Four-One-Oh

patrickjoust:

Perlman Place is a desolate little side street off North Avenue in East Baltimore. I’ve taken pictures there on several occasions over the last few years and nothing much has changed in that time. Finally it was announced that these rows are to be torn down as it is considered the most blighted block in the city.

My friend Mike (boyghost on tumblr and flickr) and I recently revisited the place. As of when these photos were taken, only a single row had been torn down, but a lot of the plywood that usually blocks the entrances to long broken windows and doors, was also removed, which allowed us to see inside a lot of these places. Even though there are thousands upon thousands of abandoned buildings here, buildings are usually well sealed, or at least sealed to someone like me.

I’ve never gotten used to the state of things in Baltimore… that there can be so much desolation and that the best that is usually done is to tear things down. However, there is a regularity to seeing boarded up rowhomes day after day. There was definitely an intimacy to being able to peek inside these places and see staircases and wallpaper, TVs and beds. As silly as it sounds, it truly makes me sad to see the insides of these places. I don’t feel nostalgic for what was, but I am very much disheartened by the current state of being for so many people who are stuck in a neighborhood like this.

This is actually a good location when you think about it. It’s close to a park and a few busy streets. There is beautiful and historic architecture all around here. In many ways there is more of a sense of community in a place like this than there is in often sterile and vacuous suburbia, where most neighbors hardly know each other, or even for that matter in my last apartment building, where it was often difficult to get something as basic as a friendly greeting from someone you met in the hall. Here, you see people outside, sitting on their steps, talking to each other, kids playing. All of this is good, but a quick glance in a neighborhood like this tells you very quickly that it’s not enough to make it all work.

There’s no money except for in the sale of drugs or in the befuddled national effort to prevent that sale. There isn’t a free market incentive to make this neighborhood work, so it rots and we all lose out.