Welcome to BaltoBlog!

Vintage photos; close-ups of rowhouse architecture; snapshots of life on the street; maps old and new; historic prints and paintings: This blog contains links to online Baltimore photo sources plus photos I've recently received from friends. Please email me with additional cool sources!

March 14, 2003: Local Writer Sucks Oysters
Rafael Alvarez sent me a couple of Baltimore photos of, well, Mr. Baltimore, himself. Ralphie wrote for the Sun for 20 years and now is a staff writer for The Wire. But really he's an artist, author of a few dozen exquisite short stories. You can read one story on his website. And here's a column he writes for Maryland.com.

March 15 Oops! Evidently the real Mr. Baltimore was offended by the above entry. Writes Ralphie, "Somebody at the Pratt showed him how to call up your BLOG. He says if you don't stop saying that him and that rafael alvarez @#$% are the same person, he's gonna get steven l. miles on your [case]."

March 13, 2003: Baltimore Bloggers



Today's Sun had an article on Baltimore blogs, so I checked some of them out. By far my favorite is one entitled curiousLee, by Mike Lee. Scroll down to see spectacular photos of Baltimore.

March 10, 2003: Snow and Babies

Remember how many babies were born after the New York City blackout? Well, remember the snow last month?

(Baby Otto makes me wish we'd named our children palindromic names!)

March 7, 2003: Local Photographer Pulls Clients
Classmate Tom Gregory, who teaches art at CCBC, sent the following link to a series of Baltimore posters he created between 1982 and 1991. Check them out!

March 6, 2003. Waverly Safeway Dedication After years without a grocery store followed by months of neighborhood wrangling over a proposed new store, today Waverly residents celebrated (and protested--it's Waverly, after all) the groundbreaking for a new Giant to be built at Old York and Gorsuch. Myles Honeig, president of the Waverly Improvement Association, sent these two photos of the event. WIA is developing a new website, which will live here.

March 1, 2003. Arabbers

Scott Kecken, a film maker and teacher at Villa Julie College, is finishing a video on Baltimore's A-rabbers. He sent along this photo, made at the funeral of Ed Chapman. Here's some information about the work.

February 24, 2003: Home Sweet Home
Tom LaCosta's great Baltimore website has some charming photos here and there. If you click here, you can send your mother a free postcard of an early streetcar conductorette! She'll love it. Or think you're a wacko like your dad.

There's also a lovely Joseph Harrigan photo of the Jones Falls, not far from where I live. If you look carefully, you'll see that the syringes look like tiny, perfectly-formed ANGLE BRACKETS.

February 23, 2003: Maps

If you want a map showing the number of aggravated assaults occurring in front of your son's house during the first two weeks of Feburary, the City's crime stats site is the place to look (the answer is "one"; the son claims innocence). Just key in the neighborhood of interest, and presto! a map.

Historic USGS Maps is the place to go see what the city looked like between 1890 and 1904. Check out the larger version of the map on the left to see how few streets north of UB existed in 1890. Notice that the intersections of diagonal streets look like tiny, perfectly-formed ANGLE BRACKETS