The Baltimore institution of vendors hawking produce from colorful horse-drawn wagons is about to receive a major makeover, but some involved with the city's 19th-century tradition are unhappy with the proposed changes.
In August, officials condemned a West Baltimore stable housing 51 horses and ponies but pledged to help the quaint practice endure. A team of city officials began working with the street peddlers, known as arabbers, to find a suitable place to board their animals.
Now officials are overhauling the loosely regulated practice of arabbing, enforcing permit requirements for vendors and their animals, and replacing the ramshackle stable with a new facility to be built near the B&O; Railroad Museum in Southwest Baltimore. Horse owners will be required to pay to board their animals at the new facility, and only working horses will be allowed to reside there.
But the changes have caused angst in arabber circles and created friction among family members in the business. They have also drawn the ire of retired arabbers and those keeping horses as pets who feel they, too, are entitled to use the new stable. Citing decades-old neighborhood affiliations and family-like bonds with their animals, these horse owners insist they are as much a part of the arabbing tradition as hawkers commanding produce-laden carts.
"I feel like the city has turned its back on us," said Dorothy Johns, who said her grandmother Mildred Allen was one of the first black female arabbers in the city. She said the city's rules are unfair to her family, whose members toiled in the trade for decades.
"They don't understand the relationship between the horses and us," said Johns, who owns three horses. "We're not asking for a handout. We're asking for a place for our horses, just like the rest of the owners." City officials say their priority is to preserve the vending tradition and encourage it as a viable business. They also point to new Health Department regulations that prohibit horses in Baltimore that are not used for selling produce or giving carriage rides.
"How do I tell the citizens of Baltimore, many of whom are in great need, that we are going to find funds to accommodate recreational equestrian users before we can find funds for streets and houses?" said Doug McCoach, director of the city's Planning Department, part of a team of officials who have been meeting weekly with horse owners.
"Arabbing as an institution has been moving along on its own without any city oversight," he said. "It's been almost an underground economy, and now is a chance to support them and mainstream them."
Officials envision a 35-stall stable at the dead end of South Fulton Avenue in Southwest Baltimore. McCoach would not give a specific cost estimate but said city officials hope to move quickly, with plans to put out requests for proposals next month.
When officials shuttered the stable in the 1900 block of Retreat St., the Maryland Jockey Club agreed to house the animals beneath a tent in the Pimlico parking lot for 90 days. City leaders recently asked for an extension until the end of December.
But some observers are skeptical about whether merchants can afford the city's plan. At a meeting discussing the charge for boarding horses, city officials tossed out a figure of $400 per stall per month, Johns said. Officials would not confirm that number, saying only that they hope to seek grants to offset costs.
"If you got 30 horses, that's $12,000 a month - that's ridiculous," said Felix Wills, 66, who boarded a horse at the Retreat Street stable, but stopped arabbing about 10 years ago. "The city doesn't get that kind of rent on M&T; Bank Stadium. Besides, these guys just can't afford it."
Wills said he and a half-dozen horse owners paid the Retreat Street operator $150 a month to board horses.
Horse owners charge that the city has not applied the new rules fairly, saying one horse owner is being allowed to bring 19 horses to the new stable, even though only six are used for vending. City leaders maintain all animals housed in the new location will be working horses.
Johns' father, Ophas Allen, said he simply wants what is best for his four horses, who were his vending partners until two years ago, when he stopped arabbing because of health problems.
Allen, 77, said he was 10 when his mother gave him his first pet, a caramel-colored pony with white spots named Bobby. Allen was so excited about the gift, he said he slept with it for several nights. Growing up poor in West Baltimore, Allen said, he was forced to quit school by age 16 to help his mother in the trade.
"I raised my children on the wagon," he said. "It was rough, but I had to do it because I didn't have the proper education. I had to do it the best way I could."
Allen reasons the only way he can keep his horses is to return to arabbing, which he dreads.
"I'm scared to get out in the street - someone might rob me, kill me," he said.
The city is committed to helping horse owners like Allen find a suitable place for their horses, said Reginald U. Scriber, the housing department's deputy commissioner of community services, who notes that his father, cousin and brother were all hawkers.
"Does this mean we are going to turn our backs on those that do not qualify? No. But we are not going to build a stable used for horses that are not arabbing," he said. "We have to think about the economics here."
While Allen said he believes retired horses deserve a spot at the new stable, Health Department officials say older horses need proper space for grazing - which the new location will not provide.
"They should not be standing up 24 hours a day in a small stall without any exercise," said Olivia Farrow, Baltimore's assistant commissioner for environmental health.
But Allen said officials had long been aware that older horses were being housed at the tiny Retreat Street location and did little to clamp down.
Just how that facility fell into disrepair is unclear. City officials say horse owners had not paid electric and water bills and had been cited numerous times for structural problems. Horse owners say they tried to maintain the facility and that the city's housing and health enforcement was spotty, at best.
"I am not in a position to say why it was allowed to get to the condition it was in," said Scriber, "but I am here to say that it will not be allowed again."
The shuttering of the Retreat Street stable was the latest episode of a decades-old saga between city officials and the sellers, who have clashed over the horses' living conditions, permitting issues and the health of the animals. Arabber advocates sued the city in 1998 after a stable was closed, and a former city health commissioner suggested phasing out the practice altogether.
Arabbing has endured in Baltimore - but just barely. Some estimate there are only a dozen merchants left. Even the term "arabber" harks back to another time, deriving from the expression "street arab," which was used to describe homeless children in the 1800s and eventually became applied to the vendors.
Many advocates say that the peddlers plodding through cobblestone streets with colorful carts and distinctive cries will soon be known only in memory.
"There have been utterances like this for the last 30 years," said Roland L. Freeman, a fourth-generation street salesman, who documented the custom in his 1989 book The Arabbers of Baltimore. "When the city offers this type of proposal, they are getting the nails to put in the coffin. Somebody there already knows this is not going to work."
Most vendors only do the work part time and are scraping by with meager profits, Freeman said.
"There are a few guys around the stable who can bankroll you for the day," he said. "You get your produce, rent the cart, and go out and hope you don't get robbed."
kelly.brewington@baltsun.com