This report, prepared as part of a joint studio between graduate students in the Master of Community Planning and the Master of Historic Preservation programs at the University of Maryland, College Park for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), the Maryland Historical Trust (MHT), and the City of Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP), seeks to answer the following questions:
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What is an alley house?
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How many alley houses exist in the City of Baltimore, and where are they located?
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What is the best method for determining the fate of these buildings?
The impetus for this report was the implementation of Project C.O.R.E. (Creating Opportunities for Renewal and Enterprise), a Maryland state initiative begun in 2016 which, in part, seeks to demolish abandoned, derelict, and dilapidated buildings in Baltimore.
This report constitutes Phase 1 of a two- phase study of Baltimore’s alley houses, which, in part, defines the essential qualities of an alley house. We find that Baltimore’s alley houses have historically provided affordable housing for the city’s working class. Alleys in other areas of the country and the world also serve as commercially and residentially viable spaces, outlined as case studies in this report.
Using ArcGIS software, we located 3,918 alley houses in Baltimore. To determine which alley houses or groups of alley houses should be rehabilitated, demolished, or stabilized as part of Project C.O.R.E., we recommend that a three-part scoring system be implemented during Phase 2 of this study: a building condition survey, an objective significance score reflecting historical and architectural value, and a neighborhood resident survey. We further recommend averaging the building condition survey and objective significance scores and creating a database of all alley house groups so groups can be examined individually and comparatively, using scores derived from the resident survey to confirm or deny the results of the building condition and objective significance scores. We recommend using the Survey123 for ArcGIS application to record field work data. To gain community input on this process, we recommend that a charrette be conducted over the course of five to seven days.
