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Introduction

Capital letter Urban Renewal began with Housing Act of 1954 and ended with Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.

Broader history begins as early as the 1890s and continues through the present.

1930s: New Deal support for public housing and slum clearance

Baltimore

New Deal efforts led by progressive reformers, e.g. demolition of St. John's Court, 1939

Housing Act of 1937 provided federal support for "slum clearance" and public housing

1940s: Planning for post-WWII development

Baltimore

In 1946, Land Development Commission (formerly the Baltimore Redevelopment Commission) created to purchase slum land by condemnation, clear it and resell it to private enterprise for development.

National - Housing Act of 1949

In January 1949 State of the Union address unveiling the Fair Deal, Truman observed that "Five million families are still living in slums and firetraps. Three million families share their homes with others."

Expanded FHA-insured mortgages, funding for 800K public housing units.

1950s: Shift from focus on residential to commercial redevelopment

Baltimore

Baltimore - Housing Census of 1950 found 55,000 structurally substandard houses in the city

Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Authority, established January 1957 on recommendation of Urban Renewal Study Board, a committee of national experts in housing planning and public administration

Combined 3 agencies, with neighborhood planning unit of Dept of Planning and "area projects" attached to the Department of Public Welfare

Projected program of 20-year $900,000,000 w/ 2/3 fed, 1/3
reality 3/4 fed $

National

Housing Act of 1954

Title I - providing federal financing for slum clearance programs associated with urban renewal projects in American cities

Mount Vernon Urban Renewal Area

Mount Vernon Place and surrounding blocks largely developed from the 1840s through the 1870s :

Blanchard Randall House/Mount Vernon Club (1842) built by William Tiffany, a wealthy Baltimore commission merchant.

Peabody Institute (1866) designed by Edmund George Lind

Henry Walters' Art Gallery (1904-1909) modeled after Italian Renaissance and Baroque palaces.

11 West Mount Venon Place built in 1853 but enlarged in the 1870s to encompass four houses made into one with approximately 40 rooms, 100 windows, and 16 fireplaces. Wedding present for Robert Garrett, the elder son of John Work Garrett who was the President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and Robert Garrett & Sons, bankers and his wife Mary Frick in 1872.

From February 16, 1929:

"Mount Vernon Place is not the healthy spot of former years, but has degenerated into a runway for dogs and a gathering place for disreputable characters, it was declared yesterday by Dr. A.D. McConachie" opposing development of apartment building at 101 West Monument Street

In 1945 , Mayor McKeldin announced he was forming a committee – three architects and an engineer—to study a proposal to transform Mount Vernon Place, remarking:

"In Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore has a centrally located, commodious and commanding site for the magnificent monument to our country's first great President. But Mount Vernon Square is grazed by the slum and the blight. It has lost much of its original luster, and has been running down at the heel. Some of the surrounding buildings have a shabby appearance; boarding houses are invading the center devoted to our national and State heroes – Washington, LaFayette and John Eager Howard."

Among architects on the committee, D.K. Este Fisher, architect and member of the Land Redevelopment Commission – helped lead efforts to secure racial covenants in Bolton Hill in the 1920s.

In 1959 , the Planning Council of the Greater Baltimore Committee conducted an independent study of Mount Vernon and recommended an urban renewal program to the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Authority.

"The renewal objectives set forth for the Mt. Vernon area can be attained only through the program outlined of fairly substantial clearance and redevelopment, combined with intensive and widespread rehabilitation. A program of less clearance and more rehabilitation… would not provide the optimum level of either private or public benefits…" (FIND SOURCE)

In July** 1961**, Mrs. Rufus Gibbs, resident of 1209 St. Paul Street, long-time anti-feminist and opponent of the 19th amendment, wrote to the Baltimore Sun:

"When renewal is needed in the Mount Vernon area I am sure that those of us who live there will cooperate with the agency in charge of the work, but we, as well as city authorities, should not permit destruction that will increase the miles of rubble that have already wrecked Baltimore and by not paying taxes puts an added burden on those who do.

Destruction creates a greater expense that must be included in the cost of new buildings and evidence points out this district as the center of homes for decent people who are not financially able to pay for luxury living."

Walters Art Museum – Centre Street Expansion

In 1934 , when the Walters Art Gallery opened three-fourths of the collection was removed from view; at this time, the Walters' Board of Trustees President Philip B. Perlman began a life-long campaign for the gallery's expansion.

By 1956, rumors of the Walters' plans for expansion circulated, including the threatened demolition of the Jencks House and other buildings along West Mount Vernon Place. On Mar 30, 1957 , Mrs. Rufus M. Gibbs wrote to the Baltimore Sun:

"Baltimore is suffering from an insatiable desire for rubble and we now rival the war-devastated cities of Europe with the wreckage around the Hopkins Hospital and Waverly and Area 12 and other parts of the city. In addition plans are under way to tear down part of Mount Vernon place, so that we can build up delusions of grandeur with a $9 million Walters Gallery to out-do the National Gallery in Washington."

Public resistance led to failed bond bill votes for $9 million in 1958, failing again for $4 million in 1960. Walters Art Gallery studied why the bond issues had failed, then linked their expansion plans to the Urban Renewal program in Mount Vernon. Final bond issue in 1966 passed with support from the Greater Baltimore Committee.

The Walters considered leading architectural firms for their expansion, such as I.M. Pei and Lawford and Forbes in New York and in 1967 , the Walters selected Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott as the project architects, along with the Baltimore firm, Meyer, Ayers and Saint.

Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott were successor firm to the architecture practice formed in Boston in 1874 by the famed American architect Henry Hobson Richardson; assisted on Boston Government Service Center designed by Paul Rudolph (1962; firm won AIA's National Honor Award for its design of the Tramway Terminal in Squaw Valley, California (1969) and the prestigious the AIA Firm Award in (1973).

Three floors were to be dedicated to permanent display areas, while the remaining spaces embraced the long-hoped for auditorium, library, special exhibition galleries, Conservation department, and classrooms. By 1973, the auditorium was in use and the following year the wing opened to the public.

Renovated in mid-1990s by the Vitetta Group, a Philadelphia-based firm that involved removing nearly 20,000 pounds of concrete from the 1974 wing - Centre Street building to create new vistas and let in more light . In 1994, Hyman Myers, Director of Historic Preservation for the firm remarked:

"This was not just a hack architect looking at it. . . . There is something very thoughtful about the way it was added to the old building. If somebody was that careful then, we ought to be that careful now… Our position is: Let's not make rash judgments about how much we hate Brutalist architecture… It's: 'Let's see how we can make it work.' We hope that when the project is done, you won't say, 'Vitetta did a great job renovating the building.' You'll say, 'Shepley Bulfinch built a great building, and we never noticed it before.'"

Peabody Expansion

In the 1960s, Peabody was awarded urban renewal funds for their expansion and the Peabody Trustees selected a design for dormitories, cafeteria, and parking by Edward Durrell Stone.

Native of Fayetteville, AK, Stone was an early modernist architect who early works included the Museum of Modern Art (1937). Later projects included New York and the National Geographic Society Building (1961) and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1962) in Washington, DC.

Initial conception called for the complete demolition of four rowhouses facing on East Mount Vernon Place, replacement with plaza and walled garden, eventually facades and front rooms preserved but rear demolished

Shot Tower Urban Renewal Area

Fallway follows the route of the Jones Falls, originally ran uncovered into the harbor.

Defines the western edge of the Shot Tower Industrial Park, now largely characterized by a sea of parking lots.

Shot Tower Park

Built in 1828 , the Phoenix Shot Tower was the tallest building in the United States until 1846. It is 215 feet tall and contains an estimated 1.1 million bricks. Annually, 2.5 million pounds of "drop" shot, used for small game hunting, was made in the tower until 1892. In 1892, new methods of shot production made the Shot Tower obsolete and it closed its doors.

In 1921 , permits were granted to tear down the shaft, but public reaction came out strongly against the demolition. Funds were raised and, on Oct 11, 1924, a group of Baltimore citizens bought the Shot Tower for $17,000 and donated it to the City of Baltimore with the understanding that it would be preserved.

In July 1957 , the Old Town Merchants and Manufacturers Association pushed to locate the proposed Civic Center (now First Mariner Arena) by the Shot Tower, Irvin Blum, Chairman of Redevelopment Committee:

"Building the center on that site will not only benefit Old Town, but the entire community, by ridding it of a blight on its face that has radiated throughout the entire area."

Fayette Street expanded in the 1950s, housing replaced by the Flag House Courts high rise public housing development around 1960.

In January 1968 , Francis W. Kuchta, Assistant Director of Development, BURHA, remarked:

"With the new, main Post Office within Shot Tower Industrial, the focus will be on an area people will use. It will face Historic Park, and clearance and development of the park will enhance the area. People will be attracted to such outstanding features as the Shot Tower, Flag House and Carroll Mansion."

In 1974, a community organization arose to advocate for local residents and spur revitalization. Led by Father Richard Lawrence of St. Vincent de Paul Church (1841), the group proudly named itself the Jonestown Planning Council, resurrecting the area's original name and reconnecting it with its past.

Fayette Street Post Office (1972)

Promoted as an anchor for the Shot Tower Industrial Park - a 24-acre area bounded by Colvin Street, Fayette Street, the Fallsway and Orleans Street – U.S. Post Office opened in 1972 with 4,000 employees, $5 million in new equipment, housed in a floor area the size of sixteen football fields.

Brutalist façade composed of precast concrete panels designed in 1968 by the partnership of Tatar & Kelly - Seymour Tatar & W. Boulton Kelly - with Cochran, Stephenson & Donkervoet serving as associate architects.

Further examples of modern architecture from Tatar & Kelly can be found from the Enoch Pratt Free Library - Reisterstown Road Branch (1967), Steuart Hill Elementary School (1969), and the Baltimore County Public Library - Towson Branch (1974).

Walk to next

Charles Center (1950s-1980s)

In 1952, Report of the Commission on Governmental Efficiency and Economy: the City faces municipal bankruptcy if the downward trend is not reversed.

In 1954, the day after Christmas, O'Neill's Department Store at southwest corner of Charles and Lexington Street closed: the business community forms the Committee for Downtown

Beginning 1954 , the Committee for Downtown promoted a master plan (covering 1000 acres) for arresting the commercial decline of central Baltimore. In 1955 the Greater Baltimore Committee, headed by banker and developer James W. Rouse, joined the effort.

GBC, not satisfied with this slow pace of public planning, formed their own in house planning team, the Planning Council, headed by nationally-known planner David Wallace from Philadelphia, and with William Potts and George Kostritsky as staff designers, plan formed the basis of a $25 million bond issue in 1958.

Beginning in Philadelphia, PA in 1953, under Mayor Joseph S. Clark, David Wallace led a citywide urban redevelopment evaluation that resulted in the Central Urban Renewal Area (CURA) Report. In it he established a new strategy for overall redevelopment that targeted catalytic actions to strengthen communities and downtown. CURA became a model for other cities, notably Baltimore, MD.

The plan was unusual for its time in not pursuing a "clean-slate" site, but rather incorporating existing structures. The 33 acres (13 ha) site includes three public plazas designed by RTKL, connected by walkways and pedestrian bridges.

After eighteen months, in March 1958, they presented the result of their work to the mayor and to the city: office buildings, commercial space, hotels, a theatre, three public plazas, underground parking, and skywalks providing pedestrian access to the whole area separated from the traffic.

Morris Mechanic Theatre (1967)

Morris Mechanic planned the theatre to replace the aging Ford's Theatre which he purchased in 1929, on a site formerly occupied by offices of The Baltimore Sun.

Architect John Johansen was a member of the Harvard Five - a group of architects that settled in New Canaan, Connecticut in the 1940s (John M. Johansen, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, Philip Johnson and Eliot Noyes) influenced by Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus Movement.
Designed the Mummers Theater in Oklahoma City (1970) similarly threatened by neglect and proposed demoltion.

Mechanic died while the building was under construction

Opening gala held on January 16, 1967 was presided-over by his widow, actress Elaine Swann, Mayor Theodore McKeldin and Eugene M. Feinblatt, chairman of the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency.

Remained Baltimore's primary venue to host touring Broadway plays in the 1970s but in the 1980s and 1990s, producers felt that the theatre was too small and outdated to accommodate the larger shows of the era. The theater ceased operation in 2004 when the restored Hippodrome Theatre reopened.

In 2007 , the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) voted to place it on its "Special List" and to make it a landmark.

In 2008 , Planning Commission voted against landmarking—counter to CHAP's recommendation the first time in 40 years that the Planning Commission had opposed a landmark designation – based on a redevelopment proposal that preserved 80 to 90 percent of the building's shell.

In an article declaring Charles Center the "New Heart of Baltimore," Jane Jacobs praised the project's

…attempt to stimulate a rebuilding use which is at fundamental odds with previous use or the surroundings of the project. The site is in the very heart of downtown, not on its fringes, and it is to be re-used for precisely the things that belong in the heart of downtown.

Architectural Review Board, consisting of the deans of three of the most prominent architectural schools in the country; Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania, judged the plans for each parcel of land to be developed.

See also:

Statler Hilton Baltimore/Sheraton Baltimore City Center (1967)
Lord Baltimore Hotel (1928) - designed by William Lee Stoddart and opened on December 30, 1928. The 22 story French Renaissance style hotel has a brick veneer over a steel frame and is 289 feet tall.

One Charles Center (1962)

Jury selected among designs with finalists including Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer.

Born in 1886, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, started as a teenager Germany working in his father's stone carving shop but eventually serving as the last director of the Bauhaus architectural school until the Nazis forced the school to close in 1933. Mies immigrated to Chicago in 1938, best known for midcentury modernist landmarks Farnsworth Building outside of Chicago and the Seagram Building in New York City.

Baltimore Sun:

"Not just an office building, but a monument to a revered and influential philosopher -architect will soon rise at Charles and Lexington streets.

23-story aluminum and glass International Style skyscraper, completed in 13 months at a cost of $10,350,000.

Another developer adapted Breuer's proposal for a site across the street, and the two buildings came up practically side-by-side.

Two Charles Center/Charles Towers (1969)

Two Charles Center, built 1969 by developers Conklin + Rossant, stands 385 feet/117 meters tall and contains 30 floors, is one of the tallest residential buildings in Baltimore. Partnership composed of William J. Conklin and James Rossant - best known for the best known for his master plan of Reston, Virginia.

BG&E Building (1916/1966)

21-story skyscraper built in 1916.

Designed by the Boston and Baltimore-based architectural firm of Parker, Thomas and Rice (Douglas H. Thomas lived in Baltimore), the same firm designed the Hotel Belvedere and the B&O Railroad Office Building among other iconic Baltimore landmarks

Standing at 88 m (289 ft) it was tied with the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower from 1916 to 1923 as the tallest building in Baltimore.

1966 addition, designed by Fisher, Nes, Campbell and Associates (also worked on the World Trade Center as Associate Architects)

University of Maryland / Market Center

Lexington Street Pedestrian Mall (1973)

In 1959, Kalamazoo, Michigan, became the first American city to adopt an outdoor pedestrian mall designed by Victor Gruen, pioneer in the design of shopping malls, for their downtown area, closing two blocks of Burdick Street to automobile traffic.

In 1958, the Planning Council of the Greater Baltimore Committee advanced a $3,500,000 scheme to create an enclosed air-conditioned mall along Lexington Street.

Few years later, Committee for Downtown and the firm of Tatar and Kelly proposed a $1,000,000 "face-lifting" for Lexington Street that would include "an elevated pedestrian level connecting to the second floors of existing buildings."

In 1967, after earlier abandoning the plan, the Planning Commission was inspired by presentations on successful pedestrian malls in Ottawa, Canada (Sparks Street, 1961) and Knoxville, Tennessee (Market Square, 1950s)

In 1973, Lexington Street between Liberty and Howard closed to all traffic except delivery trucks, despite lawsuit by Gutman Realty (Brager-Gutman)

In September 14-16, 1984, City Fair moved to the Market Center area with events at the Lexington Street pedestrian mall, Lexington Market, Park Avenue's Chinatown, Center Plaza and more. Baltimore Metro subway system, had not yet started regular weekend service, but provided special service during the weekend of the fair.

Howard Street Transit Mall (1980s)

Proposals for Howard Street Transit Mall discussed through the late 1970s but eventually scaled down to the two blocks located north and south of Lexington Street.

Work starting in May 7, 1984:

"This is a truncated, Reagan-era, version of the grand mall that was envisioned for Howard street and favored by the Urban Mass Transit Administration during the Carter administration, examples of which elsewhere are Chestnut street in Philadelphia, F Street in Washington, and State street in Chicago."

Opened in November 1986, Baltimore Sun Editorial - Nov 22, 1986:

"Some people will like the new arched lamp posts and other street furniture. Others may not. It all suggests an internal mall without a roof. But to comment properly, you have to see it for yourself. Howard Street was going down for years. Now it is looking up."

Howard Street

Colonel C. Baker Clotworthy, commander of the Fifth Regiment:

"I would be deeply interested in this improvement because it means so much more than simply tearing down some houses and opening a street. Everyone in the city is familiar with the steady decrease which has taken place in the value of property in this neighborhood for the last 20 years.

All about Richmond Market, and extending north, there are hundreds of undesirable houses and, in many cases, huts. This sore is spreading rapidly. A great many negroes, not of the best class, gradually tenant the houses on the edge of this district and immediately the white people move from the block invaded. If this continues no one knows where it will stop."

State Center/Mount Royal Plaza

Concern about the housing and health conditions around the Fifth Regiment Armory in the mid-1940s.

Henry V. Hubbard, former Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Chairman of the Department of Regional Planning, Harvard University, former partner in Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture office in Brookline, Mass., co-founded and began co-editing the journal City Planning in 1925. Mayor McKeldin hired Hubbard in 1945 to produce a report on conditions and redevelopment of slum areas.

In his 1946 report, Hubbard highlighted series of statistics:

33/1000 juvenile delinquents/children in Armory (11.4 average)
41.8/10000 TB cases/population (19.2 average)

Drawing conclusions including:

"It is noticeable that the delinquency and disease symptoms of blight" run parallel in a general way with the trend of the degree of overcrowding the buildings."
The age of dwellings is stressed by Mr. Hubbard as a cause of blight…. "The University and Camden areas," Mr. Hubbard said, "contain practically no dwellings built in the present century."

Plans for the State Center office complex began as early as February 1951 with a recommendation by the State Office Building Commission to construct a group of office buildings at a single site in Baltimore city. The Commission deferred any recommendations on a site, noting (with Cold War era concern) that "a war might change the physical appearance of the city and make a "suburban" office building location a possibility."

After State officials initially favored a site at Gwynns Falls Parkway and Resiterstown Road, where Mondawmin Mall is located today, the Baltimore City Council, the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, leaders of the Mount Royal Protective Association and other resident groups all pushed for a location by the Fifth Regiment Armory.

Proponents for this location - covering a 25-acre area known since the mid-1940s as Redevelopment Area 12 - saw the proposed demolition as "slum clearance" and new offices, as The Baltimore Sun noted, a "barrier to northward creeping blight."

Dr. Robert L. Jackson, only black member of the City Planning Commission, opposed the Armory site, noting that it would force 950 black families to move

Richard L. Steiner, Director of BURHA figured room for 370 families, would not state how many available for black renters, "That's in the hands of the redeveloper."

In 1953, Mt. Royal Improvement Association rallied over 200 people to support the location, calling it "best means of salvaging a run down area."

NAACP, represented by W.A.C. Hughes opposed the development, Hughes office located there and his mother owned property in the area. HUghes volunteered with the NAACP as a lawyer from the 1930s through his death in 1966, Morgan State stadium named after him

State Office Building Group - #1/2 (1958)

Complex included the 6-story State Roads Building and the 15-story Main State Office Building

Firm also designed the Prince University School of Architecture building (1963) and the architecture building for the University of Maryland (opened 1971), Charles Nes became President of AIA National in 1966

By 1963, citing uncertainty over expressway routes, the city leased adjoining land originally slated for the private development of luxury apartments as surface parking lots

Employment Security Board Building

Employment Security Board building is a six-story building faced with limestone and glass on a three-acre property.

Designed by Fenton & Lichtig – a partnership composed of Marvin William Fenton and Bert Leopold Lichtig who met working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s. In 1949, they started their own firm working on public schools, theaters, and more – notably including the Employment Security Building (1960) in the State Center complex and contributing (with Nes, Campbell and Partners and James R. Edmunds, Jr.) to the design of the George H. Fallon Federal Office Building (1967).

Built for the federal government under a lease-purchase arrangement, the building was expected to revert to state ownership 25 years after construction.

Fifth Regiment Armory (1901/1933) - 210-247 W. Hoffman Street

Built in 1901, the Fifth Regiment Armory is a historic National Guard armory with a 200 foot by 300 foot drill hall, a mezzanine or "balcony" level, and a newer second level (reconstructed in 1933 after a fire) housing the trussed steel drill hall roof.

Designed by Wyatt & Nolting, the partnership of James Bosley Noel Wyatt and William G. Nolting, also designed the Baltimore City Courthouse and the Garrett Building on Redwood Street Downtown.

The movement of black families into northwest Baltimore began in the late 19th century and by the 1910s black households began to move into the 1200 block of Bolton Street and the 1200-1300 blocks of Park Avenue, just north of the Fifth Regiment Armory. Just a few years before, at 1834 McCulloh Street in 1910, local black lawyer W. Ashbie Hawkins bought a rowhouse and the Baltimore City Council responded with the nation's first municipal law to enforce racial segregation.

In the Mt. Royal area, a group of 300 northwest Baltimore residents (led by the president of the Baltimore Bar Library and the neighborhood's City Council representative, among others) responded to the changes on Bolton Street by signing racial covenants barring the sale or lease of their properties to African Americans.

In the 1920s, the Mount Royal Protective Association boasted of their Efforts to secure and enforce racial covenants from local property owners, noting the group's "greatest achievement… has been the subjecting of the property in its area to a restriction for white occupancy only."

Not limiting their efforts to racial covenants, the Mount Royal Association joined with local political leaders in "slum clearance" efforts that demolished over 70 properties on the 1100 block of Bolton Street in the late 1920s for the development of Armory Plaza and the demolition of more homes nearby in the late 1930s.

Herbert R. O'Conor Building / State Office Building # 4 (1974)

Plans first announced in late 1968, with proposals prepared by Victor Gruen and Associates.

Austrian-born architect best known as a pioneer in the design of shopping malls in the United States, architectural firm established in 1951 became a major firm in urban planning and revitalization

Built to house 2,000 employees in a 5-story office, 7-story laboratory tower and 3 levels of underground parking, original Gruen proposal called for retailing and "people" amenities on state office property to "keep the area viable after office closing hours." 14,000 square feet of comercial space in an arcade fronting on the "pedestrian level"

Firm designed the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins (1964) and in 1975, Meyer, Ayers, Saint won a national AIA honor award for the Loyola Notre Dame Library.

Building built on time and in budget, but cut backs on materials and errors in design, led to a rash of problems, cracking and damaged concrete caused the Baltimore Sun to publish editorial "Watch Out for Falling Concrete"

Mount Royal / Madison Park / Bolton Hill

McMechen Street from Bolton Hill to Madison Park offers a host of examples of urban renewal planning and design from the boxy strip mall of the Bolton Hill Plaza, the incongruous high-rise apartments, and the modern Smokestack Hardy Fire Station. Together with the clearance Linden Avenue between Dolphin and Wilson Street, these projects are the result of the Madison Park South Urban Renewal Plan, adopted by Baltimore City in July 1961 as Project No. 1 for the Mount Royal-Fremont Urban Renewal Area. Nearly 25 acres were eventually demolished for the project, beginning with a block of twelve rowhouses at the corner of McMechen and McCulloh Streets to make way for a new fire station.

In 1946 , Baltimore Real Estate Board organized a committee, headed by James Rouse – only 32 years old at the time—to study the "Fifth Regiment Armory section" to consider a "blighted-area redevelopment project" driven by "private enterprise."

Memorial Apartments (1967) - 301 McMechen Street

Memorial Apartments (1966) 12-story house 286 apartments for elderly limited income, sponsored by the Memorial Episcopal Church, Rt. Rev. Harry Lee Doll, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Maryland broke ground with a shovel in a ceremony attended by Mayor McKeldin, Eugene M. Feinblatt, Chairman of the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency among others.

1966, Three years earlier, Doll and his Roman Catholic counterpart, Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, had joined in public support of open housing legislation, for which they were both booed and jeered at a city council meeting.

Cost more than $3,000,000, 12-stories tall with 286 units

Bolton Plaza

Note:Find architect

Mount Royal Intermediate School

Architects Taylor & Fisher

John Street Park

On June 23, 1955, Arthur D. McVoy, Director, Department of Planning emphasized the role of the park as a model:

"This was not just somebody's "nice" idea for a little park for a nice block on John Street. It is a very significant experiment set up by the Department of Planning and the Planning Commission to see if this device could be effective in many old sections of the city where the houses are sound enough to retain and the neighborhood is threatened by instability."

In 1955, describing the park as "an experiment in urban renewal" the Baltimore Sun remarked:

"This is not a pretentious park. It is merely a little recreation space created by the elimination of motor traffic from a one-block section of one street. But the street lies in a part of Baltimore with a special character of its own: quiet, old, tasteful and pleasant."

Bolton Commons (1967)

http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20070919/urban-band-aid

Assorted Notes and Links

http://archive.org/details/guidelinesforbar00land

http://archive.org/details/waverleystudyinn00unitrich

http://archive.org/details/DynamicA1956

http://archive.org/details/DynamicA1956_2

Eutaw Gardens

http://www.boltonhillgardenclub.org/history

http://www.baltimorestyle.com/index.php/style/home_garden_article/h_modernist_oasis_so07/

http://www.ce.jhu.edu/baltimorestructures/Index.php?location=Morris%20A.%20Mechanic%20Theater

http://tclf.org/content/urban-renewal-renewed-makeover-baltimore%E2%80%99s-center-plaza

http://www.ce.jhu.edu/baltimorestructures/Index.php?location=Charles%20Center%20South

http://www.gbc.org/upload/GBC_History2008.pdf

http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/baltimore/modern-maryland/Content?oid=1246434

http://www.cr.nps.gov/hdp/exhibits/baltimore/B2L08.pdf

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/md/md1600/md1689/data/md1689data.pdf

Harlem Park Fair- http://archives.ubalt.edu/cpha/pdf/photofolder059.pdf

William L. Marbury Sr. - U.S. Attorney General for Maryland; political reformer - 159 W. Lanvale St.

1200 block on Bolton Street:

"Five years ago it had gone to pot. One or two families had clung persistently to their homes, but most of the owners had fled before the encroachment of undesirables who had begun to filter in. The razing of the 1100 block to make room for the Armory Plaza was a green light for speculators, who bought up property in the block right and left for occupancy by tenants forced out of the houses which were being torn down. Many of them moved in and proved to be so objectionable that an older resident, impoverished but respectable, immediately moved out in order to go to a better neighborhood. His house, left vacant, immediately was wrecked by vandals, who tore doors from their hinges and carried them off, pulled the gas and electric fixtures from the walls and ceilings and made off with part of the railings on the front steps."

Urban Renewal by Bike