A trip to the Baltimore Museum of Industry reveals the little worlds of neighborhoods and shopping in Baltimore about 60 years ago.
Curators there have dipped into the institution's archives to create an exhibition called "Baltimore Shops." It mixes the traditions of city neighborhood markets, vanished department stores and revered retailers. Anyone who ever had a grilled cheese sandwich at a Read's drugstore soda fountain counter will connect with these magical images and artifacts.
Baltimoreans tend to associate an old-fashioned Christmas with a trip to one of the city's markets, where merchants offered their fresh turkeys, grated coconut, mincemeat and hollow chocolate Santas. The primitive stalls were heaped with pyramids of tangerines, candied fruit and piles of oysters set out on raw December days.
Curator Jane Woltereck apologized to me that her exhibit was done on a tight budget and was not as large as some others in the museum. "How appropriate," I thought. Baltimore always shopped on a budget; our lean wallets and purses made for more memorable holiday experiences.
I stood at the museum and looked at early-1950s pictures of the Broadway Market in Fells Point. The battered wooden sheds offered a gritty glimpse into an aging neighborhood before the historic preservationists arrived a decade later.
Federal Hill, its cousin neighborhood across the harbor, appears bustling in a 1960s Light Street shot that epitomizes no-frills shopping: Epstein's, the Princess Shop and a Rice's bakery.
Another wonderful photo shows the early neighborhood department store Hochschild Kohn, at what is today Belvedere Square. The shot depicts a "motorstair" — an escalator. A sign painted on the wall directs customers to Infants and Children, the Pig Tail Shop, Teen World, and Young Baltimoreans. Then comes a direction to Negligees. And, tellingly, it ends with Corsets.
I appreciated the way this show — without belaboring the point — illustrates how the region changed, how we went from walking or riding streetcars to using a car to shop. There are photos of the magnificent Hutzler's Art Deco-style store under construction on Howard Street in 1930 (the epitome of a mass-transit destination) and its sporty Towson offshoot — with its appeal of immediate parking in a classic 1950s concrete structure.
The millinery bar at Hutzler's Westview recalls when women wore hats to midnight Mass. An interior shot of the Hamburger's store at Baltimore and Hanover streets shows that men could be fussy about their formal head wear, too.
I personally did my share of budget shopping at the old Read's drugstore chain. Read's sometimes gets lost in local retailing lore. Its stores could be found from Salisbury to Catonsville, they saturated downtown Baltimore (one per block on busy Lexington Street) and were scattered throughout the neighborhoods, too. Read's had the advantage of Sunday and extended hours because it sold medicine. The exhibit includes a bottle of Read's eardrops.
The Hess shoe store chain devised a way to appeal to children and their parents. Many Hess shops had a children's barbershop (a big draw) and, on Belvedere Avenue, an indoor sliding board.
But everyone becomes rhapsodic when recalling the Hess live monkeys. The exhibit contains a great photo of this mini-menagerie at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center. The children's barbershop faced the glassed monkey cage. So children, who presumably resisted the idea of a haircut, melted at the sight of the primates. And those parking their Studebakers could gaze through the plate-glass show window and enjoy the show, too.