Blog #11

A couple weeks ago I attended Kenneth Jackson’s lecture entitled The Road to Hell: Race and Suburbanization in Baltimore. He discussed the changing cities all over the US, but mostly focused on Baltimore. He began by saying that the original reason people came to Baltimore was because it was considered the Sin City of the east coast. Businessmen would stop off in Baltimore’s red light district before continuing on their journeys. At that time there was no such thing as the “inner harbor” Baltimore was an industrial city, and the water was for industrial ships only.

Jackson continued, by asking the question, which he wished to focus on and answer throughout his talk: what makes a city distinctive? Just as the excerpt from Jane Jacobs book, “The Life and Death of Great American Cities” that we read in the beginning of the year he stated, that there is always a reason that a city has formed where it has, and it usually related to easy transportation. For example Boston is on the Charles River, which runs into the ocean. Then Jackson went on to discuss the specifics about Baltimore city itself and its history.

Baltimore was chartered in 1979, so it was not as old as some cities, but it still had an important role. Baltimore was important for its Catholic standpoint, among other things Baltimore was home to the first bishop. Up until the Civil War Baltimore was the third most important city. Baltimore was constantly growing because it was constantly in a competition with Philadelphia. Both cities were trying to bring in tourists and money and were both important in travel. They both built roads, canals, and most importantly railroads. Baltimore built the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which was the first real railroad in the United States. But Baltimore soon slipped from the third to the sixth most important city after the Civil War ended. Among other things Baltimore was the second largest port of entry into the United States. All the history that Jackson told us about Baltimore was shocking. I could never picture Baltimore as a large industrial port, with immigrants coming in as if it were New York. Living here now is so different from the picture that Jackson painted of Baltimore long ago. During the lecture, I was sitting next to my friend who lives in Maryland and she kept turning to me and asking me if he was still talking about Baltimore. It was hard to picture the old Baltimore in comparison to it today. But as the talk went on the information just got more and more unbelievable.

Jackson continued his talk by talking about the changing times in Baltimore’s population. In 1950 Baltimore reached its population peak of around 950,000 people, today the population has decreased to only 650,000. One third of the population has moved out of the city. But as the city decreased the suburbs grew. Baltimore’s suburbs are three times the size of Baltimore. After Baltimore’s density rapidly and significantly decreased there was a lack of confidence. No office buildings were built from 1929 to the 1970’s. The city also noticed a growth in African Americans. Baltimore was built on a port and was a city about industrialization. The majority of the jobs were industrial jobs. But since 1950 eighty percent of industrial jobs were lost. He said that Baltimore had become a service economy, and joked that the African Americans just came a little too late, they came at the wrong time. Baltimore was once one of the most important industrial cities in the world, and now it was plagued with increased poverty, building abandonment and so on. The department stores were a huge part of life in the city. But riots became more frequent and the department stores closed giving people no reason to go shopping downtown. They now went shopping elsewhere, like to shopping malls. There was a rise in crime and it stopped being as diverse as it once was, it was no longer attracting immigrants.

Jackson stated that this wasn’t just in Baltimore, as a nation we decided to live in the suburbs. It was inexpensive land, inexpensive transport, gas was less expensive than any other country and remains to be till this day. But what I found most interesting was the rules that the FHA set up in the 1930’s. They wrote underwriting guidelines deeming which residential areas were more suitable than other to live in. They drew out residential security maps redlining areas with a high population of African Americans and Jews. I found this so fascinating, that the city would actually zone based on what race or religion you were. This pushed a lot of the poor into the inner city and therefore the poor were isolated, and not scattered. This prejudice caused African Americans to suffer because people left the city and with that so did the appeal and the jobs. Jackson gave an interesting and informative talk. It was so fascinating learning what Baltimore used to be like, when he discussed the mothers and daughters in their white gloves taking the trolley downtown to go shopping at the department stores gave an entirely different image than what I could ever picture. It made me realize that beauty and history that Baltimore has. It reminded me of the poems we have read, such as “In a Station of the Metro” which talk about finding that beauty in seemingly ugly things. Baltimore may have some bad neighborhoods, but it still has its beautiful inner harbor, the blossoming cherry trees, the square in Canton, and the “boardwalk” along the water in Canton. There is so much beauty in Baltimore but we are too busy focusing on all the bad things to venture out and find these little wonders. Even on the streets. I was in Canton last Friday and I was walking along the sidewalk when on one of the only trees on the street there was a swarm of honeybees that had probably just formed. It was amazing seeing something like that on the streets of Baltimore. If I had been scared of the stereotypical Baltimore I would have never gotten to witness the beauty that is subtly hidden throughout this city.