Architecture student Christophe Tanis discovered a bold way to gauge a neighborhood’s walkability while strolling down a city street in West Baltimore: He estimated the number of inches between him and a speeding bus.
“There’s no safety buffer between the sidewalk and the road, and people are driving so fast,” he said. “It's not a good place for people to walk, period.”
Tanis’ touch with transit on a three-mile stretch of Liberty Heights Avenue this fall was an adrenaline-fueled reminder of its shift from a bucolic main street for shopping, entertainment and services to a busy and mostly barren commuter corridor. Now, he and classmates in a University of Maryland urban design studio are looking to the avenue’s history to devise a master plan that restores its former character and supports the future of its surrounding neighborhoods. The students will present it on Friday to Healthy Neighborhoods, a local organization that connects undervalued neighborhoods with public and private capital, to inform investment goals for the area.
“We’ve asked the students to envision a neighborhood that they would want to live in,” said architecture Assistant Professor Georganne Matthews, who is co-teaching the graduate course with architecture Professor Matthew Bell. “We also ask students to consider cultural context: who lives in the neighborhood now, what stories and histories define this place, and what will it make attractive for generations of residents to come.”
Liberty Heights Avenue is an east-west artery that for over a century has provided a direct line into the city from Baltimore County, traversing several historically Jewish and Black communities. Once known as “the suburb in the city,” the area, dotted with longtime bakeries, restaurants and grocery stores, was the setting for several films by acclaimed director Barry Levinson, including “Diner.”
Over many decades, disinvestment, race riots and suburban expansion shuttered many of the avenue’s storefronts. But the corridor is bookended by two large parks, has good subway access and is adorned with many well-kept early-20th century homes. Among the abandoned facades are architectural marvels including Baltimore’s regal First Baptist Church, the oldest Black Baptist church in the state, and the Ambassador Theatre, an Art Deco-style movie house built in 1933.
“The avenue itself is the missing piece,” said Bell. “It isn’t able to serve the neighborhoods just blocks away.”
The student plans envision new connections to surrounding neighborhoods and efforts, like trees planted along the street and traffic buffers, that would enhance walkability. Repurposing several larger homes into multifamily units could provide much-needed housing for younger families or allow aging residents to stay in place.
“When the retirement generation ages out, which is roughly 40% of the area’s population, the neighborhood will turn,” said Cheron Jones from Healthy Neighborhoods, who consulted on the studio project. “We have these huge box homes with no commercial or amenities. There is no incentive for a young family to move into the area.”
In addition to consulting with Healthy Neighborhoods, Matthews and Bell brought in regional architects familiar with the area and experts in sustainability and engineering. A trip to New York City offered inspiration for repurposing historic buildings and of mixing building size and use at the street level.
“For many of us, it’s the first time we’re envisioning a whole street rather than designing on just one site,” said graduate student Sarah Jane Gravin. “It’s a whole new way of thinking architecturally.”
On a wall in the architecture building’s design studio, a 12-foot satellite view of the corridor is studded with multicolored Post-its flagging areas for street trees, housing, park space or retail, or where underused areas—like the site of two old water tanks—could be repurposed for development. Students also suggested improved flow and accessibility to Liberty Heights from surrounding neighborhoods. Many of their visions harken back to the avenue’s 20th-century glory days, with rehabbed front-facing buildings returning to retail, service and community amenities.
The final plans, which include colorful mockups of their renderings similar to vintage travel posters, convey a potentially charming future for Liberty Heights—and one that could cause a driver to slow down during their daily commute.
“We needed a vision of what could possibly be,” said Jones. “I see this as an opportunity for someone with all of the chutzpah of an up-and-coming architect and without the bureaucracy weighing them down to see things differently. The sky’s the limit.”