Sandtown, Columbia, Allview Estates

My Dad, Rae, Phyllis, Jacob, and Teddy, standing in front of 1723 Edmondson Avenue.

My Dad was pretty strict with me and did not allow me to socialize much. I was rarely allowed to go to the house of someone my parents had not met. That rule was for the GIRLS. Boys houses were strictly off-limits. Boys were allowed to visit my house, only if an adult was home, and they were only allowed downstairs, in the open floor plan part of the house. Dating was not an issue, period.

The very few parties I attended were hosted by girls, usually, and had some kind of purpose, such as a cast party after a school play. That summed up my social life in high school. During my Senior year, as a licensed driver, at least I had the privilege of driving myself to and from the parties.

One of those parties was hosted by a girl who lived in Allview Estates. I lived in Columbia, MD, during my secondary school years. At that time, Allview was technically not part of Columbia, but nearby. Columbia was a planned city, that was designed to be integrated. As I grew up, I got thoroughly used to the idea and never gave it a thought. On the rare times that I socialized, I was with a group, and the group was pretty mixed. No big deal.

This particular night, I had offered to act as a sort of co-hostess for this party, and arrived early to help prepare food and set up. I drove by myself and parked in front of the destination house. Since it was summertime, there was plenty of daylight and people in the neighborhood were outside. I got out of my car and started walking up the drive to the house. I couldn’t help but notice that the neighbors stopped watering their lawns, etc. and just stared at me, until I entered the house.  I realized that, in their minds, I wasn’t supposed to be there. Those people paid good money to have an all-White neighborhood and they didn’t want me to lower their property values. A few weeks later, I left for college and never looked back.

The next Summer, my Dad sold his house in Columbia and moved to the Baltimore suburbs. I never spent too much time in that house, but when I was visiting, I did a little bit of driving around the Baltimore area, sort of.  I say that because, I realized that my geographic knowledge of Baltimore is strictly limited to the parts of the city that were designated for the Black population. Other than that, I know a few destinations, like Shopping Centers, schools,  and Downtown. The rest of my knowledge of Baltimore is a jumble of names, with no geography attached. Since the city has no organized layout, I’m usually lost. My husband grew up in Pennsylvania, so he was clueless, too, when we drove to the city to visit relatives.

The only way I can navigate Baltimore Streets is by visual clues from my childhood. I use maps, but usually fall back on my memories. My husband and I have gotten lost all over the place. Mostly, we got around by using my Dad or another relative as a navigator.

Eventually, I broke down and resorted to a map. Between using the map and linking my childhood memories, I realized that I had spent my early years in residential and cultural segregation. I rarely gave this a thought, because it was all I knew.

I am reading a book about the residential history of Baltimore, Not in My Neighborhood, and suddenly, my childhood memories make more sense. Here is one of my memories.

I read that an historic dividing line between Black and White sections of Baltimore was Fulton Avenue.  In the 1940’s, the first two Black people to purchase property on Fulton Avenue were Dr. Gilbert Banfield and Dr. Bruce Alleyne. I knew the latter as Grandfather and I eventually inherited the property on Fulton Avenue. That was his dental office. My grandmother married Dr. Alleyne after his first wife died (before I was born). The Banfields and Alleynes socialized together all their lives, but I just accepted them as family. When my grandmother and Dr. Alleyne purchased their properties on Edmondson and Fulton Avenues, those were very nice neighborhoods. As I grew up, I got to see those areas deteriorate around me. Bethlehem Steel closed, and many men lost their jobs. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, nearby areas were heavily damaged in the ensuing riots and never repaired. An ugly housing project was erected across the street from my Grandmother’s  house, moving too many people into a single, poorly maintained building. The area became a food desert. Most recently, it was in the general area where Freddie Gray lived. In the earlier, nicer years, my father and his siblings and cousins grew up in that neighborhood. Although I didn’t grow up in Sandtown, my parents and I did live there for one year. My parents sold our house and we lived with my grandparents while our house in Columbia was under construction.

My grandmother was so proud of her houses on Edmondson Avenue. According to the 1930 Census, my grandmother lived in a rental property at 1723. They were still living at 1723 when the 1940 Census was enumerated, but by that time she probably owned the property. By the 1950’s, my grandmother had purchased a second house on the same block, 1705, where she would spend the rest of her life. My great-grandmother and other relatives remained in the house at 1723. After my great-grandmother’s death, the house became a rental property. Since it was a rental, I have no memory of ever being in the house at 1723, but I have many memories of the house at 1705 Edmondson Avenue. My father lived in both houses and told me stories that would apply to both of them, since they were on the same city block and had the same floor plan. I have also checked the Census records for additional information.

The City of Baltimore was strictly segregated by race. At the time my grandmother moved there, the neighborhood was in a slow transition from White to Black occupancy. In 1920, my grandmother was living in rural North Carolina. She moved to Baltimore about 1926 and may have lived on Myrtle Avenue for a time. By 1930, my relatives were living on Edmondson Avenue, renting the first house that they would eventually buy.

My father grew up in those houses and told me stories that complete the history I have read about the area. Historically, real estate developers built new property on the outskirts of the city, where sales were limited to Whites-only. The new properties had all the amenities such as central heating, electricity and plumbing. The older houses, which were built around 1900, had no amenities and would be expensive to bring up to standard. These houses were sold to the Black population, who had few other choices. In the 1930 and 1940 Census records,  a woman named Frances Moran was listed as the owner and occupant of the house at 1705 Edmondson Avenue. Ms. Moran was White. For at least a decade, that block of Edmondson Avenue had a mixed-race occupancy. My relatives and the Moran household were neighbors.

My father told me what it had been like, growing up in the original houses on Edmondson Avenue. The original houses had no central heating or basement. They did have a coal cellar opening, which may have been at the front of the house. Originally, the house had a stack of centralize fireplaces going through the main rooms on each floor. There were also gas jets on each side of the fireplaces, for lighting. The house had six fireplaces.  My father said that my grandfather John had dug out the basement under the house at 1705. My grandmother told me that during the digging, they had to carefully brace their work to keep it from filling with sand overnight. That was how I learned that area was nicknamed Sandtown. My grandfather dug out a full basement underneath the length of the house and reinforced it with concrete. The basement had several sections, dug at various heights, to save labor. One tiny section, probably dug as an afterthought, was just large enough to fit an oil burning furnace. The front part of the basement was the area around the original coal cellar. According to my father, that area had been sealed up.  The rear part of the basement was probably the first part to be constructed. This shallow basement section connected with the back yard. The back basement contained the plumbing for the entire house, the laundry and some of the electrical  infrastructure.

My father said that his family used a coal stove for heating and cooking when he was a child. Originally, the houses had no bathrooms and used an *outdoor arrangement* at the back.  My guess is that my grandmother installed running water and a toilet as soon as she owned those houses. After that, she installed electricity and central heat. The original fireplace chimney networks were used to install the ductwork for the heating system. That furnace room was dug near the location of the chimneys. Over time, my grandmother fully modernized the house, eventually adding central air conditioning, too.  She must have put a small fortune into that house, since it originally came equipped with an outhouse, backyard pump and fireplaces.

My grandmother turned her house into a lovely home and did a lot of entertaining. She hosted Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. She hosted countless club meetings and card parties for her friends. When I was old enough to be useful, I was conscripted to polish silver, set tables and help clean the crystals on the chandelier. Her house was fabulous on the inside, even as the neighborhood deteriorated on the outside.

Once the neighborhood started to decline, many of the doctors, such as Dr. Banfield and others, began to move out. They moved their homes and offices to nicer sections of the city and suburbs. In fact, that is probably how my parents came to build a house in Columbia. One of my early visits to Columbia was to the home of Dr. Woodland, in Wilde Lake. The Woodlands were friends and colleagues of my grandparents. After seeing their house, my parents got interested in building their own house, eventually choosing a lot in Oakland Mills.

While many of the more affluent Blacks, including my parents, moved outward, my grandmother and her second husband, Dr. Alleyne, chose to stay in the inner city. One reason they stayed is that nothing could have separated my grandmother from that house. She put all that work and money into the property and it was HERS.  Dr. Alleyne maintained his old Fulton Avenue practice, partly out of duty and also because of his age. Dr, Alleyne was born around 1890, so by the 1960’s he was easily at an age when he could have retired. Instead, he worked shorter hours and continued to practice dentistry in the neighborhood. He did not make a lot of money in his last years. I know that many times, he treated people knowing that they would never pay him for his services. I also know that he got robbed at gunpoint at least twice, by people who thought he had either a lot of cash or a stockpile of narcotics in his office. He had neither. Eventually,  he retired and turned his practice over to a younger dentist. I think he was in his eighties by that time. Certainly, the neighborhood was no longer safe for an old man to close his office and walk home alone each evening.

Dr. Alleyne died in 1977, about a year before I had my wake-up call in the Allview Estates. By that time, my mind was so used to compartmentalizing neighborhoods that a never thought much about segregation. I simply knew that I would see only Black people in familiar neighborhoods in Baltimore. Columbia was integrated and I was used to that. For  me, the anomaly was an all-White neighborhood. I rarely got to see those and really didn’t stop to think about what I was missing.

I had a lot more to learn.