Among these is the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1916, and the imposing Enoch Pratt Free Library, which dates back to 1886. Steamed shrimp with oysters at Mount Vernon MarketplaceĪnd while many of the area’s more prosperous residents fled for leafier neighborhoods in the early 20th century, their arts patronage left behind some of the city’s best cultural institutions. Scott Fitzgerald, who reputedly racked up a hefty bar tab. The old Stafford Hotel-now an unusually elegant block for student housing-once hosted F. Nearby, the beaux arts Belvedere Hotel, which hosted royalty and presidents in the early 1900s, now contains condos.
Next to Dooby’s is a tree-draped brownstone-the kind you might find in New York or Boston-that houses basement cocktail bar Sugarvale. Flanking Mount Vernon’s tranquil park squares are stately row houses built in a variety of styles: Second Empire, Italianate, Greek Revival. The architecture, too, is remarkably diverse. And the neighborhood’s longstanding ethnic diversity has spawned cuisines that span Afghani, Spanish, Indian and Nepali. Esquire declared the nearby Brewer’s Art the best bar in the country a decade ago. Then there are places like The Helmand, a quarter-century-old restaurant owned by the brother of a former Afghan president, which still ranks as one of Zagat’s top 10 Baltimore restaurants. For decades, Mount Vernon has been home to a thriving LGBT community, and has long boasted some of the best gay bars in town-along with a starring role in the annual Baltimore Pride celebrations. This is not to suggest that the turnaround has happened overnight. Next door is Ceremony Coffee Roasters, whose bright interior calls to mind an Apple store-albeit one that sells avocado toast and nitro cold brew. You’ll see this impulse in places like the hip Mount Vernon Marketplace food court, which opened in 2015 in a former warehouse, and whose menu ranges from Chesapeake oysters to gourmet Mexican and Greek. Steeped in history as it is, the Mount Vernon of today seems very much focused on what lies ahead.
“It’s a special place steeped in tradition and one of the finest things Baltimore has ever built. “People here really see the monument as the symbol of their city,” Humphries says. The area possesses a European splendor that seems at odds with the urban squalor depicted in HBO’s gritty crime drama The Wire-the tall central column in particular honors an ideal as well as a historical figure. Humphries runs a nonprofit called the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy, which works to preserve the 200-year-old monument and the surrounding park squares. Two blocks west is the Maryland Historical Society, a library and museum that houses the original handwritten lyrics of Francis Scott Key’s “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The monument dominates a cobblestone square, surrounded by radiating gardens and beautiful buildings, including a Norman-Gothic Methodist church, the breathtaking Peabody Library, and the Renaissance-inspired Walters Art Museum, whose collection ranges from the ancient world to the contemporary. Today, the area is at the forefront of a broader revival in the city-indeed, as if signaling this fact, this spring saw the opening of the Hotel Revival, a colorful boutique property in the heart of the neighborhood.įrom Dooby’s doorway, you can see one of the neighborhood’s more traditional attractions: the Washington Monument, a 178-foot column topped with a statue of the headlining founding father, providing a fitting contrast to the kids inside Dooby’s. Outside the youthful eatery, the neighborhood, which is a National Historic Landmark district, is rife with monuments, along with the elegant Victorian row houses that once accommodated the city’s elite. “It’s great to see the space animated with people.” “This wouldn’t have been the case 15 years ago,” says conservationist Lance Humphries, a Michigan native who moved to Baltimore in 1995 and Mount Vernon in 2001. Music from indie darlings Arcade Fire blends with the tippy-tap of laptops, as the young people around me work on their screenplays and business plans. I walk into Dooby’s, a Korean-inspired coffee shop-restaurant that opened in 2013 in a burned-out townhouse, which has become well known for its pork-belly banh mi.
It’s mid-afternoon on a Monday, normally a slow time for restaurants, but here in Mount Vernon, just north of Baltimore’s famous harbor, business is hopping. Baltimore’s historic district promises the city a brighter future American Way | American Airlines WRITTEN BY: Julekha Dash | PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Scott Suchman | JUNE 2018