For Baltimoreans of a certain age, the former Greyhound bus station on Howard Street is a place that triggers memories – as a starting point for distant travels, the first stop for visitors arriving in town, the only downtown landmark with illuminated dogs on the side of the building.
For U. S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, it was a place to get a job.
“I shined shoes on these floors in 1965” at age 17, he recalled this week. “My mother died when I was very, very young. You either shined shoes or you worked up at Lexington Market and carried bags to make money. So this place has a special significance to me.”
Soon, the old bus station will trigger a different set of memories. Mfume and other elected officials and community leaders broke ground on Thursday for a $14.9 million adaptive reuse project that will transform it into the SquashWise Center, the headquarters of Baltimore SquashWise, a non-profit organization offering youth programs that combine tutoring and athletics.
Approximately 200 people gathered in the bus station’s former waiting room to hear about SquashWise’s plans for the conversion and watch as dignitaries threw shovelfuls of dirt in the air to get it started.
The building has been substantially gutted in preparation for the work, and speakers made more than a few references to its past.
“There’s great historical significance here,” said SquashWise executive director Abby Markoe. “This building brings us great stories and memories.”
With Thursday’s groundbreaking, she said, “we are building a new kind of community, bringing people together across racial, economic and geographic difference to discover and develop their love of squash, all of this in a location with great public transit and in a building that holds deep meaning for the region. Many people have journeyed through it.”
Opening in 2025
Founded in 2007, SquashWise offers a combination of tutoring, squash coaching and competition, fitness, and college and career readiness for Baltimore City students, with more than 80 percent of its students going on to college. For years it operated out of the Meadow Mill Athletic Club in Woodberry. After Meadow Mill closed in 2021, it moved to temporary quarters on Sisson Street while its leaders made plans and raised funds for a permanent home.
Part of the city’s Mount Vernon historic district, the building at 601 N. Howard St. served as Baltimore’s Greyhound bus station from 1941 to 1987, one of more than 60 stations around the country designed by William Strudwick Arrasmith. Since then it has been a staging area for film production in the city and administrative offices for Maryland Center for History and Culture, among other uses.
SquashWise acquired the property in May of 2021 from the Maryland Center for History and Culture, which owns the rest of the block. PI.KL Studio is the architect and J. C. Porter Construction LLC is the general contractor.
Exterior restoration plans have been approved by Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architecture Preservation. Interior plans call for SquashWise Center to contain six squash courts, three classrooms, fitness space, meeting areas and a kitchen. Markoe said the new building will enable SquashWise to substantially increase the number of youth participants, while also serving as a hub for community gatherings and events.
SquashWise aims to complete construction in time to open its new center in mid to late 2025. Board vice president Douglas Hoffberger announced that the organization has successfully completed its capital campaign, having raised $14.9 million. He said contributions ranged from $4 to $4 million, the latter sum coming as a combination of several sources from the state of Maryland.
Markoe said SquashWise is looking for people to be part of a “Founding Members’ Circle” of donors who will receive a lifetime membership to the facility when it opens and that the organization has launched a program called School Squash that brings squash to Baltimore City public schools.
Eventually, she said, she hopes SquashWise Center will be a place where teachers and principals will bring students on field trips, in the same way students now visit the National Aquarium, Maryland Science Center and Hippodrome Theatre.
“We want to be one of those cultural institutions that Baltimore City public school students can check out during the school day,” she said.
A complicated game
One champion of the project is Maryland State Del. Mark Edelson, representing the 46th District. He said he was born in South Africa, where squash is popular, and played in a program that is “almost identical” to SquashWise.
Edelson said squash is a sport that requires quick thinking as well as athleticism.
“Squash is a very complicated game and it really, really pushes your brain,” he said. “You really are playing [with] geometry — thinking about the lines, the fact that the ball doesn’t bounce so much. You’re trying to outthink your opponent and get a better place on the court. There’s so many aspects of learning and training that it has for young people.”
State Comptroller Brooke Lierman said the sport helps young people build self-confidence, especially the first time they win a match.
“It’s amazing to see how powerful sports can be…. It transforms their lives,” she said. Winning at sports and excelling in school gives students a sense that “they can go on and do whatever it is that they want to do in life.”
“What’s happening here at SquashWise is remarkable,” said State Sen. Antonio Hayes. “Oftentimes … we hear about young people being a problem in our communities. SquashWise is really demonstrating for all of us that our young people are solutions to our communities in a major way, not only excelling in the sport of squash but also excelling in their classrooms.”
The adaptive reuse aspect of the project shows what can happen when communities give old buildings new life, Hayes added. In the General Assembly, elected officials “work really hard to leverage those dollars that we have to transform places like this that are abandoned,” he said.
Sign of the past
As part of the conversion, SquashWise is keeping one remnant of the building’s years as a bus depot. On display Thursday was one of two illuminated Greyhound dog signs that were mounted on the building’s exterior when it was a bus station – the bus company’s logo. It had been kept in storage by the Maryland Center for History and Culture, which donated it to SquashWise. The other sign remains part of the museum’s collection.
Markoe said the Greyhound sign will be installed on an interior wall above new squash courts as a reminder of the building’s history. She said the station’s original terrazzo floors remain and portions will be visible between the squash courts.
Even as the building changes, Markoe said, SquashWise doesn’t want to lose sight of its past. She told a story about two SquashWise graduates, twins who discovered they have a family connection to the building.
“When two of our graduates – Deon and Keon Rosado (who, by the way are about to graduate from Dickinson College and Morehouse College) – visited the building, they shared a story with me,” she said. “Their great-great-grandfather traveled from Georgia to Maryland during the Great Migration on a Greyhound bus through this very station. This is how their family became Baltimoreans, and how Deon and Keon eventually became a part of the SquashWise community.”
The building’s location on Howard Street is significant too, she said.
“Howard Street is also an incredibly important part of Baltimore’s history, a social and economic hub that went into decline unfortunately in the ‘60s and ‘70s but also an important part of the civil rights history in Baltimore,” she said. “We recognize at SquashWise the significance … not only for our program and mission but for Baltimore and Maryland at large.”
I want to work with Mariachi Vargas and Greyhound and Police 🚔 Department