Leo Beachy: The Cove, Garrett County, Maryland, photo courtesy Photographicus Baltimorensis

More tremendous photos, stereoviews, and cartes de visite from Baltimore and Maryland can be found on Photographicus Baltimorensis:

This blog is a product of my preoccupation with Baltimore’s many early professional photographers and the thousands of portraits they took of Baltimoreans between the 1860s and the early 1920s, when Kodak’s advances made amateur photography a viable mass diversion.

It is nice when private collectors share their passion in a way that allows for broader public participation.

Over the past two years with Baltimore Heritage, I’ve worked to connect historic preservation and neighborhood revitalization in the historic neighborhoods of West Baltimore. Baltimore Heritage is a historic preservation advocacy nonprofit established in 1960. We’re a small group, two and a half staff supported by membership and programs. My own position began in fall of 2009 with support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to focus on African American heritage city-wide, support matched by grants from the Baltimore Neighborhood Collaborative requiring us to focus our efforts in support transit-oriented community development in an area of West Baltimore proposed for as the location of a new east-west light rail route known as the Red Line.

As part of this broader effort, I worked this past summer with Dr. David Gadsby, Brandon Bies and a great group of volunteers from the Archaeological Society of Maryland to conduct an archeological investigation of Lafayette Barracks—a Civil War camp and hospital located within the boundaries of Lafayette Square park, at the heart of an area known as Old West Baltimore. West Baltimore is not necessarily an obvious place to conduct an archeological investigation or to build connections between heritage and neighborhood revitalization. I often encounter questions from both residents — and, perhaps even more often, people who live outside these neighborhoods — asking why we should bother with preserving or interpreting the history of neighborhoods and communities, whose struggles with abandonment, addiction, disinvestment and violence seem to overwhelm any other concerns? While I can’t put this question aside, I can continue with a perhaps more optimistic thought – how can our shared heritage be used to build better neighborhoods and better lives for West Baltimore residents? Further, what is the place of public archeology in this effort?

Though such efforts are often minimized in favor of the higher priority on “removing blight” or attracting investment into downtown (and always constrained by limited funds), preservation and archeology in Baltimore have an urgent responsibility to connect cultural heritage to diverse communities in ways that go beyond interpreting the past or even highlighting the origins of the city’s persistent inequalities, but to effectively empower residents in pursuit of neighborhood revitalization that respects their own histories. Our work with public archaeology in Lafayette Square began two years ago, when I first approached Dr. Gadsby to ask how we might be able to use archaeology to learn a bit more about the occupation of the park during the Civil War. My quick bar napkin sketch of the area must have been credible enough to convince Dave to come out on a site visit a few months later on a snowy January and then pass his enthusiasm along to Dr. Charles Hall from the Maryland Historical Trust a few months later. We applied for and received a Survey and Inventory grant from the Archaeological Society of Maryland in late 2010 and scheduled our investigation for mid-summer 2011.

The project felt all the more urgent in the context of the national and local commemoration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial that seemed ready to take the stories of the B&O Railroad, the Pratt Street Riot, and wealthy, Confederate-sympathizing spies in Mount Vernon as the only stories worth telling. Such choices have consequences for who participates in the interpretation of Baltimore’s history and where that interpretation takes place, likely excluding segregated black, low-income neighborhoods like Lafayette Square. Writer and Baltimore native Ta-Nehisi Coates recently reflected on a similar point in a recent NPR interview on how African Americans have been excluded from the interpretation of the Civil War through Lost Cause mythologies. Coates remarked that, “one of the most depressing things [he] found,” was when a tour guide at the Gettysburg Battlefield park told him, “‘You can sit there for hours — and you can count on one hand the number of African-Americans that come into the battle park.’” In The Atlantic magazine, Coates describes how the “country’s battlefields are marked with the enduring evidence” of the “tireless efforts” by Confederate descendants to present their own story of the Civil War—a story that, despite their defeat in the conflict, erased their ancestors complicity with the system of slavery that Confederate troops had fought for and died trying to preserve. Here in Baltimore, the monuments to Confederacy are one of the city’s most visible daily reminders of the war. Just this past summer, the Maryland’s United Daughters of the Confederacy held a ceremony on Confederate Memorial Day at Baltimore’s Loudon Park Cemetery to honor the 600 Confederate veterans buried there. No memorial exists to honor the free blacks who built Fort No. 1 on West Baltimore Street to protect the city (and encampments like Lafayette Barracks) from Confederate attack. No annual ceremony is held to recognize the hundreds of enslaved men who enlisted in the U.S. Colored troops, mustering at Camp Birney in West Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park.

Lafayette Barracks was located in Lafayette Square Park from 1861 through 1865, housing up to 1,000 soldiers at a time, and was just one camp within a broader ring of fortifications, hospitals and encampments that fed and sheltered soldiers moving in and out of Baltimore during the war. Our initial documentary research, by myself and my colleague Lauren Schiszik, turned up encouraging references that opened a window on the daily life of 1860s West Baltimore—stories of escaped slaves from the Eastern Shore sheltered by Union troops at the camp, stories of violence between soldiers and residents, stories that we hoped might be made all the more visceral through the use of archaeology. Public archaeology built on our continued efforts to explore and interpret complex histories of segregation, urban renewal and civil rights in West Baltimore and provided the basis to expand the visibility of our organizing effort with the Friends of West Baltimore Squares—a new partnership-based West Baltimore organizing and outreach effort we started last spring.

The investigation began on Friday, July 8 with our group of Archaeological Society of Maryland volunteers establishing a grid to guide the location of shovel test pits and the metal detector survey. We started a few shovel test pits that afternoon and began the metal detector survey working along the grid. On Saturday, we expanded the number of shovel test pits, working from east to west along the southern edge of the park where we believed camp activities would have been focused. We also opened up the two units–small square excavations–along the western edge of the park. Finally, on Sunday we concluded the excavation with additional shovel test pits and completing both units.

We recovered a range of 20th and 19th century artifacts including several items that are clearly associated with the Civil War occupation of the park. These latter artifacts include tin buttons from the trousers or underwear of Union soldiers, a button from the dress jacket of a Maryland Union officer, and a small piece of lead shot. Other 19th century artifacts included a pipe stem, many pieces of ceramic, fragments of decorative cast-iron work, brick and coal. The presence of numerous cut or wrought-iron nails in the park is a clear indicator of the structures historically located in that area.

Over the long three day weekend, we had over 250 visitors to the site, including scores of neighborhood residents, local church members on Sunday, Baltimore Heritage members, and even the head of the Baltimore City Department of Planning. On Saturday alone, we had about 160 individuals participate in one of our five walking tours around the site and we gave away around 140 hotdogs to visitors and volunteers. We provided a range of interpretation including opportunities to talk with archeologists and volunteers, a 2005 outdoor exhibit produced by Baltimore Heritage on the social and architectural history of Lafayette Square, a temporary exhibit on the President Street Station set up by volunteers from the Baltimore Civil War Museum, and a brochure explaining the process of urban historical archaeology, the Civil War context of the site and the history of the community in the 20^th century.

We’ve had several subsequent opportunities to continue extending the discussion around Lafayette Barracks—offering a special tour to a group of young people from the nearby Macedonia Baptist Church during the excavation and following up with the same group to present a talk about the artifacts we recovered; a presentation on the investigation to the Department of Recreation and Parks Advisory Board; tabling at Lafayette Square Block Party just a month after the dig with a box of artifacts in hand; presenting to local Civil War enthusiasts through a lecture series at the nearby Mt. Clare House Museum; and starting the planning for a follow-up presentation in the community once we have completed processing and analyzing the artifacts.

We have also connected the investigation to a range of other projects where we’re seeking to engage African American audiences around the Civil War Sesquicentennial, including a walking tour about the history of Frederick Douglass in Fell’s Point and a lecture program on how the National Trust for Historic Preservation is working to expand and improve the interpretation of enslavement at historic sites around the country. In November, we organized a West Baltimore Civil War bike tour that connected visitors to encampments and significant historic places across the area with a role in the Civil War—Mt. Clare Mansion and Camp Carroll, the site of Lafayette Barracks, and the B&O Railroad Museum. This latter program had an additional advantage of building new relationships with local bike planners and advocates who are working to expand cycling infrastructure in West Baltimore communities.

This project was also an important accomplishment the Friends of West Baltimore Squares—a relatively new community organizing effort that we started in partnership with the Parks & People Foundation and a number of community organizations around Lafayette Square, nearby Harlem Park, Franklin Square, and Union Square to encourage the use and recognition of parks and heritage as important assets for community development. Through events and outreach—barbeques, volunteer events at local gardens and walking tours (highlighting history and sustainable storm water management)—we’ve grown a contact list of nearly 400 residents and stakeholders that are interested in staying engaged in West Baltimore neighborhoods. The strong turnout by residents and visitors for our archaeological investigation is both a reflection of our continued work to engage area residents and an important building block in establishing our credibility as a partner who can create valuable opportunities for local residents to meet neighbors and discuss both the past and the future of their communities.

Through these experiences we’ve settled on a set of guiding principles for our outreach work that clearly mirror the values of activist public archeology laid out by Dr. Gadsby and other practitioners within the field.

• We are dedicated to a usable past that seeks out histories of development, struggle, and organizing that offer tools to better understand contemporary concerns.
• We embrace difficult stories, recognizing the importance of stories around enslavement, civil rights, racism and urban renewal to shaping the history of these neighborhoods and continuing to engage residents and visitors at a visceral level.
• We don’t work alone. Our research and interpretation seeks to engage residents and other stakeholders in the interpretation of local history and the development of tours.

Even with modest expectations, it is challenging to evaluate the true effectiveness of these or any efforts that seek to use heritage to support neighborhood revitalization. We’re two and a half staff, a small grant here and there, up against decades of disinvestment and economic inequality. However, I agree with Dave writing in Archaeology in Society, p.72 that the “primary obstacle” for public archeology (and historic preservation) “lies in the need to convince local residents of the relevance of history and heritage for their lives.” Ned Kaufman, a long time director of historic preservation for the Municipal Art Society of New York, offers his own support for this view in Place, Race, and Story: essays on the past and future of historic preservation, writing–

“History offers a way to establish a presence within the public space of political and cultural discourse–and without presence one can hardly hope for leverage. History can’t provide adequate housing, end discrimination or prevent redevelopment, but it can contribute to the debate that is necessary to achieving these goals.”

With patience and many new partnerships, I hope we are starting to make the case this is true.

During the first month of 2011, I took photos of old buildings nearly every day (25/31 is not too bad!) as part of an event known as Fun-A-Day. For 2012, I wanted to get more folks in Baltimore to participate and to organize a small show for anyone who was interested. It didn’t take long to set up a Fun-A-Day Baltimore website and connect with a local artist who started a Facebook event page. I’ve been kicking around a few local history ideas for a project I can tackle for January 2012 from a “walking tour”-a-day to a “building history”-a-day but I haven’t settled on anything yet.

Any suggestions?

Update

My first Fun-A-Day project, a 12 page pamphlet on Orange County Modern architecture, is now online.

Baltimore Skyline has a summary of a 1998 Baltimore Sun feature on the history of the building and a good set of photos from the demolition.

• When Club One was the House of Welsh
• So Long Club One
• More Club One Demo in Photos

Dan Rodricks dedicated his December 5 column to the building’s history and its role in fighting the 1904 fire– In rubble of tavern turned club, a remembrance.

Over the weekend, a demolition crew turned One, a chic night club for most of the last decade, into a pile of brick, broken cinderblock and sand. If you’re of a certain age and missed One’s run as a nightclub, you will know this location, at Guilford Avenue and Saratoga Street, as House of Welsh Corner. Instead of big dance floors and theatrically-lighted bars stocked with Dom Perignon, you’ll think of a classic Baltimore tavern that served sizzling steaks on metal plates and Maryland whiskey at a bar without stools.

If you’re of a certain age, or paid attention to local history, you might also appreciate a story associated with this tough, old corner of the city. It was the location of what I’d call “communications heroics” from the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, and you might even join with me in suggesting that the next developer of this real estate, along with the Communications Workers of America, put up a small plaque so that those heroics might be remembered.

Three rowhouses, built in the 1830s, made up the House of Welsh. It opened around 1900 and, by the time it closed nearly a century later, it was said to have the city’s oldest liquor license. In his obituary for the tavern in 1998, my Sun colleague Jacques Kelly wrote that the House of Welsh sat “out the back door of City Hall and attracted politicians, lobbyists, bookmakers, lawyers, policemen, judges and reporters who wanted plain, tasty food served in an unhurried manner.” I once saw a home movie of the elevated train tracks that carried street cars over Guilford Avenue, between Biddle Street and House of Welsh Corner, until 1950. The bar was males-only and whites-only until the 1960s.

It’s what happened in 1904 that gets the plaque.

Righthand Rule: South Baltimore No-Go Zones Part 1: Swann Park

After walking through the open gate of a closed park, along a path through a broken fence, to the edge of a crumbling bridge that leads to a shuttered power plant, you realize there’s always another layer. The No-Go zones are nested like Russian dolls, but there’s no deterrent quite as powerful as the feeling that you’re being watched. I’ll come back when there’re no boats.

Middle Branch Case Files: Reed Bird Island Park

Now Reed Bird Island is technically a city park, but only, as my collaborator Eric and I found out, because of a suggestion made by the Olmsted brothers (sons of Frederick Law) in 1904. They pointed out that erosion from development upstream at the Patapsco River was leading to the accumulation of mud flats here at the river’s mouth. These were being occupied and used for dumping.

The Olmsteds, as part of their 1904 report on potential park spaces in Baltimore, suggested that the city get ahold of these islands, (their status was in doubt because they were basically new, free land) and cap them to form parks. They also pointed out that rerouting the new bridge to cross these things would increase their visibility and connection to the city. So after a few years, that’s what happened.

Soft Sites: Masonville Cove

The Claw is conspicuous, jumping out of the gmaps aerial photo like a mutant appendage. Between the double pressures of development and industry, this much feral openspace on the waterfront is an anomaly, even for the spottily derelict Middle Branch. It is heavily vegetated, but walking the site, feeling the mossy bricks, ceramic powerline insulators and huge concrete blocks underfoot, one sees that this is really just a big pile, a ground made of stuff.

Port Covington: The Ghost of the Masterplan in Tinkerer’s Paradise

Then, as now, the spaces on the ground between these lines of connection and transfer were largely forgotten and undeveloped. In the 19th century, this area was the backyard and back door to the city of Baltimore, and like any backyard, this was a place for recreation and storage, comingled with trash and half-completed projects. The map above, part of a citywide topographic survey from 1895, shows rowing piers and resorts among the marshes, along with a dog pound, a guano pier, and a “night soil dump”.

Managing Baltimore’s Post-War Decline

I was quite excited about this panel, with my own particular interest on dealing with the consequences of abandonment, commercial disinvestment and concentrated poverty in West Baltimore neighborhoods. The first two panelists– Lynette Boswell, University of Maryland College Park and Karen Beck Pooley, Allentown Redevelopment Authority– took a similar approach focusing on the succession of public policies, what Boswell referred to as “place-based” policies in her paper Historical Shifts in Place Based Policies: A Focus on Baltimore, Maryland, from the “Baltimore Plan” an early housing plan under then Mayor Theodore McKeldin (documented in the 1953 short film by the same name) to federal urban renewal policies, model cities and up through HOPE VI and even Healthy Neighborhoods with Pooley’s paper Planning for Vacancy: Baltimore’s Response to Vacant Properties from WWII to the Present. With both papers, however, I really wanted a deeper consideration of the political and racial dimensions of the public policies they reviewed, along with a more critical treatment of the government reports and press accounts that served as a basis for  both presentations. For example, Boswell used a 1937 HOLC Residential Security Map of Baltimore to identify historically “distressed” neighborhoods but did not address the widely acknowledged racism of the HOLC’s mapping practices. Similarly the Baltimore Plan, which Pooley discussed in detail, was later used by the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real Estate Boards, the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Home Builders, and the Mort­gage Bankers’ Asso­ci­a­tion as the basis for a campaign to eliminate support for public housing. Using more diverse sources or offering examples of contemporary scholar critiques of Baltimore development and housing policies could have provided a more complete review of these same issues.

With these concerns in mind, Hayward ‘Woody’ Farrar’s paper The Devolution of the Black Community’s Physical Environment in Baltimore, 1950-2010 offered a dramatic counterpoint with a personal and dynamic presentation that started with a brief emotional reflection on the tragic character of Baltimore’s widespread abandonment. Farrar, the author of The Baltimore Afro-American, 1892-1950, continued to reflect on the dramatic changes to the segregated black neighborhoods of West Baltimore, where a class diverse community helped foster leaders such as Thurgood Marshall and Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson in the early 20th century. Farrar attributed the loss of these neighborhoods as they were in part to urban renewal, referencing Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It by Mindy Fullilove.

The comments by Kelly Quinn, Miami University of Ohio were helpful in pulling the three papers together with an additional reference to How Racism Takes Place by George Lipsitz as a welcome addition to the issues raised in all three papers.

Making the Charm City: Planning, Tourism and Gentrification in Postwar Baltimore

Chaired by Edward Orser, UMBC, this panel touched on the real highlights of Baltimore’s 1970s urban renewal agenda from highways, to the Inner Harbor to the well known dollar house program. I came late and missed “Our Domestic Vietnam:” Baltimore’s Highway War and the Discovery of a New Urban Regime presented by Rob Gioielli, University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash College but I expect I could get a sense of it from the Baltimore chapter in his dissertation Hard Asphalt and Heavy Metals: Urban Environmentalism in Postwar America. The next paper, A Nice Place to Visit and I Would Want to Live There: Tourism and the ‘Liveable City’ in Baltimore’s Inner Habor Redevelopment from Aaron Cowan, Slippery Rock University (similarly drawn from his dissertation “A Nice Place To Visit: Tourism, Urban Revitalization, and the Transformation of Postwar American Cities”) was packed with interesting surprises on the early history of the Harbor Place development — most notably its role as an important gathering place for b-boys and MCs in the early 1980s. Cowan quoted from Bret McCabe’s 2009 City Paper interview with MC Labtekwon:

“In the ’80s, I grew up in Whitelock City in West Baltimore. I was a black kid on a skateboard that liked to rap. I would go to the Harborplace, Club Cignel, and Club Fantasy and meet up with kids from all over Baltimore City and Baltimore County. It was always an adventure.”

The final paper of the panel – O Pioneers! Urban Identities in Baltimore’s Homesteading Program of the 1970s from Shana M. Gass, Towson University — was an effective introduction to what is often better known as Baltimore’s dollar house program. Gass’s interpretation of the dollar house program reflected some of the racial and class tensions emphasized out in contemporary press accounts.

Baltimore Highway Planning and its Effect on Planning Baltimore

I missed the introductions for this panel and did not initially realize that the panelists included a whole host of professionals who had been directly involved in the planning and partial implementation of Baltimore’s deeply misguided highway plans during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Chaired by William Chan, now an Assistant Professor of Architecture, Morgan State University, co-panelists included Sidney Wong, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Morgan State University, Art Cohen, Principal of Public Health Services, Martin Millspaugh, former Chairman of Inner Harbor/Charles Center Management and author of the The Human Side of Urban Renewal: A Study of the Attitude Changes Produced by Neighborhood Rehabilitation, William Hellman, a former Maryland Secretary of Transportation (1984-1987), and Al Barrie, former Deputy Planning Director of Baltimore.

With this large group, many of the panelists did not have a chance to say much but did offer a small window into the odd dynamics of the 1970s highway fights nearly 40 years ago. At one point, William Chan reflected on the impossible challenge of preparing a “sensitive” urban design for an elevated highway proposed to run straight through the Fell’s Point neighborhood, just a few feet from the front steps of late 1700s and early 1800s rowhouses. Art Cohen, who remains an enthusiastic transportation activist with b’more mobile, shared his own reflections on the unique conditions that led to the success of the highway revolts, including the role of the civil rights movement in enabling new interracial coalitions and a popular anger following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Additional Baltimore paper presentations

Of course, I could not make it to all of the sessions or catch all the Baltimore-focused papers. Here are the papers I wish I could have heard, along with any information I can find online for the paper–

• Saving ‘City X:’ Citizens and Policy-Makers Prepare for the Unthinkable in Baltimore, Eric S. Singer, American University — of course based on the dissertation “Saving City X: Planners, Citizens and the Culture of Civil Defense in Baltimore, 1950-1962” (unfortunately not available online)
• Corner Stores in Canton, Sidney Brower, University of Maryland (Brower’s 2007 paper on The Corner Store as an Element of Smart Growth is online as a PDF)
• City Planning Through Land Tenure in Baltimore Maryland’s Ground Rent System, Garrett Power, University of Maryland Law School — Power is the author of the seminal study of Baltimore’s ground rent system Parceling Out Land in Baltimore, 1632-1796
• Washington and Welch Talk About Race: Public Health and Residential Segregation in
  Early 20th Century Baltimore, Graham Mooney, Johns Hopkins University. Mooney teaches a course Life and Death in Charm City: Histories of public health in Baltimore, 1750 to the present with a thoroughly referenced syllabus.
• The Machinery of Immorality: Entrepreneurs of Vice, ‘Vice Cranks’ and Disorder in
  Baltimore, 1900-1916, Dennis Halpin, Rutgers University (again not available online)

Race, Place and Civil Rights Bus Tour

Finally, my tour on Race, Place and Civil Rights, covered a handful of neighborhoods we walked through for last year’s programs on Race and Place in Baltimore Neighborhoods, including stops at PS 103, the old Frederick Douglass High School, and Lafayette Square along with a ride past the old Orchard Street Church and the lower stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue up to St. Peter Claver Church. This was actually the first bus tour I’d ever planned–we usually do walking tours at Baltimore Heritage as they don’t require any investment up front–and I did not realize how much time moving a group on and off the vehicle could eat up. While we covered the earlier period of civil rights activism in Baltimore, I missed my chance to bring the group out to Greater Rosemont for a discussion on block-busting and only took a handful (who did not need to get back to the hotel by noon) to see Read’s Drug Store. A lesson learned for me but I hope the tour-goers still had a good experience.

Over the past two years with Baltimore Heritage, I’ve worked on a handful of projects connecting historic preservation and neighborhood revitalization in the historic neighborhoods of West Baltimore. West Baltimore is not a likely place for this particular approach. I often encounter questions from both residents — and, perhaps even more often, people who live outside these neighborhoods — asking why bother with preserving or interpreting the history of neighborhoods and communities, whose struggles with abandonment, addiction, disinvestment and violence seem to overwhelm any other concerns? I can’t put this question aside quickly or easily so I’ll continue with this issue unresolved– how can our shared heritage be used to build better neighborhoods and better lives for West Baltimore residents?

Baltimore Heritage is a nonprofit historic preservation advocacy organization established in 1960. We’re a small group, two and a half staff supported by membership and programs, with a history of energetic preservation advocacy. My own position began in fall of 2009 with support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to focus on African American heritage city-wide, matched by grants from the Baltimore Neighborhood Collaborative which required us to focus these outreach efforts in support transit-oriented community development in an area of West Baltimore neighborhoods proposed for the development of a new light rail route known as the Red Line.

Although West Baltimore is not exceptional within the city, or certainly when compared to neighborhoods in North Philadelphia, the east side of Cleveland, or the South Bronx, in some West Baltimore neighborhoods the scale of vacancy and abandonment is incredible, shocking to visitors and a tragedy for residents who live next door to collapsing rowhouses, burnt-out factories and brownfields. Neighborhoods like Harlem Park, Upton, and Midtown Edmondson can be characterized by concentrated poverty and limited access to fresh food.  Despite these challenges, however, you can find unique historic architecture on almost every block, from pre-Civil War rowhouses to midcentury modern civic and educational buildings. Historic green spaces, like Lafayette Square or Franklin Square, are still well loved and well used by many neighborhood residents.

Any explanation of this confusing landscape must draw on intersecting histories of racial segregation, housing discrimination, community development and urban renewal. Following these threads can help us connect the beginning of these neighborhoods–developed as affluent, European suburbs in the late 19^th century to the emergence of Old West Baltimore as one of a handful of segregated black communities in the city at the beginning of the 20^th century. We can continue through the rapid racial transition that transformed whole swaths of West Baltimore from white to black during the 1950s and 1960s (deftly chronicled by Dr. Ed Orser in Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Edmondson Village Story) and the terrible mix of industrial job loss and urban renewal that gutted the heart of West Baltimore neighborhoods in the 1970s and 80s.

Our work in West Baltimore been a bit experimental, testing our hypothesis—heritage is an asset for West Baltimore’s community development—by exploring new ways to organize residents and reshape the perception of the historic built environment from a liability into an asset. Our experience so far has led us to a few ideas about what is important and what might work–

• We are dedicated to a usable past that seeks out histories of development, struggle, and organizing that offer tools to better understand contemporary concerns.
• We embrace difficult stories, recognizing the importance of stories around enslavement, civil rights, racism and urban renewal to shaping the history of these neighborhoods and continuing to engage residents and visitors at a visceral level.
• We don’t work alone. Our research and interpretation seeks to engage residents and other stakeholders in the interpretation of local history and the development of tours.

Race and Place in Baltimore Neighborhoods was one of our first large scale projects to address these themes of segregation and community development. With support from the Maryland Humanities Council and Free Fall Baltimore, we organized a series of four collaborative programs—a lecture on the local history of public housing and three walking tours in historically African American neighborhoods–Upton, Greater Rosemont, and Sharp Leadenhall–led by scholars from the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, UMBC and Towson University working in collaboration with resident-led neighborhood organizations. Together these programs aimed to stimulate an informed discussion about the historical experiences of residents and institutions in Baltimore’s historically segregated African American communities in relation to contemporary debates on historic preservation and community development.

 These three tours visited a diverse set of historic places, while considering issues from highway fights and anti-gentrification neighborhood organizing in South Baltimore through the flourishing of civil rights activism in churches and businesses in the neighborhoods of Old West Baltimore. We visited Thurgood Marshall’s elementary school. We walked by the only Baltimore dollar house where a black resident displaced by eminent domain during the highway fight successfully returned to his home. In church basements, we discussed topics from the feasibility of rowhouse rehabs to the potential of transit-oriented development in the broader Baltimore region. In a single month, we engaged nearly 250 people, an audience that was notably more diverse in age and race than many of our more conventionally presented tour programs. This project affirmed our confidence in our new strategies for collaboration and interpretation, strategies that we continue to use in the development of new tours and publications focused on themes including the Civil War history of West Baltimore.

The results of these explorations remain inconclusive. We’re still testing against the enduring challenges of decades of disinvestment along with our own limited capacity as a small nonprofit. I’m encouraged though by the idea that we’re not along. As we’ve searched for new ideas to apply to our own work, we’ve gotten to know a few of the organizations and individuals wrestling with these same concerns, testing their own approaches in local laboratories across the country. I’ll give you three examples–

• Andrew Hurley’s work in St. Louis, documented in his recent book Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities, offered historical and archeological research and interpretation to North St. Louis residents and organizations with the goal of supporting grassroots revitalization. Hurley observed, “Inner-city preservationists embarking on such a path can anticipate a  host of difficult decisions as they wrestle with the inevitable tension between community-building and economic-development goals.” - p.31
• Cliveden, a 1760s mansion built for Revolutionary-era elite Benjamin Chew, had been a stodgy house museum through the early 2000s when they dedicated themselves to finding new relevance to their diverse, low-income neighborhood of Germantown, Philadelphia. In charting this new course, they decided to abandon the visitor, redefining their mission to serve as “a catalyst for preserving and reusing historic buildings to sustain economic development for historic Northwest Philadelphia and beyond.”
• The Los Angeles Conservancy, supported by the same National Trust grant program as our work at Baltimore Heritage, hired a new organizer to greatly expand their outreach and advocacy in the segregated Latino communities of East LA, undertaking projects such as “Save Wyvernwood,” where they supported the efforts of a resident community in the 1939 Wyvernwood Garden Apartments to resist displacement and the demolition of their homes.

These examples are distinct, I know. At the same time, we’re all together wrestling with that same question I posed a few minutes ago. We’re not finding any easy answers but I do think we’re gaining confidence that public history and preservation scholars and professionals are right to ask this question.

Ned Kaufman, a long time director of historic preservation for the Municipal Art Society of New York, offered an answer of sorts in Place, Race, and Story: essays on the past and future of historic preservation, writing–

“History offers a way to establish a presence within the public space of political and cultural discourse–and without presence one can hardly hope for leverage. History can’t provide adequate housing, end discrimination or prevent redevelopment, but it can contribute to the debate that is necessary to achieving these goals.” – p.401