Wordless Wednesday - A Visit to St. Mary's City, Maryland

A Fell’s Point Pier

I was in Fell’s Point the other week and noticed that this old pier is still there. It is cut off from land, but there is a fence around the general area and has been for some time. I don’t know what is up with it but every time I go there I expect it to be gone. There used to be 2 piers in this spot. One, I believe maybe this one, belonged to something maritime related, like the Navy or Coast guard. It wasn’t used much and it was fenced off from the public. The other one, which was next to it, was just rotting.

I'm a bit nostalgic about these piers. Back in the early ‘90s a friend and I used to take a lot of walks around here and explore the area. There were still a lot of those warehouses too and they had not been torn down or renovated. Since my friend was a guy I felt comfortable going around these areas and he even convinced me to walk out on some of these old piers. We also used to poke around the one in front of the old coffee warehouse, which is not part of the Frederick Douglas-Isaac Meyers Maritime Park.

It was fun but scary to go out on them as they were unstable but it was like being on a part of history. In those days we mostly saw local fishermen out on those docks and they were usually friendly. Towards the end, before the spot was sold and developed, I began to avoid the area as it became a gathering place for homeless people. The new pier by the coffee warehouse is pretty and functional but I wish I had photographed the spot in the old days.

An Old White Coffee Pot

I just like this decaying White Coffee pot restaurant and I believe it is on the corner of Howard and Franklin. I’ve been watching it fall apart over the years because I sometimes pass it while going back and forth to the library. I have some dim memory of it being open, and then a phase where I wasn’t sure if it was open or closed. I also believe that in college a friend went to look at renting one of the places above the restaurant and was frightened away by the general decay of the area.

New Gaps in the Cityscape

This was going to be a Wordless Wednesday but it didn’t quite make it. If I find a building being torn down I always stop to photograph it, even if I don’t quite remember what was there before.

The one above was on Eastern Avenue and Broadway but it fell down a couple of months ago. I happened by on the day when they were tearing down the remains. I’m sure it was an auto parts store as the person with me was reminiscing about how he used to buy car parts there. I don’t know the age of the building but it was one of the typical three story brick buildings you see all around Fell’s Point.

I photographed the remains above last summer, so it isn’t recent but I always like three pictures for Wordless Wednesday. It is on North Avenue and Charles. (I think?) This was some old Victorian thing and I believe a carryout at some point? This one really puzzled me as I’ve walked by it a thousand times and had no idea what was once there, except it was in bad shape and boarded up towards the end.


I was wandering down Park Avenue a couple of weeks ago (as you can see in last week’s Wordless Wednesday) and noticed that they were knocking down parts of Lexington Mall. That spurred me on to a photo expedition in the area as now I bet they’ll be knocking down everything around there. Again, I don’t remember what was here but I am not often on this street anymore. Actually, almost nobody is and during the past few years it’s been a bit of a ghost town. People only seem to use it as a shortcut to the light rail.

Stormy Sky

I actually took this photograph in January but it seems to fit the stormy summer mood of today. This should be on Cathedral Street somewhere, not far from the library.

I'm thinking of just turning this into a photo blog because I have so many other writing projects that I don't have time for more research. I'll research when I can, but I just love taking photos of things in Baltimore City. In the back of my mind I have a coal chute article planned but not researched yet. I'm suddenly seeing so many coal chutes around here. You never know whan something odd like that will preoccupy you.

Wordless Wednesday - Remains of Civilization near Park Avenue

Graveyard Lilies

A few weeks ago I was in Richmond, Virginia and visited the Hollywood Cemetery. While Baltimore certainly has its share of unusual cemeteries, I found this one to be rather intriguing, particularly the different kind of symbolism on the graves. If you want to study Victorian gravestone art, Hollywood Cemetery is the place to go.

Gravestones, like the ones in Hollywood Cemetery, originated as a way to keep the dead from rising from the grave. They were slabs or boulders placed over the ground where the body was buried. Soon, markers included names. Early images on gravestones were less than peaceful, though. Drawings of skeletons or other images of death served to remind the living of where they could end up if they did not live virtuously.

It was during the 1800s that the tone of images on gravestones began to change. At this time “garden cemeteries” replaced overcrowded churchyards and mourning became a much more elaborate practice, from clothing to length of time to gravestones. As many families lost loved ones during the Civil War it seemed that no family was untouched by an untimely death. It is no secret that the Victorians were overtly interested in death and the elaborate graves of the time reflect that. Lilies, like those on the gravestone above, symbolize purity, chastity, and were usually used on the graves of young women or babies. It was also used more generally to symbolize innocence in the face of God.


Resources

The Mystery of Graveyard Art and Symbols by Troy Taylor
Gravestone Symbolism
Cemetery Iconography