Every person will have his/her own list of qualities needed for the best place to live. Here’s mine: Kooky, Affordable, Progressive, Urbane with Transportation, also known by city planners as the highly transitional KAPUT neighborhood. Okay, I fudged that a little when I realized if I had a K instead of a D, I could spell a clever acronym, but it is true that nearly every wonderful place I have lived started out lowly, had its zenith and then became wildly popular, overpriced, and again went kaput, at least by my standards. Diversity (the lost D) is an important aspect of my best place to live so I include that in kooky, as I’m afraid there are large segments of the population that still find diversity to be a frighteningly kooky concept. Kooky also implies unique. When surrounded by Walmarts and fast-food chains, it all begins to look the same to me. Urbane is not necessarily urban, but a certain amount of street smarts and savvy that respects diversity.
I hope some of you will comment on the best place you ever lived, or still do, as there may be one more move in my future.
In 1974, I was 23 and living in the familiar western suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland near where I grew up. I eventually found stable post-college employment downtown. I soon realized commuting into the sun, both ways, was the road to sheer madness. I was already a member of the Baltimore Gay Alliance, formed in the early ‘70s, and frankly, being gay in the burbs was not exactly working for me. In those days, Baltimore didn’t have anything that approached a gayborhood although some areas, notably Mt. Vernon, Fell’s Point, Charles Village and Bolton Hill, were known to have some gay residents. I found an apartment in Charles Village, approx. 30 blocks of north of downtown, drawn by its architecture, diversity and proximity to Johns Hopkins University. I lived there until 1980.
Baltimore is known as a city of neighborhoods. Large waves of immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s produced ethnic neighborhoods of an amazing array. The neighborhood adjacent to where I worked was largely Lithuanian. Baltimore accumulated sizeable Italian, German, Polish and Jewish populations. The city experienced a large influx of African-Americans from the South during World War II, drawn by factory jobs and a need for workers during the war. While Baltimore did have an upper-class elite and white-collar middle class, the city in the first half of the twentieth century was overwhelmingly blue-collar working class. White flight to the suburbs occurred during the '50s and '60s.
While Baltimore was still exceedingly diverse as a whole in 1974, the individual neighborhoods were not. Charles Village was an exception. Beginning in the early 1900s, the handsome three-story brick and stone townhouses were built for an affluent middle class who later led the white flight. Many of the large elegant homes were then divided into apartments. When I arrived in Charles Village, its inhabitants were roughly 25% aging widows who had stayed, 25% university students, hippies and young first-jobbers, 25% African-Americans and 25% gay (with some crossover). Some viewed the area as down on its luck, my parents included, but its success and vitality, to my eyes, were due to the fact that everyone was a minority in some way and no clear majority existed. It was the best place I ever lived.
This photo, used with permission, was taken in the late ‘70s by my good friend to this day, Mark Praetorius, who lived right across the street from me back then. It’s typical of Charles Village, although end-of-the-block houses often had corner turrets topped with cone roofs and many blocks had front porches.
Charles Village was extremely livable. A small, one side of one block, commercial area was the hub of the neighborhood, including a small supermarket, bank, drugstore, laundromat and deli. Many of the residents did not own cars but it was short three-block, or less, walk for most. The little supermarket catered to small households, a place where you could buy one pork chop or one chicken breast. Everybody walked to the store and because we were forever hauling groceries and laundry, there were always pedestrians on the street, even late into the evening. Street crime was nearly non-existent in a city that had a bad reputation for it.
The nearby university had an endless calendar of speakers, movies, "free university" classes and hosted some of the Baltimore Gay Alliance’s first events. Wyman Park, the Baltimore Museum of Art and a foreign-film theater (heavy on Lena Wertmuller) were within easy-walking distance. I voted in a church hall a block away. The neighborhood had an edge and was intellectually stimulating. Storefronts and lampposts were regularly plastered with creative notices of politics, art, music and the latest movement. I often saw John Waters, then a budding film director, on the street. (I believe he lived in Reservoir Hill at the time, but apparently had many friends in the neighborhood. I did not know him personally.)
Baltimore had done away with the streetcars by then, but had a dependable bus system. The bus stopped at my corner to whisk me to work, or to the train station ten blocks away, or downtown where I could catch a shuttle to the airport. I still marvel decades later how practical and convenient the neighborhood was.
Memorial Stadium was close by, too far to walk, but only a short bus trip. I had no interest in baseball or football but the stadium had an outdoor skating rink in the winter. I started an informal weekly "gay night" with friends that snowballed into something larger than I anticipated. We were never the majority but we did have an undeniable presence. Years later I met someone who happened to know the rink manager. The manager said he didn’t know exactly why all those gay men were coming on Tuesday evenings, but they didn’t get into fights and they never left a mess, so it was fine with him.
So what happened to my wonderful neighborhood? Solely my conjecture but I trace its "downfall" to the tall ships that visited the newly redeveloped Inner Harbor. This involved twenty or so large boats with masts and sails, gloriously rigged frigates and such. It was a HUGE event, widely publicized. Legions of suburban children begged their parents to take them into the dreaded bowels of the city—the same city their suburban-grown parents thought was a rat-infested, drug- and crime-ridden, murder-capital piss hole. They came by the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. People who had not set foot inside the city in decades looked around and said, "Gee, this is nice!"
White professionals started to return to the city. On the surface, most thought this was a good thing, but it didn’t turn out that way for the renters of Charles Village. The widows were dying off. The very affordable neighborhood had little crime. Beautiful well-built houses with high ceilings, transoms and multiple fireplaces could be had for a fraction of what was paid for suburban pieces of shit. Every house on the market was snapped up. Gentrification began. Prices escalated. Rents rose. Even houses divided into apartments went up for sale. Renters began to move to more affordable areas.
Okay, the new people weren’t horrible. I could put up with their exposed brick and refinished floors. Their hearts were in the right place, but they were wary. They drove everywhere. They shopped elsewhere. They did their laundry at home. A lot of them had little kids so they didn’t go out at night. I have nothing against young families or children but they were quickly becoming a majority and acting more inward than outward. The neighborhood became more affluent, but there were fewer and fewer people on the street. Then I got notice that I had to move. I suppose I could have tried to relocate to the fringes of the neighborhood, but I felt it was losing its creative energy and becoming bland. Most of my friends had already moved away. Some crime began to return. A friend got mugged at night on his way home from the store.
I moved to another neighborhood in the city, certainly no safer, but immediately realized my mistake. There was no little supermarket, no university. Except for one small cigarette-and-soda store, there wasn’t anything to walk to at all. I lived there one year before leaving the city and the state for a multitude of reasons unrelated to housing.
I still consider the ‘70s to be the heyday of Charles Village. A convergence of unrelated factors had reigned to mark an era. White flight had opened the neighborhood to diversity. Student activism was still running high and decidedly to the left. Even the doddering old ladies added something to the delicate balance of forces, commanding a level of respect and civility that kept the rest of us from getting too rambunctious and loud. I already knew it was okay to be gay, but the rest of the neighborhood thought it was okay too.
Charles Village was less diverse when I left in 1980 but high interest rates were putting a damper on the booming real estate market. I didn’t keep close tabs on the neighborhood, it may have waxed and waned several times since then, but some of the diversity—the hippies and the old ladies—would be hard to replace. I don’t know anyone who lives there now but I checked with friends elsewhere in the city. Charles Village didn’t completely slide to uniformity. The university still has a positive influence on the area. A new baseball stadium was built downtown, a very nice one, but Memorial Stadium was ripped down along with the ice rink. The foreign-film theater closed. A gay leather bar has opened on the southern fringe of the neighborhood. The commercial strip is being redeveloped with plans for a Barnes and Noble.
Charles Village is considered to be a solid and stable, if somewhat expensive, neighborhood today. I guess many would see that as an upswing, not a downfall. Maybe it’s just me.