A new vision for Perkins Homes arrives in 2023

The year 2023 delivered a batch of kept neighborhood promises. Just visit Gough and Bond streets in Southeast Baltimore, between Little Italy and Fells Point. It was the site of the old Perkins Homes housing project created at the very end of the Great Depression and the start of World War II.

After an elaborate springtime groundbreaking ceremony (Mayor Brandon Scott in hard hat and working heavy equipment), the beginnings of a whole new neighborhood are taking shape along East Pratt Street.

Watch for a constellation of neighborhoods, Perkins, Somerset and Oldtown, which sit between downtown Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, to be rebuilt with residences, a new school, parks and a reworked recreation center honoring the late bandleader and drummer Chick Webb.

This is estimated to be a $1 billion investment that promises to deliver diverse residents with a range of incomes.

Not far away, off Central Avenue, the Harbor Point peninsula added more apartments (on the Caroline Street flank) and the new T. Rowe Price headquarters overlooking the harbor.

Not 20 years ago this was a rust-belt brownfield chemical and iron foundry area.

While Perkins and Harbor Point will be adding hundreds of new housing units, two tiny Fells Point homes were restored this year.

The Ship Caulkers Homes (twinned wooden structures) on South Wolfe Street had sat vacant for decades. It was a delightful preservation victory to see this pair of little gems arrive after Labor Day. Their exteriors, front, back and roof are all nicely rebuilt, much from surviving 18th-century materials.

The homes come with a backstory. Black ship caulkers who worked on the waterfront in the sailing ship era lived in these remarkable homes. Restoration of their interiors remains to be accomplished.

Baltimore’s old department store neighborhood along Howard Street remains a work in steady, if slow, progress.

The Crook Horner Lofts were completed in the old Pollack Blum’s furniture store at Saratoga and Howard streets. Developer Alan Bell and his partners celebrated their elaborate and painstaking renovation/adaptive reuse of an 1890s plumbing supply warehouse. There are now 15 large apartment lofts in the building, which also once served the Pollack-Blum furniture store just across Howard Street from the old Hutzler’s department store.

Around the corner at Park Avenue and Mulberry Street another development is rising at the old Martick restaurant and bar location. That miniature tavern and eating establishment is being preserved while a larger apartment building wraps around it. There’s also a preservation effort for structures along Park Avenue, where there was a small stretch of former Asian restaurants, including the old China Doll.

Work progressed throughout 2023 on getting the venerable Faidley’s seafood operation out of the old Lexington Market building along Paca Street. Faidley’s will occupy the capstone section of what is known as the new Lexington Market. Look for the move to be completed in a few weeks.

Neighborhood rebuilding efforts continued in Johnston Square off Greenmount Avenue and in Park Heights.

A new high-speed platform and the beginnings of a new wing arrived at Pennsylvania Station, which is well into its ongoing exterior restoration. Amtrak officials said this project is going to be a long one and perhaps take three to five years.

If Perkins Homes represents a large work in progress, the Baltimore Peninsula in South Baltimore (once called Port Covington) is its counterpart.

Situated along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco, this sizable stretch of commercial and apartment buildings fills what was once the port freight facility of the old Western Maryland Railway.

There are totally new streets that have been laid out and partially filled with a new community. Baltimore now has a Mission Boulevard as well as Tidewater, Rye and Distillery streets.

The new buildings filling the Baltimore Peninsula have a retro vibe and look as if they could easily accommodate a Restoration Hardware store. The buildings look to the past for their architecture style and perhaps mimic some of the blocks in downtown Baltimore constructed after the 1904 fire. Stay tuned for more at the Baltimore Peninsula.