Tag: charles village

Cinnamon Cake, Zelma T. Cole (a personal essay)

Fairly early in the pandemic, I moved to a new house.

I felt conflicted, leaving the 1880s rowhouse on Howard Street that I’d bought in 2009. But it had some issues that were becoming bothersome. The dining room was cramped and dark, and the kitchen small and awkward, making the increasing Old Line Plate-related press requests to film or photograph me there unfeasible. We’d filmed the 2019 Baltimore Sun bit in my cousin’s Medfield kitchen. Plus… I really wanted a porch.

When we went to view the house that would become our new home, we were nervous if it was even ethical to do so, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Masked and gloved, we toured a spacious place not far from our own and we made an offer.

Real-estate boringness ensued. Suspenseful for us, dull to read about. Through luck, privilege, a little of my own savvy and diligence (if I do say so myself), and the help of our excellent real estate agent, we somehow ended up moving in May of 2020. We carried half our things on foot.

I soon learned that the model we bought was called a “Daylight Rowhouse.” Built to be wider rather than deeper, there was a window in each room. Many of these houses didn’t even require skylights. Builders began advertising this style to Baltimore’s upwardly mobile around 1915. “Why buy an old house with small dark and ill-ventilated rooms, when a house 20 feet wide, 7 rooms and bath… can be had for the same money?,” read one ad in the Sun. Hey! That’s how I felt, over a century later! Suffice it to say, we love it here.

from The Baltimore Rowhouse by Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure
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“Fudge-It,” Mary Pat Clarke

Writing about contemporary politicians invites commentary on grievances, which makes me hesitate to make these kinds of recipes. As a resident of Baltimore, it is hard to imagine how history will look from the future. I imagine some more objective version of myself reading over these accomplishments and failures, but honestly, even Baltimore politics of the 70s and 80s leave me a little bewildered.

Still, if constituent services is any measure of a councilperson’s effectiveness then there is little debating that Mary Pat Clarke had a long and successful career. A Baltimore Sun article about her December 2020 retirement belabored that point. A summary of her political career was bracketed with statements about how she would be remembered most for “fixing prosaic problems for residents.” Filling potholes and restoring streetlights is pretty uncontroversial.

Clarke was born Providence, Rhode Island in 1941. After earning degrees from Immaculata College and the University of Pennsylvania, she ended up in Baltimore with her family in the late 60s. According to a Sun article from when she was elected President of the Greater Homewood Community Corporation in 1971, Clarke then lived with her four children in the Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood.

After her election to Greater Homewood Community Corporation, Clarke was a regular fixture in the Baltimore Sun’s local news pages. GHCC operated a children’s summer day camp, organized Youth Corp cleanups of Wyman Park, and organized programming for Greater Homewood’s senior citizens.

Clarke’s husband J. Joseph Clarke had been a delegate who lost his seat to Joseph R. Raymond. In 1975, Mary Pat beat out Raymond for the New Democratic Club endorsement for city council. The Sun covered the endorsement as a bit of revenge. J. Joseph Clarke went on to be a developer in Baltimore. His company is responsible for many projects, including the demolition of the historic Southern Hotel.

After winning the council race, Mary Pat’s career in Baltimore City Politics lasted 45 more years. Those years included a mayoral run, work on various committees, two stints as Council President (and an earlier failed campaign for that office), a clash with the Harborplace Hooters, and various bills and stances, some worthy and some ill-advised. Which are which is up to your own discretion.

The Evening Sun, 1973. Caption: “MRS. CLARKE—With John, Susan, Erin and Jenny”
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King Crab Au Gratin, Ruth S. Wood

I’ve come across a fair share of librarians in my cookbooks. Librarians might be next behind home economists as far as professions of recipe-contributors goes.

Unfortunately, I could find scarce information about Ruth Wood, who contributed this “good luncheon dish” to “Once Upon A Thyme in Charles Village” in 1972. Her name is too common to easily search, but the recipe caption associates her with the Waverly Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Ruth Wood was born Ruth Staebner in Tennessee in 1920. She grew up in Falls Church, Virginia.
She attended the College of William and Mary before coming to Baltimore to work at the library.
A book-mobile librarian in the 1960s, Wood was promoted to head up the Waverly Branch in 1971, when the library opened at its current location on 33rd street, replacing the “Homestead Branch” on 1442 Gorsuch Avenue.

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Mapping the 1911 Baltimore Sun Recipe Contest & “Crabs And Bacon,” Miss H. A. Blogg

There has probably been no greater force for the dissemination of recipes developed by home cooks than recipe contests.

State and county fairs in the 19th century hosted many cooking contests as a part of their “ladies” programming. These fairs were an opportunity for women gather and to show off their “domestic arts”, from needlework to baking and cooking. In my research about White Potato Pie, I came across a “white potato custard pie” category at the 1880 Cecil County Agricultural Society exhibition. The level of specificity suggests a large amount of prizes to be awarded. The other pie categories that year were Green Peach, Dried Peach, Green Apple, Dried Apple, Grape, Cherry, Gooseberry, Currant, Pumpkin, Cocoanut, Lemon, and Apple – and that is just for pies. There were contests for preserves, cakes, breads, cheeses, and more. The dollar prize adjusts to about twenty dollars in “today money.” Considering the amount of effort to just travel to these events, it was clear that the glory of winning was an incentive as well.

It wasn’t long before companies selling ingredients and kitchen appliances figured out that they could use contests as a way to get publicity – and to crowdsource recipes to promote their products. Companies like Heinz, Borden, and Kraft have held recipe contests over the decades. Sometimes, the winning recipes ended up published in promotional cookbooks and advertisements. Newspapers used recipe contests as a way to engage women readers. Home economists and cooking teachers were often employed as judges.

In November 1910, hundreds of women showed up to the Bernheimer Brothers store in downtown Baltimore to enter their bread loaves, biscuits, pies, doughnuts, and cakes to be judged by “representatives of local newspapers.” The Baltimore Sun described some of the cakes as “ornamental in the extreme” and touted the “skill shown by Baltimore women” but did not print the names of any of the winners or the names of the winning items.

Perhaps the Sun was inspired by the success of this contest to hold their own contest in early 1911.

  • Advertisement for the recipe contest in the San Francisco Examiner, 1901
Continue reading “Mapping the 1911 Baltimore Sun Recipe Contest & “Crabs And Bacon,” Miss H. A. Blogg”

Chicken Leek Cobbler, Gil French

“There used to be a stone yard at 26th and Charles and in it was a large tool box about 6′ by 4′ by 4′. This the older boys called THE HOT BOX, and they took delight in locking the younger boys in there for a couple of hours, and believe me by that time they were scared to death.” – Marion deKalb Clark in “Charles Village: An Edwardian Memoir,” 1969

For a little over a decade, I’ve lived around the borders of Baltimore’s Charles Village neighborhood. Although I was sad when I had to leave Mt. Vernon, I do enjoy access to lots of different grocery stores, parks and bus lines. I also have come to enjoy the sense of history that permeates the neighborhood spirit.

When “A Brief History of Charles Village” by Gregory J. Alexander and Paul K. Williams came out in 2009, the book was sold all over the neighborhood. The book told the story of the colonial Merryman’s Lott and Huntington land grants, and the neighborhood’s past as a retreat for wealthy Baltimoreans to move to in the summer. The origins of what we now know as Charles Village lie in the 1870s when the Peabody Heights Company acquired the land which was gradually built into the relatively-dense neighborhood.

A lot of the photos and information found in Alexander and William’s book also appeared in Baltimore Sun Columnist Jacques Kelly’s 1976 book “Peabody Heights to Charles Village.” Although that book is slimmer, it contains thorough research including building dates and builder names of almost every house in the neighborhood.

  • 2600 block of Maryland Avenue shown in “Peabody Heights to Charles Village” by Jacques Kelly. Photos originated from the Peale Museum
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