Would you ever guess that your neighborhood shopping center had been built atop a historic black burial ground? That’s just what happened in the case of the Belair Edison Crossing strip mall, where University of Baltimore anthropology professor Ronald Costanzo in 2015 discovered a white tombstone poking through a parking lot.
Slightly more than two years ago, Islamic State militants stormed through Mosul, Iraq, destroying priceless artifacts that its members had deemed “idolatrous.” This week at the Columbus Center in the Inner Harbor, Light City is offering a chance to visitors to peer in at these lost relics using augmented and virtual reality tools.
Although the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture opened Saturday in the heart of Washington, the state of Maryland from which D.C. was carved has a strong presence.
If you tuned in to WEAA last week, you might have heard something different — and exciting — come over the airwaves. Baltimore journalist Stacia L. Brown
just launched a new audio documentary series, The Rise of Charm City, which debuted on the station last week. The series aims to tell intergenerational stories about place and memory in Baltimore City — the kinds of stories you don’t really hear anywhere else. Baltimore Fishbowl chatted with Stacia about this new program:
Your new documentary series, The Rise of Charm City, recently launched. Tell us a little bit about how the project came to be, and where you hope to go with it.
I applied for a grant with AIR’s Localore: Finding America project. It’s an initiative that aims to bring innovative storytelling projects to public radio in cities across the country, in an effort to attract underrepresented and marginalized voices to public radio and/or to introduce the uninitiated to public radio-listening. I applied on behalf of myself, as an independent producer. WEAA 88.9 FM also applied, separately, as a station. Both the station and I were selected as finalists for Baltimore. We were then paired and we developed our project from there. We want to celebrate locations and neighborhoods that haven’t gotten enough shine.
As we noted yesterday, there’s growing momentum behind a campaign to replace Andrew Jackson, arguably the engineer of genocide, on the $20 bill. The leading contender to replace him? None other than Underground Railroad hero Harriet Tubman. Which is an awesome idea.
The Atlantic’s City Lab has turned up an amazing (and amusing) piece of Baltimore history: the 1914 program for the centennial commemoration of the War of 1812.
The bragging starts early on — in paragraph one, in fact:
Baltimore, as far as the memory of man runneth, has always been big. … Baltimore has been bountifully endowed by nature, and nature is being assisted by those most skilled in civic development.
$425,000
4305 Roundnoll Road, Baldwin
4 bedroom(s), 3 bathroom(s)
The current owners of this house have long been impressed with its history. Here are a stories they’ve enjoyed:
Still looking for a great way to spend this Mother’s Day? Make it a relaxing one with the 43rd Annual Historic Harbor House Tour of Fell’s Point. The tour consists of about a dozen houses, including such “perennials” as the Robert Long House and Colonial Garden, the Thomas Lamdin House, and “The Palace on Dallas.” The other homes will include an assortment of Fell’s Point residences ranging from cozy historic houses with beautiful urban gardens to dramatic, light-filled contemporary homes. Docents will be available at each location to further educate guests on the history of the home and the style and unique characteristics found within, as well as the story of the owners. That being said, the tour is self-guided, so you can take the time you need and go at your (and mom’s) own pace.
You know those creepy mental asylums in horror movies? Well, this story about Rosewood, the Baltimore-area mental hospital that closed in 2009, is about that bad.
“Evil wore tightly laced girdles under fashionable gowns. Scheming in embroidered cloche hats, it sipped tea and fingered jewels while listening to the gossip of the haut monde,” Slate writer Jesse Bering says about the Rosewood story — but that kind of purple prose isn’t really necessary when the plain-spoken truth is dark enough.
