A City of Neighborhoods
From Little Italy to historic Fells Point, Baltimore's many neighborhoods offer unique glimpses of the city's character.
In the early 19th century, Baltimore's preferred address was Mount Vernon Place, a district of wide garden squares and boulevards.
"Mount Vernon Place is where you lived if you were rich from about 1800 to 1920," says Charlie Duff, president of the Baltimore Architect Foundation.
At the district's center -- a 178-foot column honoring a young nation's new president, the world's first monument to George Washington and the first public monument begun in the United States.
A walking tour of Mount Vernon passes carefully maintained English-style homes, gothic churches and sculpted fountains.
Some of Baltimore's more popular attractions can be found on a much smaller scale than Washington's Mount Vernon Place monument. Decorative window screens in the Canton neighborhood are the canvas for a uniquely Baltimorean art form.
Legend has it that screen painting began early this century when a grocer colored the screens of his store to advertise his produce. Few people remain who do the painting now, and those who do have a long waiting list.
The neighborhoods reflect Baltimore's rich ethnic history. Welsh, Irish, Germans and Poles made homes here as waves of immigrants poured into the city.
Italians built a tight-knit community near downtown, in a neighborhood known as Little Italy.
The district is more of a tourist attraction these days, and it features some of Baltimore's best Italian restaurants.
Frank Vellegia, owner of one of Little Italy's oldest restaurants -- Vellegia's, opened by his parents in the 1930s, recalls the streets he and his friends used as a playground, playing stickball and other childhood games. He points to his family's pasta plant, which his son runs.
"And in between the restaurants you can see the families that still live there," he says. "So there's an intricate mixture of commerce and residents, and we like it that way."
Baltimore's markets are nearly neighborhoods of their own -- from the Broadway Market, one of the city's oldest, to Lexington Market, which lays claim as the country's oldest continuously run market.
"They not only dispensed meat and things of that nature, but they also were the people who dispensed news to travelers," says Leonard Jaslow, general manager of the market that began as an open air stall in 1782. "So it was not just a market, but a social meeting place, and it continues to be that today."
An Anthemic History | Go Nautical in Fells Point
Don't Miss Downtown | Those Famous Crabs
Destination: Baltimore
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