I walk along Charles Street because it's never dull, empty or static. Lately, I've been fascinated by a trio of animated men dressed up as Statues of Liberty. They carry advertising signboards for a tax preparation service. Its office is in a building where, more than 50 years I ago, I bought my toy electric trains.
I learned this week that the Charles Street Association, now officially known as the Historic Charles Street Association, is celebrating its centennial. There's also a Charles Street Development Corp. Both groups are run by Kristin Speaker, who came to the job in 2002.
I asked her this week about the most significant change she's observed along the street.
"All the universities along Charles are seeing how important it is to invest in the neighborhoods where they have students," she said.
Her assistant, Amelia Rambissoon, who lives in Station North, has watched the millennial generation discover and move to her neighborhood, a couple blocks on and off the Charles Street corridor above Penn Station.
"Some millennials are being priced out of Federal Hill and Canton, and they are coming to Mount Vernon and Station North," Rambissoon said. She estimates that an apartment that rents for $1,500 a month in Federal Hill would be $900 in Mount Vernon and $750 in Station North.
I've been a Charles Street fan for nearly 60 years now and recall a meeting of the Charles Street Association in the 1980s. Those present included retail merchants and others intent on maintaining the street's character and tone.
I think of the stately Biggs & Co. antique furniture showroom. Its mahogany dining room tables disappeared as that spot became the beloved Louie's Bookstore and Cafe and is now Ware House 518, a restaurant.
I think of the old Purnell & Co. art rooms; that space has been converted to residences. The old Bowen and King opticians is now the Sotto Sopra restaurant.
I also recall that when the street deteriorated and some rough bars surfaced at Mount Royal Avenue in the 1960s, the neighborhood's protectors emerged and staged a good fight. The liquor outlets were symptomatic of the hard times the city was experiencing, but the opposing forces mounted a long offensive.
At a joint historic-development Charles Street gathering held at the Pen and Quill (the former Chesapeake restaurant venue) this week, I watched the street's energetic and competitive young developers discuss how they are transforming beat-up rowhouses into rentable apartments. There is also a heady anticipation that the Charm City Circulator's route will be expanded northward to the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus by this summer, when street improvements there are finally complete.
It's obvious that the whole Charles Street corridor, from Federal Hill north, has emerged as a place where people want to live. That's something of change from the goals of the 1915 Charles Street Association, which placed greater emphasis on select retailers and fancy shopping.
As much as I've been a Charles Street fan, it took me several years to discover that it has its own travel brochure. Because the street is a designated National Scenic Byway, it has an attractive fold-out guide with photographs by Greg Pease, whose Old Goucher neighborhood studio is just a few feet from the corner of Charles and 22nd. I found a copy at a Penn Station travel brochure rack.
We locals overlook the appeal the street and its landmarks have for tourists. On spring and summer evenings I watch people arrive at Mount Vernon place and start taking pictures of the Washington Monument.
One of the markers of a certain type of urban achievement was reached when both a Starbucks and Chipotle opened in the 1209 residential building at Charles and Preston streets.
"Corporations look for certain demographics, and we've arrived," Speaker said.