Pigtown

  Pigtown is a neighborhood in Southwest Baltimore: south of W. Pratt Street, west of the stadiums. S. Monroe Street is usually considered its western boundary. Washington Blvd, the main street in the neighborhood, bends sharply southwest, with smaller streets running off it . Some of the streets are narrow, short and at odd angles (Mangold Street, Sterrett Street).

  Baltimore's first railroad was the B & O (Baltimore and Ohio). Industries and homes for the workers grew around the railroad. The older houses reflect the social stratification: small, narrow 2-floor row homes for the men who actually did the work, larger, more decorative places for the white-collar guys and bosses. Heavy industries sprung up: a saw mill, an iron factory, brick kilns. The railroad shipped pigs into the neighborhood from the midwest. The pigs had their death run through the streets of pigtown and over Ostend Street and Cross Streets to South Baltimore (aka Federal Hill) where the butchers and abattoirs awaited them. “Heinz's Riverside Abattoir” was located in the l900 block Light Street. The neighborhood had a strong German presence.

  Currently, Pigtown is now severed from South Baltimore by the stadiums and interstates, but earlier the two neighborhoods were better connected. A quick ride over the Hamburg Street bridge or Ostend Street would get you from one neighborhood to the other. Some of South Baltimore's streets (Cross Street, West Street, Ostend) pick up again in Pigtown. The Cross Street Market would be where the pigs reappeared as pork chops.

  Reading over various web notes, one surmises a gritty little community that has pride in its roots, that wants to keep its identity. Earlier attempts to change its name to “Washington Village” were beaten down, even though this more gentrified name made its way to some of the street maps. The area is mixed in every way: racially, economically, and educationally

  Residents say that the community isn't for everybody, you've got to be able to tolerate a certain amount of crime, drugs and the nuisances that go with them. Every year the area holds a Pigtown festival, replete with live pigs. There is a move to shame out the slumlords by posting pictures of derelict houses and naming their absentee owners.  At 901 W. Pratt Street is the B & O Railroad museum. Mount Clare Mansion stands in Carroll Park, the Georgian style home built by Charles Carroll

Encore! Early 1970's!  Walk up West Pratt Street!

  Revisit part of West Baltimore in 1971, a scrappy little neighborhood which some people called Steuart Hill. Walk along the Pratt Street/Frederick Avenue corridor, Carrollton Street on the east, perhaps the West Baltimore Shopping Center on the west. The “action corner” was Pratt and Monroe. The New Horn movie theater has already closed. The neighborhood is clinging (but not very hard) to an island of "white" with African Americans ready to move in from any direction. This would not be a move of upward mobility for anyone!

  The Bowman Restaurant in the l700 block W. Pratt, with its long counter, is the place to meet tfor breakfast. Eight in the morning found it pretty lively, although not all the diners are headed for work. A fried egg sandwich on plain white bread is a bargain. The coffee can act as a roto router for sensitive guts. The customers are cutting up.

  There is a tall older woman, grey hair a bit disheveled, and always in the midst of the conversation. Her name is Mary Stewart. The name has a ring to it, sounds almost queenly.The name of the local Dept. of Social Services--is Steuart Hill, a former post office. In this building there are spy holes through a second story wall, where in its post office days the supervisors could spy on their workers. Parole officers share the building. A person applying for AFDC might hear a parole officer, Angelo, chewing out his parolees, until the day when the cops came in and hauled out Angelo.

  The main drag has all the stores you would expect; convenience stores, drugstores, bars, small retailers selling inexpensive merchandise. Monroe Street at Pratt features a really good seafood store. Pulaski at Pratt sells used furniture, some quasi-antiques worth buying. A large thrift store on Pulaski Street is ever popular. Frederick Avenue meets Pratt Street at Smallwood. On Frederick, Meushaw's offers lunch, good value for money.

  Thelma's sandwich shop is located right across from the Baltimore City Dept. of Social Services center on Smallwood and Pratt. Thelma is a known character. She has two female assistants to turn over those burgers and pack a hefty tuna sandwich. Again- good value for money. Many are sad the day Thelma drops over, can work no more. Even more of a neighborhood event is the sudden death of Mary from the Bowman Restaurant. There is no money to bury her. Neighbors beseech the Social Services center for money. "Mary's laying up the street on the second floor of the funeral home and there's not enough to bury her." Eventually the problem is solved.

This neighborhood (early 1970's) is tougher than Hampden. The job of the Social Service Center is always easier (in these days!) when a family gets on public assistance and stays there.

It is much harder calculating the benefits for a more "upscale" family who works a few months, loses a job, needs public funds a few more months, perhaps finds seasonal work, etc. The poorest of the poor do not expect much. A church donates a few food bags. The poorest are satisfied to come in and get a bag. The poorest of the men, homeless, are given a bus token and directions to Helping Up Mission on East Baltimore Street 

This particular social services center in W. Baltimore is the nearest to the large mental hospital in Catonsville, Spring Grove. Occasionally Spring Grove releases a patient with a bus token and a bottle of Haldol, telling the person to get off the number 8 bus at the first Social Service center- Smallwood and Pratt. Once in awhile a family drives up from West Virginia. Again,this is the first Social Service Center they hit. Now and then, the family is living in a car with a rocking chair tied on top. God bless them all! No entrepreneur ever had plans to gentrify this part of Baltimore.* (It had seen its heyday somewhat earlier, when such a personage as H. L. Mencken lived nearby at 1524 Hollins Street. A hint of its former status as a German enclave can be found in such names as Wilhelm Street, Wolfarth's Tavern.

*as of early 1970's