Johns Hopkins Jr. wants you to visit his neighborhood.
As the director of Baltimore Heritage Inc., Johns Hopkins Jr. makes a life out of working to salvage Baltimore's history - its long blocks of Victorian rowhouses, grassy parks and centuries-old churches.
His favorite city artifact? The slice of Bolton Hill where he lives.
"For me, the 1200 block of John Street is the best of historic neigborhoods," he said. "Architecturally it's probably a B-plus block - they are not anywhere near the fanciest houses or the most ornate windows or natural pieces. But the people there are Baltimoreans through and through."
In the past year, Hopkins and others passionate about Baltimore's architectural heritage have been dealt some heavy blows that have forced them to reflect on the apparent ineffectiveness of their preservation efforts.
They've watched one old landmark go down after another, like dominos in the development game. The Rochambeau, a 100-year-old apartment building, toppled after they failed in a fierce effort to convince the Archdiocese of Baltimore not to turn it into a prayer garden. Then, a block of classic Baltimore rowhouses, nearly 200 years old, was destroyed to make space for a Mercy Medical Center expansion.
A year ago, Hopkins told The Sun that Baltimore needed a far-reaching plan to identify and protect its historic sites, instead of trying to protect squares, parks and rowhouses piecemeal as they became targets for development.
The plan has yet to appear, but Hopkins, a distant ("very distant," he says) relative of the university's founder, says the absence of this plan doesn't mean every historic site is in immediate danger.
Over the past year, he argues, more Baltimoreans have become aware that the historic sites they care about may be imperiled. Neighborhood associations are ramping up their efforts to protect churches and squares and City Council and mayoral candidates are talking about preservation.
"We obviously have a long way to go," he said. "But we're starting to see some of the fruits of cooperation already."
Two weeks ago, the city Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation approved the nomination of four valued sites as city landmarks: Riverside Park, Bolton Square, Union Baptist Church and the American Brewery. The next steps are for the Planning Commission and City Council to approve the designation, which will afford some protection for the buildings.
Can enough people in Baltimore be brought to care enough about saving their history to give real muscle to local preservation efforts? Here's some more of what Hopkins had to say: The big issues in the city right now are crime and development. How do make people care about saving parts of their history?
In one sense, it's easy to get people excited about Baltimore history. It's literally all around us, all the time. I think that for me it's a shock, how easy it is to kindle that excitement.
As far as turning that excitement into action to help revitalize a block or to help save a poor building, well, like everything else, it's just a matter of too few hours in the day and too many other demands.
But these are issues that are close to home for everybody. If you live on a block, you take pride in it, you are part of it, and I think it's also a part of you. So it's not like we have to coax and cajole people. People care. It's just a matter of making that productive. In the past year a number of unprotected landmark buildings went down. What kind of action is happening to create higher protection?
We had talked about a preservation plan for the city - and I think what we're seeing now are steps toward that. We recently had a forum for City Council president and mayor and talked about the idea: Does Baltimore have a preservation plan? What should it be?
And we've had discussions about the need to first do an inventory. The first step in the plan is to document what you have. And I think that's a really good indication that collectively, people are thinking more on "What can we do ahead of time?"
We've made some good strides. Baltimore Heritage has a watch list now of buildings we feel are important and whose fates are not certain. Just within the last couple months we helped get started a group called the Baltimore Historic Districts Council; it's a group of historic neighborhoods that have agreed about cooperating on city-wide preservation and development issues.
So what we are shifting towards - and we're still in the process of the shift - is on a lot of different fronts, city agencies and nonprofit organizations and neighborhood associations and individuals, thinking forward rather than just reacting. It seems like we've seen development and preservation come head to head a few times in the past year. Is it frustrating when new condos and shopping malls trump preservation?
When you ask that question, I sort of cringe. Just because it's only in the rare circumstance that it's "preservation vs. development." In most instances, it's "How do we find the creative solution out of it?" When there is a development proposal that involves demolition, I view my role as providing a public voice that can come in and say, "Wait a minute, what are our options? Can we get at what the property owner wants to do and save the building at the same time?"
A lot of times the answer is that there is an alternative solution. Sometimes the owner is committed to demolition, and when the building doesn't have any kind of historic preservation status, it's very difficult to change the outcome of those. Many people don't know that being in a "national historic district" doesn't always protect a site when the private owner wants to change something. The Rochambeau was in such an area but was still torn down. Two weeks ago, four Baltimore treasures came one step closer to becoming "city landmarks." What does this mean? Will they be shielded from demolition?
As far as the nuts and bolts go, it means that if you want to alter that building - either put on an addition or demolish - you have to get the approve of CHAP; that's our city commission appointed by the mayor that oversees historic neighborhoods and landmark buildings.
It does offer a very high bar you must meet in order to alter these buildings. Very few landmark buildings ultimately do get demolished. At the same time it does allow for changes and additions to be made to that building.
Maybe the best example of that is the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is a city-designated landmark building, which over the last couple decades has had modern wings put on it. So that's one example where this process has allowed for growth while still maintaining the integrity of the original historic building. What do you do when a private owner doesn't have the money to maintain a historic building? The owners of the Scottish Rite Temple of Freemasonry at Charles and 39th streets, for example, are delaying the nomination of their building as a city landmark because it might make the building difficult to sell.
That's one of the challenges. Right now, if you look at your landmark list, the vast majority were brought forward with the consent of the owners.
Then there are the buildings that are historically significant whose owners don't want consent to landmarking and that's what we are seeing CHAP embarking on for the first time in 20 years: What to do with those buildings. And that's where the balance comes in - the recognition that these are important buildings that shaped Baltimore's identity, and on the other hand respecting property owners' wishes. And that's what we are going to see - finding that balance - in the next couple months. How do our preservation efforts stack up against other cities'?
I do know that one of the things we've got going for us is that we've got fantastic buildings and neighborhoods left. When my counterparts from other cities come to Baltimore, to a person, their jaws drop and they say, "I can't believe how many great buildings you have in Baltimore. Wow, this is tremendous, you are so lucky." So we are starting at a good vantage point in that we have a lot of our original building left.
There are literally - literally - thousands of buildings that have all kinds of incredible history all over Baltimore City. What's so special about the history of Baltimore's buildings, squares and parks?
Many of the historic neighborhoods are Victorian architecture, the cornices and the windows and the high ceilings. The great thing about rowhouses is that there is a real mystery to them. There is a uniformity on the outside but you walk inside and you - you don't know what's going to be in there. Some of them have been historically maintained since they were built in 1880 and some of them have been wildly changed. It's almost anything goes.
I like to walk visitors inside rowhouses and all of a sudden their smiles just break out and they say, "Wow, I didn't know it was so big in here. Twelve-foot ceilings? Holy cow."
And then I walk them down the street, and I suddenly realize they're looking in every single window. The accolades just go on and on and on. "Is that real plaster? Is that a real medallion on the ceiling? I can't believe that. When was this built? You mean it's three rooms deep? Holy cow."
julie.turkewitz@baltsun.com