Baltimore: Pope of Trash Homeland, Free Double Warhol Museum and the Freeway That Never Got Built
Walk 36th Street Hampden where John Waters films everything and Atomic Books is his official mail drop for fan letters, smell the Domino Sugar refinery and learn Chesapeake canning history at the Museum of Industry, drive the Bay Bridge to oyster-and-crab Eastern Shore towns, explore Fells Point cobblestones where community revolt stopped an interstate highway in the 1960s creating the template for historic preservation advocacy, browse 36000 objects across 5000 years at the free Walters Art Museum, and attend Artscape the largest free arts festival in America drawing 350000 in July.
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Hampden and The Avenue
Hampden, a neighborhood in north-central Baltimore centered on 36th Street known as The Avenue, was a white working-class mill town neighborhood through most of the 20th century whose textile mills closed leaving behind a dense Victorian rowhouse community. The neighborhood became home to independent boutiques, restaurants, vintage shops, and galleries in the 1990s and 2000s as artists sought affordable space. Atomic Books on Falls Road is the official mail drop for filmmaker John Waters, the Pope of Trash, who was born in Baltimore in 1946 and has set most of his work in the city. The Hon Bar on 36th Street, named for the Baltimore female term of address hon, is emblematic of Hampden working-class identity with beehive wigs, cat-eye glasses, and pink flamingo decor referencing Waters aesthetic. HonFest, the annual street festival celebrating kitschy Baltimore femininity on 36th Street, draws crowds each June.
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Baltimore Museum of Industry
The Baltimore Museum of Industry on Key Highway in South Baltimore, housed in a former oyster cannery on the waterfront, documents the industrial heritage of Maryland and Baltimore through exhibits on the canning industry, garment manufacturing, printing, and the development of the Chesapeake Bay working water trade. The museum operates a 1906 steam tugboat, the S.S. Baltimore, for harbor excursions. Baltimore was one of the most industrially diverse cities in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with production in canning, shipbuilding, copper, fertilizer, clothing, and dozens of other industries. The Domino Sugar refinery plant on South Locust Point, still in operation, produces the most recognizable waterfront odor in Baltimore and its neon sign is a landmark visible across the harbor. The sugary smell on certain wind directions is considered by longtime residents as quintessentially Baltimore in the same way that other cities have their own distinctive urban olfactory signatures.
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Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore
The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States and one of the most ecologically productive in the world, shapes Baltimore culture, economy, and cuisine more than any other geographic feature. The bay stretches 200 miles from its headwaters at the Susquehanna River in northeastern Maryland to its mouth at Virginia Beach, covering 4,480 square miles of open water with 11,000 miles of shoreline. Blue crab, oyster, rockfish, and waterfowl hunting are the foundations of Chesapeake food and sporting culture. St. Michaels, Annapolis, and Oxford on the Eastern Shore are the most visited bay towns from Baltimore. The Bay Bridge connecting Annapolis to the Eastern Shore has been widened multiple times and remains insufficient during peak summer beach traffic. Chesapeake Bay water quality improvement has been a major regional environmental effort since the 1980s, with nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from agriculture the primary challenge. Oyster restoration programs have rebuilt reefs in some tributaries.
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Fells Point Maritime District
Fells Point, established in 1730 by William Fell on the north shore of the Patapsco River, is the oldest surviving maritime neighborhood in Baltimore, predating the Inner Harbor development, and retains 18th and 19th century brick warehouses and rowhouses along the waterfront. The neighborhood was the center of Baltimore shipbuilding in the era of wooden sailing ships and was where the Baltimore Clipper, the fast sailing ship design used for privateering and the slave trade, was developed. Fells Point was nearly demolished in the 1960s when Interstate 83 was planned through the waterfront, but community resistance, one of the earliest successful freeway revolts in American history, saved the neighborhood and established it as the model for historic preservation advocacy in Baltimore. The cobblestone streets, bars on Thames Street, the Broadway Market, and the waterfront promenade make Fells Point the most visited neighborhood by visitors after the Inner Harbor.
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Walters Art Museum and Sculpture
The Walters Art Museum at 600 North Charles Street in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, which opened the current building in 1909 and has been free to the public since 2000, houses one of the most comprehensive art collections in any American museum, covering nearly 5,000 years from ancient Egypt through the early 20th century with particular strength in medieval art, Byzantine artifacts, Renaissance and Baroque paintings, Asian art, and the collection of 19th century French academic and orientalist painting assembled by William and Henry Walters. The collection of over 36,000 objects was assembled almost entirely by two men, father and son, through disciplined collecting over 60 years. The Hackerman House adjacent to the main museum provides additional gallery space. The Walters free admission policy, combined with the BMA free admission policy, makes Baltimore one of the most generous cities in America for free museum access to world-class collections.
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Artscape and Baltimore Arts Calendar
Artscape, held annually in July along Mount Royal Avenue near the Maryland Institute College of Art in the Station North neighborhood, is the largest free arts festival in the United States, drawing over 350,000 visitors over three days with music on multiple stages, visual art exhibitions, craft vendors, food, and public art installations. The Maryland Institute College of Art, founded in 1826, is one of the oldest and most respected art colleges in the United States and a significant driver of creative industry in Baltimore. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District, designated in 2002 around the MICA campus, contains galleries, studios, performance spaces, and the Charles Theater, one of the finest independent cinemas in the mid-Atlantic region. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall has been one of the stronger American orchestras. Baltimore has a deep theater culture through Center Stage, the state theater of Maryland, and theater companies across the city.