January 2006 Issue

january 2006

B A L T I M O R E

issue no. 19

are suburbs the new cities? are cities the new suburbs?

THIS MONTH’S GUEST EDITOR KARRIE JACOBS | COMING OF AGE IN COLUMBIA AN ESSAY BY STEPHEN AMIDON DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH A SURPRISING FIND FOR FOODIES | OFF THE GRID MARYLAND’S NEW SOLAR HOUSE

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contents

19 corkboard 21 have you heard …

25 food: strip mall surprise anne haddad

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29 baltimore observed: the town that wouldn’t budge jason tinney

33 space: the evolution of the house alice ockleshaw

39 encounter: along baltimore street photo essay by neil hertz

44 developing downtown

44

michael stern

48 skipping the city for the suburbs: q & a with audrey singer tom waldron

50 essay: a “new town” childhood stephen amidon

53 poetry: poem for people who are understandably too busy to read poetry

50

stephen dunn

55 sustainable city: solar systems julie gabrielli

59 out there: suburban case study: westchester jessica leshnoff

63 in review 67 resources

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70 eye to eye cover note: composite photograph by Alex Castro f r o m p h o t o g r a p h s b y H e l l i n K a y.

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Urbanite Issue 19 January 2006 Publisher Tracy Ward Durkin Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth A. Evitts Elizabeth@urbanitebaltimore.com Guest Editor Karrie Jacobs Assistant Editor Marianne Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com Copy Editors Karen Baxter/Alter Communications Angela Davids/Alter Communications Contributing Editors William J. Evitts Joan Jacobson Susan McCallum-Smith Catherine Pierre Contributing Writer Jason Tinney Art Director Alex Castro Production Manager Lisa Macfarlane Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com Production and Design Assistance Ida Woldemichael Senior Account Executive Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com Account Executives Darrel Butler Darrel@urbanitebaltimore.com Keri Haas Keri@urbanitebaltimore.com Office Manager Bellee Gossett Bellee@urbanitebaltimore.com Marketing Kathleen Dragovich Interns Mike Meno Jonathan J. Stein Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial Inquiries: Send queries to the editor-in-chief (no phone calls, please) including SASE. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission

by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2006, by Urbanite LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at 410-243-2050.

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urbanite january 06

editor’s note

quotes BALTIM ORE

We cannot continue to believe that the landscape is sacred and the city profane. They must both be considered sacred.

—Paul Murrain, urban designer and consultant

—Canadian Journalist Larry Frolick from his article “Suburbia’s Last Stand”

F

or thirteen years my parents lived in Williamsville, a small section of Amherst, New York, outside of Buffalo. Williamsville is your classic American suburb. A web of streets and strip malls connects pockets of residential neighborhoods with housing types ranging from bungalows to McMansions. It has lots of enclosed shopping and lots of surface parking. It has low crime, an enviable public school system, decent parks, and a relatively homogeneous population.

When I first visited my parents in the 1990s, I immediately noticed that residents of Williamsville don’t walk. One crystalline winter morning I set out on foot to get milk from the grocery store, the equivalent of walking a long city block. As I rounded the bend of Cobblestone Lane and headed towards the gated exit, one of the neighbors shouted out.

“Honey! Are you OK?” “I’m walking to the store.” The lady looked perplexed. I pointed to the strip mall’s canopied frame, which was visible from her front porch.

“Did your car break down? Are your parents home?” She started to put her coat on. “Let me give you a ride.”

“No, no, that’s OK. I want to walk.”

She stared at me.

At first I ascribed the lack of pedestrians to snow. But in truth, Western New Yorkers are proud of their ability to weather the elements. I soon realized that pedestrian life was thwarted by infrastructure.

At the main thoroughfare outside my parent’s development, the sidewalk lessened to a few feet.

Across the busy intersection, there was a vehicular entrance to the store’s expansive parking lot, but no sidewalk and definitely no pedestrian crossing. After playing a live-action game of Frogger, I realized the reason for the woman’s concern: Being a pedestrian in Williamsville was downright dangerous. Roads were primary, sidewalks peripheral—little slices of concrete precipitously flanking busy bands of blacktop.

Design has determined behavior. In Williamsville, as in many American suburbs, you don’t walk.

You “take” walks. Taking a walk is a thing you do for exercise after dinner and it usually means following a well-worn path around the cul de sac or through one of the designated “walking trails” in the town. Walking in Williamsville is like walking on a treadmill: It is focused, literal, and relatively bland. For any real daily needs, you strap yourself into your car and you drive.

This defines a very simple difference between traditional American cities and their suburbs. From something as simple as the ability to walk to places, cities offer a spontaneity not often found in suburban communities. You can’t randomly bump into people in cars, at least not without getting sued.

But now, it seems cities and suburbs are beginning to blur. Urban attributes are being emulated in suburbia. In his article on the new Metro Center at Owings Mills (p. 44), architect and urban planner Michael Stern evaluates the developers’ attempt to create a walkable Main Street hub. In return, cities find themselves imitating some of the things that suburban dwellers demand, trying to lure them back downtown with new homes that include multi-car garages, great rooms, and seclusion from the street.

As I drove along the newly developed Boston Street in Canton the other day, I watched a pedestrian playing his own version of Frogger amidst the car-clogged street, and I thought back to Williamsville. We have long known that cities and suburbs are economically linked. Now, it is fruitful to think about how they are beginning to affect, and to learn from, each other culturally.

In the meantime, my parents have moved back to Baltimore City. They’re coming over later.

They’re walking.

—Elizabeth A. Evitts

photo by Sam Holden

Cars do not allow for spontaneity—not when you must make twenty lights for a bowl of potato soup.

They may be America’s last pioneers, urban nomads in search of wide open interior spaces.

—Cathleen McGuigan, senior editor and writer for Newsweek

The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.

—Marshall McLuhan, American media and culture guru

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

—Charles Lamb, British essayist and poet

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear ... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

—J. G. Ballard, British novelist

There are some places [outside Pleasantville] that the road doesn’t go in a circle. There are some places where the road keeps going.

—Tobey Maguire as David in the 1998 film Pleasantville

In the suburbs you have backyard decks; in towns you have porches on the street.

—Andrés Duany, architect, urban planner, and cofounder of the New Urbanism movement

The majority of sprawl in this country is produced by those who are fleeing from sprawl.

—Alex Krieger, urban planner, author, and Harvard professor

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contributors

behind this issue

photo courtesy of Michael Stern

photo courtesy of Jessica Leshnoff

self portrait

Stephen Amidon Stephen Amidon was born in Chicago and raised in a variety of suburbs, most notably Columbia, Maryland, which served as the inspiration for his 2000 novel The New City. Amidon’s experiences as a teenager in Columbia and the effect that it had on his writing is the subject of his essay “A ‘New Town’ Childhood” (p. 50). After graduating from college and waking up to the reality of life as a poor writer in Reagan’s America, Amidon fled to London, where he spent thirteen years working in a variety of jobs, including film critic for the Financial Times and books editor for Esquire UK. The author of five novels and a book of short stories, he currently lives in decidedly nonsuburban western Massachusetts with his wife and four children.

Gail Burton Gail Burton, a Baltimore native and graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, shot the photographs for this month’s article “Strip Mall Surprise” (p. 25). Burton has never been interested in strip malls, but after photographing and meeting the owner of Salsa Grill, she believes she’ll be more open-minded: “You never know what little gem may be hiding in a strip mall.”

Burton shoots news, features, and sports for the Associated Press. Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN The Magazine. She lives in Federal Hill.

Jessica Leshnoff Jessica Leshnoff, who wrote “Suburban Case Study: Westchester” (p. 59), likes both cities and suburbs, but she prefers the city: “Although I love the brightly lit, fully stocked Giants and Targets of the suburbs, I’d choose walking for a cup of coffee over ten different types of hummus any day.”

Leshnoff, who grew up in a New Jersey suburb near New York City, currently works for Maryland Public Television; before that, she was a U.S. correspondent for the London-based news agency ResearchResearch, where she covered American research and science policy. Her work has appeared in The Washington Times, The Washington Post, Baltimore’s City Paper, On Tap Magazine, and American Journalism Review.

Michael Stern Michael Stern is a principal at Strada, a Pittsburgh-based design firm that specializes in urban planning and architecture.

After studying the Owings Mills suburb some ten years ago, Stern refocuses his attention on the new Metro Center at Owings Mills project for his feature article “Developing Downtown” (p. 44). He believes the development represents a larger movement toward integrating transit and urban planning. “Progressive communities are realizing that transportation infrastructure investments ought to be capitalized on through good planning [that can] create walkable communities,” he says. Stern has served as the project director and urban designer for the Pittsburgh Downtown Plan, a master plan for that city; co-authored the Pittsburgh Regional Parks Master Plan, which restored the city’s major parks; and taught at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.

When we decided to explore the blurring lines between urban and suburban landscapes this month, our first choice for guest editor was Karrie Jacobs. Few other journalists have written so eloquently about the richness and ridiculousness of the American built environment. After four years as the architecture critic for New York magazine, Jacobs moved to San Francisco in 1999 to become the founding editor of Dwell magazine. Now back in Brooklyn, Jacobs writes a monthly column called “America” for Metropolis magazine and contributes to a number of publications, including Travel + Leisure. This summer, Viking will publish her book, The Perfect $100,000 House. As we talked about the content for this issue of Urbanite, Jacobs began to think about her own fascination with the American subdivision …

self portrait

photo courtesy of Stephen Amidon

with guest editor karrie jacobs

E

very now and then I go on what I think of as a “subdivision date.” There is no romance involved, no necking in dimly lit cul de sacs or rolling around in deep suburban carpeting. Recently, however, I did watch an extraordinarily lovely sunset, the wispy clouds turning magenta, over something called Gale Ranch, a “master planned community” located in the rugged brown hills of Contra Costa County, California. My subdivision date that day was with a photographer named Bill Owens. Back in the 1970s, Owens turned his exploration of newly emerging California landscapes into a book called Suburbia.

Owens, who is now working on a new version of Suburbia, had read something I’d written about a Southern California town called Rancho Cucamonga and invited me to see a subdivision near his East Bay home. Late one Sunday afternoon, we drove round and round the meandering streets of Gale Ranch, through neighborhoods called Wisteria, Veranda, and Monarch, looking at endless acres of alternating faux Spanish, faux Craftsman, and faux Tudor homes filling the hollows between hills. We stopped to inspect the model homes in a part of the development called “Gallery” where a million-plus dollars will buy a 4,000-square-foot McMansion. We wandered through the many rooms of the Bellevue, the Whitney, and the Getty models. In each one I would seek out the master bath; I’m fascinated by the idea of luxury represented by these oversized rooms with their jumbo spa tubs placed front and center like shrines. Owens, for his part, seemed most interested in the way the late day sunlight played off the palette of shiny new materials.

I go on my subdivision dates, driving through someone else’s fantasy of the good life, because I don’t exactly get it, although I’m a child of the suburbs: My hometown was an early twentiethcentury real estate development, one of a cluster of bedroom communities tied to New York City by the George Washington Bridge, a fading commuter rail line, and myriad bus routes. In many respects, it is the model for the perfect little towns that the New Urbanists build today. It was a mile square, utterly walkable, had a healthy downtown and a certain amount of character. (It was also, like many small towns, a mean-spirited, oppressive, narrow place, a possibility the New Urbanists don’t generally engage.) But it is nothing like most of the subdivisions that are built today. It had none of that non-specific dreaminess of the places concocted by America’s commercial homebuilders.

No matter how many subdivisions I visit, I can’t quite grasp the relationship of the built environment to the landscape. To me, these places are as elusive as earthworks, the kind of art pieces that decades ago attempted to alter how we see the natural world. But subdivisions are works of a scale that Robert Smithson—the artist responsible for the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake—could never have realized. In fact, I am always trying to tease some sort of aesthetic truth out of subdivisions. For instance, on a subdivision date near Denver, a friend and I drove around the master planned community that replaced the old Stapleton International Airport, and we noticed how lovely a street of seemingly identical homes looked when they were just raw, uncovered fiberboard, before the layers of faux history had been applied. Eventually, I want to write about how these communities shape the landscape, how they move the land around as the prehistoric glaciers did.

When I go on subdivision dates with photographers like Owens, I wind up jealous of their medium. Taking a picture of a place is so much more direct than writing about it. Me, I go and I look, but I’m still not sure about what it is that I want to say. Perhaps some day, in some remote subdivision, I will have a moment of insight and clarity. I will be like Buddha beneath the Bodhi tree, except that I will be in the bonus room or master suite of a model home. At that point, I will stop dating and get serious about subdivisions. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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what you’re saying

Open to Spirituality What a pleasure it was to read your November 2005 issue. I salute the Urbanite staff in putting together such a wonderfully diverse and open issue about spirituality.

In my seven years of research in the Baltimore area that led to my book, If I Gave You God’s Phone Number, I too found a rich tapestry of voices and beliefs that spoke to the God experience. One learning that I arrived at was that all of us do indeed have our own unique relationship with God. What surprised me when I did the interviews and when I led discussions while promoting the book was not only how spiritually hungry so many people are, but how many people hunger to talk about their spiritual experiences in a safe venue.

Time and time again, in bookstore discussions, total strangers opened up and talked about their personal awakenings or experiences, but they also stated that they usually never talked about these because they did not feel safe doing so.

When I read in Lea Gilmore’s guest editor essay, “I love the joy and freedom of knowing that what I believe is what I believe, what you believe is what you believe, and that is what makes us so darn wonderful,” I wanted to especially honor and thank Urbanite for such openness.

—Mare Cromwell is a writer and environmental consultant who lives in Dickeyville.

effort made to include what may not be mainstream, but is certainly no less valid.

The spiritual path that I am describing is at the core of the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria and eastern Benin who speak Yoruba, a NigerCongo language. As the executive director/founder of OYO Traditions Cultural Arts Institute in Baltimore, I have worked for years researching, preserving, and presenting to others the culture and tradition of Africa and the diaspora. We have conducted several sacred rites and celebrating ceremonies for the greater public so as to inform them of what our religion is and what it is not. I respectfully ask that for any future articles on religion/spirituality you would also include this religious practice that has been around since the beginning of time.

the impact of stress can effectively end this health problem.

Perhaps there would be room in future issues to present some of this exciting work that has so much potential to help eradicate this huge problem we face in Baltimore.

—Janet Smith is the director of the Maharishi Enlightenment Center of Baltimore. She lives in Lutherville.

For more information, visit the websites for Institute of Science, Technology, and Public Policy (www. istpp.org) and the Transcendental Meditation Program (www.TM.org).

Corrections

—Iyaolorisha Ogunronke is the executive director and founder of OYO Traditions Cultural Arts Institute and a priest of Ile Ogun.

Meditating on Change In response to the article “The Pathology of Murder: Is Homicide a Health Problem?” by Bill Mesler (November 2005), I wanted to write to you regarding a solution to this problem that has already been documented to work.

The Crime Vaccine: How to End the Crime Epidemic, Jay B. Marcus’s 1996 book, explains how developing consciousness and systematically reducing

Map, please! In the November “Food” department, we mistakenly placed Hamilton in northwest Baltimore.

It is located in northeast Baltimore.

The December “Editor’s Note” stated that the text that would become the Archimedes palimpsest was written by the mathematician in the tenth century. It should have read that the text of Archimedes was copied in the tenth century.

In the December “Have You Heard” department, we misspelled the name of Shananigans Specialty Toy Shop owner David Stelzer.

Another Way to Worship I found your November 2005 issue, specifically the two articles “The Topography of Faith” by Tom Waldron and “Portraits of Belief ” by Jason Tinney, very interesting. I would like to make you aware that there is a growing number of people in Baltimore, in particular African Americans, who embrace and practice the religious/spiritual path of their cultural heritage. Here in the states it is known as Orisha worship, Ifa, or Lucumi. The tradition has also survived in Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and Trinidad, and there are practitioners in Germany and China.

It continues to spread all over the world.

More often than not, this African-centered belief system is overlooked, denounced as pagan, or simply dismissed. I am not saying that the authors of the articles attempted to do this, but it always seems that only mainstream religions or spiritual paths are recognized and given attention, while African-centered spirituality remains overlooked. This is something that I would like to change. If diversity and tolerance are to be effective, there should be an

update There have been some interesting developments since we wrote about Steve Case’s investment company, Revolution LLC, in our October 2005 issue. Case, a cofounder of AOL, resigned from the board of Time Warner, Inc. on October 31, 2005 in order to devote more time to Revolution LLC and its healthcare arm, Revolution Health Group.

The company has recently made several acquisitions within our region. Revolution Health Group acquired Bethesda-based Wondir, which combines search engine and message board technologies, as well as MyDNA Media, a supplier of health news and information, based in Washington, D.C. Revolution Health Group also purchased a controlling interest in ConnectYourCare, Inc., a

Timonium company that offers Internet-based tools and services for consumer-directed healthcare management.

“With these initial investments, we are on our way to building a company that puts patients back in control of their health care decisions,” Case said in a recent Revolution Health Group announcement.

While many critics and analysts have questioned Case’s motivation for leaving Time Warner, it seems that his future now lies with Revolution and its ongoing campaign to offer American consumers increased health care options in three areas: content, coverage, and care.

—Mike Meno w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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what you’re writing

culture shock I had a chance to talk to an older couple last week.

Married for more than fifty years, they spoke of experiencing “real struggle.” They lived through the fear and violence of the Civil Rights era—call it an extended code red for those who believe we can codify terror.

“The youth of today won’t live for anything, but they’ll die for nothing,” the husband said, and his wife agreed.

“Do you hold us all with such little regard?”

I asked.

“In the ’60s, we were poor in terms of resources.

Today we face a poverty of the spirit and the mind,” said the husband, again with his wife’s agreement.

“We do live in a very different era,” I responded.

“In the ’60s, we were less connected in a technological sense. However, we were more connected spiritually. We had to struggle hard to connect with others, and in the process, we became whole. There is no need for that anymore. There are groups of like-minded individuals all around us. We no longer have to strive to understand our friends or our enemies. A society is destined to fail when its members no longer desire to understand others because they will also have no desire to understand themselves.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Anthony Gayle is a doctoral student in math education at Morgan State University. He lives in Towson.

After I spent nearly a thousand dollars and six hours at the Motor Vehicle Administration, my 1989 Mazda passed the state inspection, and now the back of my car proudly displays a new Maryland plate. However, the screws holding the Washington, D.C. front plate have refused to budge, giving my car a disconcerting—if not illegal—dual identity.

In downtown Baltimore you’ll find me working for a large humanitarian aid organization in disaster response. We work in places where people, sometimes against their will, sometimes by free choice, are thrust into new environments amid unknown faces, languages, and cultures; people who, like me, suddenly find themselves dependent on the kindness of strangers.

“Is Centre Street that way?” I ask the man at the bus stop.

“Honey!” He laughs and points in the opposite direction. “Turn around!”

This, I think, is how refugees, hurricane victims, or newcomers must feel. They must close their eyes and take a deep breath before opening the door, wishing that when they exhale and open their eyes they will step into a familiar street with familiar smells and sounds and people.

But the life they have left—the life I have left— is not there when we open our eyes. We step through the door hearing the wind whisper “you don’t belong here,” and finding our place will be like wrenching out the rusty screws that hold my front license plate.

Necessary, but painful and daunting and sad.

“What You’re Writing” is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month, we pick a topic. Use this topic as a springboard into your own lives and send us true stories inspired by that month’s theme. Only nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We have the right to edit for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits.

You may submit under “name withheld” to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you’ve already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know. Due to libel and invasion of privacy issues, we reserve the right to print the piece under your initials.

Submissions should be typed (and if you cannot type, please print clearly) and sent to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, Maryland 21211 or to WhatYoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore .com. Please keep submissions under 500 words.

The themes printed below are for the “What You’re Writing” department only and are not the themes for future issues of the magazine itself.

Topic

Deadline

Publication

The Corner Store Jan 23, 2006

Apr 2006

Nakedness

Feb 13, 2006

May 2006

Playtime

Mar 12, 2006

June 2006

Kelsey Hoppe is the Indonesia program officer for disaster response at World Relief. She lives in Mount Vernon. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

15

Doing More For The Music.

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urbanite january 06

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urbanite january 06

c o r k b o aa rr dd

Duck-n-Roll

If you liked The Big Lebowski, you’ ll love Roo Café Duck-n-R ts oll nights at hi storic Seidel’s Bowling Cente r. On January 13 , The Swingin’ Swamis jam; on January 27, The Silos and June Star play alon g to the rhythm of duckpins be knocked down. ing

courtesy of Gallery G at the Beveled Edge

Miniature Show Gallery G at the Beveled Edge in Mount Washington presents its first annual Miniature Show, which features only works that measure 12 inches by 12 inches or smaller. The show includes pieces by more than thirty artists.

4443 Belair Roa d Shows start at 9 p.m. $10, includes bo wling; shoe re ntal $1; drinks snacks availabl and e Roots Café info rmation: 410-88 0-3883 Seidel’s Bowlin g Center: 410486-5171 www.rootscaf e.org

Show runs through January 31 5616 Newbury Street Mon through Fri 10–6; Sat 10–5 410-664-5700 www.thebevelededge.com

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade

The annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration Parade takes place s January 16 at noon. The procession begin King er Luth in Mart at the intersection of Jr. Boulevard and Eutaw Street and travels south down MLK. Community organizations, floats, church groups, marching bands, and more will appear.

1-877-BALTIMORE www.bop.org

nc e i s o nd a e s ou y Bre eH b offe osted eon C d h el n b ls , a m b u l ks g clu ha ll leve C o C o e a B n g h i f t t ’s o n t ren r of er s k ni tti Kni noe Childa weekly co-owneary; knitt Ca e ss an d in g Red offer artist is nec n e , i aga Smith erienc p lf o W . No ex . e é Caf elcom w d are R oa d r o arf day 7H r 433 y Satu r e v E .m . s 11 a r c l a s 0 e p z 444 $5 4 4 - an o e . b 4 410 .redc w ww

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Euphoria Filmmaker Lee Boot hosts a screening of Euphoria, his feature-length documentary about the pursuit of happiness in America. Filmed in Baltimore, Euphoria received a gold medal at the 2005 WorldFestHouston International Film Festival.

y of r t es

c ou

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ria L pho g Eu akin M 05

LC

Maryland Institute College of Art Brown Center, Falvey Hall 1301 West Mount Royal Avenue January 30 1:30 p.m.

Free 410-225-2300 www.mica.edu; www.theeuphoriaproject.com w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

19

The list of colleges that accepted

our graduates

last year is no guarantee of where your child will go.

But history does have a habit of repeating itself.

Acceptances include: Bates College Boston University Brown University Carnegie Mellon University Columbia University Cornell University Dickinson College Drexel University Emory University Franklin & Marshall College

Tufts University University of Chicago UMBC University of Maryland University of Michigan University of Pennsylvania Vanderbilt University Vassar College Washington University Wesleyan University Yale University

Georgetown University Harvard University Howard University Johns Hopkins University Middlebury College New York University Oberlin College St. Mary’s College Skidmore College Stanford University Swarthmore College

Daily Student Transportation Available

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Financial Consultant

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7 St. Paul Street, Suite 1600, Baltimore, MD 21202

(410) 576-3000 Citigroup, Inc., its affiliates, and its employees are not in the business of providing tax or legal advice. These materials and any tax-related statements are not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used or relied upon, by any such taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties. Tax-related statements, if any, may have been written in connection with the “promotion or marketing” of the transaction(s) or matters(s) addressed by these materials, to the extent allowed by applicable law. Any such taxpayer should seek advice based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor. ©2005 Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Member SIPC. Smith Barney is a division and service mark of Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and its affiliates and is used and registered throughout the world. CITIGROUP and the Umbrella Device are trademarks and service marks of Citicorp or its affiliates and are used and registered throughout the world.

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urbanite january 06

have you heard . . .

Once a funeral home in the late 1880s (and still inhabited, as the rumor goes, by spirits that are prone to pranks), Spirits Tavern opened its doors to the living this fall in a building that has housed bars for decades. The tavern’s atmosphere is a perfect marriage of upscale lounge and classic dive bar: Burled chestnut wood and red velvet curtains lend the interior a chic vibe, but the space still has the feel of a down-home spot perfect for meeting up with your old punk rock buddies. Owned by San Diego transplant Chad Michael Ellis and his dad, Danny Ellis, this place will satisfy both beer and whiskey

aficionados, as well as wine connoisseurs. The bar is stocked not only with some great beers, including Guinness, Samuel Smith, and various Clipper City brews, but also lots of good wine. Bar munchies, like quarter-pound all-beef hot dogs made in Baltimore and excellent homemade guacamole, are on the menu, along with fresh pâté and gourmet cheese plates to go with your vino. 1901 Bank Street; 410563-1612.

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

Tavern …

—Hellin Kay

Salon …

photo by Ethan Cook

Jill Sell, known for co-founding the Gspot: Audio/Visual Playground gallery and performance space in Hampden, has opened Alpha Salon and Spa, one of the few Aveda concept salons in the city. Sell transformed a classic Fells Point corner rowhouse into a bright, airy space that offers salon patrons a great view of the surrounding neighborhood. As an Aveda concept salon, Alpha utilizes only Aveda’s high-quality, environmentally sustainable hair and beauty products, and all employees are specially trained at Aveda courses and seminars. “The entire line, including hair color, is organically derived from plants and

flowers,” says Sell. Haircuts begin with a signature stress-relieving neck, shoulder, and scalp massage.

The salon carries Aveda’s full line of hair, skin, and makeup products and offers makeup application services for weddings, parties, and other events at which clients need to look their best. Later this winter, Sell plans to expand Alpha to offer facials, waxing, and other skin care treatments. Open Monday through Saturday. 817 South Bond Street; 410-3271300; www.alphastudiobaltimore.com.

—Marianne Amoss

Contest …

Dust off and freshen up all those scripts you have lying around: The Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, in partnership with the Morgan State University Film and Television Writing Program and the Johns Hopkins Film and Media Studies Program, is launching the first Baltimore Screenwriters Competition. Its aim is to create awareness of the screenplay as a literary art form and to help undiscovered screenwriters to get a foot in the door of the entertainment industry. Original, feature-length screenplays that can be filmed in Baltimore are eligible for entry. The deadline is January 17, and the application fee is $50. The final scripts will be judged by film industry professionals Marie Rowe (Wag the

Dog, Liberty Heights, Sleepers), David Simon (The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street, The Corner), and Richard Walter (head of UCLA’s Department of Film and Television and the author of Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing). The first-place winner will receive all kinds of film-related goodies, including a one-year membership to the American Film Institute, a reading at the 2006 Baltimore Book Festival, two VIP passes to The Senator Theatre, and an all-access pass to the 2006 Maryland Film Festival. www.bop.org/film/film.aspx.

—M. A.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

21

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urbanite january 06

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY

have you heard . . .

Music …

For six years, a group of thirty musicians has worked to classify songs from more than ten thousand artists into categories based on four hundred specific musical traits like melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics.

This endeavor, called the Music Genome Project, was designed to analyze and compare the structure of music, specifically jazz, indie, rock, and other popular music of the last sixty years. The project culminated in the August 2005 launch of Pandora, an online music discovery service. Pandora utilizes the analysis completed by the Music Genome Project to provide users with personalized radio stations. It matches songs or artists users enjoy with other music that

shares similar musical traits. Just type in an artist or song that you like and immediately Pandora creates a custom “station” composed of music that is akin to what you just entered. You can tweak your playlist as you listen by indicating whether you like or dislike the song, thereby controlling what the station offers you. An advertising-supported version of Pandora is free, or you can subscribe to an ad-free version for $36 a year or $12 for three months. Subscribers can maintain up to one hundred “stations” at a time and share their stations with friends via e-mail. www.pandora.com.

—Jonathan J. Stein

Magazine …

Brain, Child magazine is a quarterly publication that bills itself as “the magazine for thinking mothers.” Brain, Child is a step up from the typical parenting magazine. Each month, it offers all kinds of useful and thought-provoking articles, ideas, and discussions. The magazine’s features include short blurbs on news affecting parents and children, nonfiction essays, debates on hot issues, reviews, and fictional stories. The magazine deals with relevant and timely topics, like reading children’s e-mail, learning to say “no,” and the truth about fertility treatments. Brain,

Child, launched in 2000, is for moms (and dads!) who want to chew on something meatier than what is provided by other parenting publications, yet its appeal is not limited to parents; much of the information, stories, and debates aired out in this magazine are for everyone. Available at some Borders, Barnes & Noble, and other bookstores; magazines can be ordered from the website if not available in your area. www.brainchildmag.com.

—M.A.

Those who felt depressed at the news that Baltimore native Joseph Holtzman had stopped publishing his quarterly magazine, nest, will be cheered to know that he has put his unique curatorial eye to work designing the new Jason Jacques Inc. gallery space in Manhattan. The two-story gallery, which displays ceramics (mainly Art Nouveau and japonist) and pottery handpicked by owner Jacques, now resembles the work it exhibits. Holtzman “designed it from floor to ceiling,” says Jacques. Maryland artist Patrick O’Brien carried out some of Holtzman’s ideas, including painting the ceiling of the stairway

in a blue-and-white pattern similar to that of seventeenth and eighteenth century Delft pottery.

Holtzman also designed enormous circular shelving display units, a modern twist on the idea of the Chinese mandala. Holtzman created one of his signature lighting fixtures for Jacques’ gallery; he combined sockets and exposed wires, covered in beads, with crystals and jade opaline glass to create a stunning, sparkling, octopus-like light. 29 East 73rd Street; 212-535-7500; www.jasonjacques.com.

—M. A.

photo by Edie Bemben

Gallery …

Have you heard of something new and interesting in your neighborhood? E-mail us at HaveYouHeard@urbanitebaltimore.com. If we use your idea for a future Have You Heard, we’ll send you a $15 gift certificate for Daedalus Books Warehouse Outlet, redeemable in the bookstore or on the website (www.salebooks.com).

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

23

OVERLOOKING THE INNER HARBOR Serving Lunch & Dinner Sunday Brunch in enclosed terrace

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So are these: Shrimp and grits, lobster ravioli, ragout of wild mushrooms, scallop ceviche cocktail, Malaysian lamb sate with grilled pineapple, lobster and black bean fritters, Prince Edward Island mussels, oysters and scallops Rockefeller, crab cakes, seared tuna, beef carpaccio, baked Caesar salad, heirloom tomato salad, crab bisque… see Chef Ann’s whole Tex-Mex/Pacific Rim/Carolina/French-inspired menu in person at Belvedere Square. Dinner: Tues. - Sun.Closed Mondays.

Chef Ann Nault serves her house-cured tequila salmon gravlax with crème fraiche and garlic crostini.

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trust yourself

food

by anne haddad

photography by gail burton

Strip Mall Surprise Some of the best authentic cuisine can be found in nondescript shopping centers

Above: Salsa Grill earned a favorable Zagat rating for its Peruvian food.

Treasure is hiding in a plain-Jane vinyl-lined palace fortified on either side by dollar stores and beauty supply shops. The strip-mall restaurant may not get a lot of respect, but especially in the suburbs, it’s often the place to find the most authentic ethnic food alongside comforting American standards.

At this time of year, you can even drop your taxes off at the H&R Block a few doors down.

Many strip-mall restaurants are all about the food: They provide relatively cheap space for restaurateurs who care more about winning patrons with their recipes than with their atmosphere and address. Some of these joints do have exotic interiors, such as Parsa Kabob in Timonium and the Orchard Market Café in Towson, and some have entertainment like the belly dancing that happens on weekends at Amer’s Café in Fullerton. But in general, we’re looking at wipe-clean seating and paper placemats.

One example of great food in a stripped down environment is the Salsa Grill. Thriving on the busy lunch hours for the employees of the nearby Social Security Administration, Salsa Grill is located in a blah shopping center on Security Boulevard. It’s what owner Jay Angle calls a “Peruvian sub shop.”

But how many sub shops boast Spanish paella and seco de cabrito (goat stew)? The empanadas de

carne (meat pies) are the ultimate comfort food.

The kitchen makes its own croutons and dressing for the Caesar salad, and the crab cake is strictly jumbo lump.

“We draw people with our food—I’m not concerned about much else,” says Angle, 43. With a shrug, he adds, “I’m a country-club-trained chef, and I’m in a strip mall.”

Salsa Grill’s word-of-mouth reputation has grown steadily since Angle opened the eatery in 1993, and two years ago Salsa Grill earned a favorable Zagat rating for its mostly Peruvian food.

Salsa Grill has an American side of the menu, too. But why get a cheesesteak when you can get carne asada (grilled beef)? Kids will eat chicken tenders and fries, which are on the Salsa Grill menu, but they might also like arroz con pollo (rice with chicken)—and here they can find out.

Angle, born and raised in Towson, was a caterer and country-club chef twelve years ago when he and a colleague, a Peruvian-born chef named Emilio Torres, started looking for a space where they could operate a restaurant and catering business. Torres has since retired and moved to South Carolina.

Angle, who says he knows enough “kitchen Spanish” to communicate with his staff of mostly Central Americans, is perfectly happy to keep the w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

25

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urbanite january 06

authentic foods his former partner introduced to the menu, and he has even added some Salvadoran recipes provided by the mother of one of his waitresses.

One of his chefs, Henry Alvarez, is an accomplished pastry chef from Colombia who makes delicious dulces (desserts). If you’re lucky, you’ll be there on a one of the Friday nights when Alvarez whips up a batch of handmade marshmallows, which the restaurant sometimes doles out free to customers instead of the standard chips and salsa.

But how does a country-club chef end up in such a proletariat kitchen? Angle says it was purely a business decision. Torres found the space on Security Boulevard, and it appealed to Angle because of its proximity to Social Security’s huge workforce and the Beltway and I-70.

Angle decided that a local customer base and easy access to highways for catering were more important to him than aesthetics.

As for interior design, the dining room is decorated with Peruvian art, photos, and traditional clothing. But the first art that hits the eye when customers walk in is, in effect, the menu: poster-size, laminated photographs of food. This, Angle says, has been the biggest business booster.

“Customers come in, point, and say, ‘I want that,’” Angle explains.

The food is homemade, the menu ever-evolving, and the ingredients fresh. Last summer, Angle grew his own tomatoes for the restaurant. And this fall, Alvarez turned out doughnuts, using pumpkins that Angle grew on his brother’s land.

Diane Feffer Neas, president of Feffer and Associates Food and Beverage Consultants and chair of the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food, says that the food offered by stripmall restaurants like Salsa Grill can be healthier than fast food and enough like homemade to serve as a surrogate for what comes out of your own kitchen.

When you look at the social and economic factors, good food in a homely location like a strip mall makes sense, says Neas.

Neas knows food on the high end: She has organized food tours through France and was a friend of Julia Child. But like Child, who made no secret of her appreciation for a really good hamburger, Neas can appreciate good food no matter the décor. Most Americans can, she says.

“I think because the American palate is so international, comfort food is becoming international,” Neas says. “Chicken and rice, even if it has a different spice to it, is still chicken and rice.”

Unlike the white-tablecloth restaurant, strip-mall eateries don’t have to create a look, a smell, a feeling. Good food on simple plates is enough, she says. No one goes in expecting more than that, as long as the price is right.

And the ethnic food at many of these restaurants can be as authentic as it gets, even if you have to request that it be de-Americanized. Neas says one of her favorite restaurants is China Wok, located in a strip mall on Honeygo Boulevard in White Marsh.

But she usually asks the owner to make something special for her, and he never disappoints.

“He knows I’ve been to China,” she says. n

Top: Teresa Ramos, a waitress at Salsa Grill, walks through a full dining room during lunch. Some of the authentic Salvadoran recipes on the menu were provided

by Ramos’s mother.

Bottom: Jay Angle, owner and chef of Salsa Grill, presents Caribbean paella, one of the restaurant’s popular dishes.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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by jason tinney

photography by helen sampson

The Town that Wouldn’t Budge Historic Ellicott City holds tight to its smalltown roots amidst suburban sprawl

Fire, floods, and Howard County’s suburban sprawl have threatened historic Ellicott City with change, but the 233-year-old town has largely refused to change.

Seems like there’s always someone or something trying to influence old Ellicott City—to twist and reshape its very fabric. The 233-year-old Howard County main street community along Frederick Road/MD 144 (an original portion of the Historic National Road) has constantly found itself geographically and historically in the middle of change.

Whether it be fire or floods, or the surrounding county’s ever-growing suburban sprawl, change has been able to push this little town only so far.

With many of its shops and restaurants built into solid granite bedrock, historic Ellicott City refuses to budge, literally.

“Ellicott City is like a photograph of a time that doesn’t exist anymore,” says Charles Alexander, principal architect at Alexander Design Studio, located on Main Street. An Ellicott City resident since 1989, Alexander sees the town’s landscape as one of the primary attractions for folks seeking small-town charm.

“Ellicott City is somewhat protected by its topography,” he says. “It is almost impossible to build in a way that has an impact. I think that’s what drives people here. All of a sudden—boom—you’ve stepped into a totally different pattern of living.

That’s the appeal of the town.”

Surrounded on all sides by rocky terrain, the Patapsco River, and the Patapsco State Park, Ellicott City seems to be completely removed from the housing developments and strip malls along Route 40, just over a mile away. “You have no idea where Route

40 is because of the hills and trees,” Alexander says, “but you don’t have to go very far to see standard suburban development.”

Drawn by the relative ease of commuting and the town’s reputation for excellent schools, people who work in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. have over the last decade claimed Ellicott City and the rest of Howard County as their bedroom community.

Adam Harriger, a transplant from Silver Spring, Maryland, and proprietor of Annabell’s Fine Wine and Gourmet Foods, which opened in November of 2004, says that historic Ellicott City offers refuge for suburbanites looking for something beyond suburbia. From antique shops to modern home décor, the neighborhood-pub vibe of The Judge’s Bench to the upscale Jordan’s Steakhouse, Ellicott City is made up of an eclectic and varied group of specialty shops and restaurants that boast a uniqueness not easily found in nearby Columbia. “You’ve got a million and one chains in Columbia,” says Harriger. “It’s the same stuff over and over again. Who wants to go to a mall every weekend?”

Of course, over the past few centuries, the town has changed somewhat.

“It certainly is in a better situation than it was when I was growing up,” says Constance C. Wehland, president of the Howard County Historical Society. Wehland has lived in the same house on College Avenue for forty years, just a few doors from the house in which she was raised. She sees Ellicott w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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ClipperMillAd.qxd

8/29/05

10:43 AM

Page 1

No fire could put out her burning desire to create art.

On the wall of her studio is pinned a quotation by Euripides: “There is in the worst of fortunes the best

Creating a community takes art…

of chances for a happy change.” For renowned archi-

The art of seeing amazing

tectural ceramicist Norma Wallis, the worst occurred

possibilities where others don’t—and being

10 years ago, when the infamous Clipper Mill Fire gutted her studio. “My artwork was

absolutely hands-on in

gone; my tools were gone,” she remembers. “But something good came out of that

crafting every detail.

fire.” As one of the two original artists who stayed on after the blaze, Wallis persevered, going on to create a broad range of commissioned works for public projects, institutions,

That’s what you’ll discover

and private collectors. Incorporating ceramic tile, mosaics, glass, and even semiprecious

at Clipper Mill— a new

stones into her art, Wallis says that her designs “fit the purpose of the work, interpreting

community that’s uniquely defined by the artisans and

what people want in an artistic way.” She points to a private commission, a large raised

artists who have worked here for more than 150 years.

hearth created from scorched tiles she salvaged from her burned studio a decade ago. “I like the idea of them being fired once, then going through a fire, then rescued and made into something new. There’s a certain beauty in that.”

Pictured above: Norma Wallis of Architectural Ceramics

From its start as the Union Machine Shops, once the largest machine manufacturing plant in the nation, to its later role as an artist’s colony, Clipper Mill has always been a place of innovation and activity. Now along the Jones Falls, it is being reinvented as a vibrant mixed-use community—one that you can call home or work, or both. Within its 17 acres bordering massive Druid Hill Park, Clipper Mill will offer cutting-edge choices balanced with environmentally

The real made surreal: “Infoculture’s unmodern quest” for the art of information They may appear to be Clipper Mill’s resident avantgarde filmmakers, but Infoculture’s Lee Boot and

sustainable design—and your pick of homes, apartments, condominiums, office space, and live/work artist studios.

With its central location and own light rail stop, you’re never far from, well, anywhere.

Stacy Arnold say their true inspiration is decidedly “unmodern.” “The Renaissance took their best

There’s an art to

information about living, which at the time was

creating a

Biblical, and actively developed resplendent art for all to see that represented these ideas,” says Boot. “In the broadest sense, our film Euphoria is an attempt to shift the nature of public dialog about profound and essential information.” Funded by the National Institutes of Health, their

community—and you’ll find it where it all started, at Clipper Mill.

For leasing opportunities call 443-573-4000, for residential information call 410-243-1292.

“surreal information” film, completed in June 2005, explores the peculiarly American pursuit of happiness, and, according to Boot, “encourages people to think about

Clipper Mill Tenants: Artisan Interiors, Biohabitats, Corradetti

what we know about building a fulfilling life.” Euphoria presently is being screened

Studios, Gallery G @ The Beveled Edge, Gutierrez Studios,

before a wide range of medical, politcal, and academic groups, with educational distribution underway. “We are a culture of information,” says Arnold, “so our goal at Infoculture is to use art as a way of presenting information to engage people with their lives. As artists, it’s our ancient tradition.”

Pictured above: A still from Infoculture’s Euphoria

30

urbanite january 06

Harry Campbell, Infoculture, Les Harris, Linda Bills, Lisa Egeli, Mandala Creations, Norma Wallis, Patrick O'Brien, Paul Daniel

Clipper Mill In Baltimore’s historic Jones Falls Valley

www.clippermill.net

City’s transformation from farming community to bustling suburban town as the biggest change.

“We’ve gone from a strictly agricultural county, prior to 1960, to what we are today,” she says. Most of the farms are gone, replaced with clusters of housing developments and the once-blue-collar mill town has evolved into a sophisticated mix of old and new, both in terms of its residents and its businesses.

The rise of suburbia isn’t the only thing that has caused change in Ellicott City. A series of disasters has altered the town as well. Located on the Tiber branch of the Patapsco River, Ellicott City experienced major floods in 1868 and again in 1972 (along with several smaller floods in between and since).

Major fires in 1984 and 1999 caused extensive damage to several buildings along Main Street, which have since been fully restored. (“This is the town that won’t die,” says Harriger.)

According to Alexander, rebuilding after 1972’s Hurricane Agnes brought about “the first wave of gentrification,” and the town welcomed restaurants such as Cacao Lane and Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant (both of which continue to thrive today). But in the last ten years, a new generation of younger, hipper storeowners has brought a certain chic to the town.

“The new businesses have kept the small-town mentality but added a sense of sophistication,” says Cathy Tran, a bartender who has worked at Cacao Lane for two years.

Shelley Harris, co-owner of Caplan’s Auction and Appraisal Co. for the last eighteen years and the president of the Ellicott City Business Association,

Ellicott City offers refuge for suburbanites looking for something beyond suburbia. agrees. “Some first-class shops have come to Ellicott City in the last few years,” she says.

“People are looking for it,” says Harriger. “This area seems to be going through a rebirth. There’s an influx of younger residents. They don’t want to have to go to Baltimore or D.C. for entertainment.”

Of course, this kind of change comes at a cost.

CNN/Money reported that the median price for an Ellicott City home was $376,000 in 2005, showing a gain of 22% over the past two to five years. “The average person is priced out of the market,” says Alexander. “It becomes the domain of the wealthy. Howard County has serious problems with affordable housing as it moves into its future. Can a fireman or a teacher afford to live in Howard County?”

According to Philip Stackhouse, vice president of the Howard County Historical Society, rising housing prices will force other changes in the town.

“The dollar pressure will continuously force up the retail space market,” he says. “If a landlord is getting $1,000 a month from a small mom-and-pop antique store and he can get $2,000 a month from a high-end

Adam Harriger sits on the steps of Annabell’s Fine Wine and Gourmet Food.

gift shop, I think we’re gradually going to see, just as we’ve seen in the past, all of the local merchants forced out by high rents.”

Construction and renovations continue to go on in historic Ellicott City, but because of the topography and a strict Historical Review Committee, construction and renovations are limited. Alexander’s firm is involved with two infill projects in town—the renovation of an occupied one-story building into a three-story office space, and the construction of eight apartments on a vacant lot in town.

Alexander’s “transformations,” as he calls them, add contemporary flair to existing older structures—a concept he thinks Main Street is now ready to welcome.

“This town has become sophisticated enough to know that in [the design of] its new buildings and in its infill you don’t have to be a literalist,” he says.

“You want people to be able to know what’s original and what’s not. That’s a level of sophistication which, I think, is a little more reflective of an urban thought process.”

Regardless of what the future may bring, whether it be fortune or floods, historic Ellicott City will only bend so much, usually on its own terms. For some, that is just fine.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” says Wehland, “and expect to be buried in St. John’s Cemetery. I feel that people will say, ‘That poor soul, she’s never lived any place else, she’s never had an opportunity to travel around and live other places.’ I don’t think that’s a disadvantage in my situation. I’ve been very happy living here all my life.” n

Historic buildings, like The Firehouse Museum, add to Ellicott City’s small-town charm.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

31

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urbanite january 06

by alice ockleshaw

courtesy of Sears®

space

The Evolution of the House Six floor plans show the trajectory of the American Dream

From the rambling Victorians of the turn of the last century to today’s townhouses in revitalized suburbs close to cities, homes in Maryland over the past one hundred years have evolved rapidly to meet the changing needs and circumstances of its citizens. In fact, Maryland has often been an innovator, serving as a precedent-setting laboratory for town planning and home design. Today, the floor plans of these homes offer not only a glimpse at how the middle class lived at various times in Maryland’s history, but they also reveal telling information about residents’ value systems. Here, a look at six floor plans and what they say about how we choose to live.

doWn

KITCHEN

DINING ROOM

UP

The Bungalow An Exercise in Efficiency Early twentieth century bungalows represented a massive departure from Victorian style. Driven by growing national panic about germs and the flight of the new middle class to the suburbs, this efficient, affordable model was easily constructed, and, with its low ceilings and easy-to-reach nooks, simple to clean. Floor plans, like this one from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog, boasted modest and informal living and dining rooms and small kitchens and bathrooms that would “save work for the busy housewife.” This floor plan was especially popular in College Park.

BEDROOM

LIVING ROOM

FIRST FLOOR

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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Welcome

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townhomes with 2 car garages in Hampden!

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Cooperative Living in Greenbelt A New Deal town created under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s federal government during the Depression, Greenbelt was an experiment in community planning and cooperative social dynamics. Ringed by parks and connected to local amenities by courtyards and pedestrian roads, Greenbelt’s spacesaving, affordable rowhouses reflected Art Deco architecture characterized by smooth lines and geometric shapes, and they were often furnished with affordable and compact Danish-style “Greenbelt furniture.”

UP

DINING ROOM

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KITCHEN

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FIRST FLOOR

Tract Houses The Growth of Modernism In the years following World War II, commercial homebuilders around the country began experimenting with new architectural styles and construction methods. In subdivisions throughout Maryland, many tract houses reflected a modernist aesthetic, featuring flexible spaces, open kitchens, and a blurring of indoor and outdoor spaces. Multiple bathrooms, family rooms, playrooms for children, and carports with side entrances redefined the American Dream and helped to form today’s expectations of a modern family home.

FAMILY ROOM

LAUNDRY

BREAKFAST� ROOM

KITCHEN

FORMAL� DINING ROOM

The “New Town” Home Urban-Style Living in Columbia In 1963, the Rouse Company acquired more than 14,000 acres in Howard County to construct a new town that would offer a utopian alternative to the problems of urban living, complete with jobs, schools, green space, and accessible shopping and businesses. Though it shared many of the principles of homogenous Greenbelt, Columbia was designed to eliminate boundaries set by subdivisions and integrate people of a variety of races and income levels.

Ryland Homes, then the largest homebuilder in Columbia, designed a range of housing types to serve these needs, including this one with an enclosed two-car garage.

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LIVING ROOM

DEN

UP

2 CAR GARAGE FOYER

FIRST FLOOR w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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urbanite january 06

oPtional door

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FIRST FLOOR

The McMansion Luxury for the Masses

KITCHEN FAMILY ROOM

The City Townhouse Putting the Urban Back in Suburban doWn to entry

DINING ROOM

UP

oPtional FirePlace

LIVING ROOM

Often called McMansions for their large size, cheap construction, and ubiquitous presence, these suburban homes were first made popular during the booming 1980s and were designed to maximize vertical space on small lots. Bridging the gap between tract houses and expensive custom-built houses, these status symbols brought features formerly reserved for the wealthy—great rooms, master suites, atrium-style halls, and sweeping staircases—to the masses. They also incurred criticism for their contributions to urban sprawl.

Over the past decade, cities have revitalized, attracting new residents who seek the vibrancy of urban living. Suburban dwellers flee traffic and sprawl by reinvesting in the cities that they (or their parents) left decades earlier in search of greener pastures.

In response, traditionally suburban homebuilders are moving into cities, offering floor plans with the “comforts” of suburban life set in an urban environment. McHenry Pointe, Pulte Homes’ first project in Baltimore City, offers two-car garages and large bathrooms and kitchens. Instead of the iconic picketed yard, there are rooftop decks.

SECOND FLOOR

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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urbanite january 06

ryland.com

encounter

photography by neil hertz

Along Baltimore Street Baltimore Street, the City’s equator, runs six miles across the center of town. Starting at Hilton Street in the west, it offers a variety of streetscapes before reaching Haven Street at the eastern limit of the city—parkland, rowhouses, shopping strips, a medical complex, the downtown business district, a muchtouted block of porn stores and girlie shows, a cemetery, and several industrial sites, both thriving and abandoned. In 2003, I set out to record whatever caught my eye up and down the street or in the nearby alleys. I was chiefly interested in qualities of light, for one of the things I love about Baltimore is the way daylight so easily makes its way down to street level, bringing out the texture of brick and wood and stone. But I also wanted to record some of the doings of people on the street.

—Neil Hertz

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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urbanite january 06

Clockwise: The Central Business District near Calvert Street; an alley in Butcher’s Hill; the industrial landscape of Baltimore Street near Haven Street; the infamous Block.

Neil Hertz works with a medium-format camera, a Mamiya 6 rangefinder.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on 1% origination fee, a 1% discount point, $201.50 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower.

2 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on 1% origination fee, a no discount point, $217.00 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower.

3 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on no origination fee, a no discount point, $227.33 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower.

4 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted above represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on a no origination fee, no discount point, $242.83 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower. * Mortgage Loan Fees may include appraisal, credit report, processing, document preparation, an underwriting fee, flood certificate, tax service, wire transfer, and other fees. Please note that the actual APR may vary depending upon the Mortgage Loan Fees the participating lender charges the borrower. Rates are subject to change.

1

You Can’t Arrive Unless You Know the Destination The Murphy Fine Arts Center 2201 Argonne Dr. 443-885-4440 www.murphyfineartscenter.org

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Our community’s

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You Can’t Arrive Unless You Know the Destination

Where excellence surrounds you

The Murphy Fine Arts Center 2201 Argonne Dr. 443-885-4440 www.murphyfineartscenter.org w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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developing

downtown

Can the new Metro Center at Owings Mills turn a suburb into a city?

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Mich a e l

S t e rn

courtesy of RTKL Associates Inc.

B y

O

wings Mills contains a unique set of circumstances that makes it potentially valuable as a model of the sustainable city. In one relatively concentrated area, it contains all the necessary functions of a viable city: industry, commerce, residences, and a highly developed transportation and water infrastructure, including mass transit—all directly adjacent to a complex and fragile aquatic ecosystem. Owings Mills has the potential to serve as a positive example of what the developing urban entity of the edge city could be.

It is equally poised, however, to become yet another example of the placeless wasteland of isolated buildings, parking lots, and despoiled waterways that is rapidly becoming the normal condition of the American landscape.

Using the somewhat naive and grandiose language of academia, I wrote these words some ten years ago, after spending almost two years enmeshed in a study of Owings Mills. As an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, I was particularly interested in exploring emerging issues of urbanism in the suburban context. How could growing suburban areas make the transition into more fully formed communities that have the character of what we would consider a “city?”

Cities are organic entities: They change, grow, and shrink in response to a tremendous variety of social, economic, and, as we have been taught most dramatically in recent months, environmental forces. Often, in spite of the best efforts of planners and politicians, they go their own way. Nonetheless, my students and I embarked on a study of how Owings Mills might ultimately make that transformation to a city from what was described in the Baltimore County Master Plan of 1984 as a “growth area.”

What defines a city is something that has challenged scholars for centuries, and it continues to do so as the form and character of cities change in the face of new technologies. The invention of the automobile led to the massive expansion of the suburbs, air conditioning permitted the explosion of growth in the southern states of the U.S., and the Internet has stimulated whole new forms of virtual communities. But I think most of us would still agree that the city is represented physically by a relatively dense settlement pattern that permits intense social discourse in an environment that supports public space. The first requirements are streets that encourage social interaction, not just vehicular movement. The tree-lined residential street with porches, stoops, sidewalks, and gardens, or the bustling pedestrian shopping street, are still American ideals, and in fact have found renewed advocates even among suburban developers.

So, the street must be pedestrian-oriented—social interaction rarely occurs between people in their cars, and when it does, it’s usually ugly— and the city formed by these streets must contain a mixture of uses ranging from different housing types, to businesses, to civic buildings, parks, and public places. When all of these elements come together correctly, the city can emerge, as described by Lewis Mumford, as “the point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community.”

Much has changed, of course, in Owings Mills in those ten years since our study, and it certainly has proven to be a growth area, with the addition of more housing, office buildings, and retail space (through expansions to the Owings Mills Mall). But in spite of all of this “development,” most of these elements remain dispersed in the typical suburban pattern of singleuse clusters—housing over here, office space there, and retail sealed up inside the mall.

Now, however, a long-awaited project that can enhance the transformation towards “city-hood” is beginning to come to fruition. The ceremonial groundbreaking for the Metro Center at Owings Mills—a mixed-use development that will include an impressively broad range of ingredients that add up to at least the district of a city—took place July 7, 2005. Arthur Adler, vice president of the development firm David S. Brown Enterprises, w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

45

courtesy of RTKL Associates Inc.

What defines a city is something that has challenged scholars for centuries, and it continues to do so as the form and character of cities change in the face of new technologies.

says that construction will begin in the first quarter of this year. The project will be built on approximately forty-six acres owned by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) located on the site of the current commuter parking lots at the southern end of the Owings Mills Metro. Over the expected development timeframe of ten to fifteen years, the developers intend to create an impressively dense and complex project that falls into the category of “transit-oriented development,” or TOD. Transit-oriented developments are one of those “back to the future” concepts. They are planned communities that use a transit stop—a subway station, light-rail stop, or even a major bus stop—as the focus of an integrated neighborhood design that is dense and mixed-use. They incorporate residences, workplaces, and commerce in a way that is designed to minimize the need for automobile use and maximize pedestrian and transit connections throughout the city and region. This is a planning approach that is in practice across the United States, from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City to Atlanta to Baltimore. It is really a continuation of the practice of streetcar suburbs that began in the nineteenth century; Roland Park was one of the early TODs. As planned, the project follows the current standard thinking about urban design; it is organized around a main street that runs parallel to the Northwest Expressway (I-795) and is the principal vehicular, as well as pedestrian, spine. In order to free up the site for the intended development yet still maintain the current function of the commuter parking, two mammoth garages, one holding 2,089 cars and the other 2,894, will be built in the first phase. Between the garages and immediately adjacent to the metro station entrance, Baltimore County will construct a 100,000-square-foot building housing both the largest public library in the county and a satellite facility for the Community College of Baltimore County.

After that, sometime in 2007 to 2008, the private portion of development will start with the construction of the first phase of a mixture of

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offices, apartments, retail shops, and restaurants. The developer expects to follow market demand in terms of the time of phasing and implementation but sees that market as robust. With a direct connection to downtown Baltimore and the terminus of the metro at the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, there are already 2,500 commuters daily at the site—a built-in market for the project. The north side of the metro station property is also part of the project, but is currently planned as a more traditional office park for development in a later phase.

Metro Center at Owings Mills is the product of a public-private partnership among Owings Mills Transit, LLC (a partnership of developers Howard S. Brown and Willard Hackerman), the MTA, and Baltimore County. While the private development group will be responsible for realizing the project, particularly in the market-oriented elements of retail, office, and housing, the public sector is doing much to encourage this development, aside from the decade-long planning process behind it.

Baltimore County will contribute $13.1 million for parking garages and infrastructure and will invest $16.7 million in the County Library/ Community College building. The MTA, in addition to contributing the land to the project, will contribute $15.1 million toward the garages. The public entities will contribute half the total cost of the garages. The public entities see multiple benefits to the project in the form of increased metro ridership, both to and from Baltimore, an increased tax base, the community assets of the civic components, and an increased sense of community in the form of the new main street.

So, what does all this add up to? Once the Metro Center project is completed, are we ready to declare the job done and Owings Mills ready to assume the designation of a “city?” Well, as significant as the project is on its own merits, I think not. While it makes great strides in city-making, particularly through the integration of civic functions of the library and college into the heart of the community, and it thoroughly mixes the range of urban elements, it will remain an isolated fragment of urbanity in a sea of single-use developments that have no interconnections.

Part of the problem stems from the existing site conditions. The metro site is circumscribed and limited by the highway and metro line to the north and the Gwynns Falls and Red Run streams to the south and east.

The only possible point of expansion and connection is toward the mall to the east. But part of the problem also stems from historical planning mistakes and missed opportunities. When both the metro and the Owings Mills Mall were under construction in the mid-1980s, the planning agencies involved had the logical thought that the metro station ought to be located immediately adjacent to the mall to benefit both projects through increased transit ridership and retail customers. The developer of the mall, The Rouse Company, refused, however, preferring to exist in serene suburban isolation. As a result, the metro station was relegated to the far eastern portion of the site where it currently sits.

There are several bitter ironies to that decision. The first is that it was The Rouse Company, the developer of pioneering urban revitalization projects like the Inner Harbor and the idealistically integrated new town of Columbia, who made this anti-urban decision. Additionally, the mall, which is now owned and operated by General Growth Properties, which acquired the Rouse Company in 2004, has never lived up to its aspirations

as an upscale regional mall and has struggled to find a suitable market.

Who’s to say what would have happened to the mall if the metro station had in fact been located in the preferred spot? It certainly would have been immensely favorable to the long-term development of a more comprehensive and interconnected town centered around the metro station.

Still, there is hope that under the new management the mall can be rethought and connections can be made to the Metro Center. Several factors are at work that could facilitate this transformation. The transition to a more mixed-use environment is underway, with the addition of a new apartment complex on the site of some of the mall’s existing parking lots that were sold to Questar Properties, and the lackluster state of the mall’s economy may spark a rethinking of its future character and function. Many malls around the country are in a similar situation and are being redesigned and reconfigured to open them up to the environment and integrate other uses including housing, office, and even civic functions.

If the mixed-use, traditional street pattern that will be established at the Metro Center is allowed to penetrate and dissect the hermetically internalized mall, then a more comprehensive set of urban relationships can start to develop and we may see the development of a true street life that reflects the vitality of a town.

However, even if new street connections are made to the mall from the Metro Center and a fully mixed-use community develops, a key component of successful urban design will continue to be missing—parks and public space. Well-designed streets that are pedestrian friendly and create a strong relationship between the interior functions of the buildings and the sidewalk are the first step in successful urban design, but any great city has a civic gathering space that encourages social interaction, whether it is New York’s Central Park, the Inner Harbor, or a town square. The proposed plan for the Metro Center does incorporate this crucial element of urban design, but in a very limited form: In front of the new library building will be a centrally located public square. It is an important point in the overall composition of the plan and is likely to be well-used locally, but will not fulfill the larger connective role that a great public space can.

Again, there are missed opportunities waiting in the wings. When the original planning for Owings Mills was carried out in the early 1980s, a key component of the overall scheme was a lake that would be formed by damming Red Run stream near the mall. This lake was envisioned as the centerpiece of the new residential community that came to be called Owings Mills Newtown, and one of the main streets through the area is still called Lakeside Boulevard. But nature and the Army Corps of Engineers intervened in this plan. During the standard environmental review process for the construction of the dam, it was discovered that Red Run, a major drainage that joins the Gwynns Falls drainage just to the east of the metro, was home to a population of trout that would be destroyed by the construction of the lake. Trout require a cool-water habitat of well-shaded, running water; the construction of the lake would raise the water temperature to the point at

which it would no longer sustain the trout. The Army Corps of Engineers, which was overseeing the environmental review, put a stop to the lake and instituted various measures designed to sustain the fish but not necessarily promote the human use of the stream valley.

The dramatic elimination of this central water feature seems to have been a loss from which the community never really recovered. Instead of becoming a central connective public space to the whole community, Red Run is now perceived only as an impediment to development—a limiting factor that requires extensive management of the stormwater effluent created by the adjacent development. During the 1990s, there was a fitful attempt to recast it as a stream valley park that, while devoted to more individual recreational pursuits like walking and biking paths, would still create an important public space. Apparently that initiative has fallen prey to indifference on the part of the community.

This seems particularly unfortunate considering the success of other greenway/trail projects in Baltimore. The Gwynns Falls Trail is a nationally recognized example of how public/private partnerships can reinvigorate a neglected and abused urban waterway flowing through various neighborhoods and transform it into an important community asset. Currently all of the developments in Owings Mills, including the Metro Center project, turn their backs on the one outstanding natural asset available. No connections are made: No trails, boardwalks, or bridges allow the local citizens to use the space. Is it really just going to be left for a few trout?

In many ways, good city-making is about making connections between the various parts of a community—physical connections that promote interpersonal interactions, which in turn promote social and economic success. As Del T. Adams, manager of development services for the Maryland Department of Transportation, suggested, “There’s an education going on about using TOD projects to make more connections, and we’re all getting smarter about how we do it.” I think he’s right, and the Metro Center project is an important step in the right direction. But Owings Mills can’t stop there, or it will not have succeeded in the long term.

Cities are organic and are always in a process of change. They grow and shrink, go through life cycles of youth, maturity, and decline and seem always to be in a process of reconstruction. The challenge for Owings Mills is to follow a path that will lead to a more mature urban form that will give it a sense of place and make it special and memorable. It is clearly still evolving and, when one thinks of it, twenty years is a very short period of time in the development of a city. The planning for the next twenty years ought to be reflective of both the successes and the failures of the last twenty. Boldly rethinking pieces like the Owings Mills Mall that once seemed state-of-the-art but now might be obsolete; integrating a true public space network for the community; and, more than anything, creating the diversity and messy vitality of city life will be the challenge for the future. n

courtesy of RTKL Associates Inc.

While the Metro Center at Owings Mills makes great strides in city-making, it will remain an isolated fragment of urbanity in a sea of single-use developments that have no interconnections.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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city suburbs

skipping the for the

New immigration patterns mean that urban places like Baltimore may become more homogeneous while the suburbs diversify

B y

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Wal dron

For decades, immigrants flocked to Baltimore, drawn by the city’s industry and opportunity. In recent years, new patterns have emerged, and Baltimore City no longer attracts the same numbers of immigrants. Most of those who do come to the region are bypassing the city entirely and settling instead in the suburbs.

According to The Brookings Institution, a private nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and public policy studies, Baltimore City’s foreign-born population grew by 26% during the 1990s. This was significant, given that the city was losing tens of thousands of non-immigrant residents during that decade. But the growth in the number of immigrants in Baltimore in that time was well below that of most of the nation’s cities.

Meanwhile, much larger numbers of immigrants were settling instead in the Baltimore suburbs.

Overall, 89% of new foreign-born immigrants in the region settled in the suburbs in the 1990s. This phenomenon is taking place in several other cities and has important implications here and elsewhere.

Journalist Tom Waldron recently discussed the issue with Audrey Singer, immigration fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. Singer, a resident of the Adams-Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C., has written extensively about immigration patterns.

URBANITE: How have immigration patterns changed in our cities, generally speaking?

SINGER: There are two big recent trends. The first is that we are a suburban nation and now, for the first time, there are more immigrants in the suburbs than in central cities. Related to that is that immigrants are locating themselves directly in the suburbs, whereas in the past, immigrants moved to the cities because that’s where the jobs were. There was housing close by; transportation was usually not a huge issue.

And they tended to concentrate there and move to the suburbs when they started to do better economically.

Now, in massively suburban metropolitan areas like Atlanta, the opportunities are in the suburbs. Immigrants are settling directly there and bypassing the cities because the cities don’t have the same function that they used to have for immigrants.

The second big trend is the new geography of immigration. Immigrants are landing in big numbers in all kinds of new places like Las Vegas and Charlotte, North Carolina. A few metropolitan areas have absorbed the majority of immigrants for the past fifty years. New York and L.A. are still the big magnets, with Chicago and Miami not far behind. But what has happened in the past

ten to fifteen years is a new development where immigrants are moving to metropolitan areas with very little history of immigration. We’ve seen a spreading out to places we didn’t see before all over the country and a particularly high impact on places in the Southeast.

URBANITE: What are some of the metropolitan areas that come to mind where immigration patterns have changed significantly in the past twenty or thirty years?

SINGER: Emerging immigrant gateways are places like Atlanta, Dallas, Fort Worth, Las Vegas, and Orlando. All of those places had really virtually no twentieth-century history of immigration. Atlanta’s foreign-born population, for example, grew by almost ten times between 1980 and 2000. It went from 46,000 to 1980 in 423,000 in 2000. And immigrants in Atlanta are living almost entirely outside the city of Atlanta.

That’s high drama. And these immigrants are coming from a pretty diverse set of countries.

There are a couple of things driving this.

Local economies are robust in these growing places, and there are the kinds of jobs and industries that attract immigrant labor, like construction. I should point out that all of these places were booming; their native populations

foreign-born population: city versus suburb

foreign-born population living in baltimore city 68,600

1970

baltimore city maryland suburbs

29,000 24,000

1980

1990

25,000

2000

23,467 50,000

29,638 64,193

29,638 116,000

1900

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2000

“Suburbs are becoming more like cities, and cities are becoming more like suburbs in a lot of ways.”

were also growing at a fast clip, even faster than the immigrant population.

URBANITE: How does Baltimore fit in?

SINGER: Baltimore is a former gateway. It’s part of a class of cities that used to attract a lot of immigrants but no longer does. And to be fair, there’s another interesting thing about Baltimore.

The foreign-born population in the city in the past thirty years has remained constant or has increased a little bit, whereas in a lot of the other former gateways like Cleveland, Buffalo and Pittsburgh, the foreign-born population has dipped very low and is either still declining or has never reached the point of where it was even thirty years ago. In the case of Baltimore City, the immigrant population is only about half the size of what it was in 1900.

One reason that the city has been able to still attract immigrants may be that in Baltimore, there is infrastructure downtown that is “immigrant friendly.” There are places to live and places to open up businesses that are centrally located, unlike in some of these emerging gateways. Those places have no history of immigration and have a different urban form, which is very suburban, very spread out, very dispersed; the jobs and the housing are all decentralized. There’s less of an opportunity to residentially concentrate in some ways.

URBANITE: Can we expect Hispanic immigrants that are in the city to keep moving to the suburbs?

SINGER: If the current wave of immigrants follows the classic migration and settlement patterns like we’ve seen in the past for Baltimore, then we would expect those immigrants who are doing relatively well and have the means to move, to start moving to the suburbs. The question is, How long will it take?

When you get down to it, immigrants come to this country for the economic opportunity it offers, for the future of their families. So a lot of them are interested in having the best education for their kids. That does become an issue for some of these parents.

URBANITE: As parts of Baltimore continue to be redeveloped, do you wonder if the city will become more homogeneous over time?

SINGER: I think it’s already happening in a lot of places, like San Francisco, which used to house a lot more lower-income immigrants. The cities around San Francisco have absorbed some of them.

But I think what’s good for Baltimore City may not be good for its poorest inhabitants. To the extent that some immigrants fit into that category, then they’ll be impacted too, especially in terms of housing issues. Not all immigrants are poor, of course.

URBANITE: What are the implications of fast immigrant growth in Baltimore and elsewhere?

SINGER: There are huge implications on the ground, of course. You can graph economic cycles with anti-immigrant sentiment. When times are good, immigrants are not a problem. When things start to go south, then people look around for people on who to blame their problems.

We have this huge federal immigration machine in terms of admission policies and border enforcement. But when it comes to helping immigrants fit in once they are here, the social, cultural, and residential issues that come with immigration are really addressed at the local level.

Because there’s not a huge pot of federal money for local communities, schools, hospitals, and agencies to dip into to make things run a little more smoothly, immigrants are being incorporated [into the larger society] through big

institutions. So schools are a huge factor in how people get integrated. The workplace serves to integrate or not integrate people. There are also the many community-based organizations that provide all kinds of services to immigrants and also Baltimore’s significant refugee population.

URBANITE: How do you see the opportunities for Baltimore City, Baltimore County, or Howard County?

SINGER: Baltimore City is concerned about population loss. And I think some leaders see immigrants as a way to stem that loss. So retaining immigrants who move there, or stealing them away from other places like the surrounding counties or Washington, D.C, could help population loss.

URBANITE: How do you define city and suburb?

Is there a definition, or is it a state of mind?

SINGER: Suburbs are becoming more like cities, and cities are becoming more like suburbs in a lot of ways, not just regarding immigration issues.

The newly developing places in the Southeast and the Southwest, like Phoenix and Atlanta, are suburban-like places. I think there are things that still define central cities like density and form. But I think newer American cities—those that developed after World War II and that are continuing to boom now—are very suburbanlike. I’m talking here about the cities themselves, which are then surrounded by miles and miles of “real suburbs.” So the suburban landscape is the dominant one for most people. It means a lot of things for the way we live.

For more information on Singer’s work, see The Rise of New Immigrant Gateways, published by the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, www.brookings.edu/metro. n

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a “new town” childhood

top photo by Morton Tadder, courtesy of Columbia Archives; bottom photo by Hellin Kay

Novelist Stephen Amidon reflects on growing up in Columbia

In the summer of 1970, my family moved to a vast, muddy field in central Maryland that my parents stubbornly insisted on calling a city. There was precious little evidence to support this claim. Only a handful of people lived nearby, few of the streets were paved, and the closest school was over a half-hour away. Consulting our Rand McNally atlas provided me with no comfort—there was no sign of this alleged metropolis in the empty space bordered by Laurel, Clarksville, and Ellicott City. As far as my 11-year-old mind could tell, we might just as well have moved to the recently conquered moon.

But then something strange and wonderful began to happen. Over the next two years, the city I had been promised—Columbia—grew around me.

Houses, schools, shops, and playgrounds blossomed in once-empty fields, all of them bearing a seductively modernistic design that was nothing like the suburbs I had formerly inhabited. Streets and villages with whimsical names like Gatsby Green, Thunder Hill, and Jacob’s Ladder soon surrounded me.

Best of all, families from all over the country, many of them with kids my age, arrived on an almost-weekly basis. By the summer of 1972, Columbia still might not have been on all the maps, but there was no denying that it had become a place of its own.

What was perhaps most remarkable about this urban growth spurt was that it so closely mirrored my own. My hometown and I were contemporaries; we came of age together. I watched Columbia grow from the ground up, from the inside out. I watched it become. This forever shaped the way I see the world. Most writers pass through adolescence in established communities, filled with traditions and strictures. They can rebel or they can tow the civic line. I had no such guidance. Tradition in Columbia was no older than the recently planted saplings that lined the streets, too scrawny to provide any shade. Evidence of the past was ruthlessly bulldozed and paved over.

Columbia’s citizens, led by a benevolent planner named James Rouse, were in the process of creating their own traditions. This was emphatically brought home at my brand-new high school when we were asked to choose our own mascot. (To my lasting shame, we settled on the truly terrible “Scorpions.”)

It was during this time that I began to dream of becoming a writer. Perhaps I would have made a similar choice had I grown up in Brooklyn or Montana—I just would have turned out to be a very different sort of writer. The freedom from a local past, the sheer newness of my environment, continues to have a profound effect on my fiction. When I write, I start with a blank page in every sense of the term. I prefer faceless subdivisions, new developments, and gentrifying neighborhoods as the setting for whatever drama is to come. This refusal to import the past into my fiction is especially true when it comes to creating character. I find it difficult to write about people with freighted, Faulkneresque histories; with family ghosts or allegiances to clan or country. (It is also undoubtedly why, in college, I became enamored of the existentialism of Camus and Sartre, with its precept that existence precedes essence, an idea that could have served as Columbia’s philosophy—minus the filterless cigarettes.) My fiction is populated by outsiders, strangers,

people in the process of arriving in a new place and deciding just what they are going to be. This tendency undoubtedly stems from the fact that nearly everyone I met in those early Columbia days was engaged in the uniquely American act of personal re-invention: the Carneys and the Bargers, whose fathers were Vietnam veterans leaving that wretched war behind; the Youngs and the Fridays, middle-class black families escaping subtly racist suburbs; the Cohens, idealists leading their bemused daughters to the liberal promised land; my friend Guy, whose single mother was fleeing the inner city. I learned to understand people by figuring out who they were becoming, rather than who they had been.

This flight from the past was most evident to me in Columbia’s racial politics. We had no black neighbors in our former New Jersey suburb; there were no black students at my school. In Rouse’s new city, however, I found myself in a community where blacks and whites lived, worked, and learned in close proximity. At first, there was a giddy, paradisiacal aspect to this interaction. Black and white boys would gather without a second thought to play raucous games of basketball in our driveway; our first crushes and dates easily crossed racial lines. Before long, however, the bacillus of racism infected the community, let in by adults and the county police and the nightly news.

By 1973, the schools and teen centers were electric with the possibility of racial violence, something that had been unthinkable just a few years earlier.

When I came to write my novel about Columbia, The New City, it was the specter of racial strife, more than Vietnam or Watergate, that I posited as the main threat to Rouse’s Edenic vision of a new America.

But Eden it had been, at least to my nascent writer’s imagination, never more so than during those first two summers when my brother and I would wander the growing city in search of places to play. We often wound up in the unfinished houses that surrounded ours, perfect forts for fending off imaginary attackers or simply lazing about. Sometimes, I would daydream about who would eventually inhabit whatever room I occupied. As time passed, these fantasies became increasingly complex. I now can see that they were my first attempts at drawing characters. And they would soon be put to the test when flesh-and-blood human beings moved into the completed houses. Invariably, my own creations would prove sorely lacking when compared to the real thing. How could I have ever dreamed that the basement of the house behind us would soon be occupied by a mile of model train tracks, constructed by a taciturn army colonel who refused to talk about his time in Vietnam? Or that a bedroom in the house next door would be occupied by Fearless Fly, the adopted son of an African American judge, a sweet but troubled boy who would eventually disappear back into the D.C. slums? Or that an NSA spy would live in the house down the street, and that I would one day peak at incomprehensible top-secret photos his son briefly lifted from his parents’ room? This is the lasting legacy of my youth spent in the new city—the realization that putting characters on the blankest possible page is the best way of ensuring they will surprise me. n w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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p o e t r y

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Poem For People Who Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry

Stephen Dunn is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Different Hours. Other accolades include an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His most recent book of poetry is The Insistence of Beauty; it waas published in 2004. He divides his time between Frostburg, Maryland, and Pomona, New Jersey.

Relax. This won’t last long.

Or if it does, or if the lines make you sleepy or bored, give in to sleep, turn on the T.V., deal the cards.

This poem is built to withstand such things. Its feelings cannot be hurt. They exist somewhere in the poet, and I am far away.

Pick it up anytime. Start it in the middle if you wish.

It is as approachable as melodrama, and can offer you violence if it is violence you like. Look, there’s a man on a sidewalk; the way his leg is quivering he’ll never be the same again.

This is your poem and I know you’re busy at the office or the kids are into your last nerve.

Maybe it’s sex you’ve always wanted.

Well, they lie together like the party’s unbuttoned coats, slumped on the bed waiting for drunken arms to move them.

I don’t think you want me to go on; everyone has his expectations, but this is a poem for the entire family.

Right now, Budweiser is dripping from a waterfall, deodorants are hissing into armpits

of people you resemble, and the two lovers are dressing now, saying farewell.

I don’t know what music this poem can come up with, but clearly it’s needed. For it’s apparent they will never see each other again and we need music for this because there was never music when he or she left you standing on that corner.

You see, I want this poem to be nicer than life. I want you to look at it when anxiety zigzags your stomach and the last tranquilizer is gone and you need someone to tell you I’ll be here when you want me like the sound inside a shell.

The poem is saying that to you now.

But don’t give up anything for this poem.

It doesn’t expect much. It will never say more than listening can explain.

Just keep it in your attache case or in your house. And if you’re not asleep by now, or bored beyond sense, the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.

Come on: Good. Now here’s what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.

There’s an awful shrug and, suddenly, You’re beautiful for as long as you live.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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urbanite january 06

TRANSFORMING AMERICA’S CITIES

Sales by

by julie gabrielli

photo by Stefano Paltera

sustainable city

Solar Systems University of Maryland students compete to build the best sun-powered home

The University of Maryland’s solar-powered house won the “People’s Choice” award at the 2005 Solar Decathlon.

Eco-friendly design is getting to be a popular spectator sport. This past fall, when a “solar village” appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., 120,000 visitors came out to tour the eighteen houses that were designed, built, and transported to the city by student teams from colleges and universities from the United States, Canada, and Spain. For most visitors, this was a rare chance to experience the wide range of eco details—green materials, renewable energy technology, and countless creative ideas for compact spaces. Spectators braved inclement weather, waiting in long lines to get a peak at the innovative designs, like the home created by students from the University of Maryland.

But this was no fluffy “house beautiful” contest.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Solar Decathlon is a serious competition that tests performance in ten categories, including architecture, energy balance, water heating, and comfort. Top industry judges filed through the homes over

the ten-day event, and the solar energy data produced by the structures was closely monitored and analyzed.

Who knew there was this much mainstream interest in modest, but oh-so-coolly designed, sunpowered homes? “Mom, if we installed solar in our house, we could spend a lot less money,” observed one 9-year-old boy in the line for the University of Texas at Austin house.

University of Maryland’s team of more than 100 students spent three years gaining invaluable handson experience with sustainable design as they created their own solar-powered entry for the competition. Architecture group leader and graduate student Mike Binder said that the team wanted the house to be impressive, but also comfortable and easy to imagine as a home. In that, they succeeded: Visitors chose it for the “People’s Choice” award, and it placed eighth overall.

An unofficial category revealed itself that rainy week in October—could these houses built for the

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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sun withstand an overabundance of rain? The University of Maryland house was one of the few that didn’t leak, no doubt adding to its appeal to visitors. Its openness, sunny interior, livability, and airy design were also admired.

Local vendors and craftspeople helped the students to bring their ideas to fruition. Baltimorebased design-build studio Luke Works helped to create wheatboard and bamboo plywood cabinets and cast the fly-ash concrete countertops for the kitchen. EarthSun Energy Systems, a green residential design/build firm in Hyattsville, supplied the solar hot water tubes. Columbia’s Chesapeake Lighting Associates donated lighting, and Muléh, an upscale boutique in D.C. that blends the organic with the contemporary, loaned the furniture. Graham Thompson, a superintendent for Whiting-Turner, and Chris Fromherz, a project manager for WhitingTurner, both offered the students professional and technical advice and also facilitated donations ranging from materials to forklifts.

Once inside the University of Maryland house, visitors asked a wide range of questions, from the technical (How much power do the solar panels produce?) to the material (Where can I get this bamboo flooring? These energy-saving appliances?

These recycled glass tiles?). Many people asked if they could buy blueprints of the 800-square-foot house. This was a nice surprise, given that the size of the average American house has doubled to 2,349 square-feet in the last fifty years, according to the National Association of Home Builders. If people can enthusiastically embrace these tiny prototypes, what does that say about the current offerings in the housing industry?

Najahyia Chinchilla, a graduate architecture student at the University of Maryland who served as co-project manager, was impressed by the level of training and technical knowledge that goes into a

It takes a village: Eighteen collegiate teams from the United States, Canada, and Spain gather during the opening ceremony of the Solar Decathlon.

special project such as this. Her undergraduate degree in environmental policy helped her to see, for example, how installation expertise can drive local pricing of renewable energy and efficiency technologies. Her take-away from the experience was an appreciation for how complex projects get implemented in real life. She was up to the challenge of interacting with many different trades, making sure that everyone was on the same page, even “selling” them on the ideas behind the house and its unusual technologies.

Today, the University of Maryland house has been relocated to Red Wiggler Community Farm in Montgomery County, where it will provide an affordable housing opportunity for a Red Wiggler staff member. The students partnered with Farm Director Woody Woodroof in June 2005, who acted

as the “client” and also scouted potential donors to fund the house’s construction.

“We will offer scheduled interpretive tours where participants can view the outside of the house and learn about its history, and hear how it is performing and how it relates to broader sustainability issues,” Woodroof says. He will also monitor the efficiency of the house, which may help future solar decathletes as they design the next generation of solar homes.

Just as Olympic athletes begin training for the next competition soon after the games close, the next University of Maryland Solar Decathlon team is already in formation for the 2007 competition. With a lot of hard work and community support, this group will once again put Maryland on the renewable energy map. n

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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DECORATIVE PAINTING

by jessica leshnoff

courtesy of the collection of the Hudson River Museum

out there

Suburban Case Study: Westchester A new exhibit about an iconic bedroom community looks at the roots of the suburb

Above: Vintage advertisement for Foodarama refrigerator, 1955

The word “suburb” conjures up many images—most of them Technicolor snapshots of mom at home, dad at the office, and the kids playing on a wellmanicured lawn. The truth is, the suburb was born long before the Leave it to Beaver era. The suburban ideal—fresh air, greenery, and enough space to raise a family—is as old as the American dream itself and as deep-rooted in our collective psyche as apple pie.

In an exhibit opening this month titled Westchester: The American Suburb, New York’s Hudson River Museum sets out to answer the how and why of suburban living, and perhaps more importantly, to illustrate that suburbia’s roots are much older—and simpler—than people think.

The exhibit, which runs from January 28 through May 28, examines the evolution of the American suburb through a case study of Westchester. The museum chose to focus on this county, which lies just north of Manhattan, not only because the museum itself is based in Yonkers, a city in West-

chester County, but because the county is home to a myriad of developments, including some of the nation’s very first suburbs.

Museum curators Laura Vookles and Bartholomew Bland partnered with Roger Panetta, chair of the history department at Marymount College of Fordham University, to examine every aspect of suburban life, from historic real estate ads to kitchen dioramas. The resultant exhibit begins with photos, a video, and artifacts from The Dick Van Dyke Show, a 1960s “golden era” suburban sitcom based on the experiences of a New York comedy writer and his family in Westchester’s New Rochelle, and then pedals back through time to the birth of suburbs more than a hundred years earlier.

The show zeroes in on one of America’s very first commuters, celebrated author Washington Irving, whose Sunnyside estate—a mere fifteen miles from Manhattan—provided a respite from the hustle and bustle of nineteenth century New York City. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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And respite, not status or style, is what the suburbs were founded on, according to the curators.

The decision to move to the suburbs often boiled down to a desire for good health and better quality of life. New York in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, like many cities, was a risky place to live, with “poor water quality, sweltering summers, crime, and close living quarters,” Vookles says. And, according to Panetta, Irving himself was sent to the “country” of Westchester as a child to escape first yellow fever and then cholera.

Beyond imperative needs such as clean air and water, people wanted a place of their own—this ideal to procure property is as old as America itself, Vookles explains. “For the price of renting, you could own a house,” she says. “The suburb is just one other way of playing out what’s always been the American dream.”

That specific American dream—of a yard, a roomy kitchen, and bedrooms for the kids— offered city dwellers a tempting alternative that simply wasn’t possible in a downtown. People began flocking to the suburbs, with fledgling mini-malls and once city-only services following close behind.

“People vote with their feet,” says Bland. “I think the desires to live in nature and own property are very ingrained in American culture, and academics critical of the suburbs tend to undervalue those things.”

One goal of the exhibit, stress all three curators, is to counteract negative attitudes about suburbs, something that’s plagued these communities since the introduction of Levittown, Pennsylvania, a post-war town infamous for its identical houses and meticulously planned streets. Suburbia represents a “brainless, homogenous, vapid place” to many of us, according to Panetta, and this exhibit may unravel those preconceived notions by investigating the variety of suburban built environments. A major part of dismantling suburbia’s bad rap is educating the public that the seeds of suburban living were planted more than a hundred years before places like Levittown and had more to do with comfort and safety than fleeing diversity.

The final section of the exhibit compares two different types of suburbia: White Plains and Bedford. White Plains has embraced sprawl and development to become more of an “edge city,” while Bedford, north of White Plains, has fought development and tried very hard to uphold the “country village” feel of historical suburbs. “What we hope people will come away with is that this is a very old idea,” Panetta says. “It is in fact an essential American idea, not an invention of a couple of commercial developers in the 1950s.” n

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in review

MUSIC

photo courtesy of Contemporary Museum

No Straight Lines Private Eleanor The Beechfields, 2005

CULTURE Crowd of the Person Contemporary Museum Through January 14

When Baltimore native Austin Stahl created Private Eleanor in 2001, he was the sole member of the band and was relying on his own recording prowess to put out albums. (In 2000, Stahl started his own record label, OTPRecords, and put out his own work, plus recordings of New York’s Standish Arms and Baltimore’s The Seldon Plan.) For Private Eleanor’s latest album, Stahl decided to deviate from his usual lo-fi four-track experimentation and make a studio recording featuring a full-scale band.

The album, No Straight Lines, features Maryland musicians Marian Glebes, Isaac Gurfinchel, Chris Merriam, Bruce Sailer, and Drew Stevens. They are joined by several guest artists, including Michael Nestor of Baltimore’s Pupa’s Window, who is also the owner and founder of The Beechfields record label, located in Towson.

No Straight Lines offers stark acoustic rock—it is a marriage of folk rock and early 1990s indie shoegaze with pop overtones. The band’s sound is not altogether unfamiliar, as it rings of a softer, less depressing Bright Eyes.

The energy of No Straight Lines waxes and wanes as each song builds off of the previous track’s emotion, until the sorrowful “I’d Have Been a Sign Painter” climaxes with sentiments of anguish and affliction. The album is full of joys and woes: It seems to tell the story of a just-beginning love affair, com-

plete with the second-guessing and self-deprecation usually found in pop punk or emo lyrics. Though his voice lacks refinement in places (and often sounds strikingly similar to Elliott Smith’s), Stahl’s words are sincere and honest, and sometimes very sad; in “Flowers Might Die,” he sings, “I just wanted you to be the one thing I’d figured out, for once in my life.”

The one surprise here is the clearly antiwar “On Our Side,” in which Stahl sings, “And may God condemn their souls when we smoke ’em from their holes.

Moral authority is mine, ’cause God is on our side.”

With the success of his record label and Private Eleanor’s fall tour (plus a duo tour with new band member Glebes), Stahl is happy to be part of a network of independent musicians around the country.

Producing under his own (or, in this case, a friend’s) label offers different freedoms with music and, according to Stahl, “the ability to capture a sound, change it, build on it, and ultimately create something new.”

No Straight Lines is available at Sound Garden (1616 Thames Street, Fells Point), The True Vine (1123 West 36th Street, Hampden), and Atomic Books (1100 West 36th Street, Hampden). Check the band’s website (www.privateeleanor.com) for winter tour dates.

Boarded up and seemingly abandoned, the Contemporary Museum on Centre Street in Mount Vernon now resembles so many East Baltimore rowhouses.

The exhibition begins outside the museum, with the main entrance obscured by panels of spray-painted wood. Inside, Crowd of the Person, the multi-month exhibition organized by curator Cira Pascual Marquina, is equally disarming. Four distinct projects address, in Pascual Marquina’s words, “the idea of self-organization and emancipation.”

In one such project, (Re)living Democracy, four artists have transformed the museum space into a political platform. This is hardly your run-of-the-mill museum show—there are no art objects present in the traditional sense. Printed information regarding the seizure of land and homes in East Baltimore is coupled with a multimedia installation that records the lives of residents living through the upheaval of urban redevelopment. Residents’ drawings, audio recordings, photographs, and letters voice displeasure about the use of eminent domain by the City and, more specifically, Johns Hopkins University.

This exhibition demands much of the viewer: active participation, interaction, and consideration

of the very real social issues at stake, as well as one’s own responsibility to them. But that, says Pascual Marquina, is her goal. “My curatorial practice tends to be socially engaged,” She explains, “which means that I’m drawn to interventionist practices.”

Crowd of the Person’s other three components, while overshadowed somewhat by the scope of (Re)living Democracy, are still engaging. What all the video and photography/audio pieces have in common is their evocation of similar themes: the relationships between the body and the political spaces around it, held up against cinematic narrative.

In addition to the exhibition itself, the artists behind (Re)living Democracy worked with the Rose Street Community Center and the museum to organize public programming, including a community forum that will take place January 7. All events are held on site at the Contemporary Museum and are free. For more information about the exhibit, visit the Contemporary online at www.contemporary.org or call 410-783-5720. For information on events and related activist art, visit www.campbaltimore.org.

—Edwina Rodgers

—Lauren Bender

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 6

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in review

BOOK Gone to New York: Adventures in the City Ian Frazier Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005

BOOK Don’t Know Much About Mythology Kenneth C. Davis HarperCollins, 2005

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urbanite january 06

Longtime New Yorker contributor Ian Frazier knows that city living is about accumulating things—history, people, buildings, bottle caps, and plastic bags.

The essays in his new collection, Gone to New York: Adventures in the City, provide a close look at both iconic landmarks and the everyday sights of New York City streets. What Frazier finds there is sometimes uniquely New York, and often broadly urban.

The essays in the collection will be familiar to some readers: Gone to New York pulls from Frazier’s previously published work in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and other magazines. Frazier’s deft descriptions, insights, and sense of humor make him a trusted guide on unconventional explorations of things like how the side of a highway looks different when the viewer is on foot instead of in a bus or a car, and the process by which a city dweller gets rid of trash too large for regular collection.

“Canal Street,” a standout essay, weaves elements of autobiography into a narrative about the avenue, from Brooklyn to the Holland Tunnel.

The reader is swept along in the crush of traffic along Canal Street and is taken into a store to meet Frazier’s landlord, whose name changes depending on who’s asking. To the landlord’s delight, a burglar has foolishly stolen only the left-foot boots from the pairs in his storeroom. Above the store is Frazier’s

apartment, part of a former candy factory; when he moved in, he found hundred-pound bags of imitation coconut. The essay winds up with a detailed history of the Holland Tunnel’s storied and dangerous construction and the man for whom the tunnel is named. By street’s end, Frazier demonstrates that, block-by-block, a city street contains layered histories of industry, immigration, and everyday life.

Readers of the essays will note the ways that Frazier’s own relationship with the city changes.

First, he navigates through New York City after living in a small Ohio town. Then, as he gets older, marries, and has a child, he eventually moves across the river to New Jersey, from which he has a view of Manhattan. These shifts in the author’s life provide context for many of his explorations of the city included in the collection. Glimpses of Frazier’s youthful antics are present, as are later flashes of what it is like to raise a child in the city or commute from a suburb.

The essays in Gone to New York, which mix curiosity and humor, encourage readers to pay close attention to the jumble of things that make city living worthwhile.

“If I believe it, it’s religion; if you believe it, it’s myth.”

So says Kenneth C. Davis in the latest addition to his best-selling Don’t Know Much About series.

Davis writes that modern society often dismisses the beliefs of so-called “primitive” civilizations with this biased distinction. Yet myths are sacred stories that convey essential truths, he writes. As vessels of our value systems, they are as important and prevalent in the world today as they were thousands of years ago. Myths attempt to explain the inexplicable and, when combined with worship and ritual, give birth to religion. Mythology and religion, therefore, are two sides of the same coin, which is why Native Americans still fight to protect their sacred landscapes from desecration by rock climbers or tourists, even though no rational individual would consider scaling a church or a mosque for sport.

Davis contends, like Homer, that “all men have need of the Gods,” and his survey of ancient civilizations includes the usual pantheons—Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Mesopotamian (modern-day Iraq)— along with a welcome review of the Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Pacific, and Native American.

He asks some ticklish questions: Why is there an Egyptian pyramid on the U.S. dollar bill? Do all little boys want to kill their father and sleep with their mother? Did Adam have a wife before Eve? What did Confucius say? And what’s Moses doing in the Koran?

The world’s cultures are woven together in a fascinating tapestry of relationships. Davis tugs at a thread linking the first superhero, Gilgamesh, to the European feudal tradition of droit de seigneur and the plot twists in Braveheart. He tugs at the stitches binding Homer’s Iliad, Joyce’s Ulysses, and the movies O Brother Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain.

And, as for Wile E. Coyote? Tug, tug … here’s the Native American trickster god. Bugs Bunny? Tug, tug … there’s Bre’r Rabbit, knotted to the clever African hare.

Over the centuries, myth has collided, most controversially, with religion. Whose truth is the truth?

History’s battlefields are strewn with victims of the “my god is bigger than your god” debate.

Furthermore, myths (like religions) have always been manipulated for political gain. It proved easier for Pope Julius I to convert the pagan Romans to Christianity if he didn’t mess with their biggest party date: December 25. Hitler appropriated Wagner’s operas as propaganda for the Teutonic race, and Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II believed their emperor was God. And for centuries, the prevailing legend of the colonization of the New World conveniently ignored some facts. For example: a) the Vikings probably got here first; b) John Smith was a mercenary; c) Pocahontas was ten years old; d) colonization triggered one of the greatest ethnic cleansings in history.

A Native American school principal noted that Disney’s movie Pocahontas “was the equivalent of teaching the holocaust by having Anne Frank fall in love with a German soldier.”

Winners not only get to write history: They get to mythologize.

This book is a provocative and entertaining introduction to mankind’s bumper crop of stories. It inspires the reader to dig down deep, without judgment and without prejudice, to find a bedrock of truth about the human condition, however hard it may be.

—Jenny Wierschem

— Susan McCallum-Smith

BOOK The City as Suburb: A History of Northeast Baltimore Since 1660 Eric L. Holcomb, with a foreword by Kathleen G. Kotarba Center for American Places, 2005

Ever since the poet Horace wrote about the city mouse and country mouse in ancient Rome, Western culture has recognized a strict division between the rural and the urban. This dichotomy shaped Europe’s landscape for centuries before traveling to America, where it persisted through the 1800s.

In Baltimore, wealthy merchants used to split their time between townhouses within the city and sprawling country villas located on the city’s fringes—perhaps the most notable example being Clifton, a vast 500-plus-acre spread with an Italianate mansion, the retreat of businessman and philanthropist Johns Hopkins.

Then along came the suburb, changing the American landscape forever. In The City as Suburb, Eric L. Holcomb, a Baltimore City planner who specializes in historic preservation, describes how the advent of this new community model galvanized development in northeast Baltimore, especially during the period from 1918 (the year northeast Baltimore was annexed by the city) to 1940. “The change was phenomenal,” Holcomb writes. “In 1898, only 279 dwellings were located in northeast Baltimore. By 1940 there stood 14,343 dwelling units—a 5,100 percent increase.” New neighborhoods off the Harford and Belair roads mixed the trappings of the countryside—grass, trees, and cottage-style houses—with essential urban amenities, like a sewage system and good roads. This is Holcomb’s definition of the citysuburb, an inspired hybrid of the picturesque rural

ideal and the services and social fabric that, preWorld War II, only a city government could provide.

The roots of neighborhoods such as Lauraville, Arcadia, and Frankford (formerly Gardenville) were in fact far more rural than urban, as the name Gardenville suggests. These communities sprang from Baltimore’s old “truck farms,” which supplied vegetables and dairy products to the burgeoning city to the south. As the farmers prospered, their crossroads villages thrived. One or two generations before, however, much of the northeast land had been owned by a few gentleman-merchants who exercised their creativity here, designing elegant mansions for themselves and dabbling in agriculture.

While Holcomb’s account will be of great interest to residents of northeast Baltimore, it may disappoint readers looking for broader insights. The city-suburb is held up as this book’s theme, but really, Holcomb does not discuss it or other key concepts with much analytical rigor. Rather, The City as Suburb is an exhaustively researched volume of standard local history. It is replete with all sorts of gleanings from archives: newspaper articles and advertisements, letters, estate inventories. Black-andwhite photos and maps are plentiful. For those who love delving into historical minutiae, or who want to know more about the origins of their neighborhood, Holcomb has performed a valuable service.

—Amanda Kolson Hurley

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25 Strip Mall Surprise Writer Anne Haddad visited Salsa Grill (6644 Security Boulevard; 410-265-5552; www.eatsalsagrill.com).

Foodie Diane Feffer Neas’ favorite is China Wok, located at 7916 Honeygo Boulevard in White Marsh (410-931-3586). Tony’s Café in Taneytown (520 East Baltimore Street; 410-756-4050; www.tonyscafe americandream.com) features Italian and American food, and their pasta Bolognese rivals Little Italy.

Cockeysville’s Parsa Kabob features an exotic tentlike decor, as well as great kabobs (74 Cranbrook Road; 410-683-7411; www.theparsakabob.com).

Amer’s Café makes some of the best pita bread available in the Baltimore area. (7624 Belair Road; 410-668-5100; www.amerscafe.com). At Lebanese Taverna Café, try the chicken fatteh and savory pies with either meat, cheese, or spinach (2478 Solomons Island Road, Annapolis; 410-897-1111; www. lebanesetaverna.com/cafes/annapolis). El Salto II, actually a freestanding restaurant across the parking lot from a strip mall, offers authentic Mexican fare like the Mexican shrimp cocktail, with a gazpacho-like salsa with chunks of avocado and plenty of cilantro and lime (8816 Waltham Woods Road, Carney; 410-668-3980).

48 Skipping the City for the Suburbs Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, by Joel Garreau, is about new urban centers developing on the edges of metropolitan areas in the United States. The Brookings Institution’s study of new immigration patterns is available at www.brookings.edu/metro/ publications/20040301_gateways.htm. For demo-

graphic data about Baltimore and the region, visit the Institute’s site: www.brookings.edu/es/urban/ livingcities/Baltimore.htm. The Lewis Mumford Center at the University of Albany has information on cities, suburbs, and immigration on its website (www.albany.edu/mumford). The Pew Hispanic Center (www.pewhispanic.org) tracks demographic patterns of Hispanics. The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program has published two books (and another is forthcoming) on metropolitan issues.

The first volume is Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000, edited by Bruce J. Katz and Robert E. Lang (Brookings Institution Press, 2003). The second volume, edited by Alan Berube, Bruce Katz, and Robert E. Lang, has the same title (Brookings Institution Press, 2005).

55 Solar Systems The University of Maryland’s solar house is featured on the website solarhouse.umd.edu/page.php?id=65.

The Solar Decathlon website is www.eere.energy. gov/solar_decathlon. For more on Red Wiggler Community Farm, see www.redwiggler.org. To find out more about Luke Works, visit www.lukeworks. com. EarthSun Energy Systems can be reached at 301-980-6325 or online at www.earthsunenergy.com; American Power & Light, which installed the solar electric systems, can be reached at 301-805-0763.

The Chesapeake Lighting website is www. chesapeakelighting.com. Check out the wares of D.C. furniture boutique Muléh at www.muleh.com.

59 Suburban Case Study: Westchester The website for the Hudson River Museum is www. hrm.org. The guide to the Hudson River Museum exhibit mentioned in the article is Westchester: The American Suburb, edited by Roger Panetta (Fordham University Press, 2006). The “I ♥ The Burbs”

renderings ourtesy of RTKL Associates Inc.

resources

For more information on the Metro Center at Owings Mills project, see page 44.

exhibit at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, runs from January 15, 2006 to April 9, 2006. For more info, see www.katonahmuseum. org. William H. Hudnut III’s book about suburbs is Halfway to Everywhere: A Portrait of America’s FirstTier Suburbs (Urban Land Institute, 2003). For information on the evaluation and documentation of the National Register of Historic Places, visit www. cr.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/suburbs. An informal cultural history of Levittown, with some interesting historical photography, can be found at tigger.uic.edu/~pbhales/Levittown.html.

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