|
Baltimore, Maryland
|
|
|
| City of Baltimore |
|
|
|
| Nickname(s):
|
Motto(s):
“The Greatest City in America”, [1] “Get in on it.”, [1] “Believe” [3] |
Location within Maryland
|
Show map of MarylandShow map of the United StatesShow map of North AmericaShow all
|
Coordinates:  39°17′N 76°37′WCoordinates: 39°17′N 76°37′W |
| Country |
United States |
| State |
Maryland |
| City |
Baltimore |
| Historic colony |
Province of Maryland |
| County |
None (Independent city) |
| Founded |
1729 |
| Incorporated |
1796–1797 |
| Independent city |
1851 |
| Named for |
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675) |
| Government
|
| • Type |
Mayor–council |
| • Body |
Baltimore City Council |
| • Mayor |
Jack Young (D) |
| • City Council |
|
| • Houses of Delegates |
|
| • State Senate |
|
| • U.S. House |
|
| Area
|
| • Independent city |
92.05 sq mi(238.41 km2) |
| • Land |
80.95 sq mi (209.65 km2) |
| • Water |
11.10 sq mi (28.76 km2) 12.1% |
| Elevation
|
0–480 ft (0–150 m) |
| Population
|
| • Independent city |
620,961 |
| • Estimate
|
602,495 |
| • Density |
7,556.25/sq mi (2,917.48/km2) |
| • Urban
|
2,203,663 (US: 19th) |
| • Metro
|
2,802,789 (US: 21st) |
| • CSA
|
9,797,063 (US: 4th) |
| • Demonym
|
Baltimorean |
| Time zone |
UTC−5 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) |
UTC−4 (EDT) |
| ZIP Codes |
|
| Area codes |
410, 443, and 667 |
| FIPS code |
24-04000 |
| GNIS feature ID |
0597040 |
| Primary Airport |
Baltimore-Washington International Airport
BWI (Major/International) |
| Interstates |
        |
| U.S. Routes |
  |
| Website |
City of Baltimore |
Baltimore ( BAWL-tih-mor) is the most populous municipality in the U.S. state of Maryland. Baltimore was established by the Constitution of Maryland[10] as an independent city in 1729. With a population of 602,495 in 2018, Baltimore is the largest such independent city in the United States. As of 2017, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be just under 2.802 million, making it the 21st largest metropolitan area in the country.[11] Baltimore is located about 40 miles (60 km) northeast of Washington, D.C.[12], making it a principal city in the Washington-Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the fourth-largest CSA in the nation, with a calculated 2018 population of 9,797,063.[13]
Baltimore is also the second-largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic.[14] The city’s Inner Harbor was once the second leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. In addition, Baltimore was a major manufacturing center.[15] After a decline in major manufacturing, heavy industry, and restructuring of the rail industry, Baltimore has shifted to a service-oriented economy. Johns Hopkins Hospital (founded 1889) and Johns Hopkins University (founded 1876) are the city’s top two employers.[16]
With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a “city of neighborhoods.” Famous residents have included writers Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ogden Nash, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Upton Sinclair, Tom Clancy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and H. L. Mencken; musicians James “Eubie” Blake, Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Tori Amos, Frank Zappa, Tupac Shakur, Robbie Basho, Bill Frisell, and Philip Glass ; actors and filmmakers John Waters, Barry Levinson, Divine, David Hasselhoff, Jada Pinkett Smith; artist Jeff Koons; baseball player Babe Ruth; radio host Ira Glass; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi; and United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Baltimore after the bombardment of Fort McHenry. His poem was set to music and popularized as a song; in 1931 it was designated as the American national anthem.[17]
Baltimore has more public statues and monuments per capita than any other city in the country,[18] and is home to some of the earliest National Register Historic Districts in the nation, including Fell’s Point, Federal Hill, and Mount Vernon. These were added to the National Register between 1969 and 1971, soon after historic preservation legislation was passed. Nearly one third of the city’s buildings (over 65,000) are designated as historic in the National Register, which is more than any other U.S. city.[19][20]
History
The city has 66 National Register Historic Districts and 33 local historic districts. Over 65,000 properties are designated as historic buildings and listed in the NRHP, more than any other U.S. city.[19] The historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives.
Etymology
The city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore[21] of the Irish House of Lords and founding proprietor of the Province of Maryland.[22][23] Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland.[23][24] Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning “town of the big house.”[23]
Before European settlement
The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, when Paleo-Indians first settled in the region.[25] One Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland periodarchaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period.[25] During the Late Woodland period, the archaeological culture that is called the “Potomac Creek complex” resided in the area from Baltimore south to the Rappahannock River in present-day Virginia.[26]
In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was sparsely populated, if at all, by Native Americans. The Baltimore County area northward was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock living in the lower Susquehanna River valley. This Iroquoian-speaking people “controlled all of the upper tributaries of the Chesapeake” but “refrained from much contact with Powhatan in the Potomac region” and south into Virginia.[27]Pressured by the Susquehannock, the Piscataway tribe, an Algonquian-speaking people, stayed well south of the Baltimore area and inhabited primarily the north bank of the Potomac River in what are now Charles and southern Prince George’s counties in the coastal areas south of the Fall Line.[28][29][30]
Colonial period
European colonization of Maryland began with the arrival of an English ship at St. Clement’s Island in the Potomac River on March 25, 1634.[31] Europeans began to settle the area further north, beginning to populate the area of Baltimore County.[32] The original county seat, known today as “Old Baltimore”, was located on Bush River within the present-day Aberdeen Proving Ground.[33][34][35] The colonists engaged in sporadic warfare with the Susquehanna, whose numbers dwindled primarily from new infectious diseases, such as smallpox, endemic among the Europeans.[32] In 1661 David Jones claimed the area known today as Jonestown on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream.[36]
The colonial General Assembly of Maryland created the Port of Baltimore at old Whetstone Point (now Locust Point) in 1706 for the tobacco trade. The Town of Baltimore, on the west side of the Jones Falls, was founded and laid out on July 30, 1729. By 1752 the town had just 27 homes, including a church and two taverns.[37] Jonestown and Fells Point had been settled to the east. The three settlements, covering 60 acres, became a commercial hub, and in 1768 were designated as the county seat.[38]
Being a colony, the Baltimore street names were laid out to demonstrate loyalty to the mother country. For example King George, King, Queen, and Caroline streets.[37]
Baltimore Town in 1752, (at “The Basin”)
Baltimore grew swiftly in the 18th century, its plantations producing grain and tobacco for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. The profit from sugar encouraged the cultivation of cane in the Caribbean and the importation of food by planters there.[39] As noted, Baltimore was as the county seat, and in 1768 a courthouse was built to serve both the city and county. Its square was a center of community meetings and discussions.
Baltimore established its public market system in 1763.[40] Lexington Market, founded in 1782, is known as one of the oldest continuously operating public markets in the United States today.[41] Lexington Market was also a center of slave trading. Slaves were sold at numerous sites through the downtown area, with sales advertised in the Baltimore Sun.[42]Both tobacco and sugar cane were labor-intensive crops.
Baltimore in 1774 established the first Post Office system in what became the United States,[43] and the first water company chartered in the newly independent nation (Baltimore Water Company, 1792).[44][45]
Baltimore played a key part in events leading to and including the American Revolution. City leaders such as Jonathan Plowman Jr. led many residents in joining the resistance to British taxes, and merchants signed agreements to refuse to trade with Britain.[46] The Second Continental Congress met in the Henry Fite House from December 1776 to February 1777, effectively making the city the capital of the United States during this period.[47]
Antebellum period
The Town of Baltimore, Jonestown, and Fells Point were incorporated as the City of Baltimore in 1796–1797. The city remained a part of surrounding Baltimore County and continued to serve as its county seat from 1768 to 1851, after which it became an independent city.[48]
Bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British. Engraved by John Bower[49]
The Battle of Baltimore against the British in 1814 inspired the composition of the USA’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the construction of the Battle Monument which became the city’s official emblem. A distinctive local culture started to take shape, and a unique skyline peppered with churches and monuments developed. Baltimore acquired its moniker “The Monumental City” after an 1827 visit to Baltimore by President John Quincy Adams. At an evening function Adams gave the following toast: “Baltimore: the Monumental City—May the days of her safety be as prosperous and happy, as the days of her dangers have been trying and triumphant.”[50][51]
Baltimore pioneered the use of gas lighting in 1816, and its population grew rapidly in the following decades, with concomitant development of culture and infrastructure. The construction of the federally funded National Road (which later became part of U.S. Route 40) and the private Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.) made Baltimore a major shipping and manufacturing center by linking the city with major markets in the Midwest. By 1820 its population had reached 60,000, and its economy had shifted from its base in tobacco plantations to sawmilling, shipbuilding, and textile production. These industries benefited from war but successfully shifted into infrastructure development during peacetime.[52]
Baltimore suffered one of the worst riots of the antebellum South in 1835, when bad investments led to the Baltimore bank riot.[53] Soon after the city created the world’s first dental college, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, in 1840, and shared in the world’s first telegraph line, between Baltimore and Washington DC in 1844.
Sixth Regiment fighting railroad strikers, July 20, 1877[54]
Civil war and after
Maryland, a slave state with abundant popular support for secession in some areas, remained part of the Union during the American Civil War, due in part to the Union’s strategic occupation of the city in 1861.[55][56] Another factor was the fact that the Union’s capitol, Washington, was in the state of Maryland (geographically if not politically), and well situated to impede Baltimore and Maryland’s communication or commerce with the Confederacy. Baltimore saw the first casualties of the war on April 19, 1861, when Union Soldiers en route from the President Street Station to Camden Yards clashed with a secessionist mob in the Pratt Street riot.
In the midst of the Long Depression which followed the Panic of 1873, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad company attempted to lower its workers’ wages, leading to strikes and riots in the city and beyond. Strikers clashed with the National Guard, leaving 10 dead and 25 wounded.[57]
20th century through 1968
On February 7, 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire destroyed over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours, leaving more than 70 blocks of the downtown area burned to the ground. Damages were estimated at $150 million—in 1904 dollars.[58] As the city rebuilt during the next two years, lessons learned from the fire led to improvements in firefighting equipment standards.[59]
Baltimore lawyer Milton Dashiell advocated for an ordinance to bar African-Americans from moving into the Eutaw Place neighborhood in northwest Baltimore. He proposed to recognize majority white residential blocks and majority black residential blocks, and to prevent people from moving into housing on such blocks where they would be a minority. The Baltimore Council passed the ordinance, and it became law on December 20, 1910, with Democratic Mayor J. Barry Mahool‘s signature.[60] The Baltimore segregation ordinance was the first of its kind in the United States. Many other southern cities followed with their own segregation ordinances, though the US Supreme Court ruled against them in Buchanan v. Warley (1917).[61]
The city grew in area by annexing new suburbs from the surrounding counties through 1918, when the city acquired portions of Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County.[62] A state constitutional amendment, approved in 1948, required a special vote of the citizens in any proposed annexation area, effectively preventing any future expansion of the city’s boundaries.[63] Streetcars enabled the development of distant neighborhoods areas such as Edmonson Village whose residents could easily commute to work downtown.[64]
Driven by migration from the deep South and by white suburbanization, the relative size of the city’s black population grew from 23.8% in 1950 to 46.4% in 1970.[65] Encouraged by real estate blockbusting techniques, recently settled white areas rapidly became all-black neighborhoods, in a rapid process which was nearly total by 1970.[66]
1968 and after
The Baltimore riot of 1968, coinciding with riots in other cities, followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Public order was not restored until April 12, 1968. The Baltimore riot cost the city an estimated $10 million (US$ 72 million in 2019). A total of 11,000 Maryland National Guard and federal troops were ordered into the city.[67] The city experienced challenges again in 1974 when teachers, municipal workers, and police officers conducted strikes.[68]
Following the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015, the city experienced major protests and international media attention, as well as a clash between local youth and police which resulted in a state of emergency declaration and curfew.[69]
Baltimore has suffered from a high homicide rate for several decades, peaking in 1993, and again in 2015.[70][71] These deaths have taken a severe toll, especially within the local black community.[72]
Development and promotion
By the beginning of the 1970s, Baltimore’s downtown area known as the Inner Harbor had been neglected and was occupied by a collection of abandoned warehouses. The nickname “Charm City” came from a 1975 meeting of advertisers seeking to improve the city’s reputation.[73][74] Efforts to redevelop the area started with the construction of the Maryland Science Center, which opened in 1976, the Baltimore World Trade Center (1977), and the Baltimore Convention Center (1979). Harborplace, an urban retail and restaurant complex, opened on the waterfront in 1980, followed by the National Aquarium, Maryland’s largest tourist destination, and the Baltimore Museum of Industry in 1981. In 1995, the city opened the American Visionary Art Museum on Federal Hill. During the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the United States, Baltimore City Health Department official Robert Mehl persuaded the city’s mayor to form a committee to address food problems; the Baltimore-based charity Moveable Feast grew out of this initiative in 1990.[75][76][77] By 2010, the organization’s region of service had expanded from merely Baltimore to include all of the Eastern Shore of Maryland.[78] In 1992, the Baltimore Orioles baseball team moved from Memorial Stadium to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, located downtown near the harbor. Pope John Paul II held an open-air mass at Camden Yards during his papal visit to the United States in October 1995. Three years later the Baltimore Ravens football team moved into M&T Bank Stadium next to Camden Yards.[79]
Baltimore has seen the reopening of the Hippodrome Theatre in 2004,[80] the opening of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in 2005, and the establishment of the National Slavic Museum in 2012. On April 12, 2012, Johns Hopkins held a dedication ceremony to mark the completion of one of the United States’ largest medical complexes – the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore – which features the Sheikh Zayed Cardiovascular and Critical Care Tower and The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center. The event, held at the entrance to the $1.1 billion 1.6 million-square-foot-facility, honored the many donors including Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, first president of the United Arab Emirates, and Michael Bloomberg.[81][82]
On September 19, 2016 the Baltimore City Council approved a $660 million bond deal for the $5.5 billion Port Covington redevelopment project championed by Under Armour founder Kevin Plank and his real estate company Sagamore Development. Port Covington surpassed the Harbor Point development as the largest tax-increment financing deal in Baltimore’s history and among the largest urban redevelopment projects in the country.[83] The waterfront development that includes the new headquarters for Under Armour, as well as shops, housing, offices, and manufacturing spaces is projected to create 26,500 permanent jobs with a $4.3 billion annual economic impact.[84]Goldman Sachs invested $233 million into the redevelopment project.[85]
Geography
Baltimore is in north-central Maryland on the Patapsco River close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. The city is also located on the fall line between the Piedmont Plateau and the Atlantic coastal plain, which divides Baltimore into “lower city” and “upper city”. The city’s elevation ranges from sea level at the harbor to 480 feet (150 m) in the northwest corner near Pimlico.[5]
According to the 2010 Census, the city has a total area of 92.1 square miles (239 km2), of which 80.9 sq mi (210 km2) is land and 11.1 sq mi (29 km2) is water.[86] The total area is 12.1 percent water.
Baltimore is almost completely surrounded by Baltimore County, but is politically independent of it. It is bordered by Anne Arundel County to the south.
Cityscape
Panoramic view of Baltimore along the Inner and Outer Harbor at dusk, as seen from the
HarborView Condominium.
Architecture
Baltimore exhibits examples from each period of architecture over more than two centuries, and work from architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, George A. Frederick, John Russell Pope, Mies van der Rohe and I. M. Pei.
The city is rich in architecturally significant buildings in a variety of styles. The Baltimore Basilica (1806–1821) is a neoclassical design by Benjamin Latrobe, and also the oldest Catholic cathedral in the United States. In 1813 Robert Cary Long, Sr., built for Rembrandt Peale the first substantial structure in the United States designed expressly as a museum. Restored, it is now the Municipal Museum of Baltimore, or popularly the Peale Museum.
The McKim Free School was founded and endowed by John McKim, although the building was erected by his son Isaac in 1822 after a design by William Howard and William Small. It reflects the popular interest in Greece when the nation was securing its independence, as well as a scholarly interest in recently published drawings of Athenian antiquities.
The Phoenix Shot Tower (1828), at 234.25 feet (71.40 m) tall, was the tallest building in the United States until the time of the Civil War, and is one of few remaining structures of its kind.[87] It was constructed without the use of exterior scaffolding. The Sun Iron Building, designed by R.C. Hatfield in 1851, was the city’s first iron-front building and was a model for a whole generation of downtown buildings. Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, built in 1870 in memory of financier George Brown, has stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany and has been called “one of the most significant buildings in this city, a treasure of art and architecture” by Baltimore Magazine.[88][89]
The 1845 Greek Revival-style Lloyd Street Synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues in the United States. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, designed by Lt. Col. John S. Billings in 1876, was a considerable achievement for its day in functional arrangement and fireproofing.
I.M. Pei’s World Trade Center (1977) is the tallest equilateral pentagonal building in the world at 405 feet (123 m) tall.
The Harbor East area has seen the addition of two new towers which have completed construction: a 24-floor tower that is the new world headquarters of Legg Mason, and a 21-floor Four Seasons Hotel complex.
The streets of Baltimore are organized in a grid pattern, lined with tens of thousands of brick and formstone-faced rowhouses. In The Baltimore Rowhouse, Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure considered the rowhouse as the architectural form defining Baltimore as “perhaps no other American city.”[90] In the mid-1790s, developers began building entire neighborhoods of the British-style rowhouses, which became the dominant house type of the city early in the 19th century.[91]
Formstone facings, now a common feature on Baltimore rowhouses, were an addition patented in 1937 by Albert Knight. John Waters characterized formstone as “the polyester of brick” in a 30-minute documentary film, Little Castles: A Formstone Phenomenon.[92]
Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a Major League Baseball park, opened in 1992, which was built as a retro style baseball park. Camden Yards, along with the National Aquarium, have helped revive the Inner Harbor from what once was an industrial district full of dilapidated warehouses into a bustling commercial district full of bars, restaurants and retail establishments. Today, the Inner Harbor has some of the most desirable real estate in the Mid-Atlantic.[93]
After an international competition, the University of Baltimore School of Law awarded the German firm Behnisch Architekten 1st prize for its design, which was selected for the school’s new home. After the building’s opening in 2013, the design won additional honors including an ENR National “Best of the Best” Award.[94]
Baltimore’s newly rehabilitated Everyman Theatre was honored by the Baltimore Heritage at the 2013 Preservation Awards Celebration in 2013. Everyman Theatre will receive an Adaptive Reuse and Compatible Design Award as part of Baltimore Heritage’s 2013 historic preservation awards ceremony. Baltimore Heritage is Baltimore’s nonprofit historic and architectural preservation organization, which works to preserve and promote Baltimore’s historic buildings and neighborhoods.[95]
Tallest buildings
Neighborhoods
Baltimore is officially divided into nine geographical regions: North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest, and Central, with each district patrolled by a respective Baltimore Police Department. Interstate 83 and Charles Street down to Hanover Street and Ritchie Highway serve as the east-west dividing line and Eastern Avenue to Route 40 as the north-south dividing line. However, Baltimore Street is north-south dividing line for the U.S. Postal Service.[107] It is not uncommon for locals to divide the city simply by East or West Baltimore, using Charles Street or I-83 as a dividing line or into North and South using Baltimore Street as a dividing line.[citation needed]
Central Baltimore
Central Baltimore, originally called the Middle District,[108] stretches north of the Inner Harbor up to the edge of Druid Hill Park. Downtown Baltimore has mainly served as a commercial district with limited residential opportunities. However, between 2000 and 2010, the downtown population grew 130 percent as old commercial properties have been replaced by residential property.[109] Still the city’s main commercial area and business district, it includes Baltimore’s sports complexes: Oriole Park at Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, and the Royal Farms Arena; and the shops and attractions in the Inner Harbor: Harborplace, the Baltimore Convention Center, the National Aquarium, Maryland Science Center, Pier Six Pavilion, and Power Plant Live.[107]
The University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Maryland Medical Center, and Lexington Market are also in the central district, as well as the Hippodrome and many nightclubs, bars, restaurants, shopping centers and various other attractions.[107][108] The northern portion of Central Baltimore, between downtown and the Druid Hill Park, is home to many of the city’s cultural opportunities. Maryland Institute College of Art, the Peabody Institute (music conservatory), George Peabody Library, Enoch Pratt Free Library – Central Library, the Lyric Opera House, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the Walters Art Museum, the Maryland Historical Society and its Enoch Pratt Mansion, and several galleries are located in this region.[110]
North Baltimore
North Baltimore lies directly north of Central Baltimore and is bounded on the east by The Alameda and on the west by Pimlico Road. Loyola University Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus, St. Mary’s Seminary and University and Notre Dame of Maryland University are located in this district. Baltimore Polytechnic Institute high school for mathematics, science and engineering, and adjacent Western High School, the oldest remaining public girls secondary school in America, share a joint campus at West Cold Spring Lane and Falls Road.[citation needed]
Several historic and notable neighborhoods are in this district: Govans (1755), Roland Park (1891), Guilford (1913), Homeland (1924), Hampden, Woodberry, Old Goucher (the original campus of Goucher College), and Jones Falls. Along the York Road corridor going north are the large neighborhoods of Charles Village, Waverly, and Mount Washington. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District is also located in North Baltimore.[111]
South Baltimore[edit]
Rowhouses, Federal Hill neighborhood, Baltimore
South Baltimore, a mixed industrial and residential area, consists of the “Old South Baltimore” peninsula below the Inner Harbor and east of the old B&O Railroad‘s Camden line tracks and Russell Street downtown. It is a culturally, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse waterfront area with neighborhoods such as Locust Point and Riverside around a large park of the same name.[112] Just south of the Inner Harbor, the historic Federal Hill neighborhood, is home to many working professionals, pubs and restaurants. At the end of the peninsula is historic Fort McHenry, a National Park since the end of World War I, when the old U.S. Army Hospital surrounding the 1798 star-shaped battlements was torn down.[113]
The area south of the Vietnam Veterans (Hanover Street) Bridge and the Patapsco River was annexed to the city in 1919 from being independent towns in Anne Arundel County.[citation needed] Across the Hanover Street Bridge are residential areas such as Cherry Hill,[114] Brooklyn, and Curtis Bay, with Fort Armistead bordering the city’s south side from Anne Arundel County.[citation needed]
Northeast Baltimore
Northeast is primarily a residential neighborhood, home to Morgan State University, bounded by the city line of 1919 on its northern and eastern boundaries, Sinclair Lane, Erdman Avenue, and Pulaski Highway to the south and The Alameda on to the west. Also in this wedge of the city on 33rd Street is Baltimore City College high school, third oldest active public secondary school in the United States, founded downtown in 1839.[115] Across Loch Raven Boulevard is the former site of the old Memorial Stadium for the Baltimore Colts and Baltimore Orioles, now replaced by a YMCA athletic and housing complex.[116][117] Lake Montebello is in Northeast Baltimore.[108]
East Baltimore
Located below Sinclair Lane and Erdman Avenue, above Orleans Street, East Baltimore is mainly made up of residential neighborhoods. This section of East Baltimore is home to Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on Broadway. Notable neighborhoods include: Armistead Gardens, Broadway East, Barclay, Ellwood Park, Greenmount, and McElderry Park.[108]
This area was the on-site film location for Homicide: Life on the Street, The Corner and The Wire.[118]
Southeast Baltimore
Southeast Baltimore, located below Fayette Street, bordering the Inner Harbor and the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River to the west, the city line of 1919 on its eastern boundaries and the Patapsco River to the south, is a mixed industrial and residential area. Patterson Park, the “Best Backyard in Baltimore,”[119] as well as the Highlandtown Arts District, and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center are located in Southeast Baltimore. The Shops at Canton Crossing opened in 2013.[120] The Canton neighborhood, is located along Baltimore’s prime waterfront. Other historic neighborhoods include: Fells Point, Patterson Park, Butchers Hill, Highlandtown, Greektown, Harbor East, Little Italy, and Upper Fell’s Point.[108]
Northwest Baltimore
Northwestern is bounded by the county line to the north and west, Gwynns Falls Parkway on the south and Pimlico Road on the east, is home to Pimlico Race Course, Sinai Hospital, and the headquarters of the NAACP. Its neighborhoods are mostly residential and are dissected by Northern Parkway. The area has been the center of Baltimore’s Jewish community since after World War II. Notable neighborhoods include: Pimlico, Mount Washington, and Cheswolde, and Park Heights.[121]
West Baltimore
West Baltimore is west of downtown and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and is bounded by Gwynns Falls Parkway, Fremont Avenue, and West Baltimore Street. The Old West Baltimore Historic District includes the neighborhoods of Harlem Park, Sandtown-Winchester, Druid Heights, Madison Park, and Upton.[122][123] Originally a predominantly German neighborhood, by the last half of the 1800s, Old West Baltimore was home to a substantial section of the city’s African American population. It became the largest neighborhood for the city’s black community and its cultural, political, and economic center.[122] Coppin State University, Mondawmin Mall, and Edmondson Village are located in this district. The area’s crime problems have provided subject material for television series, such as The Wire.[124] Local organizations, such as the Sandtown Habitat for Humanity and the Upton Planning Committee, have been steadily transforming parts of formerly blighted areas of West Baltimore into clean, safe communities.[125][126]
Southwest Baltimore
Southwest Baltimore is bound by the Baltimore County line to the west, West Baltimore Street to the north, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Russell Street/Baltimore-Washington Parkway (Maryland Route 295) to the east. Notable neighborhoods in Southwest Baltimore include: Pigtown, Carrolton Ridge, Ridgely’s Delight, Leakin Park, Violetville, Lakeland, and Morrell Park.[108]
St. Agnes Hospital on Wilkens and Caton[108] avenues is located in this district with the neighboring Cardinal Gibbons High School, which is the former site of Babe Ruth‘s alma mater, St. Mary’s Industrial School.[citation needed] Also through this segment of Baltimore ran the beginnings of the historic National Road, which was constructed beginning in 1806 along Old Frederick Road and continuing into the county on Frederick Road into Ellicott City, Maryland.[citation needed] Other sides in this district are: Carroll Park, one of the city’s largest parks, the colonial Mount Clare Mansion, and Washington Boulevard, which dates to pre-Revolutionary War days as the prime route out of the city to Alexandria, Virginia, and Georgetown on the Potomac River.[citation needed]
Adjacent communities
The City of Baltimore is bordered by the following communities, all unincorporated census-designated places.
Climate
The city has a humid subtropical climate zone (Köppen: Cfa).[127] Its Trewartha climate classification is defined as an oceanic climate (Do), like the other major cities in the region (NYC, Philadelphia) with blizzards but without having a continental climate by technical definition.[128][129] Baltimore is part of USDA plant hardiness zones 7b and 8a.[130] Winters are chilly to mild but variable, with sporadic snowfall: January has a daily average of 35.8 °F (2.1 °C),[131] though temperatures reach 50 °F (10 °C) rather often and drop below 20 °F (−7 °C) when Arctic air masses affect the area.[131]
The average seasonal snowfall is 20.1 inches (51 cm),[132] but it varies greatly depending on the winter, with some seasons seeing minimal snow while others see several major Nor’easters. [a] Due to lessened urban heat island (UHI) as compared to the city proper and distance from the moderating Chesapeake Bay, the outlying and inland parts of the Baltimore metro area are usually cooler, especially at night, than the city proper and the coastal towns. Thus, in the northern and western suburbs, winter snowfall is more significant, and some areas average more than 30 in (76 cm) of snow per winter.[134] It is by no means uncommon for the rain-snow line to set up in the metro area.[135] Freezing rain and sleet occurs a few times each winter in the area, as warm air overrides cold air at the low to mid-levels of the atmosphere. When the wind blows from the east, the cold air gets dammed against the mountains to the west and the result is freezing rain or sleet.
Spring and autumn are warm, with spring being the wettest season in terms of the number of precipitation days. Summers are hot and humid with a daily average in July of 80.7 °F (27.1 °C),[131] and the combination of heat and humidity leads to rather frequent thunderstorms. A southeasterly bay breeze off the Chesapeake often occurs on summer afternoons when hot air rises over inland areas; prevailing winds from the southwest interacting with this breeze as well as the city proper’s UHI can seriously exacerbate air quality.[136][137] In late summer and early autumn the track of hurricanes or their remnants may cause flooding in downtown Baltimore, despite the city being far removed from the typical coastal storm surge areas.[138]
Extreme temperatures range from −7 °F (−22 °C) on February 9, 1934, and February 10, 1899,[b] up to 108 °F (42 °C) on July 22, 2011.[139][140] On average, 100 °F (38 °C)+ temperatures occur on 0.9 days annually, 90 °F (32 °C)+ on 37 days, and there are 10 days where the high fails to reach the freezing mark.[131]
| showClimate data for Baltimore (1981−2010 normals)[c] |
| showClimate data for Baltimore |
Demographics
Population
| Historical population |
| Census |
Pop. |
|
%± |
| 1790 |
13,503 |
|
— |
| 1800 |
26,514 |
|
96.4% |
| 1810 |
46,555 |
|
75.6% |
| 1820 |
62,738 |
|
34.8% |
| 1830 |
80,620 |
|
28.5% |
| 1840 |
102,313 |
|
26.9% |
| 1850 |
169,054 |
|
65.2% |
| 1860 |
212,418 |
|
25.7% |
| 1870 |
267,354 |
|
25.9% |
| 1880 |
332,313 |
|
24.3% |
| 1890 |
434,439 |
|
30.7% |
| 1900 |
508,957 |
|
17.2% |
| 1910 |
558,485 |
|
9.7% |
| 1920 |
733,826 |
|
31.4% |
| 1930 |
804,874 |
|
9.7% |
| 1940 |
859,100 |
|
6.7% |
| 1950 |
949,708 |
|
10.5% |
| 1960 |
939,024 |
|
−1.1% |
| 1970 |
905,787 |
|
−3.5% |
| 1980 |
786,741 |
|
−13.1% |
| 1990 |
736,016 |
|
−6.4% |
| 2000 |
651,154 |
|
−11.5% |
| 2010 |
620,961 |
|
−4.6% |
| Est. 2018 |
602,495 |
[7] |
−3.0% |
U.S. Decennial Census[146]
1790–1960[147] 1900–1990[148]
1990–2000[149] 2010–2018[150] |
According to the 2010 Census, there were 620,961 people living in Baltimore City in 242,268 households. The population decreased by 4.6% since the 2000 Census. Among school-age children between 5–17 years old, there was a 23% decline.[151] Baltimore’s population has declined at each census since its peak in 1950.[109]
In 2011, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said her main goal was to increase the city’s population by improving city services to reduce the number of people leaving the city and by passing legislation protecting immigrants’ rights to stimulate growth.[151] For the first time in decades, in July 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau’s census estimate showed the population grew by 1,100 residents, a 0.2% increase from the previous year.[152]
Gentrification has also increased since the 2000 census, primarily in East Baltimore, downtown, and Central Baltimore.[153] Downtown Baltimore and its surrounding neighborhoods are seeing a resurgence of young professionals and immigrants, mirroring major cities across the country.[152]
After New York City, Baltimore was the second city in the United States to reach a population of 100,000.[154][155] From the 1830 through 1850 U.S. censuses, Baltimore was the second most-populous city,[155][156] before being surpassed by Philadelphia in 1860.[157] It was among the top 10 cities in population in the United States in every census up to the 1980 census,[158] and after World War II had a population of nearly 1 million.
Characteristics
Map of racial distribution in Baltimore, 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot is 25 people: White, Black, AsianHispanic, or Other (yellow)
According to the 2010 Census, Baltimore’s population is 63.7% Black, 29.6% White, 2.3% Asian, and 0.4%, American Indian and Alaska Native. Across races, 4.2% of the population are of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.[150]Females made up 53.4% of the population. The median age was 35 years old, with 22.4% under 18 years old, 65.8% from 18 to 64 years old, and 11.8% 65 or older.[150]
In 2005, approximately 30,778 people (6.5%) identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.[162] In 2012, same-sex marriage in Maryland was legalized, going into effect January 1, 2013.[163]
Income and housing
In 2009, the median household income was $42,241 and the median income per capita was $25,707, compared to the national median income of $53,889 per household and $28,930 per capita. In Baltimore, 23.7% of the population lived below the poverty line, compared to 13.5% nationwide.[150]
Housing in Baltimore is relatively inexpensive for large, coastal cities of its size. The median sale price for homes in Baltimore in 2012 was $95,000.[164] Despite the housing collapse, and along with the national trends, Baltimore residents still face slowly increasing rent (up 3% in the summer of 2010).[165]
The homeless population in Baltimore is steadily increasing; it exceeded 4,000 people in 2011. The increase in the number of young homeless people was particularly severe.[166]
Religion
A little under half (47%) of people in Baltimore report affiliating with a religion. Catholicism is the largest religious affiliation, comprising 12% percent of the population, followed by the Baptist Church (7%), then Judaism (4.3%). Around 11.4% identify with other Christian denominations.[167][168]
Languages
As of 2010, 91% (526,705) of Baltimore residents five years old and older spoke only English at home. Close to 4% (21,661) spoke Spanish. Other languages, such as African languages, French, and Chinese are spoken by less than 1% of the population.[169]
Crime
Crime in Baltimore, generally concentrated in areas high in poverty, has been far above the national average for many years. Overall reported crime has dropped by 60% from the mid 1990s to the mid 2010s, but homicide rates remain high and exceed the national average. The worst years for crime in Baltimore overall were from 1993 to 1996; with 96,243 crimes reported in 1995. Baltimore’s 344 homicides in 2015 represented the highest homicide rate in the city’s recorded history—52.5 per 100,000 people, surpassing the record set in 1993—and the second-highest for U.S. cities behind St. Louis and ahead of Detroit. To put that in perspective, New York City, a city with a 2015 population of 8,491,079 recorded a total of 339 homicides in 2015. Baltimore had a 2015 population of 621,849; which means that in 2015 Baltimore had a homicide rate 14 times higher than New York City’s. Of Baltimore’s 344 homicides in 2015, 321 (93.3%) of the victims were African-American.[citation needed] Chicago, which saw 762 homicides in 2016 compared to Baltimore’s 318, still had a homicide rate (27.2) that was half of Baltimore’s because Chicago has a population 4 times greater than Baltimore’s.[citation needed] Drug use and deaths by drug use (particularly drugs used intravenously, such as heroin) are a related problem which has crippled Baltimore for decades. Among cities greater than 400,000, Baltimore ranked 2nd in its opiate drug death rate in the United States behind Dayton, Ohio. The DEA reported that 10% of Baltimore’s population – about 64,000 people – are addicted to heroin.[170][171][172][173][174]
In 2011, Baltimore police reported 196 homicides, the lowest number in the city since a count of 197 homicides in 1978 and far lower than the peak homicide count of 353 slayings in 1993. City leaders at the time credited a sustained focus on repeat violent offenders and increased community engagement for the continued drop, reflecting a nationwide decline in crime.[175][176]
On August 8, 2014, Baltimore’s new youth curfew law went into effect. It prohibits unaccompanied children under age 14 from being on the streets after 9 p.m. and those aged 14–16 from being out after 10 p.m. during the week and 11 p.m. on weekends and during the summer. The goal is to keep children out of dangerous places and reduce crime.[177]
Crime in Baltimore reached another peak in 2015 when the year’s tally of 344 homicides was second only to the record 353 in 1993, when Baltimore had about 100,000 more residents. The killings in 2015 were on pace with recent years in the early months of 2015 but skyrocketed after the unrest and rioting of late April. In five of the next eight months, killings topped 30–40 per month. Nearly 90 percent of 2015’s homicides were the result of shootings, renewing calls for new gun laws. In 2016, according to annual crime statistics released by the Baltimore Police Department, there were 318 murders in the city.[178] This total marked a 7.56 percent decline in homicides from 2015.
In an interview in The Guardian, on November 2, 2017,[179] David Simon, himself a former police reporter for The Baltimore Sun, ascribed the most recent surge in murders to the high-profile decision by Baltimore state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, to charge six city police officers following the death of Freddie Gray after he fell into a coma while in police custody in April 2015. “What Mosby basically did was send a message to the Baltimore police department: ‘I’m going to put you in jail for making a bad arrest.’ So officers figured it out: ‘I can go to jail for making the wrong arrest, so I’m not getting out of my car to clear a corner,’ and that’s exactly what happened post-Freddie Gray.” In Baltimore arrest numbers have plummeted from more than 40,000 in 2014, the year before Freddie Gray’s death and the subsequent charges against the officers, to about 18,000 in 2017 (primo November). This happened even as homicides soared from 211 in 2014 to 344 in 2015 – an increase of 63%.[179]
Economy
Once a predominantly industrial town, with an economic base focused on steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing (General Motors Baltimore Assembly), and transportation, the city experienced deindustrialization which cost residents tens of thousands of low-skill, high-wage jobs.[180] The city now relies on a low-wage service economy, which accounts for 31% of jobs in the city.[181][182] Around the turn of the 20th century, Baltimore was the leading US manufacturer of rye whiskey and straw hats. It also led in refining of crude oil, brought to the city by pipeline from Pennsylvania.[183][184][185]
As of March 2018 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates Baltimore’s unemployment rate at 5.8%[186] while one quarter of Baltimore residents (and 37% of Baltimore children) live in poverty.[187] The 2012 closure of a major steel plant at Sparrows Point is expected to have a further impact on employment and the local economy.[188] The Census Bureau reported in 2013 that 207,000 workers commute into Baltimore city each day.[189] Downtown Baltimore is the primary economic asset within Baltimore City and the region with 29.1 million square feet of office space. The tech sector is rapidly growing as the Baltimore metro ranks 8th in the CBRE Tech Talent Report among 50 U.S. metro areas for high growth rate and number of tech professionals.[190] Forbes ranked Baltimore fourth among America’s “new tech hot spots”.[191]
Panoramic view of the Baltimore Inner Harbor and Harbor Point waterfront development as seen from the Domino Sugar factory.
The city is home to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Other large companies in Baltimore include Under Armour,[192] BRT Laboratories, Cordish Company,[193] Legg Mason, McCormick & Company, T. Rowe Price, and Royal Farms.[194] A sugar refinery owned by American Sugar Refining is one of Baltimore’s cultural icons. Nonprofits based in Baltimore include Lutheran Services in America and Catholic Relief Services.
Almost a quarter of the jobs in the Baltimore region were in science, technology, engineering and math as of mid 2013, in part attributed to the city’s extensive undergraduate and graduate schools; maintenance and repair experts were included in this count.[195]
Port
The center of international commerce for the region is the World Trade Center Baltimore. It houses the Maryland Port Administration and U.S. headquarters for major shipping lines. Baltimore is ranked 9th for total dollar value of cargo and 13th for cargo tonnage for all U.S. ports. In 2014, total cargo moving through the port totaled 29.5 million tons, down from 30.3 million tons in 2013. The value of cargo traveling through the port in 2014 came to $52.5 billion, down from $52.6 billion in 2013. The Port of Baltimore generates $3 billion in annual wages and salary, as well as supporting 14,630 direct jobs and 108,000 jobs connected to port work. In 2014, the port also generated more than $300 million in taxes. It serves over 50 ocean carriers making nearly 1,800 annual visits. Among all U.S. ports, Baltimore is first in handling automobiles, light trucks, farm and construction machinery; and imported forest products, aluminum, and sugar. The port is second in coal exports. The Port of Baltimore’s cruise industry, which offers year-round trips on several lines supports over 500 jobs and brings in over $90 million to Maryland’s economy annually. Growth at the port continues with the Maryland Port Administration plans to turn the southern tip of the former steel mill into a marine terminal, primarily for car and truck shipments, but also for anticipated new business coming to Baltimore after the completion of the Panama Canal expansion project.[196]
Tourism
Baltimore’s history and attractions have allowed the city to become a strong tourist destination on the East Coast. In 2014, the city hosted 24.5 million visitors, who spent $5.2 billion.[197] The Baltimore Visitor Center, which is operated by Visit Baltimore, is located on Light Street in the Inner Harbor. Much of the city’s tourism centers around the Inner Harbor, with the National Aquarium being Maryland’s top tourist destination. Baltimore Harbor’s restoration has made it “a city of boats”, with several historic ships and other attractions on display and open for the public to visit. The USS Constellation, the last Civil War-era vessel afloat, is docked at the head of the Inner Harbor; the USS Torsk, a submarine that holds the Navy’s record for dives (more than 10,000); and the Coast Guard cutter Taney, the last surviving U.S. warship that was in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, and which engaged Japanese Zero aircraft during the battle.[198]
Also docked is the lightship Chesapeake, which for decades marked the entrance to Chesapeake Bay; and the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse, the oldest surviving screw-pile lighthouse on Chesapeake Bay, which once marked the mouth of the Patapsco River and the entrance to Baltimore. All of these attractions are owned and maintained by the Historic Ships in Baltimore organization. The Inner Harbor also is the home port of Pride of Baltimore II, the state of Maryland’s “goodwill ambassador” ship, a reconstruction of a famous Baltimore Clipper ship.[198]
Other tourist destinations in the city include Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Fort McHenry, the Mount Vernon and Fells Point neighborhoods, and museums such as the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Industry, and the B&O Railroad Museum.
Baltimore, and more specifically, the Baltimore Convention Center is home to BronyCon, the world’s largest convention for fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The convention had over 6,300 attendees in 2017, and 10,011 attendees during its peak in 2015.[citation needed]
-
Baltimore Visitor Center in Inner Harbor
-
Fountain near visitor center in Inner Harbor
-
Sunset views from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
-
-
-
-
Culture
Historically a working-class port town, Baltimore has sometimes been dubbed a “city of neighborhoods”, with 72 designated historic districts[199] traditionally occupied by distinct ethnic groups. Most notable today are three downtown areas along the port: the Inner Harbor, frequented by tourists due to its hotels, shops, and museums; Fells Point, once a favorite entertainment spot for sailors but now refurbished and gentrified (and featured in the movie Sleepless in Seattle); and Little Italy, located between the other two, where Baltimore’s Italian-American community is based – and where U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi grew up. Further inland, Mount Vernon is the traditional center of cultural and artistic life of the city; it is home to a distinctive Washington Monument, set atop a hill in a 19th-century urban square, that predates the more well-known monument in Washington, D.C. by several decades. Baltimore also has a significant German American population,[200] and was the second largest port of immigration to the United States, behind Ellis Island in New York and New Jersey. Between 1820 and 1989, almost 2 million who were German, Polish, English, Irish, Russian, Lithuanian, French, Ukrainian, Czech, Greek and Italian came to Baltimore, most between the years 1861 to 1930. By 1913, when Baltimore was averaging forty thousand immigrants per year, World War I closed off the flow of immigrants. By 1970, Baltimore’s heyday as an immigration center was a distant memory. There also was a Chinatown dating back to at least the 1880s which consisted of no more than 400 Chinese residents. A local Chinese-American association remains based there, but only one Chinese restaurant as of 2009.
Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower, built in 1911. The 15 stories of the Bromo Seltzer Tower have been transformed into studio spaces for visual and literary artists
Baltimore has quite a history when it comes to making beer, an art that thrived in Baltimore from the 1800s to the 1950s with over 100 old breweries in the city’s past.[201] The best remaining example of that history is the old American Brewery Building on North Gay Street and the National Brewing Company building in the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood. In the 1940s the National Brewing Company introduced the nation’s first six-pack. National’s two most prominent brands, were National Bohemian Beer colloquially “Natty Boh” and Colt 45. Listed on the Pabst website as a “Fun Fact”, Colt 45 was named after running back #45 Jerry Hill of the 1963 Baltimore Colts and not the .45 caliber handgun ammunition round. Both brands are still made today, albeit outside of Maryland, and served all around the Baltimore area at bars, as well as Orioles and Ravens games.[202] The Natty Boh logo appears on all cans, bottles, and packaging; and merchandise featuring him can still easily be found in shops in Maryland, including several in Fells Point.
Each year the Artscape takes place in the city in the Bolton Hill neighborhood, due to its proximity to Maryland Institute College of Art. Artscape styles itself as the “largest free arts festival in America”.[203] Each May, the Maryland Film Festival takes place in Baltimore, using all five screens of the historic Charles Theatre as its anchor venue. Many movies and television shows have been filmed in Baltimore. The Wire was set and filmed in Baltimore. House of Cardsand Veep are set in Washington, D.C. but filmed in Baltimore.[204]
Baltimore has cultural museums in many areas of study. The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum are internationally renowned for its collection of art. The Baltimore Museum of Art has the largest holding of works by Henri Matisse in the world.[205] The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum is the first African American wax museum in the country, featuring more than 150 life-size and lifelike wax figures.[44]
Cuisine
Baltimore is known for its Maryland blue crabs, crab cake, Old Bay Seasoning, pit beef, and the “chicken box.” The city has many restaurants in or around the Inner Harbor. The most known and acclaimed are the Charleston, Woodberry Kitchen, and the Charm City Cakes bakery featured on the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes. The Little Italy neighborhood’s biggest draw is the food. Fells Point also is a foodie neighborhood for tourists and locals and is where the oldest continuously running tavern in the country, “The Horse You Came in on Saloon,” is located.[206] Many of the city’s upscale restaurants can be found in Harbor East. Five public markets are located across the city. The Baltimore Public Market System is the oldest continuously operating public market system in the United States.[207] Lexington Market is one of the longest-running markets in the world and longest running in the country, having been around since 1782. The market continues to stand at its original site. Baltimore is the last place in America where one can still find arabbers, vendors who sell fresh fruits and vegetables from a horse-drawn cart that goes up and down neighborhood streets.[208] Food- and drink-rating site Zagat ranked Baltimore second in a list of the 17 best food cities in the country in 2015.[209]
Local dialect
Baltimore city, along with its surrounding regions, is home to a unique local dialect. It is part of Mid-Atlantic American English and is noted to be very similar to the Philadelphia accent, albeit with more southern influences.[210][211]
The so-called “Bawlmerese” accent is known for its characteristic pronunciation of its long “o” vowel, in which an “eh” sound is added before the long “o” sound.[212] It also adopts Philadelphia’s pattern of the short “a” sound, such that the tensed vowel in words like “bath” or “ask” does not match the more relaxed one in “sad” or “act”.[210]
Baltimore native John Waters parodies the city and its dialect extensively in his films. Most of them are filmed and/or set in Baltimore, including the 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos, as well as Hairspray and its Broadway musical remake.
Performing arts
Baltimore has three state-designated arts and entertainment (A & E) districts. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District, Highlandtown Arts District, and the Bromo Arts & Entertainment District. The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, a non-profit organization, produces events and arts programs as well as manages several facilities. It is the official Baltimore City Arts Council. BOPA coordinates Baltimore’s major events including New Year’s Eve and July 4 celebrations at the Inner Harbor, Artscape which is America’s largest free arts festival, Baltimore Book Festival, Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar, School 33 Art Center’s Open Studio Tour and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade.[213]
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is an internationally renowned orchestra, founded in 1916 as a publicly funded municipal organization. The current Music Director is Marin Alsop, a protégé of Leonard Bernstein. Centerstage is the premier theater company in the city and a regionally well-respected group. The Lyric Opera House is the home of Lyric Opera Baltimore, which operates there as part of the Patricia and Arthur Modell Performing Arts Center. The Baltimore Consort has been a leading early music ensemble for over twenty-five years. The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, home of the restored Thomas W. Lamb-designed Hippodrome Theatre, has afforded Baltimore the opportunity to become a major regional player in the area of touring Broadway and other performing arts presentations. Renovating Baltimore’s historic theatres have become widespread throughout the city such as the Everyman, Centre, Senator and most recent Parkway theatre. Other buildings have been reused such as the former Mercantile Deposit and Trust Company bank building. It is now the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theater.
Baltimore also boasts a wide array of professional (non-touring) and community theater groups. Aside from Center Stage, resident troupes in the city include The Vagabond Players, the oldest continuously operating community theater group in the country, Everyman Theatre, Single Carrot Theatre, and Baltimore Theatre Festival. Community theaters in the city include Fells Point Community Theatre and the Arena Players Inc., which is the nation’s oldest continuously operating African American community theater.[214] In 2009, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, an all-volunteer theatrical company, launched its first production.[215]
Baltimore is home to the Pride of Baltimore Chorus, a three-time international silver medalist women’s chorus, affiliated with Sweet Adelines International. The Maryland State Boychoir is located in the northeastern Baltimore neighborhood of Mayfield.
Baltimore is the home of non-profit chamber music organization Vivre Musicale. VM won a 2011–2012 award for Adventurous Programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Chamber Music America.[216]
The Peabody Institute, located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, is the oldest conservatory of music in the United States.[217] Established in 1857, it is one of the most prestigious in the world,[217] along with Juilliard, Eastman, and the Curtis Institute. The Morgan State University Choir is also one of the nation’s most prestigious university choral ensembles.[218] The city is home to the Baltimore School for the Arts, a public high school in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. The institution is nationally recognized for its success in preparation for students entering music (vocal/instrumental), theatre (acting/theater production), dance, and visual arts.
Sports
Baseball
Baltimore has a long and storied baseball history, including its distinction as the birthplace of Babe Ruth in 1895. The original 19th century Baltimore Orioles were one of the most successful early franchises, featuring numerous hall of famers during its years from 1882 to 1899. As one of the eight inaugural American League franchises, the Baltimore Orioles played in the AL during the 1901 and 1902 seasons. The team moved to New York City before the 1903 season and was renamed the New York Highlanders, which later became the New York Yankees. Ruth played for the minor league Baltimore Orioles team, which was active from 1903 to 1914. After playing one season in 1915 as the Richmond Climbers, the team returned the following year to Baltimore, where it played as the Orioles until 1953.[219]
The team currently known as the Baltimore Orioles has represented Major League Baseball locally since 1954 when the St. Louis Browns moved to the city of Baltimore. The Orioles advanced to the World Series in 1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979 and 1983, winning three times (1966, 1970 and 1983), while making the playoffs all but one year (1972) from 1969 through 1974.
In 1995, local player (and later Hall of Famer) Cal Ripken, Jr. broke Lou Gehrig‘s streak of 2,130 consecutive games played, for which Ripken was named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated magazine.[citation needed] Six former Orioles players, including Ripken (2007), and two of the team’s managers have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Since 1992, the Orioles’ home ballpark has been Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which has been hailed as one of the league’s best since it opened.[citation needed]
Prior to an NFL team moving to Baltimore, there had been several attempts at a professional football team prior to the 1950s. Most were minor league or semi-professional teams. The first major league to base a team in Baltimore was the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), which had a team named the Baltimore Colts. The AAFC Colts played for three seasons in the AAFC (1947, 1948, and 1949), and when the AAFC folded following the 1949 season, moved to the NFL for a single year (1950) before going bankrupt. Three years later, the NFL’s Dallas Texans would itself fold, and its assets and player contracts purchased by an ownership team headed by Baltimore businessman Carroll Rosenbloom, who moved the team to Baltimore, establishing a new team also named the Baltimore Colts. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Colts were one of the NFLs more successful franchises, led by Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas who set a then-record of 47 consecutive games with a touchdown pass. The Colts advanced to the NFL Championship twice (1958 & 1959) and Super Bowl twice (1969 & 1971), winning all except Super Bowl III in 1969. After the 1983 season, the team left Baltimore for Indianapolis in 1984, where they became the Indianapolis Colts.
The NFL returned to Baltimore when the former Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens in 1996. Since then, the Ravens won a Super Bowl championship in 2000 and 2012, five AFC North division championships (2003, 2006, 2011, 2012 and 2018), and appeared in four AFC Championship Games (2000, 2008, 2011 and 2012).
Other teams and events
The first professional sports organization in the United States, The Maryland Jockey Club, was formed in Baltimore in 1743. Preakness Stakes, the second race in the United States Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, has been held every May at Pimlico Race Coursein Baltimore since 1873.
College lacrosse is a common sport in the spring, as the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays men’s lacrosse team has won 44 national championships, the most of any program in history. In addition, Loyola University won its first men’s NCAA lacrosse championship in 2012.
The Baltimore Blast are a professional arena soccer team that play in the Major Arena Soccer League at the SECU Arena on the campus of Towson University. The Blast have won 9 championships in various leagues, including the MASL. A previous entity of the Blastplayed in the Major Indoor Soccer League from 1980 to 1992, winning 1 championship.
The FC Baltimore 1729 is a semi-professional soccer club playing for NPSL league, with the goal of bringing a community-oriented competitive soccer experience to the city of Baltimore. Their inaugural season will start May 11, 2018, and they will play their home games at CCBC Essex Field.
The Baltimore Blues are a semi-professional rugby league club which began competition in the USA Rugby League in 2012.[220] The Baltimore Bohemians are an American soccer club. They compete in the USL Premier Development League, the fourth tier of the American Soccer Pyramid. Their inaugural season started in the spring of 2012.
The Baltimore Grand Prix debuted along the streets of the Inner Harbor section of the city’s downtown on September 2–4, 2011. The event played host to the American Le Mans Series on Saturday and the IndyCar Series on Sunday. Support races from smaller series were also held, including Indy Lights. After three consecutive years, on September 13, 2013, it was announced that the event would not be held in 2014 or 2015 due to scheduling conflicts.[221]
The athletic equipment company, Under Armour is also based out of Baltimore. Founded in 1996 by Kevin Plank, a University of Maryland alumnus, the company’s headquarters are located in Tide Point, adjacent to Fort McHenry and the Domino Sugar factory. The Baltimore Marathon is the flagship race of several races. The marathon begins at the Camden Yards sports complex and travels through many diverse neighborhoods of Baltimore, including the scenic Inner Harbor waterfront area, historic Federal Hill, Fells Point, and Canton, Baltimore. The race then proceeds to other important focal points of the city such as Patterson Park, Clifton Park, Lake Montebello, the Charles Village neighborhood and the western edge of downtown. After winding through 42.195 kilometres (26.219 mi) of Baltimore, the race ends at virtually the same point at which it starts.
The Baltimore Brigade is an Arena Football League team based in Baltimore that began in 2017, playing at Royal Farms Arena along the Inner City near the Edward A. Garmatz Courthouse.
Parks and recreation
The City of Baltimore boasts over 4,900 acres (1,983 ha) of parkland.[222] The Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks manages the majority of parks and recreational facilities in the city including Patterson Park, Federal Hill Park, and Druid Hill Park.[223] The city is also home to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, a coastal star-shaped fort best known for its role in the War of 1812. As of 2015, The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization, ranks Baltimore 40th among the 75 largest U.S. cities.[222]
Government
Baltimore is an independent city, and not part of any county. For most governmental purposes under Maryland law, Baltimore City is treated as a county-level entity. The United States Census Bureau uses counties as the basic unit for presentation of statistical information in the United States, and treats Baltimore as a county equivalent for those purposes.
Baltimore has been a Democratic stronghold for over 150 years, with Democrats dominating every level of government. In virtually all elections, the Democratic primary is the real contest.[224] No Republican has won election to the city council since 1939, and no Republican has won the mayor’s race since 1963.
The city hosted the first six Democratic National Conventions, from 1832 through 1852, and hosted the DNC again in 1860, 1872, and 1912.[225][226]
City government
Mayor
Catherine Pugh became the Democratic nominee for mayor in 2016 and won the mayoral election in 2016 with 57.1% of the vote; Pugh took office as mayor on December 6, 2016.[227]
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake assumed the office of Mayor on February 4, 2010, when predecessor Dixon’s resignation became effective.[228] Rawlings-Blake had been serving as City Council President at the time. She was elected to a full term in 2011, defeating Pugh in the primary election and receiving 84% of the vote.[229]
Sheila Dixon became the first female mayor of Baltimore on January 17, 2007. As the former City Council President, she assumed the office of Mayor when former Mayor Martin O’Malley took office as Governor of Maryland.[230] On November 6, 2007, Dixon won the Baltimore mayoral election. Mayor Dixon’s administration ended less than three years after her election, the result of a criminal investigation that began in 2006 while she was still City Council President. She was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of embezzlement on December 1, 2009. A month later, Dixon made an Alford plea to a perjury charge and agreed to resign from office; Maryland, like most states, does not allow convicted felons to hold office.[231][232]
Baltimore City Council
Grassroots pressure for reform, voiced as Question P, restructured the city council in November 2002, against the will of the mayor, the council president, and the majority of the council. A coalition of union and community groups, organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), backed the effort.[233]
The Baltimore City Council is now made up of 14 single-member districts and one elected at-large council president. Bernard C. “Jack” Young has been the council president since February 2010, when he was unanimously elected by the other council members to replace Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who had become mayor.[234] Edward Reisinger, the 10th district representative, is the council’s current vice president.[235]
Law enforcement
The Baltimore City Police Department, founded 1784 as a “Night City Watch” and day Constables system and later reorganized as a City Department in 1853, with a following reorganization under State of Maryland supervision in 1859, with appointments made by the Governor of Maryland after a disturbing period of civic and elections violence with riots in the later part of the decade, is the current primary law enforcement agency serving the citizens of the City of Baltimore. Campus and building security for the city’s public schools is provided by the Baltimore City Public Schools Police, established in the 1970s.
In the period of 2011–2015, 120 lawsuits were brought against Baltimore police for alleged brutality and misconduct. The Freddie Gray settlement of $6.4 million exceeds the combined total settlements of the 120 lawsuits, as state law caps such payments.[236]
The Maryland Transportation Authority Police under the Maryland Department of Transportation, (originally established as the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Police” when opened in 1957) is the primary law enforcement agency on the Fort McHenry Tunnel Thruway (Interstate 95), the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Thruway (Interstate 895), which go under the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River, and Interstate 395, which has three ramp bridges crossing the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River which are under MdTA jurisdiction, the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, (BWI) and have limited concurrent jurisdiction with the Baltimore City Police Department under a “memorandum of understanding“.
Law enforcement on the fleet of transit buses and transit rail systems serving Baltimore is the responsibility of the Maryland Transit Administration Police, which is part of the Maryland Transit Administration of the state Department of Transportation. The MTA Police also share jurisdiction authority with the Baltimore City Police, governed by a memorandum of understanding.[237]
As the enforcement arm of the Baltimore circuit and district court system, the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office, created by state constitutional amendment in 1844, is responsible for the security of city courthouses and property, service of court-ordered writs, protective and peace orders, warrants, tax levies, prisoner transportation and traffic enforcement. Deputy Sheriffs are sworn law enforcement officials, with full arrest authority granted by the constitution of Maryland, the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission and the Sheriff of the City of Baltimore.[238]
The United States Coast Guard, operating out of their shipyard and facility (since 1899) at Arundel Cove on Curtis Creek, (off Pennington Avenue extending to Hawkins Point Road/Fort Smallwood Road) in the Curtis Bay section of southern Baltimore City and adjacent northern Anne Arundel County. The U.S.C.G. also operates and maintains a presence on Baltimore and Maryland waterways in the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay. “Sector Baltimore” is responsible for commanding law enforcement and search & rescue units as well as aids to navigation.
Baltimore City Fire Department
The city of Baltimore is protected by the over 1,800 professional firefighters of the Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD), which was founded in December 1858 and began operating the following year. Replacing several warring independent volunteer companies since the 1770s and the confusion resulting from a riot involving the “Know-Nothing” political party two years before, the establishment of a unified professional fire fighting force was a major advance in urban governance. The BCFD operates out of 37 fire stations located throughout the city and has a long history and sets of traditions in its various houses and divisions.
State government
Since the legislative redistricting in 2002, Baltimore has had six legislative districts located entirely within its boundaries, giving the city six seats in the 47-member Maryland Senate and 18 in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates.[239][240] During the previous 10-year period, Baltimore had four legislative districts within the city limits, but four others overlapped the Baltimore County line.[241] As of January 2011, all of Baltimore’s state senators and delegates were Democrats.[239] Approval of the next redistricting plan is expected to become effective in time for Maryland’s 2012 congressional primary election on February 14, 2012.[242]
State agencies
Federal government
Three of the state’s eight congressional districts include portions of Baltimore: the 2nd, represented by Dutch Ruppersberger; the 3rd, represented by John Sarbanes; and the 7th, represented by Elijah Cummings. All three are Democrats; a Republican has not represented a significant portion of Baltimore in Congress since John Boynton Philip Clayton Hill represented the 3rd District in 1927, and has not represented any of Baltimore since the Eastern Shore-based 1st District lost its share of Baltimore after the 2000 census; it was represented by Republican Wayne Gilchrest at the time.
Maryland’s senior Senator, Ben Cardin, is from Baltimore. He is one of three people in the last four decades to have represented the 3rd District before being elected to the Senate. Paul Sarbanes represented the 3rd from 1971 until 1977, when he was elected to the first of five terms in the Senate. Sarbanes was succeeded by Barbara Mikulski, who represented the 3rd from 1977 to 1987. Mikulski was succeeded by Cardin, who held the seat until handing it to John Sarbanes upon his election to the Senate in 2007.[243]
show
Presidential elections results
The Postal Service‘s Baltimore Main Post Office is located at 900 East Fayette Street in the Jonestown area.[245]
The national headquarters for the United States Social Security Administration is located in Woodlawn, just outside of Baltimore.
Education
Colleges and universities
Baltimore is the home of numerous places of higher learning, both public and private. 100,000 college students from around the country attend Baltimore City’s 12 accredited two-year or four-year colleges and universities.[246][247] Among them are:
Private
Public
Primary and secondary schools
The city’s public schools are managed by Baltimore City Public Schools and include schools that have been well known in the area: Carver Vocational-Technical High School, the first African American vocational high school and center that was established in the state of Maryland; Digital Harbor High School, one of the secondary schools that emphasizes information technology; Lake Clifton Eastern High School, which is the largest school campus in Baltimore City of physical size; the historic Frederick Douglass High School, which is the second oldest African American high school in the United States;[249] Baltimore City College, the third oldest public high school in the country;[250] and Western High School, the oldest public all-girls school in the nation.[251] Baltimore City College (also known as “City”) and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (also known as “Poly”) share the nation’s second-oldest high school football rivalry.[252]
Transportation
The city of Baltimore has a higher-than-average percentage of households without a car. In 2015, 30.7 percent of Baltimore households lacked a car, which decreased slightly to 28.9 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Baltimore averaged 1.65 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.[253]
Roads and highways
Baltimore’s highway growth has done much to influence the development of the city and its suburbs. The first limited-access highway serving Baltimore was the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, which opened in stages between 1950 and 1954. Maintenance of it is split: the half closest to Baltimore is maintained by the state of Maryland, and the half closest to Washington by the National Park Service. Trucks are only permitted to use the northern part of the parkway. Trucks (tractor-trailers) continued to use U.S. Route 1 (US 1) until Interstate 95 (I-95) between Baltimore and Washington opened in 1971.
The Interstate highways serving Baltimore are I-70, I-83 (the Jones Falls Expressway), I-95, I-395, I-695 (the Baltimore Beltway), I-795 (the Northwest Expressway), I-895 (the Harbor Tunnel Thruway), and I-97. The city’s mainline Interstate highways—I-95, I-83, and I-70—do not directly connect to each other, and in the case of I-70 end at a park and ride lot just inside the city limits, because of freeway revolts in Baltimore. These revolts were led primarily by Barbara Mikulski, a former United States senator for Maryland, which resulted in the abandonment of the original plan. There are two tunnels traversing Baltimore Harbor within the city limits: the four-bore Fort McHenry Tunnel (opened in 1985 and serving I-95) and the two-bore Harbor Tunnel (opened in 1957 and serving I-895). The Baltimore Beltway crosses south of Baltimore Harbor over the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The first interstate highway built in Baltimore was I-83, called the Jones Falls Expressway (first portion built in the early 1960s). Running from the downtown toward the northwest (NNW), it was built through a natural corridor, which meant that no residents or housing were directly affected. A planned section from what is now its southern terminus to I-95 was abandoned. Its route through parkland received criticism.
Planning for the Baltimore Beltway antedates the creation of the Interstate Highway System. The first portion completed was a small strip connecting the two sections of I-83, the Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway and the Jones Falls Expressway.
The only U.S. Highways in the city are US 1, which bypasses downtown, and US 40, which crosses downtown from east to west. Both run along major surface streets; however, US 40 utilizes a small section of a freeway cancelled in the 1970s in the west side of the city originally intended for Interstate 170. State routes in the city also travel along surface streets, with the exception of Maryland Route 295, which carries the Baltimore–Washington Parkway.
The Baltimore City Department of Transportation (BCDOT) is responsible for several functions of the road transportation system in Baltimore, including repairing roads, sidewalks, and alleys; road signs; street lights; and managing the flow of transportation systems.[254] In addition, the agency is in charge of vehicle towing and traffic cameras.[255][256] BCDOT maintains all streets within the city of Baltimore. These include all streets that are marked as state and U.S. highways as well as the portions of I-83 and I-70 within the city limits. The only highways within the city that are not maintained by BCDOT are I-95, I-395, I-695, and I-895; those four highways are maintained by the Maryland Transportation Authority.[257]
Transit systems
Public transit
Charm City Circulator Van Hool A330 #1101 on the Orange Line
Public transit in Baltimore is mostly provided by the Maryland Transit Administration (abbreviated “MTA Maryland”) and Charm City Circulator. MTA Maryland operates a comprehensive bus network, including many local, express, and commuter buses, a light rail network connecting Hunt Valley in the north to BWI Airport and Cromwell (Glen Burnie) in the south, and a subway line between Owings Mills and Johns Hopkins Hospital.[258] A proposed rail line, known as the Red Line, which would link the Social Security Administration to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and perhaps the Canton and Dundalk communities, was cancelled as of June 2015 by Governor Larry Hogan; a proposal to extend Baltimore’s existing subway line to Morgan State University, known as the Green Line, is in the planning stages.[259]
The Charm City Circulator (CCC), a shuttle bus service operated by Veolia Transportation for the Baltimore Department of Transportation, began operating in the downtown area in January 2010. Funded partly by a 16 percent increase in the city’s parking fees, the circulator provides free bus service seven days a week, picking up passengers every 15 minutes at designated stops during service hours.[260][261]
The CCC’s first bus line, the Orange route, travels between Hollins Market and Harbor East. Its Purple route, launched June 7, 2010, operates between Fort Avenue and 33rd St. The Green route runs between Johns Hopkins and City Hall.[261][262] The Charm City Circulator operates a fleet of diesel and hybrid vehicles built by DesignLine, Orion, and Van Hool.[260]
Baltimore also has a water taxi service, operated by Baltimore Water Taxi. The water taxi’s six routes provide service throughout the city’s harbor, and was purchased by Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank‘s Sagamore Ventures in 2016.[263]
In June 2017, The BaltimoreLink started operating; it is the redesign of the region’s initial bus system. The BaltimoreLink runs through downtown Baltimore every 10 minutes via color-coded, high-frequency CityLink routes.[264]
Intercity rail
Baltimore is a top destination for Amtrak along the Northeast Corridor. Baltimore’s Penn Station is one of the busiest in the country. In FY 2014, Penn Station was ranked the seventh-busiest rail station in the United States by number of passengers served each year.[265] The building sits on a raised “island” of sorts between two open trenches, one for the Jones Falls Expressway and the other for the tracks of the Northeast Corridor (NEC). The NEC approaches from the south through the two-track, 7,660 feet (2,330 m) Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which opened in 1873 and whose 30 mph (50 km/h) limit, sharp curves, and steep grades make it one of the NEC’s worst bottlenecks. The NEC’s northern approach is the 1873 Union Tunnel, which has one single-track bore and one double-track bore.
Just outside the city, Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport Rail Station is another stop. Amtrak’s Acela Express, Palmetto, Carolinian, Silver Star, Silver Meteor, Vermonter, Crescent, and Northeast Regional trains are the scheduled passenger train services that stop in the city. Additionally, MARC commuter rail service connects the city’s two main intercity rail stations, Camden Station and Penn Station, with Washington, D.C.’s Union Station as well as stops in between. The MARC consists of 3 lines; the Brunswick, Camden and Penn. On December 7, 2013 the Penn Line began weekend service.[266]
Airports
Baltimore is served by two airports, both operated by the Maryland Aviation Administration, which is part of the Maryland Department of Transportation.[267] Baltimore–Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, generally known as “BWI,” lies about 10 miles (16 km) to the south of Baltimore in neighboring Anne Arundel County. The airport is named after Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimore native who was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. In terms of passenger traffic, BWI is the 22nd busiest airport in the United States.[268] As of calendar year 2014, BWI is the largest, by passenger count, of three major airports serving the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. It is accessible by I-95 and the Baltimore–Washington Parkway via Interstate 195, the Baltimore Light Rail, and Amtrak and MARC Train at BWI Rail Station.
Baltimore is also served by Martin State Airport, a general aviation facility, to the northeast in Baltimore County. Martin State Airport is linked to downtown Baltimore by Maryland Route 150 (Eastern Avenue) and by MARC Train at its own station.
Pedestrians and bicycles
Baltimore has a comprehensive system of bicycle routes in the city. These routes are not numbered, but are typically denoted with green signs displaying a silhouette of a bicycle upon an outline of the city’s border, and denote the distance to destinations, much like bicycle routes in the rest of the state. The roads carrying bicycle routes are also labelled with either bike lanes, sharrows, or Share the Road signs. Many of these routes pass through the downtown area. The network of bicycle lanes in the city continues to expand, with over 140 miles (230 km) added between 2006 and 2014.[269] Alongside bike lanes, Baltimore has also built bike boulevards, starting with Guilford Avenue in 2012.
Baltimore currently has three major trail systems within the city. The Gwynns Falls Trail runs from the Inner Harbor to the I-70 Park and Ride, passing through Gwynns Falls Park and possessing numerous branches. There are also many pedestrian hiking trails traversing the park. The Jones Falls Trail currently runs from the Inner Harbor to the Cylburn Arboretum; however, it is currently undergoing expansion. Long term plans call for it to extend to the Mount Washington Light Rail Stop, and possibly as far north as the Falls Road stop to connect to the Robert E. Lee boardwalk north of the city. It will also incorporate a spur alongside Western Run. The two aforementioned trails carry sections of the East Coast Greenway through the city. There is also the Herring Run Trail, which runs from Harford Road east to its end beyond Sinclair Lane, utilizing Herring Run Park; long term plans also call for its extension to Morgan State University and north to points beyond. Other major bicycle projects include a protected cycle track installed on both Maryland Avenue and Mount Royal Avenue, expected to become the backbone of a downtown bicycle network. Installation for the cycletracks is expected in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
In addition to the bicycle trails and cycletracks, Baltimore has the Stony Run Trail, a walking path that will eventually connect from the Jones Falls north to Northern Parkway, utilizing much of the old Ma and Pa Railroad corridor inside the city. In 2011, the city undertook a campaign to reconstruct many sidewalk ramps in the city, coinciding with mass resurfacing of the city’s streets. A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Baltimore the 14th most walkable of fifty largest U.S. cities.[270]
Port of Baltimore
Baltimore harbor in 1849 with the prominent Washington Monument in the background north of the city
The port was founded in 1706, preceding the founding of Baltimore. The Maryland colonial legislature made the area near Locust Point as the port of entry for the tobacco trade with England. Fells Point, the deepest point in the natural harbor, soon became the colony’s main ship building center, later on becoming leader in the construction of clipper ships.[271]
After Baltimore’s founding, mills were built behind the wharves. The California Gold Rush led to many orders for fast vessels; many overland pioneers also relied upon canned goods from Baltimore. After the Civil War, a coffee ship was designed here for trade with Brazil. At the end of the nineteenth century, European ship lines had terminals for immigrants. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad made the port a major transshipment point.[272]:17,75 Currently the port has major roll-on/roll-off facilities, as well as bulk facilities, especially steel handling.[273]
Water taxis also operate in the Inner Harbor. Governor Ehrlich participated in naming the port after Helen Delich Bentley during the 300th anniversary of the port.[274]
In 2007, Duke Realty Corporation began a new development near the Port of Baltimore, named the Chesapeake Commerce Center. This new industrial park is located on the site of a former General Motors plant. The total project comprises 184 acres (0.74 km2) in eastern Baltimore City, and the site will yield 2,800,000 square feet (260,000 m2) of warehouse/distribution and office space. Chesapeake Commerce Center has direct access to two major Interstate highways (I-95 and I-895) and is located adjacent to two of the major Port of Baltimore terminals. The Port of Baltimore is one of two seaports on the U.S. East Coast with a 50-foot (15 m) dredge to accommodate the largest shipping vessels.[275]
Along with cargo terminals, the port also has a passenger cruise terminal, which offers year-round trips on several lines, including Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas and Carnival’s Pride. Overall five cruise lines have operated out of the port to the Bahamas and the Caribbean, while some ships traveled to New England and Canada. The terminal has become an embarkation point where passengers have the opportunity to park and board next to the ship visible from Interstate 95.[276] Passengers from Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey make up a third of the volume, with travelers from Maryland, Virginia, the District and even Ohio and the Carolinas making up the rest.[277]
Environment
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, known for its skyline waterscape and its tourist-friendly areas, was horribly polluted. The waterway was often filled with garbage after heavy rainstorms, failing its 2014 water quality report card. The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore took steps to remediate the waterways, in hopes that the harbor would be fishable and swimmable once again.
Trash interceptors
Installed in May 2014, the water wheel trash interceptor known as Mr. Trash Wheel sits at the mouth of the Jones Falls River in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. A February 2015 agreement with a local waste-to-energy plant is believed to make Baltimore the first city to use reclaimed waterway debris to generate electricity.[278]
Mr. Trash Wheel is the world’s first permanent water wheel trash interceptor to clean up the city’s polluted Inner Harbor.[279] The Jones Falls river watershed drains 58 square miles (150 km2) of land outside of Baltimore and is a significant source of trash that enters the harbor. Garbage collected by Mr. Trash Wheel could come from anywhere in the Jones Falls Watershed area.[280] The wheel moves continuously, removing garbage and dumping it into an attached dumpster using only hydro and solar renewable power to keep its wheel turning. It has the capability to collect 50,000 pounds (22,700 kg) of trash per day, and has removed more than 350 tons of litter from Baltimore’s landmark and tourist attraction in its first 18 months, estimated as consisting of approximately 200,000 bottles, 173,000 potato chip bags and 6.7 million cigarette butts.[281][282] The Water Wheel has been very successful at trash removal, visibly decreasing the amount of garbage that collects in the harbor, especially after a rainfall.
After the success of Mr. Trash Wheel, the Waterfront Partnership raised money to build a second Water Wheel at the end of Harris Creek, an entirely piped stream that flows beneath Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood and empties into the Baltimore Harbor. Harris Creek is known to carry tons of trash every year.[283][284][285] The planned new Water Wheel was inaugurated in December 2016, and dubbed “Professor Trash Wheel”.[286] Professor Trash Wheel prevents waste from exiting the Harbor and accessing the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. A number of additional projects are going on in Baltimore City and County that should result in better water quality scores. These projects include the Blue Alleys project, expanded street sweeping, and stream restoration.[279]
Other water pollution control
In August 2010, the National Aquarium assembled, planted, and launched a floating wetland island designed by Biohabitats in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.[287] Hundreds of years ago Baltimore’s harbor shoreline would have been lined with tidal wetlands. Floating wetlands provide many environmental benefits to water quality and habitat enhancement, which is why the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore has included them in their Healthy Harbor Initiative pilot projects.[288] Biohabitats also developed a concept to transform a dilapidated wharf into a living pier that cleans Harbor water, provides habitat and is an aesthetic attraction. Currently under design, the top of the pier will become a constructed tidal wetland.[289]
Media
Baltimore’s main newspaper is The Baltimore Sun. It was sold by its Baltimore owners in 1986 to the Times Mirror Company,[290] which was bought by the Tribune Company in 2000.[291] The Baltimore News-American, another long-running paper that competed with the Sun, ceased publication in 1986.[292]
The city is home to the Baltimore Afro-American, an influential African American newspaper founded in 1892.[293][294]
In 2006, The Baltimore Examiner was launched to compete with The Sun. It was part of a national chain that includes The San Francisco Examiner and The Washington Examiner. In contrast to the paid subscription Sun, The Examiner was a free newspaper funded solely by advertisements. Unable to turn a profit and facing a deep recession, The Baltimore Examiner ceased publication on February 15, 2009.
Despite being located 40 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., Baltimore is a major media market in its own right, with all major English language television networks represented in the city. WJZ-TV 13 is a CBS owned and operated station, and WBFF 45 is the flagship of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest station owner in the country. Other major television stations in Baltimore include WMAR-TV 2 (ABC), WBAL-TV 11 (NBC), WUTB 24 (MyNetworkTV), WNUV 54 (CW), and WMPB 67 (PBS).
Nielsen ranked Baltimore as the 26th-largest television market for the 2008–2009 viewing season and the 27th-largest for 2009–2010.[295] Arbitron’s Fall 2010 rankings identified Baltimore as the 22nd largest radio market.[296]
Notable people
Sister cities
Baltimore has ten sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International: [297][298]
- Ashkelon, Israel (2005)
- Bremerhaven, Germany (2007)
- Gbarnga, Liberia (1973)
- Genoa, Italy (1985)
- Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan (1978)
- Luxor, Egypt (1982)
- Odessa, Ukraine (1974)
- Piraeus, Greece (1982)
- Rotterdam, Netherlands (1985)
- Xiamen, China (1985)
See also
Notes
- ^ Officially, seasonal snowfall accumulation has ranged from 0.7 in (1.8 cm) in 1949–50 to 77.0 in (196 cm) in 2009–10. See North American blizzard of 2009#Snowfall (December 19–20, 2009), February 5–6, 2010 North American blizzard#Snowfall, and February 9–10, 2010 North American blizzard#Impact. The February storms contributed to a monthly accumulation of 50.0 in (127 cm), the most for any month.[132] If no snow fell outside of February that winter, 2009–10 would still rank as 5th snowiest.[133]
- ^ Since 1950, when the National Weather Service switched to using the suburban and generally much cooler BWI Airport as the official Baltimore climatology station, this extreme has repeated three times: January 29, 1963, January 17, 1982, and January 22, 1984.
- ^ Temperature, precipitation normals are recorded at Maryland Science Center in downtown; the National Weather Service does not yet record snowfall at this location, so the snow normals for BWI Airport, at an elevation of 156 ft (47.5 m) about 10 mi (16 km) south of downtown, are shown. Likewise humidity and sun duration normals were recorded at BWI Airport.
References …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore
Pronk Pops 
The Pronk Pops Show 1297, July 29, 2019, Story 1: Mass Shooting in California at Gilroy Garlic Festival with 4 Dead including 19-Year Old Shooter and 15 Injured — Videos — Story 2: Spending Addiction Disorder (SAD) Still Alive and Well in Both Democrat and Republican Parties — Send Them All Home — Tax –Spend –Borrow Binges — Inflation and Rising Interest Will Return With A Vengeance — Federal Reserve Will Cut Federal Funds Rate — Videos — Story 3: Top Three Lies of Big Lie Media: Trump Colluded With The Russians, Trump is A Racist, Trump Will Lose The Election — The Invincible Ignorance of Lying Leftist Lunatic Losers — Whites Moved to The Suburbs from Cities with Crime, Drug, Gang and Rat Infestations Controlled and Run by Corrupt Democrats — Albuquerque, Baltimore, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, Oakland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. — Videos —
Posted on July 30, 2019. Filed under: 2016 Presidential Candidates, 2020 President Candidates, 2020 Republican Candidates, Addiction, Addiction, American History, Blogroll, Breaking News, Business, Cartoons, Communications, Congress, Countries, Crime, Culture, Deep State, Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Elections, Employment, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Federal Government, First Amendment, Genocide, Government, Government Dependency, Government Spending, Hate Speech, Hillary Clinton, History, Homicide, House of Representatives, Human, Human Behavior, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Independence, Killing, Language, Legal Immigration, Life, Lying, Media, Medicine, Mental Illness, National Interest, News, People, Philosophy, Photos, Politics, Polls, President Trump, Public Corruption, Radio, Raymond Thomas Pronk, Rule of Law, Second Amendment, Senate, Success, United States Constitution, United States of America, United States Supreme Court, Videos, Violence, Wealth, Welfare Spending, Wisdom | Tags: 19-Year Old Shooter, 29 July 2019, 4 Dead including 19-Year Old Shooter, Albuquerque, America, Articles, Audio, Baby Boom Generation Retiring, Baltimore, Big Lie Media, Birmingham, Breaking News, Broadcasting, Capitalism, Cartoons, Charity, Chicago, Cincinnati, Citizenship, Clarity, Classical Liberalism, Cleveland, Collectivism, Commentary, Commitment, Communicate, Communication, Concise, Convincing, Corruption, Courage, Culture, Current Affairs, Current Events, Death Knell of Socialized Medicine, Detroit, Drug, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Economics, Education, Entitlements, Evil, Experience, Faith, Family, First, Fiscal Policy, Free Enterprise, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Friends, Gang and Rat Infestations Controlled and Run by Corrupt Democrats, Gilroy Garlic Festival, Give It A Listen!, God, Good, Goodwill, Growth, Hope, Individualism, Kansas City, Knowledge, Liberty, Life, Louisville, Love, Lovers of Liberty, Mass Shooting, Mass Shooting in California, Medicare, Memphis, Mental Illness, Milwaukee, Monetary Policy, MPEG3, Murder Rate Per 100000 By U.S. Cities, National Debt, New Orleans, Newark, News, Oakland, Opinions, Peace, Philadelphia, Photos, Pittsburgh, Podcasts, Political Philosophy, Politics, Prosperity, Radio, Raymond Thomas Pronk, Representative Elijah Cummings, Representative Republic, Republic, Resources, Respect, Rule of Law, Rule of Men, Send Them All Home, Shooter Santino William Legan, Show Notes, six-year-old Steven Romero, Spending Addiction Disorder (SAD), Talk Radio, Tax --Spend --Borrow Binges, The Pronk Pops Show, The Pronk Pops Show 1297, Three Big Lies: Trump Colluded with Russia, Trump is a racist, Trump will lose the election, Truth, Tyranny, U.S. Constitution, United States of America, Videos, Virtue, War, Washington D.C., White Flight to Suburbs, Whites Moved to The Suburbs from Cities with Crime, Wisdom |
The Pronk Pops Show Podcasts
Pronk Pops Show 1297 July 29, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1296 July 25, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1295 July 24, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1294 July 23, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1293 July 22, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1292 July 18, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1291 July 17, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1290 July 16, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1289 July 15, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1288 July 11, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1287 July 10, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1286 July 9, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1285 July 8, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1284 July 2, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1283 July 1, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1282 June 27, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1281 June 26, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1280 June 25, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1279 June 24, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1278 June 20, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1277 June 19, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1276 June 18, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1275 June 17, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1274 June 13, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1273 June 12, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1272 June 11, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1271 June 10, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1270 June 6, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1269 June 5, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1268 June 3, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1267 May 30, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1266 May 29, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1265 May 28, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1264 May 24, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1263 May 23, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1262 May 22, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1261 May 21, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1260 May 20, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1259 May 16, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1258 May 15, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1257 May 14, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1256 May 13, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1255 May 10, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1254 May 9, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1253 May 8, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1252 May 7, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1251 May 6, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1250 May 3, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1249 May 2, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1248 May 1, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1247 April 30, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1246 April 29, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1245 April 26, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1244 April 25, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1243 April 24, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1242 April 23, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1241 April 18, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1240 April 16, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1239 April 15, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1238 April 11, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1237 April 10, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1236 April 9, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1235 April 8, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1234 April 5, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1233 April 4, 2019
Pronk Pops Show 1232 April 1, 2019 Part 2
Story 1: Mass Shooting in California at Gilroy Garlic Festival with 4 Dead including 19-Year Old Shooter and 15 Injured — Videos
3 fatally shot at garlic festival identified by authorities
Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting leaves at least 4 dead
6-year-old boy among those killed in Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting
How and Where the Shooter Got Into the Gilroy Garlic Festival
Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting: Police Chief Scot Smithee takes questions on the investigation
People Flee Following Shooting at California Garlic Festival
The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies – John Lott
Gilroy Garlic festival shooting: Gunman is identified as teenager, 19, who opened fire on crowds with an assault rifle because he was ‘really angry’, killing three including a six-year-old boy, before being shot dead as police hunt for his ‘accomplice’
By MEGAN SHEETS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and CHRIS PLEASANCE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 21:39 EDT, 28 July 2019 | UPDATED: 14:30 EDT, 29 July 2019
The gunman from a shooting at a garlic festival in California on Sunday where three people, including a six-year-old boy, were killed has been identified as 19-year-old Santino William Legan.
He was named on Monday as police in Gilroy, where the shooting happened, continued to hunt for his accomplice.
An Instagram account that was registered under his name had been deleted by the time he was named on Monday.
Officers from the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau were seen searching a home in Gilroy overnight but they have not confirmed if it is Legan’s.
Legan was shot dead by police after firing his semi-automatic assault rifle into crowds at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, an annual event which attracts 100,000 people to the small town.
President Trump called him a ‘wicked murderer’ on Monday during a bill signing ceremony at the White House.
Among those killed was six-year-old Stephen Romero. Two others died who are yet to be named publicly.
Survivors said Legan told them he was ‘really angry’ when they asked him why he wanted to kill them.
Authorities believe he gained access to the festival, which was protected with metal detectors, by using bolt cutters to get through a fence.
They believe he had an accomplice and police are still looking for that person.
Other survivors have told how he was silent as he marched through the crowds.
‘He didn’t say anything, nothing. He did not even look from side to side. He just kept looking forward,’ Cheryl Low, who was working at the festival, told ABC.
Fifteen people, including a 12-year-old girl, were injured.
The two suspects are believed to have entered the festival via a creek on the north side, where they used a tool to cut through a fence in order to avoid strict security at official entrances.
Legan then fired his semi-automatic, stopping to reload at one point, and did not flinch as his bullets his children. Some witnesses say he moved ‘like a police officer’ because he was so efficient.
‘He shot one child and then he put the clip in and he just started moving back and forth walking toward the tents because that’s where most of the people were in that area and he started shooting,’ Cheryl Low, who was working at the festival, said.
Police are seen standing over a person believed to be the suspect shot dead in the confrontation
Police searched this home on Monday which is thought to be where some of Legan’s relatives live. It is near the festival
The shooting happened at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival on Sunday at around 6pm local time. The house searched nearby is less than two miles away
‘He was reloading his gun, he was putting another magazine in and he just opened fire.
‘He just started walking towards our booth.
‘We just ran. It was so fast,’ she said.
Several witnesses reported hearing popping noises and then seeing a white male in his 30s wearing military fatigues ‘indiscriminately’ spraying the crowd with bullets from a semi-automatic weapon for several minutes.
Candice Marquez, 51, a honey vendor at the festival, said she was just 10 feet from the shooter when he opened fire, and saw him reload a clip of ammunition.
She told Fox News that he was a white man, aged between 20 and 35, and that he seemed very calm and didn’t say anything during his attack.
Candice said he was wearing a green vest and khaki pants, was ‘very quiet’ and didn’t call attention to himself before he started spraying the crowd with bullets.
She described the shooter’s actions as ‘very deliberate’ but said he didn’t seem to be targeting anyone.
Two of her colleagues were shot in the attack, she added.
Another festival worker told NBC Bay Area: ‘He was walking like a police officer. Like he wanted to get stuff done.’
The shooting is the 246th mass shooting in the US this year.
‘HE HAD HIS WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HIM’
Alberto Romero, the boy’s father, speaking on Sunday
The grieving family of the six-year-old boy shot dead at the Gilroy Garlic festival on Sunday have told how he was a ‘happy’ child with his ‘whole life’ ahead of him.
Stephen Romero attended the festival with his mother and grandmother when he was shot dead. His father, Alberto, told on Sunday of the moment his wife phoned him to tell him what had happened.
‘I couldn’t believe what was happening, that what she was saying was a lie, that maybe I was dreaming,’ he told Mercury News.
The boy was taken to the hospital where his father met him.
He hoped he would recover but doctors quickly revealed how grave the boy’s condition was.
‘They said they were working on him and five minutes later they told me he was dead,’ his father said.
He said his son was a happy child.
‘He was joyful, always wanted to play, always positive,’ he added.
Multiple videos posted on social media show panicked attendees fleeing the park as gunshots ring out in the background.
‘What’s going on?’ a woman can be heard asking in a clip. ‘Who’d shoot up a garlic festival?’
One video shows two bloodied victims lying on the ground, while another showed victims being treated inside a trailer.
On Sunday, Stephen’s grieving father Alberto shared photographs of him on social media on Sunday night and also gave interviews where he said he had his ‘whole life ahead of him’.
‘I want to be with him until I can put him in his resting spot, wherever that is. My son had his whole life to live, he was only six, that’s all I can say,’ he said.
Stephen’s other grandmother, who was not at the festival, told KRON: ‘This is really hard. There are no words to describe [it].
‘Because he was such a happy kid, you know. I don’t think it’s fair.’
One witness told NBC Bay Area he was headed out of the event when he felt a bullet wiz by his head and saw everyone running behind him.
A woman told the outlet she heard popping noises and then turned around to see a man who appeared to be reloading a semi-automatic weapon.
Another witness said the shooting took place between food tents and from a child’s play area.
‘We were just leaving and we saw a guy with a bandana wrapped around his leg because he got shot,’ Evenny Reyes, 13, told the San Jose Mercury News.
‘There was a little kid hurt on the ground.
‘People were throwing tables and cutting fences to get out.’
A spokeswoman for Santa Clara Valley Medical Center said at least five gunshot victims have been taken to the hospital. Their conditions were unknown.
A spokeswoman for Stanford Medical Center said two patients were being treated there as well. At the press conference, Gilroy Mayor Roland Velasco said ‘the situation is still fluid, active’.
Police have yet to confirm the number of victims shot or otherwise injured in the mayhem
Heavily-armed officers are pictured at the scene as a suspect is believed to still be at large near Christmas Hill Park
Multiple local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and ATF, responded to the scene (pictured)
Armed officers escort people from Christmas Hill Park following the shooting. Police say the scene is still active because one suspect remains at large
Officers have told people not to come to the festival site, describing it as an ‘active scene’ where there is still a heavy police presence which will continue overnight Sunday
Attendees are escorted out of the festival under armed police guard after the shooting
Police officers arrive on the scene of the investigation following a deadly shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival
Cheryl Low and Candice Marquez who run The Honey Ladies, a tent at the festival, said the gunman said nothing and shot indiscriminately into the crowds. They fled and survived
President Donald Trump tweeted about the shooting
‘I want to express my extreme shock and sadness over what has happened today. I would ask for the thoughts and prayers of the community. We plan on being out here all night,’ Velasco said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom also tweeted about the horror situation in his state
Police Chief Smithee said: ‘It’s just incredibly sad and disheartening that at an event that does so much good the community had to suffer from a tragedy like this.’
‘The hearts of Gilroy PD and entire community go out to the victims of today’s shooting at the Garlic Festival. The scene is still active. If you are looking for a loved one, please go to the reunification center at Gavilan College at parking lot B,’ the Gilroy Police Department wrote on Twitter.
President Donald Trump tweeted: ‘Law Enforcement is at the scene of shootings in Gilroy, California. Reports are that shooter has not yet been apprehended. Be careful and safe!’
Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, a headliner at the festival, also tweeted
California Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted: ‘This is nothing short of horrific. Tonight, CA stands with the Gilroy community.
‘My office is monitoring the situation closely. Grateful for the law enforcement’s efforts and their continued work as this situation develops.’
Teresa Giudice, who was also an attendee at the festival yesterday, tweeted her support and thoughts to victims
Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, a headliner at the festival, also tweeted: ‘I was in Gilroy at the Garlic Festival yesterday. Really great community. Prayers go out to all’.
Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice. who was also an attendee at the festival on Saturday, tweeted: ‘I am so sad hearing about the shooting tonight at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, I was there yesterday and just got back to New Jersey.
‘I am praying for everyone there.’
Emergency personnel stand outside Gilroy High School following the deadly shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival
Armed officers are seen above responding to the scene. A woman told the outlet she heard popping noises and then turned around to see a man who appeared to be reloading a semi-automatic weapon
Gilroy Garlic festival volunteer Denise Buessing, left, embraces fellow volunteer Marsha Struzik at a reunification center
Gavilan College, located 3.2 miles from the park, was set up as a reunification site for festival attendees who were reportedly transported there by bus and in civilian vehicles.
The public was urged to stay away from the festival area and from Gavilan College if they were not immediately affected by the incident.
The three-day event is officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the World’s Largest Garlic Festival, attracting thousands of visitors each summer.
The festival is considered a ‘gun free zone’, and attendees say they were searched thoroughly before entering the park. Money raised during the event is donated to charity.
This year’s 41st annual festival featured a giant outdoor kitchen and ‘Pyro Chefs’ creating flame shows while cooking garlic calamari and scampi alongside booths serving pasta, pepper steak sandwiches at ‘Gourmet Alley’, the main food area.
There were also three stages with live entertainment, a wine garden, a cocktail booth and a children’s play area.
Singer Colbie Caillat and her band Gone West headlined the festival on Saturday.
Another highlight was a Garli-Que BBQ Challenge and the Great Garlic Cook-Off hosted by Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio.
Another witness said the shooting took place between food tents and from a child’s play area
People look on from near the scene of a mass shooting during the Gilroy Garlic Festival
The three-day event is officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the World’s Largest Garlic Festival, attracting thousands of visitors each summer
One witness told NBC Bay Area he was headed out of the event when he felt a bullet whiz by his head and saw everyone running behind him
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7295959/Eleven-people-injured-shooting-Gilroy-Garlic-Festival-California-police-say.html
6-year-old who ‘always wanted to have fun’ among three killed at Gilroy Garlic Festival
A six-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20s were killed during a shooting rampage at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California on Sunday, according to authorities.
The youngest victim, Stephen Romero, had just celebrated his sixth birthday last month at Legoland in California, his father, Alberto Romero, told NBC Bay Area on Sunday evening.
“My son had his whole life to live and he was only six. That’s all I can say,” Romero said.
The shooting happened at about 5:40 p.m. local time Sunday at the bustling food festival, one of the largest in the country. In total, three people were killed and 15 injured.
Authorities on Monday released the ages of the other two victims, but said they were withholding their names pending notification of their relatives. They said they did not yet know the motive of the shooting.
In a press conference, Gilroy police chief Scot Smithee held back tears describing how the shooting “could have gone so much worse, so fast” had it not been for police officers, who were stationed throughout the festival, quickly moving to fatally shoot the suspect when he opened fire.
Still, Smithee said later, choking up again, “any time a life is lost, it’s a tragedy, but when it’s young people, it’s even worse.”
“It’s very difficult,” Smithee said, adding that it appeared the shots were fired randomly.
Romero was at home with his 9-year-old daughter when he heard about the shooting. He said Stephen had gone to the festival with his mother and grandmother, who were also injured in the shooting.
“There’s nothing I really can do besides try to be with him until I can put him in his resting spot, wherever that is,” Romero told NBC Bay Area.
Romero said that Stephen’s mother had been shot in the hand twice, and he believes his grandmother was shot in the leg.
Officials said the suspect was carrying an assault-type rifle and entered the packed festival by cutting through a fence, circumventing the tight security at the festival’s entrance. Initially, authorities believed a second suspect may have been involved, but on Monday, said they had not confirmed that.
Romero described his son as an energetic boy who had just graduated from kindergarten and was weeks away from entering first grade.
He was “always happy and always wanting to have fun,” Romero said, as he showed off photos of his son.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival has taken place annually since 1979 to celebrate the local garlic industry. With food and live music, the festival in Gilroy, about 30 miles south of San Jose, attracts tens of thousands of fairgoers each year.
CORRECTION (July 29, 2019, 1:40 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of the 6-year-old victim. He was Stephen Romero, not Steven.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/six-year-old-who-always-wanted-have-fun-killed-garlic-n1035571
Story 2: Spending Addiction Disorder (SAD) Still Alive and Well in Both Democrat and Republican Parties — Send Them All Home — Tax –Spend –Borrow Binges — Inflation and Rising Interest Will Return With A Vengeance — Federal Reserve Will Cut Federal Funds Rate by 25 or 50 Basis Points — Economy Not Booming But Slowing Down in Real Quarterly GDP Growth Rate — Videos —
IF THE FEDERAL RESERVE CUTS INTEREST RATES NOW, IT WILL BE AN ADMISSIONTHAT A RECESSION IS COMING
June 2019 U.S. Forecast – Recession Risks
Could Household Debt Cause the Next Recession?
Harvard’s Feldstein Says Debt to Reach 100% of GDP by End of Decade
Can Low Interest Rates Hold Off Recession? (w/ Richard Wolff)
Trump’s Debt Binge Puts Treasury Auctions on Path to New Highs
Why the federal deficit is rising, despite economic growth
PBS NewsHour
Published on Oct 18, 2018
Documentary: Millennials & Debt | No Room to Maneuver
Life Expectancy and Obesity
Joe Rogan – Why Obese People Can’t Lose Weight
(Bloomberg) — The Treasury Department is expected to hold its quarterly note and bond sales at record levels for the third straight time as Washington’s latest budget deal shows that the U.S.’s debt binge will continue.
President Donald Trump once said he would eliminate the national debt, but now he’s set to approve a budget that will help usher in trillion-dollar annual deficits. In part because of that, Wall Street securities firms predict that a boost in Treasury issuance may be coming in a year’s time.
Bond dealers see the status quo prevailing at Wednesday’s quarterly refunding announcement. Forecasts are coalescing around the view that the Treasury will keep auction sizes of 3-, 10- and 30-year debt unchanged at a record total of $84 billion, in sales scheduled from Aug. 6-8. To put it in perspective, the tally was $62 billion at the time of the 2016 U.S. election.
But there’s general agreement among analysts that the plateau in issuance can last only so long. The bipartisan deal to suspend the debt limit for two years also paves the way for a $324 billion increase in government spending over the period above existing budget caps. That’s emboldening most dealers to pencil in increases in debt sales by fiscal 2021, which starts in October 2020.
“The deficit is rising and the impetus toward higher spending is very strong,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. “By the second half of next year Treasury will have to raise coupon sizes again.”
With the president shoving aside past Republican orthodoxy on fiscal restraint and the issue not prominent among Democrats campaigning to take his job, Washington is showing no signs of slowing spending.
The House passed the debt-ceiling expansion and budget bill on July 25 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he expects his chamber to clear it this week for Trump’s signature.
No Cuts
Ahead of Wednesday’s refunding announcement, the Treasury will unveil its quarterly borrowing projections at 3 p.m. New York time Monday.
Yet even with the expansion of supply over recent years, the benchmark 10-year yield is hovering close to record lows amid expectations for central bank easing and lackluster inflation. The benchmark dipped 2 basis points Monday to 2.05%.
Three months ago, some dealers saw the possibility that the Treasury could temporarily cut note and bond sales this year, amid the Federal Reserve’s plans to halt the run-off of debt from its portfolio and the Treasury’s push to boost bill issuance. The more the Fed reinvests its debt instead of letting it run off, the less the Treasury has to borrow from the public.
But the prospect of an imminent reprieve in long-term debt issuance dimmed in May after the Treasury and its borrowing committee of investors and dealers signaled that it wasn’t ideal to make temporary changes in coupon sizes. The committee indicated that shifting issuance too far toward bills could add “rollover risk.” That message upended prospects for coupon cuts, said Mark Cabana, head of U.S. rate strategy at Bank of America Corp.
More TIPS
Dealers do expect the government to keep boosting auctions of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities.
Net Treasury issuance to the public will amount to $1.2 trillion in 2019, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. That follows a net $1.34 trillion sold last year, more than double the 2017 level.
Dealers predict bill sales will pick up in the coming weeks as the Treasury replenishes its cash balance, which it trimmed to stay under the debt limit. The Treasury will sell about $220 billion of bills through Sept. 15, according to Blake Gwinn at NatWest Markets.
“The coupon sizes Treasury currently has in place still make sense, as they have room to largely make needed changes with bills or through the already-announced increases to come in TIPS,” said Praveen Korapaty, chief global rates strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The debt-limit and spending bill, along with forecasts for economic growth and interest costs, put the deficit on course to surpass $1 trillion by fiscal 2021, so Treasury will need to boost note and bond sales, according to Bank of America.
Even amid healthy economic growth, the deficit for this fiscal year widened to $747 billion in the first nine months, 23% higher than the same period a year earlier.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-debt-binge-puts-treasury-210000543.html
Story 3: Top Three Lies of Big Lie Media: Trump Colluded With The Russians, Trump is A Racist, Trump Will Lose The Election — The Invincible Ignorance of Lying Leftist Lunatic Losers — White Flight to The Suburbs from Inner Cities with The Plight of Crime, Drug, Gang and Rat Infestations Controlled and Run by Corrupt Democrats — Baltimore, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis, Newark, New Orleans, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. — Videos —
Baltimore is corrupt: Kennedy
Bongino says Trump must not relent in battle over Baltimore
Trump tells Democrat to clean his ‘disgusting, rat and rodent infested’ district
Democrats unleash fury at homeland security over US border camps
Guardian News
Published on Jul 19, 2019
Cummings on migrant child detention: ‘None of us would have our children in that position.’
DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan Testifies On Child Separation At House Hearing | NBC News
Elijah Cummings Hammer ‘idiot’ Trump For To Publicly Lashes Out Him Over Border Criticism
Outrage as Trump brands mostly-black Baltimore ‘infested mess’
House Hearing on Child Separation and Migrant Detainment | NowThis
Mick Mulvaney on Trump’s feud with Rep. Cummings, fallout from Mueller
Brian Stelter: This Fox News segment inspired Trump’s Elijah Cummings rant
Baltimore Residents: Trump’s Attacks on the City Are Rooted in “Racism and White Supremacy”
Baltimore officials respond to Trump’s tweets about the city’s conditions
Trump Tells Congressman to Go Back to Rat-Infested Baltimore | The Daily Show
Top 10 WORST Cities in America for 2019
Top 10 Worst major cities in the United States. Detroit made the list again
The 10 cities with the highest murder rates in the US
Limbaugh defends Trump’s Baltimore remarks, blasts Dems’ collusion obsession
Donald Trump Talks About Recent Unrest in Baltimore
Tucker: What should happen to those who lied about Russian collusion?
Poll says majority of Americans think Trump is racist
Tucker: Left sees racism everywhere
Rep. Omar says racism has always been a part of President Trump
Ilhan Omar retweets comedian mocking brutal assault on Rand Paul
Trump denies tweets that ignited firestorm were racist
Trump accused of racism for honoring Elvis
Omarosa calls Trump ‘racist’ in upcoming memoir
Pelosi stuns House floor with sharp rebuke of Trump’s ‘racist tweets’
Fitton: The center of the FISA abuse storm
Ben Carson: I’ve never seen evidence of Trump being racist
US house condemns Trump over racist comments
‘Everybody is called a racist now!’ Donald Trump shrugs off racially-charged attacks on Elijah Cummings and says even Nancy Pelosi was accused of racism ‘by her own party’
By FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 19:48 EDT, 30 July 2019 | UPDATED: 19:52 EDT, 30 July 2019
Donald Trump dismissed charges of racism over his charged attacks on black Baltimore Democrat Elijah Cummings on Tuesday, saying: ‘Everybody is called a racist now.’
The president used an interview with C-Span to brush aside accusations he is a racist and concern from his own aides about his rhetoric, saying that ‘the word is so overused, it’s a disgrace.’
‘I think the word has really gone down a long way, because everybody is called a racist now,’ he told the broadcaster.
‘I can tell you I’m the least racist person in the world, as far as I’m concerned.
‘They use it almost when they run out of things to criticize you, they say “He’s a racist, he’s a racist.”‘
Trump also argued that ‘her own party called Nancy Pelosi a racist two weeks ago’ – a reference to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez saying that the Speaker’s attacks on her and her ‘squad’ was speaking against people of color.
However the charges of racism against Trump began with his tweet that Hispanic-American Ocasio-Cortez and her three allies – Somali-born Ilhan Omar; African-American Pressley; and Palestinian-American Rashida Taliba – should ‘go back to where they come from.’
Dismissal: Trump said of the charge of racism: ‘They use it almost when they run out of things to criticize you, they say “He’s a racist, he’s a racist.”‘
Democratic anger: Trump claimed Nancy Pelosi – seen in Ghana on a Congressional visit Tuesday – had been accused of racism as he fought off accusations he is a racist on his fourth day of attacks on Elijah Cummings, the Baltimore Democrat who chairs the House Oversight committee
Trump threw fuel on the fire on Saturday by beginning four days of attacks on Cummings, chair of the House Oversight Committee, which he continued on Tuesday, claiming that residents of Baltimore are lighting up the White House switchboard to thank him for saying the city is a ‘living hell.’
Speaking to C-Span Tuesday, Trump continued his claim that he has done more for African-Americans than previous presidents, citing criminal justice reform and his opportunity zones initiatives and lowest historical unemployment levels for African-Americans.
He claimed it was ‘fake news’ failing to credit him for these achievements which were fueling claims he was racist.
Shortly before the interview began to be aired, a Quinnipiac poll said that 51 per cent of voters believed him to be a racist, compared to 45 per cent
Trump said earlier in the day that blacks who live in the city have been calling the White House to say he was right about the city he claimed is ‘filthy dirty,’ ‘infested,’ and ‘so horrible,’ because corrupt politicians have been mishandling their tax money.
He claimed them that the city’s money has been ‘stolen and wasted by people like Elijah Cummings’ before declaring that his assault on the black congressman is not related to the color of his skin.
‘I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,’ he said on the South Lawn of the White House as he departed.
Trump said MSNBC host and activist Al Sharpton, who has claimed that Trump has a ‘particular venom’ for persons of color, is the one with racial blinders on.
‘Now he’s a racist. He’s a racist!’ the president told reporters on the South Lawn.
Sharpton made the remarks at a press conference Monday in Baltimore – a city that Trump say he’ll go to ‘at the right time’ as he prepared to leave the White House for West Virginia.
The president said he’d liked to see Cummings bring the Capitol Hill committee he chairs to Baltimore for a field trip.
‘He should take his oversight committee, bring them down to Baltimore and study billions stolen,’ the president charged, as he dug into the Democrat.
Polling suggests the attacks could hurt Trump with suburban voters – and especially women – whom he may need to win next year. Trump in recent days, however, has expressed to advisers on his reelection team that he believes his broadsides against the minority Democrats will help excite his core supporters.
‘I think I’m helping myself because I’m pointing out the tremendous corruption that’s taking place in Baltimore and other Democratic run cities,’ he said Tuesday, as he continued to hammer his criticism.
He added, ‘Those people are living in hell in Baltimore.’ He said he was open to some kind of unspecified federal involvement. ‘If they ask me,’ he said, ‘We will get involved.’
Later, as he came back to the White House from West Virginia, the president repeated his earlier remarks and laced into Cummings for his attack on
‘Elijah Cummings it was a horrible thing the way he spoke to the head of Homeland Security the other day. These people are working very hard. They’re getting no support from the Democrats,’ he claimed.
Asked if he has a strategy when attacking Cummings, he said, ‘All it is is I’m pointing out facts. The most unsafe city in the country – in our country – is Baltimore. It receives billions of dollars.’
‘All of this money goes there and take a look at it, I don’t have to describe it. Take a look at it. So there’s no strategy, it’s very simple. And Elijah Cummings is in charge of it. And he ought ought to take his House Oversight Committee and he ought to park them in Baltimore and find out what happen to $15 billion and a lot of other money.’
Trump suggested that Cummings – a longtime lawmakers from Maryland – is directly responsible for the community’s problems.
‘No. Baltimore has been very badly mishandled for many years. As you know, Congressman Cummings has been there for a long time. He’s had a very iron hand on it,’ he said. ‘It’s a corrupt city; there’s no question about it. All you have to do is look at the facts.’
He claimed, ‘The government has pumped in, over the years, billions and billions of dollars to no avail — to absolutely no avail.’
‘It’s been misspent. It’s been missing. It’s been stolen with a lot of corrupt government. And as you know, Cummings has been in charge,’ he claimed of the congressman who has no role in the city’s management efforts.
Trump offered his Opportunity Zones, criminal justice reform and economic policies as examples of the steps he’s taken to aide African Americans living in the area.
‘But they’re so happy that I pointed out the corrupt politics of Baltimore. It’s filthy dirty. It’s so horrible. And they are happy as hell,’ he said.
The vice president was also traveling on Tuesday, to a separate event in Ohio.
‘Well, look, in the campaign in 2016, President Trump said memorably that our commitment was we — he was going to be a President, ours was going to be an administration, for all Americans. And I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve been able to do for the African American community in this country,’ he said.
Mike Pence also brought up black unemployment, the billions of dollars the administration is investing in troubled neighborhoods and bipartisan legislation Trump signed to lower the incarceration rate.
‘That being said, President Trump is someone who — you know, he calls it like he sees it. And to have Congressman Elijah Cummings berating Department of Homeland Security personnel at committees and denouncing our Border Patrol agents — making accusations that I know are not based in fact, while at the same time people in his city are struggling in neighborhoods with abject poverty — is something that the President was just going to call out.
Defending Trump on Tuesday in Ohio, Vice President Mike Pence said: ‘President Trump is someone who — you know, he calls it like he sees it’
‘And he will continue to do that not just with regard to Baltimore, but anywhere,’ he added. ‘Part of that, President Trump believes, is being able to say when things are not what they should be, to call on local leadership, to call on state leadership, to say, “You have to do better.” ‘
Pence said, ‘That’s what animated his comments about Baltimore.’
Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, also defended Trump in a television appearance on Tuesday and in remarks to reporters on Monday.
Outside the White House after a meeting there with inner city pastors that an attendee said was on the agenda before the president’s comments about Baltimore and crime, she said, ‘The president is concerned about the whole nation. About everybody in the nation.
‘So I want us to remember, that we’ve been designed to be brothers and sisters. One member of the human race. Not separate races. The same blood,’ she added.
King told reporters after the closed-door event that Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were once friends of Trump’s and they’d only recently changed their stripes.
‘And at one time in their lives, they highly regarded the president. And, so I’m thinking about a scripture: If it had been my enemy, I could have understood, I could have known what to do, but you were my friends and my brothers,’ she said. ‘So these are his brothers.’
Alveda King, second from right, niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. together with other religious leaders, from left, Rev. Bill Owens, Rev. Dean Nelson and Bishop Harry Jackson, speaks to reporters following a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House
King said she had, then tweeted, an old photo of Trump and the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton
King did not say whether she was personally troubled by Trump’s comments that a majority-black district in Maryland that’s represented by African-American Congressman Elijah Cummings were inappropriate.
Instead, she said in brief remarks, ‘Well you know, America is troubled. And if we say we’re color-blind, we need to put on our glasses.’
‘We can see. We can see a troubled America, but we can see a blessed America. The employment rates are up in every community, including the black community,’ she said. ‘The Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) under this president are being blessed. The babies in the womb, the sick and poor and elderly are being blessed.’
King added,’We have an opportunity to continue to be blessed, and we have a president’s whose listening. And I was glad to pray with him today. Now that’s it.’
Bill Owens, the founder and President of the Coalition of African American Pastors, picked up where King left off after she walked away, denying that Trump is a racist and arguing that the president has worked to improve conditions in African-American communities.
‘I find it hard to believe,’ he said of the charges against Trump.
He said that Trump can ‘of course’ do more and should go to Baltimore himself.
‘I think he should. It would be good,’ he told DailyMail.com.
He would not delve into Trump’s comments about Cummings’ district, including a claim that it is infested.
‘Well, those are his words. I don’t want to second-guess what he says, because I hear a lot of things. I see also people pandering to black people, to get them on board with some of their agenda,’ he said during the question and answer session.
Trump had claimed earlier that morning in new tweets on the subject that he’d be happy to help leaders of the urban area clean the city up, if they requested his assistance.
‘The fact is, Baltimore can be brought back, maybe even to new heights of success and glory, but not with King Elijah and that crew. When the leaders of Baltimore want to see the City rise again, I am in a very beautiful oval shaped office waiting for your call! he tweeted.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan later called Trump’s comments ‘outrageous and inappropriate’ and asked what Trump is doing about the city’s problems.
+
Trump further claimed that he’d be happy to assist leaders of the urban area clean the city up, if they requested his assistance
Trump has also opened up on activist and MSNBC host Sharpton in Monday morning tweets, in which he also claimed that the Democratic congressman is responsible for crime in Baltimore.
‘Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation. 25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull…Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!’ he wrote.
He added: ‘If the Democrats are going to defend the Radical Left ‘Squad’ and King Elijah’s Baltimore Fail, it will be a long road to 2020. The good news for the Dems is that they have the Fake News Media in their pocket!’
Trump charged Sharpton with hating ‘whites & cops’ in an early Monday morning Twitter rant.
Sharpton tweeted that he was on his way to defend Baltimore and the Democratic lawmaker after Trump attacked both, causing the president to fire back at the prominent African American civil rights activist.
‘I have known Al for 25 years. Went to fights with him & Don King, always got along well. He ‘loved Trump!’ He would ask me for favors often. Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!,’ the president tweeted.
His attack came shortly before Sharpton hosted a press conference in Baltimore with former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who served as lieutenant governor of Maryland.
‘He attacks everybody. I know Donald Trump. He’s not mature enough to take criticism. He’s like a child,’ Sharpton said at the event.
‘But he has a particular venom for blacks and people of color. He doesn’t refer to any of his other opponents or critics as ‘infested.’ He does not attack their districts. He attacks Nancy Pelosi. He attacks Chuck Schumer. He attacks other whites but never said their districts or states are places no human being wants to live,’ he added.
Donald Trump attacked the Rev. Al Sharpton in an early morning Tweet storm
Sharpton responded to the early morning attack with a tweet of his own, sharing a photo from 2006 featuring him, Trump, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and singer James Brown.
‘Trump at NAN Convention 2006 telling James Brown and Jesse Jackson why he respects my work. Different tune now,’ he wrote.
He later tweeted: ‘Trump says I’m a troublemaker & con man. I do make trouble for bigots. If he really thought I was a con man he would want me in his cabinet.’
And Sharpton told MSNBC Monday morning, ‘I intend to make trouble every time racists and bigots move around in any way shape or form, including the president.’
The two men, both prominent New Yorkers, became acquainted in the 1980s.
Sharpton has grown increasingly critical of Trump throughout his presidency and slammed Trump’s attacks on the ‘squad’ – four minority lawmakers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – as ‘racist.’
Al Sharpton said a Baltimore press conference Monday that Trump has a ‘particular venom for blacks and people of color’
In response to claims his comments were racist, Trump tweeted he was just ‘stating plainly what most people already know’
He said Cummings needs to focus on ‘fixing the mess’ in Baltimore instead of seeking impeachment investigations on the House Oversight Committee or criticizing the conditions at the border
Trump first launched his Twitter attack on Cummings on Saturday after the Oversight Committee chairman criticized conditions at the Southern border.
The outraged president defended the border detention centers as ‘clean, efficient and well run, just very crowded’, and then claimed the facilities are superior to Cummings’ own district in Maryland.
‘Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place,’ Trump tweeted Saturday.
‘Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,’ Trump wondered in another tweet. ‘No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!’
Critics said Trump was taking a dig at Baltimore residents, who are more than 60 per cent black and African American, and suggesting they were not humans.
Cummings last responded to Trump’s insults on Sunday saying, ‘Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors.’
‘It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is,’ he said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7303579/Everybody-called-racist-Donald-Trump-shrugs-attacks-Elijah-Cummings.html
Democrats Control America’s Most Dangerous Cities. So Why Do They Keep Passing the Buck on Gun Crime?
Progressives and conservatives traditionally have exhibited different attitudes to the lessons of history. While conservatives have tended to take cues from the past as they build measured hopes for the future, progressives have urged that we break free from tradition in order to create bold and ambitious blueprints for a society they consider to be more just. In the United States, however, this pattern appears to be breaking down, as it is now progressives who tend to embrace a more rigid, backward-looking approach, especially on issues tied to identity. Unlike conservatives, progressives aren’t looking to revive a better, sometimes idealized version of their country. But they have become bogged down in the politics of historical redress, at the expense of forward-looking policies that would actually improve people’s lives.
A microcosm of this larger tendency was put on display during last month’s Democratic primary debates, which touched on the issue of urban gun violence. No Democratic presidential candidate expressed a sense of responsibility for the plague of violent crime in America’s cities, even though the largest urban areas are almost all controlled by Democratic politicians.
The issue first came up during questions posed to Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. NBC’s moderators challenged Buttigieg by bringing up a recent incident in which a white police officer killed a 54-year-old black man. While that episode nominally relates to the issue of urban gun violence, it also allows Democrats to dwell in ideologically comfortable territory, since progressives have been drawing attention to police-involved shootings for years. (Indeed, it would be far more useful—and revealing—if it were instead conservative Republicans who were being pressed on this problem). Moreover, the preferred Democrat approach—tracing the problem to the country’s original sin of racism—isn’t especially helpful.
In answer to the question, Buttigieg dutifully offered a look back to history, noting “there’s a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time.” A question about the othershootings in South Bend—the vast majority of which are not committed by police officers—would have been far more illuminating. South Bend is one of the 30 most dangerous cities in America, with a per-capita homicide rate (16.8 per 100,000) comparable to that of Chicago (17.5 per 100,000). And this rate has remained virtually unchanged since Buttigieg became mayor in 2012, despite the seven years he’s had to address the problem.
At one point, the mayor did acknowledge the high death toll. “The worst part of the job is dealing with violence,” Buttigieg confessed. “We lose as many as were lost at Parkland [referring to the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting] every two or three years in my city alone. And this is tearing communities apart.” No doubt, this is absolutely true. But there is something oddly passive about the tone of such pronouncements, as if Buttigieg and other politicians were talking about a natural disaster. In truth, this ongoing tragedy is an indictment of American political leadership, including at the local level. If you can’t adequately fight crime as a mayor, why would one imagine you are fit to run a whole country?
Like both men, I’ve seen the consequences of gun violence up close. The Toronto area, where I grew up, isn’t plagued by homicide rates comparable to those of large American cities. But we still lose dozens of young lives each year to guns. The level of fear I have felt upon getting a text about a shooting in front of my mother’s home, or hearing gunshots outside my own apartment, is only a fraction of that suffered by American families I’ve met in Newark, NJ, and Columbus, OH (a few hours southeast of South Bend). One thing I’ve learned through my work is that it’s hard for people of any age to move on from losing loved ones to violence. As author and journalist Alex Kotlowitz has explained, “[a] single act of violence—it shapes who people are. It gets in their bones.”
In keeping with their preference to remain on safe progressive turf, Democratic presidential candidates typically have limited their policy proposals in this area to gun-control measures—such as universal background checks (mentioned by Buttigieg during the primary debate) and a national buyback program (which is included in Booker’s platform). Yes, such top-down measures would be helpful, as most Americans agree, but they won’t fix the problem. A lot more can be done to make American cities safer, including local actions taken by Democrat-controlled city governments. And given the large number of Democratic presidential candidates, hailing from different parts of the country, this is an opportunity for a discussion of such policy ideas to take place on the national stage.
As mayor of Newark, for example, Booker himself saw double-digit reductions in shootings over the course of his first term (2006-2010). This is to his credit. And at the end of those four years, Booker credited a variety of city government initiativesfor increasing community safety: more police officers, security cameras, gunshot-detection systems, services for ex-offenders, fatherhood support programs and an illegal-gun tip line. As mayor, Booker wasn’t waiting for either George W. Bush or Barack Obama to enact national gun-control measures. Booker took responsibility. Unfortunately, the positive changes didn’t last. After 2010, the Newark police budget was cut and targeted community programs started to lose funding. Newark’s homicide rate went back up to previous levels, further underscoring how local policies can make a meaningful difference. It would be nice to hear Booker talk more about this, rather than generic Democrat talking points.
The Democrats like to suggest that the problem of gun crime can’t ever be fully tackled until their party controls the White House and both houses of Congress, at which point they might pass aggressive gun-control legislation at the national level. But the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab has identified a meaningful role for city government initiatives in improving community safety. A 2014 empirical study of a summer-job program found that even part-time, minimum wage jobs can help reduce violent crime among youth in high-crime areas of Chicago by more than 40 percent. The study’s authors speculate that the program’s success is less attributable to poverty alleviation than to the social, psychological and cultural benefits of having a job. The City of Chicago has since implemented the findings by introducing summer job programs in local communities. And this might well be a factor in the decline in Chicago’s homicide rate since 2016.
More than 14,000 Americans died in firearm homicides in 2017, with most of the victims dying in cities. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, just over half of Americans consider gun violence, and violent crime more generally, to be “very big” problems. When you disaggregate the Pew survey responses by race, it’s clear that Democratic politicians have ample motivation to talk about these problems in a meaningful way. Among black respondents—a target group for any Democratic presidential candidate—82 percent identified gun violence as a “very big” problem. And twice as many black American respondents identified crime as a “major” problem in their local community, as compared to white Americans.
The small subset of killings that involve police officers is, of course, an important issue—especially since distrust of the police can make it harder for police to secure public co-operation in their investigations. Still, the Democrats’ disproportionate focus on this subset also seems influenced by political convenience. When white police are involved in the killing of a black man, it naturally invokes America’s horrific history of lynchings, Jim Crow segregation, slavery and other forms of state violence against black men and women—familiar territory for any Democrat on the hustings. Or, to use Buttigieg’s language, a significant part of progressive concern can be rooted in “what’s happened in the past.” The day-to-day violence within American cities, much of it involving young men as both victim and perpetrator, makes for a more awkward conversation—though it is a conversation that many black communities are willing to have.
The Democratic primary debates further spotlighted the party’s backward-looking disposition on race issues, through a particularly acute exchange in which Senator Kamala Harris attacked former Vice President Joe Biden’s decades-old opposition to federally-enforced school desegregation, or “busing.” But perhaps the best recent example of this larger trend within progressive circles emerged from last month’s U.S. congressional hearing on slavery reparations, which featured testimony from The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates and Quillette’s Coleman Hughes. As Hughes emphasized in a subsequent Quillette interview, there is literally “nothing” that can make up for the horror of slavery (not to mention convict leasing, vagrancy laws, debt peonage, redlining, racist GI bills and poll taxes). Those days are gone, as are its primary victims. And so it makes far more sense to work hard to address modern-day inequalities through improved public education, criminal justice reform and affordable healthcare. Unfortunately, this policy-oriented approach does not carry the same emotional (and political) resonance of a broad, dramatic call to remedy the ills of the past in one fell swoop.
Progressives, who have long branded themselves as forward-looking policy innovators challenging the hidebound dogmas of conservatism, would benefit from challenging their own fixation on history’s rearview mirror. A good start would come from engaging in an honest discussion of the daily criminal carnage playing out in the cities controlled by their own party. Preventing the deaths of today’s black youth would do a lot more good than dwelling on a racist past whose evils can never be undone.
https://quillette.com/2019/07/09/democrats-control-americas-most-dangerous-cities-so-why-do-they-keep-passing-the-buck-on-gun-crime/
List of cities by murder rate
Jump to navigationJump to search
The following 50 cities have the highest murder rates in the world of all cities not at war, with a population of at least 300,000 people, and all relevant data available online.[1][2]
(2017)
(2017)
per 100,000
per year
By country
See also
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
Elijah Cummings
Jump to navigationJump to search
January 3, 2019
from Maryland‘s 7th district
April 16, 1996
from the 39th district
January 12, 1983 – January 10, 1996
January 18, 1951 (age 68)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Howard University (BA)
University of Maryland, Baltimore (JD)
Elijah Eugene Cummings (born January 18, 1951) is an American politician and the member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Maryland’s 7th congressional district.[1] The district includes just over half of Baltimore City, most of the majority-black precincts of Baltimore County, as well as most of Howard County. He previously served in the Maryland House of Delegates. He is a member of the Democratic Party and chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Contents
Early life, education, and career
Cummings was born on January 18, 1951 in Baltimore, the son of Ruth Elma (née Cochran) and Robert Cummings.[2] He was the third child of seven. Cummings graduated with honors from the Baltimore City College high school in 1969.[3][4] He later attended Howard University in Washington, D.C.,[4] where he served in the student government as sophomore class president, student government treasurer and later student government president. He became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society[5] and graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor‘s degree in Political Science.[4][6]
Cummings graduated from law school at the University of Maryland School of Law, receiving his J.D. in 1976, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar later that year.[7] He practiced law for 19 years before first being elected to the House in the 1996 elections.[8]
Cummings has received 12 honorary doctoral degrees from universities across America, most recently an honorary doctorate of public service from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2017.[9][10]
For 14 years, Cummings served in the Maryland House of Delegates. His predecessor, Lena King Lee, raised funds and campaigned for him; years later, Cummings credited her with launching his political career.[11][12] In the Maryland General Assembly, he served as Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and was the first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tempore,[13] the second highest position in the House of Delegates.
Cummings also serves on several boards and commissions, both in and out of Baltimore. Those include SEED Schools of Maryland Board of Directors and the University of Maryland Board of Advisors.
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee assignments
In December 2010 Edolphus Towns announced that he would not seek the position of ranking minority member of the Oversight Committee in the next Congress, even though his seniority and service as chair would typically result in him filling this post. Reportedly, Towns withdrew because of a lack of support from Nancy Pelosi who feared that he would not be a sufficiently aggressive leader of Democrats in an anticipated struggle with incoming committee chair Republican Darrell Issa.[14] Reportedly, the White House also wanted Towns to be replaced.[15] Cummings defeated Carolyn Maloney in a vote of the House Democratic Caucus.[14]
In his role as chair of the “Oversight Committee” he presided over the first public testimony by President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen.[16][17][18]
Caucus memberships
Cummings is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.[21] He served as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus[22] during the 108th United States Congress.
Cummings received praise following the congressional panel hearings on steroids in 2008. While investigating the use of steroids in sports, the panel called numerous baseball players to testify, including former single season home run record holder Mark McGwire. After McGwire answered many questions in a vague fashion, Cummings demanded to know if he was “taking the Fifth”, referring to the Fifth Amendment. McGwire responded by saying, “I am here to talk about the future, not about the past.” The exchange came to epitomize the entire inquiry.[23]
Legislation
Cummings introduced the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014, a bipartisan bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2014. The bill, which Cummings cosponsored with Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, is a set of amendments to the Federal Records Act and Presidential Records Act. Among other provisions, the bill modernizes the definition of a federal record to expressly include electronic documents.[24][25]
Cummings supported the Smart Savings Act, a bill that would make the default investment in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) an age-appropriate target date asset allocation investment fund (L Fund) instead of the Government Securities Investment Fund (G Fund).[26]Cummings called the bill a “commonsense change” and argued that the bill “will enable workers to take full advantage of a diversified fund designed to yield higher returns”.[27]
Cummings introduced the All Circuit Review Extension Act, a bill that would extend for three years the authority for federal employees who appeal a judgment of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to file their appeal at any federal court, instead of only the U.S. Court of Appeals.[28] Cummings said that this program is important to extend because it “allows whistleblowers to file appeals where they live rather than being limited to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals”.[29] He also said that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has “an abysmal track record in whistleblower cases”.[29]
In remarks at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Cumming declared: “Our party does not just believe, but understands, that Black Lives Matter. But we also recognize that our community and our law enforcement work best when they work together.”[30][31]
Political campaigns
Cummings speaking at the 2008 Democratic National Convention
Five-term Congressman for Maryland’s 7th congressional district, Kweisi Mfume resigned in February 1996 to take the presidency of the NAACP. Cummings won a crowded[32] seven-way Democratic primary—the real contest in this heavily Democratic, black-majority district—with 37.5% of the vote. In the special election, he defeated Republican Kenneth Kondner with over 80 percent of the vote. He defeated Kondner again in November by a similar margin to win the seat in his own right.
He has been reelected 11 more times since then, never dropping below 69 percent of the vote, and even running unopposed in 2006.
Electoral history
Maryland’s 7th congressional district: Results 1996–2016[33][34]
Personal life
Cummings serves on numerous Maryland boards and commissions including the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy and the Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel. He is an honorary member of the Baltimore Zoo Board of Trustees.[35]
In addition to his many speaking engagements, he writes a biweekly column for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. He currently lives in the Madison Park community in Baltimore and is an active member of the New Psalmist Baptist Church.
He is married to Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, who was elected chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party in December 2018.[36] They have three children.[37]
In June 2011, his nephew Christopher Cummings, son of his brother James, was murdered at his off-campus house near Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was a student.[38]
Cummings underwent surgery to repair his aortic valve in May 2017 and was absent from Capitol Hill for two months. In July, he developed a surgery-related infection but returned to work.[39]
See also
References …
External links
Elijah Cummings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Cummings
Baltimore
Jump to navigationJump to search
Flag
Seal
Show map of MarylandShow map of the United StatesShow map of North AmericaShow all
BWI (Major/International)
Baltimore (/ˈbɔːltɪmɔːr/ BAWL-tih-mor) is the most populous municipality in the U.S. state of Maryland. Baltimore was established by the Constitution of Maryland[10] as an independent city in 1729. With a population of 602,495 in 2018, Baltimore is the largest such independent city in the United States. As of 2017, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be just under 2.802 million, making it the 21st largest metropolitan area in the country.[11] Baltimore is located about 40 miles (60 km) northeast of Washington, D.C.[12], making it a principal city in the Washington-Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), the fourth-largest CSA in the nation, with a calculated 2018 population of 9,797,063.[13]
Baltimore is also the second-largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic.[14] The city’s Inner Harbor was once the second leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. In addition, Baltimore was a major manufacturing center.[15] After a decline in major manufacturing, heavy industry, and restructuring of the rail industry, Baltimore has shifted to a service-oriented economy. Johns Hopkins Hospital (founded 1889) and Johns Hopkins University (founded 1876) are the city’s top two employers.[16]
With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a “city of neighborhoods.” Famous residents have included writers Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ogden Nash, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Upton Sinclair, Tom Clancy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and H. L. Mencken; musicians James “Eubie” Blake, Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Tori Amos, Frank Zappa, Tupac Shakur, Robbie Basho, Bill Frisell, and Philip Glass ; actors and filmmakers John Waters, Barry Levinson, Divine, David Hasselhoff, Jada Pinkett Smith; artist Jeff Koons; baseball player Babe Ruth; radio host Ira Glass; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi; and United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Baltimore after the bombardment of Fort McHenry. His poem was set to music and popularized as a song; in 1931 it was designated as the American national anthem.[17]
Baltimore has more public statues and monuments per capita than any other city in the country,[18] and is home to some of the earliest National Register Historic Districts in the nation, including Fell’s Point, Federal Hill, and Mount Vernon. These were added to the National Register between 1969 and 1971, soon after historic preservation legislation was passed. Nearly one third of the city’s buildings (over 65,000) are designated as historic in the National Register, which is more than any other U.S. city.[19][20]
Contents
History
The city has 66 National Register Historic Districts and 33 local historic districts. Over 65,000 properties are designated as historic buildings and listed in the NRHP, more than any other U.S. city.[19] The historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives.
Etymology
The city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore[21] of the Irish House of Lords and founding proprietor of the Province of Maryland.[22][23] Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland.[23][24] Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning “town of the big house.”[23]
Before European settlement
The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, when Paleo-Indians first settled in the region.[25] One Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland periodarchaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period.[25] During the Late Woodland period, the archaeological culture that is called the “Potomac Creek complex” resided in the area from Baltimore south to the Rappahannock River in present-day Virginia.[26]
In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was sparsely populated, if at all, by Native Americans. The Baltimore County area northward was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock living in the lower Susquehanna River valley. This Iroquoian-speaking people “controlled all of the upper tributaries of the Chesapeake” but “refrained from much contact with Powhatan in the Potomac region” and south into Virginia.[27]Pressured by the Susquehannock, the Piscataway tribe, an Algonquian-speaking people, stayed well south of the Baltimore area and inhabited primarily the north bank of the Potomac River in what are now Charles and southern Prince George’s counties in the coastal areas south of the Fall Line.[28][29][30]
Colonial period
European colonization of Maryland began with the arrival of an English ship at St. Clement’s Island in the Potomac River on March 25, 1634.[31] Europeans began to settle the area further north, beginning to populate the area of Baltimore County.[32] The original county seat, known today as “Old Baltimore”, was located on Bush River within the present-day Aberdeen Proving Ground.[33][34][35] The colonists engaged in sporadic warfare with the Susquehanna, whose numbers dwindled primarily from new infectious diseases, such as smallpox, endemic among the Europeans.[32] In 1661 David Jones claimed the area known today as Jonestown on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream.[36]
The colonial General Assembly of Maryland created the Port of Baltimore at old Whetstone Point (now Locust Point) in 1706 for the tobacco trade. The Town of Baltimore, on the west side of the Jones Falls, was founded and laid out on July 30, 1729. By 1752 the town had just 27 homes, including a church and two taverns.[37] Jonestown and Fells Point had been settled to the east. The three settlements, covering 60 acres, became a commercial hub, and in 1768 were designated as the county seat.[38]
Being a colony, the Baltimore street names were laid out to demonstrate loyalty to the mother country. For example King George, King, Queen, and Caroline streets.[37]
Baltimore Town in 1752, (at “The Basin”)
Baltimore grew swiftly in the 18th century, its plantations producing grain and tobacco for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. The profit from sugar encouraged the cultivation of cane in the Caribbean and the importation of food by planters there.[39] As noted, Baltimore was as the county seat, and in 1768 a courthouse was built to serve both the city and county. Its square was a center of community meetings and discussions.
Baltimore established its public market system in 1763.[40] Lexington Market, founded in 1782, is known as one of the oldest continuously operating public markets in the United States today.[41] Lexington Market was also a center of slave trading. Slaves were sold at numerous sites through the downtown area, with sales advertised in the Baltimore Sun.[42]Both tobacco and sugar cane were labor-intensive crops.
Baltimore in 1774 established the first Post Office system in what became the United States,[43] and the first water company chartered in the newly independent nation (Baltimore Water Company, 1792).[44][45]
Baltimore played a key part in events leading to and including the American Revolution. City leaders such as Jonathan Plowman Jr. led many residents in joining the resistance to British taxes, and merchants signed agreements to refuse to trade with Britain.[46] The Second Continental Congress met in the Henry Fite House from December 1776 to February 1777, effectively making the city the capital of the United States during this period.[47]
Antebellum period
The Town of Baltimore, Jonestown, and Fells Point were incorporated as the City of Baltimore in 1796–1797. The city remained a part of surrounding Baltimore County and continued to serve as its county seat from 1768 to 1851, after which it became an independent city.[48]
Bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British. Engraved by John Bower[49]
The Battle of Baltimore against the British in 1814 inspired the composition of the USA’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the construction of the Battle Monument which became the city’s official emblem. A distinctive local culture started to take shape, and a unique skyline peppered with churches and monuments developed. Baltimore acquired its moniker “The Monumental City” after an 1827 visit to Baltimore by President John Quincy Adams. At an evening function Adams gave the following toast: “Baltimore: the Monumental City—May the days of her safety be as prosperous and happy, as the days of her dangers have been trying and triumphant.”[50][51]
The Battle Monument is the official emblem of the City of Baltimore.
Baltimore pioneered the use of gas lighting in 1816, and its population grew rapidly in the following decades, with concomitant development of culture and infrastructure. The construction of the federally funded National Road (which later became part of U.S. Route 40) and the private Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.) made Baltimore a major shipping and manufacturing center by linking the city with major markets in the Midwest. By 1820 its population had reached 60,000, and its economy had shifted from its base in tobacco plantations to sawmilling, shipbuilding, and textile production. These industries benefited from war but successfully shifted into infrastructure development during peacetime.[52]
Baltimore suffered one of the worst riots of the antebellum South in 1835, when bad investments led to the Baltimore bank riot.[53] Soon after the city created the world’s first dental college, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, in 1840, and shared in the world’s first telegraph line, between Baltimore and Washington DC in 1844.
Sixth Regiment fighting railroad strikers, July 20, 1877[54]
Civil war and after
Maryland, a slave state with abundant popular support for secession in some areas, remained part of the Union during the American Civil War, due in part to the Union’s strategic occupation of the city in 1861.[55][56] Another factor was the fact that the Union’s capitol, Washington, was in the state of Maryland (geographically if not politically), and well situated to impede Baltimore and Maryland’s communication or commerce with the Confederacy. Baltimore saw the first casualties of the war on April 19, 1861, when Union Soldiers en route from the President Street Station to Camden Yards clashed with a secessionist mob in the Pratt Street riot.
In the midst of the Long Depression which followed the Panic of 1873, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad company attempted to lower its workers’ wages, leading to strikes and riots in the city and beyond. Strikers clashed with the National Guard, leaving 10 dead and 25 wounded.[57]
20th century through 1968
The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, looking west from Pratt and Gaystreets
On February 7, 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire destroyed over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours, leaving more than 70 blocks of the downtown area burned to the ground. Damages were estimated at $150 million—in 1904 dollars.[58] As the city rebuilt during the next two years, lessons learned from the fire led to improvements in firefighting equipment standards.[59]
Baltimore lawyer Milton Dashiell advocated for an ordinance to bar African-Americans from moving into the Eutaw Place neighborhood in northwest Baltimore. He proposed to recognize majority white residential blocks and majority black residential blocks, and to prevent people from moving into housing on such blocks where they would be a minority. The Baltimore Council passed the ordinance, and it became law on December 20, 1910, with Democratic Mayor J. Barry Mahool‘s signature.[60] The Baltimore segregation ordinance was the first of its kind in the United States. Many other southern cities followed with their own segregation ordinances, though the US Supreme Court ruled against them in Buchanan v. Warley (1917).[61]
The city grew in area by annexing new suburbs from the surrounding counties through 1918, when the city acquired portions of Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County.[62] A state constitutional amendment, approved in 1948, required a special vote of the citizens in any proposed annexation area, effectively preventing any future expansion of the city’s boundaries.[63] Streetcars enabled the development of distant neighborhoods areas such as Edmonson Village whose residents could easily commute to work downtown.[64]
Driven by migration from the deep South and by white suburbanization, the relative size of the city’s black population grew from 23.8% in 1950 to 46.4% in 1970.[65] Encouraged by real estate blockbusting techniques, recently settled white areas rapidly became all-black neighborhoods, in a rapid process which was nearly total by 1970.[66]
1968 and after
The Baltimore riot of 1968, coinciding with riots in other cities, followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Public order was not restored until April 12, 1968. The Baltimore riot cost the city an estimated $10 million (US$ 72 million in 2019). A total of 11,000 Maryland National Guard and federal troops were ordered into the city.[67] The city experienced challenges again in 1974 when teachers, municipal workers, and police officers conducted strikes.[68]
Following the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015, the city experienced major protests and international media attention, as well as a clash between local youth and police which resulted in a state of emergency declaration and curfew.[69]
Baltimore has suffered from a high homicide rate for several decades, peaking in 1993, and again in 2015.[70][71] These deaths have taken a severe toll, especially within the local black community.[72]
Development and promotion
By the beginning of the 1970s, Baltimore’s downtown area known as the Inner Harbor had been neglected and was occupied by a collection of abandoned warehouses. The nickname “Charm City” came from a 1975 meeting of advertisers seeking to improve the city’s reputation.[73][74] Efforts to redevelop the area started with the construction of the Maryland Science Center, which opened in 1976, the Baltimore World Trade Center (1977), and the Baltimore Convention Center (1979). Harborplace, an urban retail and restaurant complex, opened on the waterfront in 1980, followed by the National Aquarium, Maryland’s largest tourist destination, and the Baltimore Museum of Industry in 1981. In 1995, the city opened the American Visionary Art Museum on Federal Hill. During the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the United States, Baltimore City Health Department official Robert Mehl persuaded the city’s mayor to form a committee to address food problems; the Baltimore-based charity Moveable Feast grew out of this initiative in 1990.[75][76][77] By 2010, the organization’s region of service had expanded from merely Baltimore to include all of the Eastern Shore of Maryland.[78] In 1992, the Baltimore Orioles baseball team moved from Memorial Stadium to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, located downtown near the harbor. Pope John Paul II held an open-air mass at Camden Yards during his papal visit to the United States in October 1995. Three years later the Baltimore Ravens football team moved into M&T Bank Stadium next to Camden Yards.[79]
Baltimore has seen the reopening of the Hippodrome Theatre in 2004,[80] the opening of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in 2005, and the establishment of the National Slavic Museum in 2012. On April 12, 2012, Johns Hopkins held a dedication ceremony to mark the completion of one of the United States’ largest medical complexes – the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore – which features the Sheikh Zayed Cardiovascular and Critical Care Tower and The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center. The event, held at the entrance to the $1.1 billion 1.6 million-square-foot-facility, honored the many donors including Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, first president of the United Arab Emirates, and Michael Bloomberg.[81][82]
On September 19, 2016 the Baltimore City Council approved a $660 million bond deal for the $5.5 billion Port Covington redevelopment project championed by Under Armour founder Kevin Plank and his real estate company Sagamore Development. Port Covington surpassed the Harbor Point development as the largest tax-increment financing deal in Baltimore’s history and among the largest urban redevelopment projects in the country.[83] The waterfront development that includes the new headquarters for Under Armour, as well as shops, housing, offices, and manufacturing spaces is projected to create 26,500 permanent jobs with a $4.3 billion annual economic impact.[84]Goldman Sachs invested $233 million into the redevelopment project.[85]
Geography
Baltimore is in north-central Maryland on the Patapsco River close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. The city is also located on the fall line between the Piedmont Plateau and the Atlantic coastal plain, which divides Baltimore into “lower city” and “upper city”. The city’s elevation ranges from sea level at the harbor to 480 feet (150 m) in the northwest corner near Pimlico.[5]
According to the 2010 Census, the city has a total area of 92.1 square miles (239 km2), of which 80.9 sq mi (210 km2) is land and 11.1 sq mi (29 km2) is water.[86] The total area is 12.1 percent water.
Baltimore is almost completely surrounded by Baltimore County, but is politically independent of it. It is bordered by Anne Arundel County to the south.
Cityscape
Architecture
Baltimore exhibits examples from each period of architecture over more than two centuries, and work from architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, George A. Frederick, John Russell Pope, Mies van der Rohe and I. M. Pei.
The city is rich in architecturally significant buildings in a variety of styles. The Baltimore Basilica (1806–1821) is a neoclassical design by Benjamin Latrobe, and also the oldest Catholic cathedral in the United States. In 1813 Robert Cary Long, Sr., built for Rembrandt Peale the first substantial structure in the United States designed expressly as a museum. Restored, it is now the Municipal Museum of Baltimore, or popularly the Peale Museum.
The McKim Free School was founded and endowed by John McKim, although the building was erected by his son Isaac in 1822 after a design by William Howard and William Small. It reflects the popular interest in Greece when the nation was securing its independence, as well as a scholarly interest in recently published drawings of Athenian antiquities.
The Phoenix Shot Tower (1828), at 234.25 feet (71.40 m) tall, was the tallest building in the United States until the time of the Civil War, and is one of few remaining structures of its kind.[87] It was constructed without the use of exterior scaffolding. The Sun Iron Building, designed by R.C. Hatfield in 1851, was the city’s first iron-front building and was a model for a whole generation of downtown buildings. Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, built in 1870 in memory of financier George Brown, has stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany and has been called “one of the most significant buildings in this city, a treasure of art and architecture” by Baltimore Magazine.[88][89]
The 1845 Greek Revival-style Lloyd Street Synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues in the United States. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, designed by Lt. Col. John S. Billings in 1876, was a considerable achievement for its day in functional arrangement and fireproofing.
I.M. Pei’s World Trade Center (1977) is the tallest equilateral pentagonal building in the world at 405 feet (123 m) tall.
The Harbor East area has seen the addition of two new towers which have completed construction: a 24-floor tower that is the new world headquarters of Legg Mason, and a 21-floor Four Seasons Hotel complex.
The streets of Baltimore are organized in a grid pattern, lined with tens of thousands of brick and formstone-faced rowhouses. In The Baltimore Rowhouse, Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure considered the rowhouse as the architectural form defining Baltimore as “perhaps no other American city.”[90] In the mid-1790s, developers began building entire neighborhoods of the British-style rowhouses, which became the dominant house type of the city early in the 19th century.[91]
Formstone facings, now a common feature on Baltimore rowhouses, were an addition patented in 1937 by Albert Knight. John Waters characterized formstone as “the polyester of brick” in a 30-minute documentary film, Little Castles: A Formstone Phenomenon.[92]
Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a Major League Baseball park, opened in 1992, which was built as a retro style baseball park. Camden Yards, along with the National Aquarium, have helped revive the Inner Harbor from what once was an industrial district full of dilapidated warehouses into a bustling commercial district full of bars, restaurants and retail establishments. Today, the Inner Harbor has some of the most desirable real estate in the Mid-Atlantic.[93]
After an international competition, the University of Baltimore School of Law awarded the German firm Behnisch Architekten 1st prize for its design, which was selected for the school’s new home. After the building’s opening in 2013, the design won additional honors including an ENR National “Best of the Best” Award.[94]
Baltimore’s newly rehabilitated Everyman Theatre was honored by the Baltimore Heritage at the 2013 Preservation Awards Celebration in 2013. Everyman Theatre will receive an Adaptive Reuse and Compatible Design Award as part of Baltimore Heritage’s 2013 historic preservation awards ceremony. Baltimore Heritage is Baltimore’s nonprofit historic and architectural preservation organization, which works to preserve and promote Baltimore’s historic buildings and neighborhoods.[95]
Tallest buildings
Neighborhoods
A map of Baltimore with the official city-designated Baltimore neighborhoods, by the Baltimore City Dept. of Planning
Baltimore is officially divided into nine geographical regions: North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest, and Central, with each district patrolled by a respective Baltimore Police Department. Interstate 83 and Charles Street down to Hanover Street and Ritchie Highway serve as the east-west dividing line and Eastern Avenue to Route 40 as the north-south dividing line. However, Baltimore Street is north-south dividing line for the U.S. Postal Service.[107] It is not uncommon for locals to divide the city simply by East or West Baltimore, using Charles Street or I-83 as a dividing line or into North and South using Baltimore Street as a dividing line.[citation needed]
Central Baltimore
Central Baltimore, originally called the Middle District,[108] stretches north of the Inner Harbor up to the edge of Druid Hill Park. Downtown Baltimore has mainly served as a commercial district with limited residential opportunities. However, between 2000 and 2010, the downtown population grew 130 percent as old commercial properties have been replaced by residential property.[109] Still the city’s main commercial area and business district, it includes Baltimore’s sports complexes: Oriole Park at Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, and the Royal Farms Arena; and the shops and attractions in the Inner Harbor: Harborplace, the Baltimore Convention Center, the National Aquarium, Maryland Science Center, Pier Six Pavilion, and Power Plant Live.[107]
The University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Maryland Medical Center, and Lexington Market are also in the central district, as well as the Hippodrome and many nightclubs, bars, restaurants, shopping centers and various other attractions.[107][108] The northern portion of Central Baltimore, between downtown and the Druid Hill Park, is home to many of the city’s cultural opportunities. Maryland Institute College of Art, the Peabody Institute (music conservatory), George Peabody Library, Enoch Pratt Free Library – Central Library, the Lyric Opera House, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the Walters Art Museum, the Maryland Historical Society and its Enoch Pratt Mansion, and several galleries are located in this region.[110]
North Baltimore
Sherwood Gardens, Guilford neighborhood, Baltimore
North Baltimore lies directly north of Central Baltimore and is bounded on the east by The Alameda and on the west by Pimlico Road. Loyola University Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus, St. Mary’s Seminary and University and Notre Dame of Maryland University are located in this district. Baltimore Polytechnic Institute high school for mathematics, science and engineering, and adjacent Western High School, the oldest remaining public girls secondary school in America, share a joint campus at West Cold Spring Lane and Falls Road.[citation needed]
Several historic and notable neighborhoods are in this district: Govans (1755), Roland Park (1891), Guilford (1913), Homeland (1924), Hampden, Woodberry, Old Goucher (the original campus of Goucher College), and Jones Falls. Along the York Road corridor going north are the large neighborhoods of Charles Village, Waverly, and Mount Washington. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District is also located in North Baltimore.[111]
South Baltimore[edit]
Rowhouses, Federal Hill neighborhood, Baltimore
South Baltimore, a mixed industrial and residential area, consists of the “Old South Baltimore” peninsula below the Inner Harbor and east of the old B&O Railroad‘s Camden line tracks and Russell Street downtown. It is a culturally, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse waterfront area with neighborhoods such as Locust Point and Riverside around a large park of the same name.[112] Just south of the Inner Harbor, the historic Federal Hill neighborhood, is home to many working professionals, pubs and restaurants. At the end of the peninsula is historic Fort McHenry, a National Park since the end of World War I, when the old U.S. Army Hospital surrounding the 1798 star-shaped battlements was torn down.[113]
The area south of the Vietnam Veterans (Hanover Street) Bridge and the Patapsco River was annexed to the city in 1919 from being independent towns in Anne Arundel County.[citation needed] Across the Hanover Street Bridge are residential areas such as Cherry Hill,[114] Brooklyn, and Curtis Bay, with Fort Armistead bordering the city’s south side from Anne Arundel County.[citation needed]
Northeast Baltimore
Northeast is primarily a residential neighborhood, home to Morgan State University, bounded by the city line of 1919 on its northern and eastern boundaries, Sinclair Lane, Erdman Avenue, and Pulaski Highway to the south and The Alameda on to the west. Also in this wedge of the city on 33rd Street is Baltimore City College high school, third oldest active public secondary school in the United States, founded downtown in 1839.[115] Across Loch Raven Boulevard is the former site of the old Memorial Stadium for the Baltimore Colts and Baltimore Orioles, now replaced by a YMCA athletic and housing complex.[116][117] Lake Montebello is in Northeast Baltimore.[108]
East Baltimore
Located below Sinclair Lane and Erdman Avenue, above Orleans Street, East Baltimore is mainly made up of residential neighborhoods. This section of East Baltimore is home to Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on Broadway. Notable neighborhoods include: Armistead Gardens, Broadway East, Barclay, Ellwood Park, Greenmount, and McElderry Park.[108]
This area was the on-site film location for Homicide: Life on the Street, The Corner and The Wire.[118]
Southeast Baltimore
Southeast Baltimore, located below Fayette Street, bordering the Inner Harbor and the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River to the west, the city line of 1919 on its eastern boundaries and the Patapsco River to the south, is a mixed industrial and residential area. Patterson Park, the “Best Backyard in Baltimore,”[119] as well as the Highlandtown Arts District, and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center are located in Southeast Baltimore. The Shops at Canton Crossing opened in 2013.[120] The Canton neighborhood, is located along Baltimore’s prime waterfront. Other historic neighborhoods include: Fells Point, Patterson Park, Butchers Hill, Highlandtown, Greektown, Harbor East, Little Italy, and Upper Fell’s Point.[108]
Northwest Baltimore
Northwestern is bounded by the county line to the north and west, Gwynns Falls Parkway on the south and Pimlico Road on the east, is home to Pimlico Race Course, Sinai Hospital, and the headquarters of the NAACP. Its neighborhoods are mostly residential and are dissected by Northern Parkway. The area has been the center of Baltimore’s Jewish community since after World War II. Notable neighborhoods include: Pimlico, Mount Washington, and Cheswolde, and Park Heights.[121]
West Baltimore
West Baltimore is west of downtown and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and is bounded by Gwynns Falls Parkway, Fremont Avenue, and West Baltimore Street. The Old West Baltimore Historic District includes the neighborhoods of Harlem Park, Sandtown-Winchester, Druid Heights, Madison Park, and Upton.[122][123] Originally a predominantly German neighborhood, by the last half of the 1800s, Old West Baltimore was home to a substantial section of the city’s African American population. It became the largest neighborhood for the city’s black community and its cultural, political, and economic center.[122] Coppin State University, Mondawmin Mall, and Edmondson Village are located in this district. The area’s crime problems have provided subject material for television series, such as The Wire.[124] Local organizations, such as the Sandtown Habitat for Humanity and the Upton Planning Committee, have been steadily transforming parts of formerly blighted areas of West Baltimore into clean, safe communities.[125][126]
Southwest Baltimore
Southwest Baltimore is bound by the Baltimore County line to the west, West Baltimore Street to the north, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Russell Street/Baltimore-Washington Parkway (Maryland Route 295) to the east. Notable neighborhoods in Southwest Baltimore include: Pigtown, Carrolton Ridge, Ridgely’s Delight, Leakin Park, Violetville, Lakeland, and Morrell Park.[108]
St. Agnes Hospital on Wilkens and Caton[108] avenues is located in this district with the neighboring Cardinal Gibbons High School, which is the former site of Babe Ruth‘s alma mater, St. Mary’s Industrial School.[citation needed] Also through this segment of Baltimore ran the beginnings of the historic National Road, which was constructed beginning in 1806 along Old Frederick Road and continuing into the county on Frederick Road into Ellicott City, Maryland.[citation needed] Other sides in this district are: Carroll Park, one of the city’s largest parks, the colonial Mount Clare Mansion, and Washington Boulevard, which dates to pre-Revolutionary War days as the prime route out of the city to Alexandria, Virginia, and Georgetown on the Potomac River.[citation needed]
Belair-Edison
Woodberry
Reservoir Hill
Station North
Fells Point
Roland Park
Mount Vernon
Adjacent communities
The City of Baltimore is bordered by the following communities, all unincorporated census-designated places.
Climate
The city has a humid subtropical climate zone (Köppen: Cfa).[127] Its Trewartha climate classification is defined as an oceanic climate (Do), like the other major cities in the region (NYC, Philadelphia) with blizzards but without having a continental climate by technical definition.[128][129] Baltimore is part of USDA plant hardiness zones 7b and 8a.[130] Winters are chilly to mild but variable, with sporadic snowfall: January has a daily average of 35.8 °F (2.1 °C),[131] though temperatures reach 50 °F (10 °C) rather often and drop below 20 °F (−7 °C) when Arctic air masses affect the area.[131]
The average seasonal snowfall is 20.1 inches (51 cm),[132] but it varies greatly depending on the winter, with some seasons seeing minimal snow while others see several major Nor’easters. [a] Due to lessened urban heat island (UHI) as compared to the city proper and distance from the moderating Chesapeake Bay, the outlying and inland parts of the Baltimore metro area are usually cooler, especially at night, than the city proper and the coastal towns. Thus, in the northern and western suburbs, winter snowfall is more significant, and some areas average more than 30 in (76 cm) of snow per winter.[134] It is by no means uncommon for the rain-snow line to set up in the metro area.[135] Freezing rain and sleet occurs a few times each winter in the area, as warm air overrides cold air at the low to mid-levels of the atmosphere. When the wind blows from the east, the cold air gets dammed against the mountains to the west and the result is freezing rain or sleet.
Spring and autumn are warm, with spring being the wettest season in terms of the number of precipitation days. Summers are hot and humid with a daily average in July of 80.7 °F (27.1 °C),[131] and the combination of heat and humidity leads to rather frequent thunderstorms. A southeasterly bay breeze off the Chesapeake often occurs on summer afternoons when hot air rises over inland areas; prevailing winds from the southwest interacting with this breeze as well as the city proper’s UHI can seriously exacerbate air quality.[136][137] In late summer and early autumn the track of hurricanes or their remnants may cause flooding in downtown Baltimore, despite the city being far removed from the typical coastal storm surge areas.[138]
Humidity can contribute to dramatic lightning storms over the Baltimore area.
Extreme temperatures range from −7 °F (−22 °C) on February 9, 1934, and February 10, 1899,[b] up to 108 °F (42 °C) on July 22, 2011.[139][140] On average, 100 °F (38 °C)+ temperatures occur on 0.9 days annually, 90 °F (32 °C)+ on 37 days, and there are 10 days where the high fails to reach the freezing mark.[131]
Demographics
Population
1790–1960[147] 1900–1990[148]
1990–2000[149] 2010–2018[150]
According to the 2010 Census, there were 620,961 people living in Baltimore City in 242,268 households. The population decreased by 4.6% since the 2000 Census. Among school-age children between 5–17 years old, there was a 23% decline.[151] Baltimore’s population has declined at each census since its peak in 1950.[109]
In 2011, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said her main goal was to increase the city’s population by improving city services to reduce the number of people leaving the city and by passing legislation protecting immigrants’ rights to stimulate growth.[151] For the first time in decades, in July 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau’s census estimate showed the population grew by 1,100 residents, a 0.2% increase from the previous year.[152]
Gentrification has also increased since the 2000 census, primarily in East Baltimore, downtown, and Central Baltimore.[153] Downtown Baltimore and its surrounding neighborhoods are seeing a resurgence of young professionals and immigrants, mirroring major cities across the country.[152]
After New York City, Baltimore was the second city in the United States to reach a population of 100,000.[154][155] From the 1830 through 1850 U.S. censuses, Baltimore was the second most-populous city,[155][156] before being surpassed by Philadelphia in 1860.[157] It was among the top 10 cities in population in the United States in every census up to the 1980 census,[158] and after World War II had a population of nearly 1 million.
Characteristics
Map of racial distribution in Baltimore, 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot is 25 people: White, Black, AsianHispanic, or Other (yellow)
According to the 2010 Census, Baltimore’s population is 63.7% Black, 29.6% White, 2.3% Asian, and 0.4%, American Indian and Alaska Native. Across races, 4.2% of the population are of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.[150]Females made up 53.4% of the population. The median age was 35 years old, with 22.4% under 18 years old, 65.8% from 18 to 64 years old, and 11.8% 65 or older.[150]
In 2005, approximately 30,778 people (6.5%) identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.[162] In 2012, same-sex marriage in Maryland was legalized, going into effect January 1, 2013.[163]
Income and housing
In 2009, the median household income was $42,241 and the median income per capita was $25,707, compared to the national median income of $53,889 per household and $28,930 per capita. In Baltimore, 23.7% of the population lived below the poverty line, compared to 13.5% nationwide.[150]
Housing in Baltimore is relatively inexpensive for large, coastal cities of its size. The median sale price for homes in Baltimore in 2012 was $95,000.[164] Despite the housing collapse, and along with the national trends, Baltimore residents still face slowly increasing rent (up 3% in the summer of 2010).[165]
The homeless population in Baltimore is steadily increasing; it exceeded 4,000 people in 2011. The increase in the number of young homeless people was particularly severe.[166]
Religion
Baltimore Basilica, the first cathedral built in the U.S.
A little under half (47%) of people in Baltimore report affiliating with a religion. Catholicism is the largest religious affiliation, comprising 12% percent of the population, followed by the Baptist Church (7%), then Judaism (4.3%). Around 11.4% identify with other Christian denominations.[167][168]
Languages
As of 2010, 91% (526,705) of Baltimore residents five years old and older spoke only English at home. Close to 4% (21,661) spoke Spanish. Other languages, such as African languages, French, and Chinese are spoken by less than 1% of the population.[169]
Crime
Patrol car of the Baltimore Police Department
Crime in Baltimore, generally concentrated in areas high in poverty, has been far above the national average for many years. Overall reported crime has dropped by 60% from the mid 1990s to the mid 2010s, but homicide rates remain high and exceed the national average. The worst years for crime in Baltimore overall were from 1993 to 1996; with 96,243 crimes reported in 1995. Baltimore’s 344 homicides in 2015 represented the highest homicide rate in the city’s recorded history—52.5 per 100,000 people, surpassing the record set in 1993—and the second-highest for U.S. cities behind St. Louis and ahead of Detroit. To put that in perspective, New York City, a city with a 2015 population of 8,491,079 recorded a total of 339 homicides in 2015. Baltimore had a 2015 population of 621,849; which means that in 2015 Baltimore had a homicide rate 14 times higher than New York City’s. Of Baltimore’s 344 homicides in 2015, 321 (93.3%) of the victims were African-American.[citation needed] Chicago, which saw 762 homicides in 2016 compared to Baltimore’s 318, still had a homicide rate (27.2) that was half of Baltimore’s because Chicago has a population 4 times greater than Baltimore’s.[citation needed] Drug use and deaths by drug use (particularly drugs used intravenously, such as heroin) are a related problem which has crippled Baltimore for decades. Among cities greater than 400,000, Baltimore ranked 2nd in its opiate drug death rate in the United States behind Dayton, Ohio. The DEA reported that 10% of Baltimore’s population – about 64,000 people – are addicted to heroin.[170][171][172][173][174]
In 2011, Baltimore police reported 196 homicides, the lowest number in the city since a count of 197 homicides in 1978 and far lower than the peak homicide count of 353 slayings in 1993. City leaders at the time credited a sustained focus on repeat violent offenders and increased community engagement for the continued drop, reflecting a nationwide decline in crime.[175][176]
On August 8, 2014, Baltimore’s new youth curfew law went into effect. It prohibits unaccompanied children under age 14 from being on the streets after 9 p.m. and those aged 14–16 from being out after 10 p.m. during the week and 11 p.m. on weekends and during the summer. The goal is to keep children out of dangerous places and reduce crime.[177]
Crime in Baltimore reached another peak in 2015 when the year’s tally of 344 homicides was second only to the record 353 in 1993, when Baltimore had about 100,000 more residents. The killings in 2015 were on pace with recent years in the early months of 2015 but skyrocketed after the unrest and rioting of late April. In five of the next eight months, killings topped 30–40 per month. Nearly 90 percent of 2015’s homicides were the result of shootings, renewing calls for new gun laws. In 2016, according to annual crime statistics released by the Baltimore Police Department, there were 318 murders in the city.[178] This total marked a 7.56 percent decline in homicides from 2015.
In an interview in The Guardian, on November 2, 2017,[179] David Simon, himself a former police reporter for The Baltimore Sun, ascribed the most recent surge in murders to the high-profile decision by Baltimore state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, to charge six city police officers following the death of Freddie Gray after he fell into a coma while in police custody in April 2015. “What Mosby basically did was send a message to the Baltimore police department: ‘I’m going to put you in jail for making a bad arrest.’ So officers figured it out: ‘I can go to jail for making the wrong arrest, so I’m not getting out of my car to clear a corner,’ and that’s exactly what happened post-Freddie Gray.” In Baltimore arrest numbers have plummeted from more than 40,000 in 2014, the year before Freddie Gray’s death and the subsequent charges against the officers, to about 18,000 in 2017 (primo November). This happened even as homicides soared from 211 in 2014 to 344 in 2015 – an increase of 63%.[179]
Economy
Once a predominantly industrial town, with an economic base focused on steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing (General Motors Baltimore Assembly), and transportation, the city experienced deindustrialization which cost residents tens of thousands of low-skill, high-wage jobs.[180] The city now relies on a low-wage service economy, which accounts for 31% of jobs in the city.[181][182] Around the turn of the 20th century, Baltimore was the leading US manufacturer of rye whiskey and straw hats. It also led in refining of crude oil, brought to the city by pipeline from Pennsylvania.[183][184][185]
As of March 2018 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates Baltimore’s unemployment rate at 5.8%[186] while one quarter of Baltimore residents (and 37% of Baltimore children) live in poverty.[187] The 2012 closure of a major steel plant at Sparrows Point is expected to have a further impact on employment and the local economy.[188] The Census Bureau reported in 2013 that 207,000 workers commute into Baltimore city each day.[189] Downtown Baltimore is the primary economic asset within Baltimore City and the region with 29.1 million square feet of office space. The tech sector is rapidly growing as the Baltimore metro ranks 8th in the CBRE Tech Talent Report among 50 U.S. metro areas for high growth rate and number of tech professionals.[190] Forbes ranked Baltimore fourth among America’s “new tech hot spots”.[191]
The city is home to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Other large companies in Baltimore include Under Armour,[192] BRT Laboratories, Cordish Company,[193] Legg Mason, McCormick & Company, T. Rowe Price, and Royal Farms.[194] A sugar refinery owned by American Sugar Refining is one of Baltimore’s cultural icons. Nonprofits based in Baltimore include Lutheran Services in America and Catholic Relief Services.
Almost a quarter of the jobs in the Baltimore region were in science, technology, engineering and math as of mid 2013, in part attributed to the city’s extensive undergraduate and graduate schools; maintenance and repair experts were included in this count.[195]
Port
The center of international commerce for the region is the World Trade Center Baltimore. It houses the Maryland Port Administration and U.S. headquarters for major shipping lines. Baltimore is ranked 9th for total dollar value of cargo and 13th for cargo tonnage for all U.S. ports. In 2014, total cargo moving through the port totaled 29.5 million tons, down from 30.3 million tons in 2013. The value of cargo traveling through the port in 2014 came to $52.5 billion, down from $52.6 billion in 2013. The Port of Baltimore generates $3 billion in annual wages and salary, as well as supporting 14,630 direct jobs and 108,000 jobs connected to port work. In 2014, the port also generated more than $300 million in taxes. It serves over 50 ocean carriers making nearly 1,800 annual visits. Among all U.S. ports, Baltimore is first in handling automobiles, light trucks, farm and construction machinery; and imported forest products, aluminum, and sugar. The port is second in coal exports. The Port of Baltimore’s cruise industry, which offers year-round trips on several lines supports over 500 jobs and brings in over $90 million to Maryland’s economy annually. Growth at the port continues with the Maryland Port Administration plans to turn the southern tip of the former steel mill into a marine terminal, primarily for car and truck shipments, but also for anticipated new business coming to Baltimore after the completion of the Panama Canal expansion project.[196]
Tourism
Baltimore’s history and attractions have allowed the city to become a strong tourist destination on the East Coast. In 2014, the city hosted 24.5 million visitors, who spent $5.2 billion.[197] The Baltimore Visitor Center, which is operated by Visit Baltimore, is located on Light Street in the Inner Harbor. Much of the city’s tourism centers around the Inner Harbor, with the National Aquarium being Maryland’s top tourist destination. Baltimore Harbor’s restoration has made it “a city of boats”, with several historic ships and other attractions on display and open for the public to visit. The USS Constellation, the last Civil War-era vessel afloat, is docked at the head of the Inner Harbor; the USS Torsk, a submarine that holds the Navy’s record for dives (more than 10,000); and the Coast Guard cutter Taney, the last surviving U.S. warship that was in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, and which engaged Japanese Zero aircraft during the battle.[198]
Also docked is the lightship Chesapeake, which for decades marked the entrance to Chesapeake Bay; and the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse, the oldest surviving screw-pile lighthouse on Chesapeake Bay, which once marked the mouth of the Patapsco River and the entrance to Baltimore. All of these attractions are owned and maintained by the Historic Ships in Baltimore organization. The Inner Harbor also is the home port of Pride of Baltimore II, the state of Maryland’s “goodwill ambassador” ship, a reconstruction of a famous Baltimore Clipper ship.[198]
Other tourist destinations in the city include Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Fort McHenry, the Mount Vernon and Fells Point neighborhoods, and museums such as the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Industry, and the B&O Railroad Museum.
Baltimore, and more specifically, the Baltimore Convention Center is home to BronyCon, the world’s largest convention for fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The convention had over 6,300 attendees in 2017, and 10,011 attendees during its peak in 2015.[citation needed]
Baltimore Visitor Center in Inner Harbor
Fountain near visitor center in Inner Harbor
Sunset views from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
Baltimore is the home of the National Aquarium, one of the world’s largest.
Culture
The Washington Monument
Historically a working-class port town, Baltimore has sometimes been dubbed a “city of neighborhoods”, with 72 designated historic districts[199] traditionally occupied by distinct ethnic groups. Most notable today are three downtown areas along the port: the Inner Harbor, frequented by tourists due to its hotels, shops, and museums; Fells Point, once a favorite entertainment spot for sailors but now refurbished and gentrified (and featured in the movie Sleepless in Seattle); and Little Italy, located between the other two, where Baltimore’s Italian-American community is based – and where U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi grew up. Further inland, Mount Vernon is the traditional center of cultural and artistic life of the city; it is home to a distinctive Washington Monument, set atop a hill in a 19th-century urban square, that predates the more well-known monument in Washington, D.C. by several decades. Baltimore also has a significant German American population,[200] and was the second largest port of immigration to the United States, behind Ellis Island in New York and New Jersey. Between 1820 and 1989, almost 2 million who were German, Polish, English, Irish, Russian, Lithuanian, French, Ukrainian, Czech, Greek and Italian came to Baltimore, most between the years 1861 to 1930. By 1913, when Baltimore was averaging forty thousand immigrants per year, World War I closed off the flow of immigrants. By 1970, Baltimore’s heyday as an immigration center was a distant memory. There also was a Chinatown dating back to at least the 1880s which consisted of no more than 400 Chinese residents. A local Chinese-American association remains based there, but only one Chinese restaurant as of 2009.
Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower, built in 1911. The 15 stories of the Bromo Seltzer Tower have been transformed into studio spaces for visual and literary artists
Baltimore has quite a history when it comes to making beer, an art that thrived in Baltimore from the 1800s to the 1950s with over 100 old breweries in the city’s past.[201] The best remaining example of that history is the old American Brewery Building on North Gay Street and the National Brewing Company building in the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood. In the 1940s the National Brewing Company introduced the nation’s first six-pack. National’s two most prominent brands, were National Bohemian Beer colloquially “Natty Boh” and Colt 45. Listed on the Pabst website as a “Fun Fact”, Colt 45 was named after running back #45 Jerry Hill of the 1963 Baltimore Colts and not the .45 caliber handgun ammunition round. Both brands are still made today, albeit outside of Maryland, and served all around the Baltimore area at bars, as well as Orioles and Ravens games.[202] The Natty Boh logo appears on all cans, bottles, and packaging; and merchandise featuring him can still easily be found in shops in Maryland, including several in Fells Point.
Each year the Artscape takes place in the city in the Bolton Hill neighborhood, due to its proximity to Maryland Institute College of Art. Artscape styles itself as the “largest free arts festival in America”.[203] Each May, the Maryland Film Festival takes place in Baltimore, using all five screens of the historic Charles Theatre as its anchor venue. Many movies and television shows have been filmed in Baltimore. The Wire was set and filmed in Baltimore. House of Cardsand Veep are set in Washington, D.C. but filmed in Baltimore.[204]
Baltimore has cultural museums in many areas of study. The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum are internationally renowned for its collection of art. The Baltimore Museum of Art has the largest holding of works by Henri Matisse in the world.[205] The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum is the first African American wax museum in the country, featuring more than 150 life-size and lifelike wax figures.[44]
Cuisine
Baltimore is known for its Maryland blue crabs, crab cake, Old Bay Seasoning, pit beef, and the “chicken box.” The city has many restaurants in or around the Inner Harbor. The most known and acclaimed are the Charleston, Woodberry Kitchen, and the Charm City Cakes bakery featured on the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes. The Little Italy neighborhood’s biggest draw is the food. Fells Point also is a foodie neighborhood for tourists and locals and is where the oldest continuously running tavern in the country, “The Horse You Came in on Saloon,” is located.[206] Many of the city’s upscale restaurants can be found in Harbor East. Five public markets are located across the city. The Baltimore Public Market System is the oldest continuously operating public market system in the United States.[207] Lexington Market is one of the longest-running markets in the world and longest running in the country, having been around since 1782. The market continues to stand at its original site. Baltimore is the last place in America where one can still find arabbers, vendors who sell fresh fruits and vegetables from a horse-drawn cart that goes up and down neighborhood streets.[208] Food- and drink-rating site Zagat ranked Baltimore second in a list of the 17 best food cities in the country in 2015.[209]
Local dialect
Baltimore city, along with its surrounding regions, is home to a unique local dialect. It is part of Mid-Atlantic American English and is noted to be very similar to the Philadelphia accent, albeit with more southern influences.[210][211]
The so-called “Bawlmerese” accent is known for its characteristic pronunciation of its long “o” vowel, in which an “eh” sound is added before the long “o” sound.[212] It also adopts Philadelphia’s pattern of the short “a” sound, such that the tensed vowel in words like “bath” or “ask” does not match the more relaxed one in “sad” or “act”.[210]
Baltimore native John Waters parodies the city and its dialect extensively in his films. Most of them are filmed and/or set in Baltimore, including the 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos, as well as Hairspray and its Broadway musical remake.
Performing arts
Hippodrome Baltimore
Baltimore has three state-designated arts and entertainment (A & E) districts. The Station North Arts and Entertainment District, Highlandtown Arts District, and the Bromo Arts & Entertainment District. The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, a non-profit organization, produces events and arts programs as well as manages several facilities. It is the official Baltimore City Arts Council. BOPA coordinates Baltimore’s major events including New Year’s Eve and July 4 celebrations at the Inner Harbor, Artscape which is America’s largest free arts festival, Baltimore Book Festival, Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar, School 33 Art Center’s Open Studio Tour and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade.[213]
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is an internationally renowned orchestra, founded in 1916 as a publicly funded municipal organization. The current Music Director is Marin Alsop, a protégé of Leonard Bernstein. Centerstage is the premier theater company in the city and a regionally well-respected group. The Lyric Opera House is the home of Lyric Opera Baltimore, which operates there as part of the Patricia and Arthur Modell Performing Arts Center. The Baltimore Consort has been a leading early music ensemble for over twenty-five years. The France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, home of the restored Thomas W. Lamb-designed Hippodrome Theatre, has afforded Baltimore the opportunity to become a major regional player in the area of touring Broadway and other performing arts presentations. Renovating Baltimore’s historic theatres have become widespread throughout the city such as the Everyman, Centre, Senator and most recent Parkway theatre. Other buildings have been reused such as the former Mercantile Deposit and Trust Company bank building. It is now the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theater.
Baltimore also boasts a wide array of professional (non-touring) and community theater groups. Aside from Center Stage, resident troupes in the city include The Vagabond Players, the oldest continuously operating community theater group in the country, Everyman Theatre, Single Carrot Theatre, and Baltimore Theatre Festival. Community theaters in the city include Fells Point Community Theatre and the Arena Players Inc., which is the nation’s oldest continuously operating African American community theater.[214] In 2009, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, an all-volunteer theatrical company, launched its first production.[215]
Baltimore is home to the Pride of Baltimore Chorus, a three-time international silver medalist women’s chorus, affiliated with Sweet Adelines International. The Maryland State Boychoir is located in the northeastern Baltimore neighborhood of Mayfield.
Baltimore is the home of non-profit chamber music organization Vivre Musicale. VM won a 2011–2012 award for Adventurous Programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Chamber Music America.[216]
The Peabody Institute, located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, is the oldest conservatory of music in the United States.[217] Established in 1857, it is one of the most prestigious in the world,[217] along with Juilliard, Eastman, and the Curtis Institute. The Morgan State University Choir is also one of the nation’s most prestigious university choral ensembles.[218] The city is home to the Baltimore School for the Arts, a public high school in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. The institution is nationally recognized for its success in preparation for students entering music (vocal/instrumental), theatre (acting/theater production), dance, and visual arts.
Sports
Baseball
Oriole Park at Camden Yards
Baltimore has a long and storied baseball history, including its distinction as the birthplace of Babe Ruth in 1895. The original 19th century Baltimore Orioles were one of the most successful early franchises, featuring numerous hall of famers during its years from 1882 to 1899. As one of the eight inaugural American League franchises, the Baltimore Orioles played in the AL during the 1901 and 1902 seasons. The team moved to New York City before the 1903 season and was renamed the New York Highlanders, which later became the New York Yankees. Ruth played for the minor league Baltimore Orioles team, which was active from 1903 to 1914. After playing one season in 1915 as the Richmond Climbers, the team returned the following year to Baltimore, where it played as the Orioles until 1953.[219]
The team currently known as the Baltimore Orioles has represented Major League Baseball locally since 1954 when the St. Louis Browns moved to the city of Baltimore. The Orioles advanced to the World Series in 1966, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979 and 1983, winning three times (1966, 1970 and 1983), while making the playoffs all but one year (1972) from 1969 through 1974.
In 1995, local player (and later Hall of Famer) Cal Ripken, Jr. broke Lou Gehrig‘s streak of 2,130 consecutive games played, for which Ripken was named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated magazine.[citation needed] Six former Orioles players, including Ripken (2007), and two of the team’s managers have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Since 1992, the Orioles’ home ballpark has been Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which has been hailed as one of the league’s best since it opened.[citation needed]
Football
M&T Bank Stadium
Prior to an NFL team moving to Baltimore, there had been several attempts at a professional football team prior to the 1950s. Most were minor league or semi-professional teams. The first major league to base a team in Baltimore was the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), which had a team named the Baltimore Colts. The AAFC Colts played for three seasons in the AAFC (1947, 1948, and 1949), and when the AAFC folded following the 1949 season, moved to the NFL for a single year (1950) before going bankrupt. Three years later, the NFL’s Dallas Texans would itself fold, and its assets and player contracts purchased by an ownership team headed by Baltimore businessman Carroll Rosenbloom, who moved the team to Baltimore, establishing a new team also named the Baltimore Colts. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Colts were one of the NFLs more successful franchises, led by Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas who set a then-record of 47 consecutive games with a touchdown pass. The Colts advanced to the NFL Championship twice (1958 & 1959) and Super Bowl twice (1969 & 1971), winning all except Super Bowl III in 1969. After the 1983 season, the team left Baltimore for Indianapolis in 1984, where they became the Indianapolis Colts.
The NFL returned to Baltimore when the former Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens in 1996. Since then, the Ravens won a Super Bowl championship in 2000 and 2012, five AFC North division championships (2003, 2006, 2011, 2012 and 2018), and appeared in four AFC Championship Games (2000, 2008, 2011 and 2012).
Other teams and events
The first professional sports organization in the United States, The Maryland Jockey Club, was formed in Baltimore in 1743. Preakness Stakes, the second race in the United States Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, has been held every May at Pimlico Race Coursein Baltimore since 1873.
College lacrosse is a common sport in the spring, as the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays men’s lacrosse team has won 44 national championships, the most of any program in history. In addition, Loyola University won its first men’s NCAA lacrosse championship in 2012.
The Baltimore Blast are a professional arena soccer team that play in the Major Arena Soccer League at the SECU Arena on the campus of Towson University. The Blast have won 9 championships in various leagues, including the MASL. A previous entity of the Blastplayed in the Major Indoor Soccer League from 1980 to 1992, winning 1 championship.
The FC Baltimore 1729 is a semi-professional soccer club playing for NPSL league, with the goal of bringing a community-oriented competitive soccer experience to the city of Baltimore. Their inaugural season will start May 11, 2018, and they will play their home games at CCBC Essex Field.
The Baltimore Blues are a semi-professional rugby league club which began competition in the USA Rugby League in 2012.[220] The Baltimore Bohemians are an American soccer club. They compete in the USL Premier Development League, the fourth tier of the American Soccer Pyramid. Their inaugural season started in the spring of 2012.
The Baltimore Grand Prix debuted along the streets of the Inner Harbor section of the city’s downtown on September 2–4, 2011. The event played host to the American Le Mans Series on Saturday and the IndyCar Series on Sunday. Support races from smaller series were also held, including Indy Lights. After three consecutive years, on September 13, 2013, it was announced that the event would not be held in 2014 or 2015 due to scheduling conflicts.[221]
The athletic equipment company, Under Armour is also based out of Baltimore. Founded in 1996 by Kevin Plank, a University of Maryland alumnus, the company’s headquarters are located in Tide Point, adjacent to Fort McHenry and the Domino Sugar factory. The Baltimore Marathon is the flagship race of several races. The marathon begins at the Camden Yards sports complex and travels through many diverse neighborhoods of Baltimore, including the scenic Inner Harbor waterfront area, historic Federal Hill, Fells Point, and Canton, Baltimore. The race then proceeds to other important focal points of the city such as Patterson Park, Clifton Park, Lake Montebello, the Charles Village neighborhood and the western edge of downtown. After winding through 42.195 kilometres (26.219 mi) of Baltimore, the race ends at virtually the same point at which it starts.
The Baltimore Brigade is an Arena Football League team based in Baltimore that began in 2017, playing at Royal Farms Arena along the Inner City near the Edward A. Garmatz Courthouse.
Parks and recreation
The City of Baltimore boasts over 4,900 acres (1,983 ha) of parkland.[222] The Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks manages the majority of parks and recreational facilities in the city including Patterson Park, Federal Hill Park, and Druid Hill Park.[223] The city is also home to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, a coastal star-shaped fort best known for its role in the War of 1812. As of 2015, The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization, ranks Baltimore 40th among the 75 largest U.S. cities.[222]
Government
Baltimore is an independent city, and not part of any county. For most governmental purposes under Maryland law, Baltimore City is treated as a county-level entity. The United States Census Bureau uses counties as the basic unit for presentation of statistical information in the United States, and treats Baltimore as a county equivalent for those purposes.
Baltimore has been a Democratic stronghold for over 150 years, with Democrats dominating every level of government. In virtually all elections, the Democratic primary is the real contest.[224] No Republican has won election to the city council since 1939, and no Republican has won the mayor’s race since 1963.
The city hosted the first six Democratic National Conventions, from 1832 through 1852, and hosted the DNC again in 1860, 1872, and 1912.[225][226]
City government
Mayor
Catherine Pugh became the Democratic nominee for mayor in 2016 and won the mayoral election in 2016 with 57.1% of the vote; Pugh took office as mayor on December 6, 2016.[227]
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake assumed the office of Mayor on February 4, 2010, when predecessor Dixon’s resignation became effective.[228] Rawlings-Blake had been serving as City Council President at the time. She was elected to a full term in 2011, defeating Pugh in the primary election and receiving 84% of the vote.[229]
Sheila Dixon became the first female mayor of Baltimore on January 17, 2007. As the former City Council President, she assumed the office of Mayor when former Mayor Martin O’Malley took office as Governor of Maryland.[230] On November 6, 2007, Dixon won the Baltimore mayoral election. Mayor Dixon’s administration ended less than three years after her election, the result of a criminal investigation that began in 2006 while she was still City Council President. She was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of embezzlement on December 1, 2009. A month later, Dixon made an Alford plea to a perjury charge and agreed to resign from office; Maryland, like most states, does not allow convicted felons to hold office.[231][232]
Baltimore City Hall
Baltimore City Council
Grassroots pressure for reform, voiced as Question P, restructured the city council in November 2002, against the will of the mayor, the council president, and the majority of the council. A coalition of union and community groups, organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), backed the effort.[233]
The Baltimore City Council is now made up of 14 single-member districts and one elected at-large council president. Bernard C. “Jack” Young has been the council president since February 2010, when he was unanimously elected by the other council members to replace Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who had become mayor.[234] Edward Reisinger, the 10th district representative, is the council’s current vice president.[235]
Law enforcement
The Baltimore City Police Department, founded 1784 as a “Night City Watch” and day Constables system and later reorganized as a City Department in 1853, with a following reorganization under State of Maryland supervision in 1859, with appointments made by the Governor of Maryland after a disturbing period of civic and elections violence with riots in the later part of the decade, is the current primary law enforcement agency serving the citizens of the City of Baltimore. Campus and building security for the city’s public schools is provided by the Baltimore City Public Schools Police, established in the 1970s.
In the period of 2011–2015, 120 lawsuits were brought against Baltimore police for alleged brutality and misconduct. The Freddie Gray settlement of $6.4 million exceeds the combined total settlements of the 120 lawsuits, as state law caps such payments.[236]
The Maryland Transportation Authority Police under the Maryland Department of Transportation, (originally established as the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Police” when opened in 1957) is the primary law enforcement agency on the Fort McHenry Tunnel Thruway (Interstate 95), the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Thruway (Interstate 895), which go under the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River, and Interstate 395, which has three ramp bridges crossing the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River which are under MdTA jurisdiction, the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, (BWI) and have limited concurrent jurisdiction with the Baltimore City Police Department under a “memorandum of understanding“.
Courthouse east is a historic combined post office and Federal courthouse located in Battle MonumentSquare.
Law enforcement on the fleet of transit buses and transit rail systems serving Baltimore is the responsibility of the Maryland Transit Administration Police, which is part of the Maryland Transit Administration of the state Department of Transportation. The MTA Police also share jurisdiction authority with the Baltimore City Police, governed by a memorandum of understanding.[237]
As the enforcement arm of the Baltimore circuit and district court system, the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office, created by state constitutional amendment in 1844, is responsible for the security of city courthouses and property, service of court-ordered writs, protective and peace orders, warrants, tax levies, prisoner transportation and traffic enforcement. Deputy Sheriffs are sworn law enforcement officials, with full arrest authority granted by the constitution of Maryland, the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission and the Sheriff of the City of Baltimore.[238]
The United States Coast Guard, operating out of their shipyard and facility (since 1899) at Arundel Cove on Curtis Creek, (off Pennington Avenue extending to Hawkins Point Road/Fort Smallwood Road) in the Curtis Bay section of southern Baltimore City and adjacent northern Anne Arundel County. The U.S.C.G. also operates and maintains a presence on Baltimore and Maryland waterways in the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay. “Sector Baltimore” is responsible for commanding law enforcement and search & rescue units as well as aids to navigation.
Baltimore City Fire Department
The city of Baltimore is protected by the over 1,800 professional firefighters of the Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD), which was founded in December 1858 and began operating the following year. Replacing several warring independent volunteer companies since the 1770s and the confusion resulting from a riot involving the “Know-Nothing” political party two years before, the establishment of a unified professional fire fighting force was a major advance in urban governance. The BCFD operates out of 37 fire stations located throughout the city and has a long history and sets of traditions in its various houses and divisions.
State government
Since the legislative redistricting in 2002, Baltimore has had six legislative districts located entirely within its boundaries, giving the city six seats in the 47-member Maryland Senate and 18 in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates.[239][240] During the previous 10-year period, Baltimore had four legislative districts within the city limits, but four others overlapped the Baltimore County line.[241] As of January 2011, all of Baltimore’s state senators and delegates were Democrats.[239] Approval of the next redistricting plan is expected to become effective in time for Maryland’s 2012 congressional primary election on February 14, 2012.[242]
State agencies
Federal government
Three of the state’s eight congressional districts include portions of Baltimore: the 2nd, represented by Dutch Ruppersberger; the 3rd, represented by John Sarbanes; and the 7th, represented by Elijah Cummings. All three are Democrats; a Republican has not represented a significant portion of Baltimore in Congress since John Boynton Philip Clayton Hill represented the 3rd District in 1927, and has not represented any of Baltimore since the Eastern Shore-based 1st District lost its share of Baltimore after the 2000 census; it was represented by Republican Wayne Gilchrest at the time.
Maryland’s senior Senator, Ben Cardin, is from Baltimore. He is one of three people in the last four decades to have represented the 3rd District before being elected to the Senate. Paul Sarbanes represented the 3rd from 1971 until 1977, when he was elected to the first of five terms in the Senate. Sarbanes was succeeded by Barbara Mikulski, who represented the 3rd from 1977 to 1987. Mikulski was succeeded by Cardin, who held the seat until handing it to John Sarbanes upon his election to the Senate in 2007.[243]
show
The Postal Service‘s Baltimore Main Post Office is located at 900 East Fayette Street in the Jonestown area.[245]
The national headquarters for the United States Social Security Administration is located in Woodlawn, just outside of Baltimore.
Education
Colleges and universities
Baltimore is the home of numerous places of higher learning, both public and private. 100,000 college students from around the country attend Baltimore City’s 12 accredited two-year or four-year colleges and universities.[246][247] Among them are:
Private
Keyser Quadrangle in Spring at the Johns Hopkins University the first research university in the United States.
Interior of the George Peabody Library at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. It is considered one of the most beautiful libraries in the world.[248]
Public
Primary and secondary schools
The city’s public schools are managed by Baltimore City Public Schools and include schools that have been well known in the area: Carver Vocational-Technical High School, the first African American vocational high school and center that was established in the state of Maryland; Digital Harbor High School, one of the secondary schools that emphasizes information technology; Lake Clifton Eastern High School, which is the largest school campus in Baltimore City of physical size; the historic Frederick Douglass High School, which is the second oldest African American high school in the United States;[249] Baltimore City College, the third oldest public high school in the country;[250] and Western High School, the oldest public all-girls school in the nation.[251] Baltimore City College (also known as “City”) and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (also known as “Poly”) share the nation’s second-oldest high school football rivalry.[252]
Transportation
The Baltimore Light RailLink provides service to Baltimore–Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and the Baltimore area. Here, a train stops at Convention Center station, just west of the Baltimore Convention Center on Pratt Street.
The city of Baltimore has a higher-than-average percentage of households without a car. In 2015, 30.7 percent of Baltimore households lacked a car, which decreased slightly to 28.9 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Baltimore averaged 1.65 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.[253]
Roads and highways
Baltimore’s highway growth has done much to influence the development of the city and its suburbs. The first limited-access highway serving Baltimore was the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, which opened in stages between 1950 and 1954. Maintenance of it is split: the half closest to Baltimore is maintained by the state of Maryland, and the half closest to Washington by the National Park Service. Trucks are only permitted to use the northern part of the parkway. Trucks (tractor-trailers) continued to use U.S. Route 1 (US 1) until Interstate 95 (I-95) between Baltimore and Washington opened in 1971.
The Interstate highways serving Baltimore are I-70, I-83 (the Jones Falls Expressway), I-95, I-395, I-695 (the Baltimore Beltway), I-795 (the Northwest Expressway), I-895 (the Harbor Tunnel Thruway), and I-97. The city’s mainline Interstate highways—I-95, I-83, and I-70—do not directly connect to each other, and in the case of I-70 end at a park and ride lot just inside the city limits, because of freeway revolts in Baltimore. These revolts were led primarily by Barbara Mikulski, a former United States senator for Maryland, which resulted in the abandonment of the original plan. There are two tunnels traversing Baltimore Harbor within the city limits: the four-bore Fort McHenry Tunnel (opened in 1985 and serving I-95) and the two-bore Harbor Tunnel (opened in 1957 and serving I-895). The Baltimore Beltway crosses south of Baltimore Harbor over the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The first interstate highway built in Baltimore was I-83, called the Jones Falls Expressway (first portion built in the early 1960s). Running from the downtown toward the northwest (NNW), it was built through a natural corridor, which meant that no residents or housing were directly affected. A planned section from what is now its southern terminus to I-95 was abandoned. Its route through parkland received criticism.
Planning for the Baltimore Beltway antedates the creation of the Interstate Highway System. The first portion completed was a small strip connecting the two sections of I-83, the Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway and the Jones Falls Expressway.
The only U.S. Highways in the city are US 1, which bypasses downtown, and US 40, which crosses downtown from east to west. Both run along major surface streets; however, US 40 utilizes a small section of a freeway cancelled in the 1970s in the west side of the city originally intended for Interstate 170. State routes in the city also travel along surface streets, with the exception of Maryland Route 295, which carries the Baltimore–Washington Parkway.
The Baltimore City Department of Transportation (BCDOT) is responsible for several functions of the road transportation system in Baltimore, including repairing roads, sidewalks, and alleys; road signs; street lights; and managing the flow of transportation systems.[254] In addition, the agency is in charge of vehicle towing and traffic cameras.[255][256] BCDOT maintains all streets within the city of Baltimore. These include all streets that are marked as state and U.S. highways as well as the portions of I-83 and I-70 within the city limits. The only highways within the city that are not maintained by BCDOT are I-95, I-395, I-695, and I-895; those four highways are maintained by the Maryland Transportation Authority.[257]
Transit systems
Public transit
Charm City Circulator Van Hool A330 #1101 on the Orange Line
Public transit in Baltimore is mostly provided by the Maryland Transit Administration (abbreviated “MTA Maryland”) and Charm City Circulator. MTA Maryland operates a comprehensive bus network, including many local, express, and commuter buses, a light rail network connecting Hunt Valley in the north to BWI Airport and Cromwell (Glen Burnie) in the south, and a subway line between Owings Mills and Johns Hopkins Hospital.[258] A proposed rail line, known as the Red Line, which would link the Social Security Administration to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and perhaps the Canton and Dundalk communities, was cancelled as of June 2015 by Governor Larry Hogan; a proposal to extend Baltimore’s existing subway line to Morgan State University, known as the Green Line, is in the planning stages.[259]
The Charm City Circulator (CCC), a shuttle bus service operated by Veolia Transportation for the Baltimore Department of Transportation, began operating in the downtown area in January 2010. Funded partly by a 16 percent increase in the city’s parking fees, the circulator provides free bus service seven days a week, picking up passengers every 15 minutes at designated stops during service hours.[260][261]
The CCC’s first bus line, the Orange route, travels between Hollins Market and Harbor East. Its Purple route, launched June 7, 2010, operates between Fort Avenue and 33rd St. The Green route runs between Johns Hopkins and City Hall.[261][262] The Charm City Circulator operates a fleet of diesel and hybrid vehicles built by DesignLine, Orion, and Van Hool.[260]
Baltimore also has a water taxi service, operated by Baltimore Water Taxi. The water taxi’s six routes provide service throughout the city’s harbor, and was purchased by Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank‘s Sagamore Ventures in 2016.[263]
In June 2017, The BaltimoreLink started operating; it is the redesign of the region’s initial bus system. The BaltimoreLink runs through downtown Baltimore every 10 minutes via color-coded, high-frequency CityLink routes.[264]
Intercity rail
Baltimore Pennsylvania Station
Baltimore is a top destination for Amtrak along the Northeast Corridor. Baltimore’s Penn Station is one of the busiest in the country. In FY 2014, Penn Station was ranked the seventh-busiest rail station in the United States by number of passengers served each year.[265] The building sits on a raised “island” of sorts between two open trenches, one for the Jones Falls Expressway and the other for the tracks of the Northeast Corridor (NEC). The NEC approaches from the south through the two-track, 7,660 feet (2,330 m) Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which opened in 1873 and whose 30 mph (50 km/h) limit, sharp curves, and steep grades make it one of the NEC’s worst bottlenecks. The NEC’s northern approach is the 1873 Union Tunnel, which has one single-track bore and one double-track bore.
Just outside the city, Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport Rail Station is another stop. Amtrak’s Acela Express, Palmetto, Carolinian, Silver Star, Silver Meteor, Vermonter, Crescent, and Northeast Regional trains are the scheduled passenger train services that stop in the city. Additionally, MARC commuter rail service connects the city’s two main intercity rail stations, Camden Station and Penn Station, with Washington, D.C.’s Union Station as well as stops in between. The MARC consists of 3 lines; the Brunswick, Camden and Penn. On December 7, 2013 the Penn Line began weekend service.[266]
Airports
The interior of Baltimore–Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Baltimore’s major commercial airport
Baltimore is served by two airports, both operated by the Maryland Aviation Administration, which is part of the Maryland Department of Transportation.[267] Baltimore–Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, generally known as “BWI,” lies about 10 miles (16 km) to the south of Baltimore in neighboring Anne Arundel County. The airport is named after Thurgood Marshall, a Baltimore native who was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. In terms of passenger traffic, BWI is the 22nd busiest airport in the United States.[268] As of calendar year 2014, BWI is the largest, by passenger count, of three major airports serving the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. It is accessible by I-95 and the Baltimore–Washington Parkway via Interstate 195, the Baltimore Light Rail, and Amtrak and MARC Train at BWI Rail Station.
Baltimore is also served by Martin State Airport, a general aviation facility, to the northeast in Baltimore County. Martin State Airport is linked to downtown Baltimore by Maryland Route 150 (Eastern Avenue) and by MARC Train at its own station.
Pedestrians and bicycles
Baltimore has a comprehensive system of bicycle routes in the city. These routes are not numbered, but are typically denoted with green signs displaying a silhouette of a bicycle upon an outline of the city’s border, and denote the distance to destinations, much like bicycle routes in the rest of the state. The roads carrying bicycle routes are also labelled with either bike lanes, sharrows, or Share the Road signs. Many of these routes pass through the downtown area. The network of bicycle lanes in the city continues to expand, with over 140 miles (230 km) added between 2006 and 2014.[269] Alongside bike lanes, Baltimore has also built bike boulevards, starting with Guilford Avenue in 2012.
Baltimore currently has three major trail systems within the city. The Gwynns Falls Trail runs from the Inner Harbor to the I-70 Park and Ride, passing through Gwynns Falls Park and possessing numerous branches. There are also many pedestrian hiking trails traversing the park. The Jones Falls Trail currently runs from the Inner Harbor to the Cylburn Arboretum; however, it is currently undergoing expansion. Long term plans call for it to extend to the Mount Washington Light Rail Stop, and possibly as far north as the Falls Road stop to connect to the Robert E. Lee boardwalk north of the city. It will also incorporate a spur alongside Western Run. The two aforementioned trails carry sections of the East Coast Greenway through the city. There is also the Herring Run Trail, which runs from Harford Road east to its end beyond Sinclair Lane, utilizing Herring Run Park; long term plans also call for its extension to Morgan State University and north to points beyond. Other major bicycle projects include a protected cycle track installed on both Maryland Avenue and Mount Royal Avenue, expected to become the backbone of a downtown bicycle network. Installation for the cycletracks is expected in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
In addition to the bicycle trails and cycletracks, Baltimore has the Stony Run Trail, a walking path that will eventually connect from the Jones Falls north to Northern Parkway, utilizing much of the old Ma and Pa Railroad corridor inside the city. In 2011, the city undertook a campaign to reconstruct many sidewalk ramps in the city, coinciding with mass resurfacing of the city’s streets. A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Baltimore the 14th most walkable of fifty largest U.S. cities.[270]
Port of Baltimore
Eastward view Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
Baltimore harbor in 1849 with the prominent Washington Monument in the background north of the city
Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Baltimore harbor.
The port was founded in 1706, preceding the founding of Baltimore. The Maryland colonial legislature made the area near Locust Point as the port of entry for the tobacco trade with England. Fells Point, the deepest point in the natural harbor, soon became the colony’s main ship building center, later on becoming leader in the construction of clipper ships.[271]
After Baltimore’s founding, mills were built behind the wharves. The California Gold Rush led to many orders for fast vessels; many overland pioneers also relied upon canned goods from Baltimore. After the Civil War, a coffee ship was designed here for trade with Brazil. At the end of the nineteenth century, European ship lines had terminals for immigrants. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad made the port a major transshipment point.[272]:17,75 Currently the port has major roll-on/roll-off facilities, as well as bulk facilities, especially steel handling.[273]
Water taxis also operate in the Inner Harbor. Governor Ehrlich participated in naming the port after Helen Delich Bentley during the 300th anniversary of the port.[274]
In 2007, Duke Realty Corporation began a new development near the Port of Baltimore, named the Chesapeake Commerce Center. This new industrial park is located on the site of a former General Motors plant. The total project comprises 184 acres (0.74 km2) in eastern Baltimore City, and the site will yield 2,800,000 square feet (260,000 m2) of warehouse/distribution and office space. Chesapeake Commerce Center has direct access to two major Interstate highways (I-95 and I-895) and is located adjacent to two of the major Port of Baltimore terminals. The Port of Baltimore is one of two seaports on the U.S. East Coast with a 50-foot (15 m) dredge to accommodate the largest shipping vessels.[275]
Along with cargo terminals, the port also has a passenger cruise terminal, which offers year-round trips on several lines, including Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas and Carnival’s Pride. Overall five cruise lines have operated out of the port to the Bahamas and the Caribbean, while some ships traveled to New England and Canada. The terminal has become an embarkation point where passengers have the opportunity to park and board next to the ship visible from Interstate 95.[276] Passengers from Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey make up a third of the volume, with travelers from Maryland, Virginia, the District and even Ohio and the Carolinas making up the rest.[277]
Environment
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, known for its skyline waterscape and its tourist-friendly areas, was horribly polluted. The waterway was often filled with garbage after heavy rainstorms, failing its 2014 water quality report card. The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore took steps to remediate the waterways, in hopes that the harbor would be fishable and swimmable once again.
Trash interceptors
The “Mr. Trash Wheel” trash interceptor at the mouth of the Jones Falls River in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
Installed in May 2014, the water wheel trash interceptor known as Mr. Trash Wheel sits at the mouth of the Jones Falls River in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. A February 2015 agreement with a local waste-to-energy plant is believed to make Baltimore the first city to use reclaimed waterway debris to generate electricity.[278]
Mr. Trash Wheel is the world’s first permanent water wheel trash interceptor to clean up the city’s polluted Inner Harbor.[279] The Jones Falls river watershed drains 58 square miles (150 km2) of land outside of Baltimore and is a significant source of trash that enters the harbor. Garbage collected by Mr. Trash Wheel could come from anywhere in the Jones Falls Watershed area.[280] The wheel moves continuously, removing garbage and dumping it into an attached dumpster using only hydro and solar renewable power to keep its wheel turning. It has the capability to collect 50,000 pounds (22,700 kg) of trash per day, and has removed more than 350 tons of litter from Baltimore’s landmark and tourist attraction in its first 18 months, estimated as consisting of approximately 200,000 bottles, 173,000 potato chip bags and 6.7 million cigarette butts.[281][282] The Water Wheel has been very successful at trash removal, visibly decreasing the amount of garbage that collects in the harbor, especially after a rainfall.
After the success of Mr. Trash Wheel, the Waterfront Partnership raised money to build a second Water Wheel at the end of Harris Creek, an entirely piped stream that flows beneath Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood and empties into the Baltimore Harbor. Harris Creek is known to carry tons of trash every year.[283][284][285] The planned new Water Wheel was inaugurated in December 2016, and dubbed “Professor Trash Wheel”.[286] Professor Trash Wheel prevents waste from exiting the Harbor and accessing the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. A number of additional projects are going on in Baltimore City and County that should result in better water quality scores. These projects include the Blue Alleys project, expanded street sweeping, and stream restoration.[279]
Other water pollution control
In August 2010, the National Aquarium assembled, planted, and launched a floating wetland island designed by Biohabitats in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.[287] Hundreds of years ago Baltimore’s harbor shoreline would have been lined with tidal wetlands. Floating wetlands provide many environmental benefits to water quality and habitat enhancement, which is why the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore has included them in their Healthy Harbor Initiative pilot projects.[288] Biohabitats also developed a concept to transform a dilapidated wharf into a living pier that cleans Harbor water, provides habitat and is an aesthetic attraction. Currently under design, the top of the pier will become a constructed tidal wetland.[289]
Media
Baltimore’s main newspaper is The Baltimore Sun. It was sold by its Baltimore owners in 1986 to the Times Mirror Company,[290] which was bought by the Tribune Company in 2000.[291] The Baltimore News-American, another long-running paper that competed with the Sun, ceased publication in 1986.[292]
The city is home to the Baltimore Afro-American, an influential African American newspaper founded in 1892.[293][294]
In 2006, The Baltimore Examiner was launched to compete with The Sun. It was part of a national chain that includes The San Francisco Examiner and The Washington Examiner. In contrast to the paid subscription Sun, The Examiner was a free newspaper funded solely by advertisements. Unable to turn a profit and facing a deep recession, The Baltimore Examiner ceased publication on February 15, 2009.
Despite being located 40 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., Baltimore is a major media market in its own right, with all major English language television networks represented in the city. WJZ-TV 13 is a CBS owned and operated station, and WBFF 45 is the flagship of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest station owner in the country. Other major television stations in Baltimore include WMAR-TV 2 (ABC), WBAL-TV 11 (NBC), WUTB 24 (MyNetworkTV), WNUV 54 (CW), and WMPB 67 (PBS).
Nielsen ranked Baltimore as the 26th-largest television market for the 2008–2009 viewing season and the 27th-largest for 2009–2010.[295] Arbitron’s Fall 2010 rankings identified Baltimore as the 22nd largest radio market.[296]
Notable people
Sister cities
Baltimore has ten sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International: [297][298]
See also
Notes
References …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore
The Pronk Pops Show Podcasts Portfolio
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1291-1297
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1282-1290
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1276-1281
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1267-1275
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1266
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1256-1265
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1246-1255
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1236-1245
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1229-1235
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1218-1128
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1210-1217
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1202-1209
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1197-1201
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1190-1196
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1182-1189
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1174-1181
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1168-1173
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1159-1167
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1151-1158
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1145-1150
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1139-1144
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1131-1138
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1122-1130
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1112-1121
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1101-1111
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1091-1100
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1082-1090
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1073-1081
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1066-1073
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1058-1065
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1048-1057
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1041-1047
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1033-1040
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1023-1032
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1017-1022
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1010-1016
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1001-1009
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 993-1000
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 984-992
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 977-983
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 970-976
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 963-969
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 955-962
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 946-954
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 938-945
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 926-937
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 916-925
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 906-915
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 889-896
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 884-888
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 878-883
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 870-877
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 864-869
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 857-863
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 850-856
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 845-849
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 840-844
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 833-839
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 827-832
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 821-826
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 815-820
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 806-814
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 800-805
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 793-799
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 785-792
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 777-784
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 769-776
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 759-768
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 751-758
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 745-750
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 738-744
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 732-737
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 727-731
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 720-726
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 713-719
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 705-712
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 695-704
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 685-694
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 675-684
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 668-674
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 660-667
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 651-659
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 644-650
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 637-643
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 629-636
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 617-628
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 608-616
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 599-607
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 590-598
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 585- 589
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 575-584
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 565-574
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 556-564
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 546-555
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 538-545
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 532-537
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 526-531
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 519-525
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 510-518
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 500-509
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 490-499
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 480-489
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 473-479
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 464-472
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 455-463
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 447-454
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 439-446
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 431-438
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 422-430
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 414-421
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 408-413
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 400-407
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 391-399
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 383-390
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 376-382
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 369-375
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 360-368
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 354-359
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 346-353
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 338-345
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 328-337
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 319-327
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 307-318
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 296-306
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 287-295
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 277-286
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 264-276
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 250-263
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 236-249
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 222-235
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 211-221
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 202-210
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 194-201
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 184-193
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 174-183
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 165-173
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 158-164
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 151-157
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 143-150
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 135-142
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 131-134
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 124-130
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 121-123
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 118-120
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 113 -117
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 112
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 108-111
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 106-108
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 104-105
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 101-103
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 98-100
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 94-97
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 93
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 92
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Show 91
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 88-90
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 84-87
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 79-83
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 74-78
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 71-73
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 68-70
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 65-67
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 62-64
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 58-61
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 55-57
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 52-54
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 49-51
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 45-48
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 41-44
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 38-40
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 34-37
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 30-33
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 27-29
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 17-26
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 16-22
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 10-15
Listen To Pronk Pops Podcast or Download Shows 1-9
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )