400 applicants, mostly young professionals, both African-American and white and all true urban pioneers.
The Old Town Mall project was dedicated in June 1976. Though Old Town Mall has suffered serious decline, Stirling Street, restored around the same time, remains pristine and well kept, a testament to the power of historic preservation. As Senator Lapides wrote in 1974:
鈥淭he Stirling Street narrative contains a valuable lesson for city administrators: people are willing to return to the city and invest in its future when given the opportunity of restoration.鈥
Once a bustling department store complex on North Gay Street, the Great House of Isaac Benesch and Sons has been vacant for over a decade as the Old Town Mall waits on the progress of long stalled revitalization efforts. Isaac Benesch started his business shortly after the Civil War with a furniture store operating out of a single rowhouse. In the 1880s, as dry goods dealers like Hutzler's built their 鈥済rand emporiums鈥 on the west side, Benesch acquired nearby rowhouses and began to rebuild them into a department store.
By 1911, his business included three large 4-story buildings, dominating the 500 block of N. Gay Street. The store at 549-557 Old Town Mall, an Italianate brick building with large windows, still features an elegant copper sign band across the facade, proclaiming the 鈥淕reat House,鈥 perhaps added by Philadelphia architect Louis Levi in 1914. Next door at 565-571 North Gay Street is a four story, two bay Renaissance Revival building, of brick with terra cotta ornamentation designed by architect Charles E. Cassell and built in 1904 by William H. Porter. Cassell had a long list of major projects in Baltimore, including the grand Stewart鈥檚 Department Store at Howard and Lexington Streets, built in 1900. Benesch鈥檚 likely hoped Cassell could bring the same architectural magnificence to his work on the east side. More buildings went up in the 1920s with a warehouse at 600 Aisquith Street by the J.L. Robinson Construction Company, virtually unchanged from its 1925 construction.
Unlike those westside department stores, however, Isaac Benesch established an early reputation for serving all customers鈥攂lack and white. One 1898 account from the聽Afro-American聽newspaper stated, 鈥淚saac Benesch & Sons very much appreciate the large volume of colored trade which they have, coming from all parts of the city.鈥 In 1926, when few department stores hired African Americans as salesmen, Benesch hired Josh Mitchell to sell automobile tires鈥攁nd featured him in advertisements. In the 1940s, the Afro-American gave Benesch an 鈥渙rchid鈥 for 鈥渟erving all alike.鈥
In the 1970s, several of the original buildings were demolished as the block was redeveloped for the pedestrian-only 鈥淥ld Town Mall.鈥 The Great House had closed a few years earlier, in the early 1960s, and was run as Kaufman鈥檚 Department Store until 1997.