Four years ago, as Baltimore grappled with the pandemic and emerged from the divisive first presidency of Donald Trump, there came an idea from inside a rowhouse on Lanvale Street in Bolton Hill: Let’s get people together, let’s get them outdoors, and let’s do it across the racial dividing line of Eutaw Place.
Let’s do it with music.
Let’s call it Arts in the Parks, with an emphasis on parks. There are 29 parks, pocket size and up, in Bolton Hill, Marble Hill and Madison Park. That’s 29 places where people can gather, have an evening picnic and listen to some music. So let’s have a series of weeknight concerts, with music ranging from jazz to blues to folk, over the summer in parks on both sides of Eutaw Place.
It was Lee Tawney, a 44-year resident of Bolton Hill, who got Arts in the Parks started with the help of the Madison Park Improvement Association and the Historic Marble Hill Community Association.
“The Bolton Hill, Madison Park and Marble Hill neighborhoods have been divided historically and socially by the Eutaw Place median, the [north-south] ‘red line’ from North Avenue to Dolphin Street,” Tawney told me when he first rolled out the idea, in the summer of 2021. “We view our Arts in the Parks program as an opportunity to break down the divide.”
Tawney has since become president of the Bolton Hill Community Association, and this week he released the schedule for the 5th Annual Arts in the Parks — 10 summer picnic concerts in nine locations, starting July 10 in Sumpter Park with the jazz stylings of Todd Marcus.
Sumpter Park, between Laurens and Robert streets, is named after Arnold E. Sumpter, a city recreation worker who was the victim of senseless gun violence while on the job in 1971.
There are two concerts scheduled for Sumpter, the second in early September featuring Charm City Junction.
The park is just a block from Eutaw Place, the historic divide, by race and class, between Bolton Hill and West Baltimore.
The street is a beauty, and more boulevard than street — nine tree-lined blocks of great rowhouses and a wide, shady median that pretty much constitutes a public park. It’s one of the most impressive streets in the city.
Also along Eutaw, in the 1500 block, is Unity Hall, a nonprofit community center that was established a few years ago with a mission to go with its name — to confront the effects of segregation, racist redlining and disinvestment on central-west Baltimore: “Unity Hall’s establishment at this dividing line has been pivotal in breaking down historic barriers, promoting unity among diverse communities, and providing accessible services.”
In a 2019 Fishbowl story about the conversion of its building from union hall to multipurpose center, a founder expressed hope that Unity Hall would “be a place to bridge that invisible boundary between what is white Baltimore and what is black Baltimore.”
The center offers space for arts and education, job training and community events.
So, while the Trump administration in Washington conducts a purge of formal efforts toward diversity, equality and inclusion, the efforts at bridge-building continue along Eutaw Place in Baltimore.
Here’s the program for summer music:
July 10: Todd Marcus at Sumpter Park
July 17: Ken and Brad Kolodner at Rutter’s Mill Park
July 24: Seth Kibel at John Street Park
July 31: Jimmy Wilson at F. Scott Fitzgerald Park
Aug. 7: The Craig Alston Syndicate at Rozen Ridgely Park
Aug. 14: Ray Winder at Maple Leaf Park
Aug. 21: Gregory Thompkins & Old School at Lena K. Lee Park
Aug. 28: Abu the Great Flutemaker at 1429 Eutaw Place
Sept. 4: Charm City Junction at Sumpter Park
Sept. 11: Barrage Band Orchestra at Linden Park Apartments
Arts in the Parks 2025 concludes with a Sept. 24 birthday party in honor of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in F. Scott Fitzgerald Park. The novelist once resided at 1307 Park Ave. in Bolton Hill. The park is located at Wilson and Bolton streets.
