Brooklyn is a neighborhood on the southernmost part of the city, bordered on the south by Anne Arundel County. Back in the day, if you moved to Brooklyn, you were moving to the suburbs. That is what my grandparents did when my mother was a little girl. They moved to a rowhome on 8th Street. That house still holds many dear childhood memories. It would be easy for me to fill a very large space in my blog about my personal memories, but that would not reflect this neighborhood accurately.
Brooklyn is bordered on the north by the Patapsco River, on the east by West Bay Avenue, on the south by Church Street and on the west by Potee Street and Anne Arundel County. There are two parks in this neighborhood, Farring Bay Brook Park and Garrett Park. From the latter you can get a good view of the downtown Baltimore skyline. There is a branch of the Enoch Pratt library and some other businesses along Patapsco Avenue. My grandmother, who never had a driver's license, would walk to the IGA all the time.
One of my favorite restaurants was in this neighborhood, the 4100 Club. This restaurant was a favorite hangout for Johnny Unitas and some of the other old Baltimore Colts. Johnny's hand print can still be seen on the sidewalk outside. The establishment recently changed hands though, and it just isn't the same. That is the way with the entire neighborhood. It's not the same. It was a nice little community with thriving businesses and a small town feel, it has changed hands.
The average sale price for a home in this neighborhood in 2007 was $106,695.
2 comments:
I so love what you do here. As long as I have lived here in Baltimore I've never really spent any time in Brooklyn.
I have recently gotten the opportunity to be a part of Brooklyn's Main Street team.
There are some exciting things happening in Brooklyn that will give the community a chance to get involved and have a large voice in the future of Brooklyn. The key is to get involved before the developments come and establish a strong voice throughout the community that can dictate the direction that developers take.
Most recently Brooklyn was named a Main Street within Baltimore Main Streets, this is a huge step in properly restoring the business district without losing its historic charm. Fueling community involvement by organizing events and promoting the local businesses is what the National Trust for historic preservation preaches to its Main Street members. This is a step that will definitely give the citizens of Brooklyn a clear voice in the future plans that the city might have for Brooklyn.
The newest development in Brooklyn is a block of GREEN town homes on 6th st. These homes are really affordable because of the cities involvement which gives the home buyer a forgivable grant to purchase the properties. These homes were made by developers and construction firms focused on building energy efficient homes from environmentally friendly materials. It is a testament to the community organizations that pushed for this new development and pushed to make them affordable to the average person.
Also a new environmental restoration project is under way and a living classrooms satellite will be open in spring of 09. Masonville Cove takes up 74 acres of land along Brooklyn's waterfront on Frankfurst just a stones throw from Hanover. It will be a big part of any waterfront development in Brooklyn, and part of any plan that might come along.
Brooklyn has the opportunity to give its residents jobs and a sense of purpose by serving the thousands and thousands of people that travel by it every day.
I am lucky to be a part of Brooklyn's future and hope that more people get involved and speak up about what Brooklyn can do to become a vital part of Baltimore.
Thank you for the Brooklyn love.
Tom
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