Editor’s note: This article won second place (Division O) in the Features-driven Multimedia Storytelling category of the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association’s 2021 Contest. Read our other award-winning pieces here.
Throughout Baltimore, neglected beauty abounds in the city’s parks and open spaces. They are the tarnished jewels, awaiting attention.
As the city grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, land was set aside as open space. But parks compete with schools, public safety and economic development for attention. The city’s financial constraints hamper maintenance.
Baltimore Fishbowl asked photographer Carl Schmidt of Federal Hill Photography to capture images of a sampling of parks.
The images in the linked slide show the beauty and challenges at Carroll Park, Baltimore’s third oldest city park, which was originally part of the vast Mount Clare estate owned by Charles Carroll, a Barrister in the mid-18th century; Mount Pleasant Park, three separate fields with dilapidated turf, rusting backstops and field goals that are barely standing; and Preston Gardens, a linear park along Saint Paul Street built between 1914 and 1918, replacing an historic Black neighborhood.[metaslider id=140799]
