Just a few years in the past an engineer and architect argued that the previous Martick’s restaurant can be too pricey and troublesome to protect. That sentiment didn’t go properly with the corps of Martick’s followers who assembled that day at Baltimore’s Fee for Historic and Architectural Preservation.
This summer season a brand new condo constructing has risen across the efficiently preserved however as but unrestored bar and restaurant that was as soon as a bohemian hangout for artists and musicians and members of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. Martick’s was a secure area (sure nights of the week) within the days earlier than neighborhood requirements of acceptance and tolerance modified.
Martick’s was a spot the place Billie Vacation was as soon as a visitor. There’s additionally a report Leonard Bernstein turned up there as properly.
The outcry to save lots of the fondly remembered Mulberry Avenue constructing proved profitable. And whereas the positioning is underneath heavy development, there’s no mistaking this inconceivable preservation victory.
The condo home has risen on the positioning of a decrepit early parking storage. The developer can also be stabilizing a gaggle of nineteenth century properties alongside Park Avenue as a development crane works away redeveloping the nook of Park Avenue and Mulberry Avenue.
The positioning is west of the Central Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Nationwide Shrine of the Basilica of the Assumption.
The Park Avenue hall is part of downtown Baltimore that will get little recognition. A scarcity of excessive actual property values has unintentionally preserved the road’s mixture of structure and old school retailers and companies. The road’s anchor is the Nationwide Shrine of Saint Alphonsus Liguori Church, an 1845 Gothic Revival church with a steadfast and lively congregation.
Baltimore individuals have a sentimental and contagiously quirky attachment to the Park Avenue hall — not in contrast to the way in which we love Fells Level. It’s vintage and unpretentious. Anybody who’s lived in these components for an excellent whereas seemingly had a meal right here, purchased a flag on the retailer that after offered banners or shopped on the previous Julius Gutman’s.
The neighborhood flagship retailer was Abe Sherman’s information operation. Blessed with a gruff persona, Abe believed the shopper was all the time mistaken. Folks cherished his tough remedy.
The neighborhood loved a sure uneven status. Throughout the Twenties “the companies alongside Mulberry Avenue had been commonly raided for unlawful playing, working opium dens, and violating the Volstead Act,” stated a metropolis Preservation Fee report, referring to what was often known as Prohibition.
Greater than 100 years in the past, possibly earlier, it was dwelling to what we known as Chinatown. There’s nonetheless an Asian grocery retailer surviving and a few small eating places. The eatery sensation of the Seventies, Mee Jun Low, disappeared years in the past and its dwelling on West Mulberry Avenue is now an inexpensive dwelling condo home.
Because the Martick and the parking storage website will get rebuilt, so do different properties. The complete block between Clay and Saratoga streets is underneath heavy preservation refurbishment. Some time in the past a constructing inside the advanced was fitted out and used as a location for the brand new Apple TV+ collection, “Woman within the Lake,” starring Natalie Portman.
And close by, at Lexington and Liberty streets, the previous American Nationwide Constructing and Mortgage (earlier nonetheless, the Park Financial institution) is being fitted after years of emptiness.
There’s a Baltimore curiosity right here. You may stroll only a block away and end up squarely in a heavily-invested, superb wanting place. Simply east of this space, alongside Cathedral and Liberty streets, is such a location. The Washington Monument is a brief stroll away as properly.
This doesn’t imply the Park Avenue hall is a glammed-up boutique neighborhood. It isn’t and there are nonetheless dozens of locations that want reinvestment and TLC. However the coronary heart and soul of this a part of the town look like within the midst of an excellent factor.