While a lot of attention has been focused lately on the sorry state of Baltimore's harbor, conditions there won't improve much until the watershed itself gets better.
Toward that end, some architects from the University of Virginia are proposing a radical remedy - "daylighting," or uncovering, part of the lower Jones Falls, which which flows underground two miles under city streets before emptying out in the harbor.
The Jones Falls was actually the birthplace of Baltimore, where the first settler, one David Jones, built his house along its banks in the 1600s. The river was a source of drinking water for the fledgling city, and ships reportedly could sail as far inland as Calvert and Lexington.
But growth, flooding and pollution inspired efforts to drain, tame and ultimately bury the troublesome water way around 1915. Finally, in the early 1960s, the subverting of the Jones Falls was completed with the construction of the expressway of the same name along and atop its course. It's just the largest of Baltimore's streams to get buried - experts estimate that two-thirds of the city's waterways are underground now, serving as conduits for storm water washing off city streets and parking lots.
That lower stretch of the Jone Falls is like the mythical River Styx - musty, foul and eternally in darkness. I paddled with some others upstream from the harbor many years ago, and the only living thing we encountered was a somewhat startled looking pigeon roosting in the gloom.
"We only peeked into the openings of the culvert and did not dare to go much further," writes Jorg Sieweke, one of the U.Va. architecture professors. But he and his colleagues would like dare rethinking the Jones Falls, and turning back the clock.
The U.Va. architects aren't the first to envision uncovering Baltimore's buried streams. Last year, a local architect, Gabriel Kroiz, and Baltimore's Harbor Waterkeeper, Eliza Steinmeier, suggested in Urbanite magazine that the stream encased beneath Central Avenue, once known as Harford Run, ought to be daylighted. They argued that opening up that old waterway to the sun would help restore its water quality while also creating a walkable and bikeable linear park leading to the harbor.
Nothing much came of that idea. But perhaps the latest suggestion to reopen the Jones Falls could spark some real thinking about the unthinkable. There are lots of financial and practical hurdles to reverse-engineering the Jones Falls, of course. There's the expressway, for one thing, not to mention all the city streets and other infrastructure that would need to be redone.
"The proposals I have been developing at UVa are truly speculative," Sieweke acknowledged, "but sometimes this is how things get started. I have seen large transformations in my professional life, and I am under the impression that Baltimore would benefit from bolder moves/ goals."
To learn more, Sieweke and two U.Va. colleagues, Professors Robin Dripps and Lucia Phinney, will be presenting their idea today (Tuesday, March 1) from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Windup Space, 12 W. North Ave. Their presentation is part of "Design Conservation," a monthly forum made possible by the Baltimore Community Foundation and D:Center Baltimore.