The East Coast Literary Club Baltimore Tour

I don’t know what most people think of Baltimore, but before we moved here, my main association was with the T.V. show Homicide: Life on the Street, which ran from 1993-1999. In the good old days when we had kids who went to bed before us, watching Homicide was something Eric and I looked forward to. Now there’s this other show filmed in Baltimore called  The Wire. Apparently, the two programs are based on the same book. These shows may be part of the reason Baltimore has kind of a seedy reputation. The other part, of course, may be that Baltimore is (according to some sources, anyway) the 8th most dangerous city in the U.S. (that’s down from a few years ago). The shows are, I guess, not all fiction.

As good Baltimorians will attest, however, there’s a lot more to the city than crime. Baltimore actually has a pretty significant literary history. Since most members of my family cannot think of anything more boring than searching around to see where famous authors once sat (or slept, or walked, or died), I had to wait for some friends to visit before taking the Baltimore Literary Tour. Fittingly, my friends are part of a venerable Ohio book club, so we (I -- it was unilateral) decided to make this the East Coast branch.

The Literary tour began with a visit to La Paix in Towson, which is where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived for a bit in the 1930s while his wife, Zelda, was being treated at Sheppard Pratt psychiatric hospital. The actual house burned down while Fitzgerald was living there, but there is still a street called La Paix, so we felt very close to F. Scott while walking on it. The other advantage of La Paix is that it is only about a mile from our house. The evening continued with a visit from two mice, whom the warm weather had apparently awaked from hibernation (do mice hibernate?). The mice scampered unrepentantly around the living room while Eric chased them with a broom (He broke the broom, but the mice escaped). I imagined a giant mouse nest in the walls, and experienced deep thankfulness that neither of my guests was suriphobic. To tie them in with the literary theme of this post, we will call them Edgar and Allen.

The next day was drizzly, but, undaunted, we set off for Fitzgerald site #2, in Bolton Hill, a charming, 19th-century neighborhood north of the Inner Harbor. We saw Fitzgerald’s house (where he wrote Tender Is the Night while poor Zelda was at Johns Hopkins), and we learned that he was only one of several luminaries who made Bolton Hill home. Others include former president Woodrow Wilson, Alice Hamilton (Harvard’s first female professor), and author Edith Hamilton. I understand why they would all want to live in the neat row houses on the quiet, tree-lined streets.

F. Scott Fitzgerald slept here.

After that, we parked at the train station. We planned to take Baltimore’s free bus, the Charm City Circulator, which has three routes in the city’s most popular tourist areas. It turns out weekend parking at Penn Station is only $2 a day -- I highly recommend this option. The only slight drawback was that the drizzle was developing into a steady drip, complete with wind. If you know me, though, you know I would rather walk miles in the rain than navigate city traffic and parking. And if my fellow travelers didn’t feel the same way? I could always apologize later. The Purple Line took us to Mount Vernon (Baltimore version), where we found the Washington Monument (Baltimore version). The latter, like the “real” monument in D.C., was encased in scaffolding, so we couldn’t climb its 200-plus steps for a panoramic view of Baltimore. With the grey skies, it was unlikely the panoramic view would be very impressive, anyway. We saw the location where Star-Spangled Banner lyricist Francis Scott Key died. A church now stands on the site, which used to hold the house of Key’s son-in-law. 

Francis Scott Key died here.

     In Mount Vernon, we also saw the Stafford Hotel, another placed where Fitzgerald stayed (apparently, he had itchy feet). We saw H.L. Menken’s house and ate Greek food at a local cafe. The highlight of this part of this stop, though, was the Peabody Library. I had read that it was “the most beautiful room in Baltimore,” but that it was closed on Saturdays. Providentially, the library was open. I haven’t seen every room in Baltimore, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the most beautiful room in the world. Apparently anyone can use it, and not very many people do. I’m going to take my kids there on a field trip so that they can see what a real card catalog looks like. 

It is difficult for a cell-phone camera to capture the beauty of the Peabody Library.

Even the card catalogs are works of art.

We walked then to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Clearly we, along with anyone else who wants to accomplish anything besides saying church names, are going to call it the Baltimore Basilica. The basilica isn’t literary, but is historical. (I figured we could expand the tour). The church was designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the same man who designed the U.S. Capitol building. The relationship is obvious. The Basilica has columns and domes, and a white, light interior, just like the Capitol. It was the first cathedral in America, and while it may be disappointing to fans of the gothic, it is, fittingly, very American-looking.

The rain intensified. The wind picked up. We walked past Lexington Market (of Wire fame), trying not to see any drug dealers. The weather was perfect for Westminster Burying Ground -- final resting place of that restless soul, Edgar Allen Poe. 

Poe's gravesite, and the whole Westminster Hall and Burying Grounds, are appropriately creepy.

     We didn’t linger long at Poe's grave, though. Wet feet and the time -- around 2:30 -- made it imperative that we find a coffee shop. So we boarded the Orange Line and headed for Fells Point. On the way to The Daily Grind (a large coffee shop which seems to double as an office for several young entrepreneurs), we passed the building where Homicide was filmed (okay, now it is a literary, historical, and pop culture tour). We also caught a glimpse of The Horse You Came in On -- the bar where Poe was last seen alive. 

The coffee gave us enough energy to make it to the Purple Line and back to Penn Station, where we picked up the car. We had wanted to see the gravesite of J. Gresham Machen, who was buried in Green Mount Cemetery, close to the train station. The unabating rain and the passing time made us decide to end the tour at this point. I realized later that we had also neglected the birthplace of Upton Sinclair on North Charles. The house is no longer there, but we could have driven past. I guess that will be on the next tour. Am I the only one nerdy enough to think it might be exciting to drive past the place where the childhood home of a famous author once stood? 
        As a footnote, Edgar and Allen, like their namesake, met their demise party as a result of their appetites. The peanut butter in our traps proved too alluring for the poor little guys. Poe the mouse either doesn't exist, or he has a peanut allergy.