The Charles Village Plot

The 10th Annual Grace Darin Memorial Lecture was Thursday at Village Learning Place. It was also one of the 4th Annual series of Baltimore History Evenings that Baltimore City Historical Society has run at VLP on the third Thursdays of the month from January through June. Jacques Kelly spoke on the topic “1967: Birth of a Neighborhood” which was all about how Peabody Heights re-invented itself as Charles Village and the heroine of that plot, Grace Darin, the small town Minnesota born, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism educated, first female copy writer at The Baltimore Sun employed, resident of 26th Street who is credited with coining the name Charles Village, as well as celebrating and promoting it, especially through the mimeographed newsletter she wrote at her kitchen table on an old typewriter, hand-addressed and delivered herself to friends and neighbors, that today is The Charles Villager newsletter.

Jacques set the stage for the plot in 1967 painting a picture of down-on-the-heel old homes with outdated electric, peeling paint and heirless elderly widows whose properties often ended up on the auction block; white flight to the suburbs by younger residents often with school-aged children; red-lining by banks and FHA refusal to approve many mortgages in the city and antagonism with the largest property owner, the powerful institution, Johns Hopkins University, which was credited with evicting many senior citizens from apartment buildings it set its sight on taking over while their fraternity houses sported loud unruly parties.

Grace Darin stepped up to repaint the image of the area. In the process she helped bring about its revival and a new abiding sense of community.  She did this at that kitchen table by turning The Charles Villager into a small town newspaper filled with the escapades of the characters that lived there, espousing the charm of an older simpler way of life while attracting urban homesteaders ready to fix up houses that they got for great bargains despite the lack of support from commercial and financial institutions that  would have rather steered them beyond the beltway. 

The strengths of the village included its numerous bohemian artists, good restaurants, nearby grocery stores, movie theaters, access to cultural institutions and convenience to getting downtown. Jacques described walking to MICA  in the early sixties, comparing all the abandoned boarded up houses to Berlin at the end of World War II. At the same time a mini-renaissance was happening in Mount Vernon and downtown.

Of the mimeographed messages spread by Grace, he said they were like getting “anonymous valentines” and that “if anyone took paint to picket fence, Grace wrote about it as if it were the Taj Mahal. “ In his 2002 obituary of her, Jacques quoted Grace as saying, “Charles Village began as a plot, hatched on a sunny Sunday morning January 1967 when a few neighbors met by chance at the intersection of Lovegrove Alley and Petunia Lane, near 26th and Charles...there was a general feeling that some promotional effort was necessary to turn the community around, to combat lethargy and defeatism, to build a positive image.” 

Jacques in the same article mentioned that Grace had been corresponding with Jane Jacobs, author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” In the question and answer part of the lecture, Antero Pietila, author of “Not in my Neighborhood,” noted “ for a neighborhood to survive it needed two things: access to capital and constant rejuvenation.” Grace’s supply and stimulation of the second thing was followed by the first, as real estate agents began to list the charms of city life in Charles Village and banks and mortgage companies, particularly after the unrest of 1968, began making it less difficult to get credit and loans. 

Building upon her vision, Charles Villagers began the house tours and garden walks and the festivals that some folks probably take for granted today, though they are only possible because of the behind-the-scenes hard work of scores of volunteers inside and outside the Charles Village Community Association.

What a wonderful occasion it was on Thursday evening with city dwellers spending a few hours together in intimate intelligent conversation with a good speaker bringing local history thoughtfully to life!