North Avenue Collection ( NA)
NORTH AVENUE 100 was a project of Mayor Clarence “Du”Burns and the Citizens of Baltimore the Neighborhood Progress Administration, Marion W. Pines, Commissioner and Baltimore Traditions, the Office of Folklife Partial funding by the Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust, Equitable Bank, N.A., the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Trust, the Provident Bank of Maryland, the Macht Foundation, the Easterwood Park Boys, Inc., and Maryland Humanities Council through the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Since 1888, North Avenue’s history is the story of tradition making and city building. Its people are a continuing source of enlightenment. Its rows of brick and stone town houses read like a primer of Victorian architecture. The layers of history still unfolding offer pride and surprise to Baltimoreans today.
North Avenue - once Baltimore’s widest, longest boulevard, had been Boundary Avenue and Northern Avenue -a dusty, country road separating the city from the county. The road itself paralleled the northern limits fixed for the city of Baltimore in 1816. The Street was opened, widened, paved and readied for buildings in short sections. Near Walbrook it was known as the “Oyster Shell Road” and at Gay Street, a winter encampment for Indians gave it the name “Santo Domingo.” The first successful electric street railway in America traversed its western limits in 1890, as the city witnessed a population and building boom in these northernmost reaches. The landmark date for North Avenue was 1888 when annexation embraced new residents and businesses on both sides of Boundary Avenue.
Grand estates of the 18th and 19th centuries carried names that are still familiar: Walbrook, Mt. Royal, Druid Hill, Clifton, Easterwood, and Mondawmin. As the lands of prominent citizens yielded to a growing city, great institutions like the Samuel Ready School, the Maryland School for the Blind, the Deaconess Home and large shingle style mansions became landmarks. In turn, they gave way to the brick rows and commercial fronts, a Sears Roebuck store with the world’s largest display window, Polytechnic Institute, and Coppin State College.
North Avenue has been noted for its butchers and breweries—the Pennsylvania Trail led animals to a stately Butcher’s Row. Stonecutters and florists were clustered below the Baltimore Cemetery. Historic burial grounds include the 1799 Etting Cemetery established by a prominent Jewish family, and the elegantly landscaped
Greenmount Cemetery.
North Avenue was the place to live—in the original “suburb” of Walbrook, or in Baltimore’s answer to Harlem’s finest, Sugar Hill. It was the place to shop for new cars and Havana cigars, to ice skate or view intramural ice hockey, to stroll in Easter finery or watch a passing parade, feast on German baked goods or sample the city’s finest ice creams.
For the deluxe North Avenue Market, for world famous delicatessens, and for its version of Manhattan’s 42nd street, “The Great White Way” of Charles Street and North, pulsing with theatres, movie houses, night clubs, hotels and restaurants —North Avenue will long be remembered.
Today, you can live in one of 24 neighborhoods, worship in any of 35 churches, attend award winning public schools, ride the legacy of the streetcar tradition – the number 13 bus –and witness the revitalization of North Avenue – one of Baltimore’s most historic thoroughfares.
Experience the original city in the natural environs of Gwynns Falls-Leakin Park. Share the commercial renaissance with the merchants of Walbrook as new town houses rise nearby on the westernmost heights. Join the home owners whose porches seasonally overflow with colorful flowers and greenery. Take advantage of the convenience of the sleek subway at Pennsylvania Avenue. Benefit from the improved roadscape in the Charles Street corridor. Appreciate the rebirth of the old Poly building as the long-awaited Baltimore City Public School Headquarters. Take pride in the Great Blacks in Wax Museum’s new permanent home in the recycled Fire House at Oliver. Live in a landmark at the old Eastern High School. Watch the rebirth of historic rows and the emergence of shops, apartments, commercial centers.
Watch North Avenue as the stage for continuous episodes in our City’s growth, history and tradition. Your own personal and family recollections are at its center. At the heart of North Avenue are its past, present and future residents who live, work, play and travel here.
In January 2002 the Station North Arts and Entertainment District was established.
Table of Contents
Series I. Penn-North Oral Histories