From Cab Calloway to Redd Foxx, Pennsylvania Avenue has long been a center for Baltimore’s arts and entertainment scene. Today Pennsylvania Avenue is on its way to becoming the newest designated Arts and Entertainment District and would be the city’s only one focusing on black artists. Join us and our guides who have been leading the effort to get Pennsylvania Avenue designated as an Arts and Entertainment District as we walk through “The Avenue” exploring its history and its future.

Join Ms. Tracey Brown, long time Woodberry resident and neighborhood leader, on a tour of this charming former mill community. Together we'll learn about its rise, eventual fall, and recent rebirth. We will be touring sections of TV Hill, Clipper Mill and Brick Hill that are thriving today as they were in the mid-nineteenth century. Plus get updated on the recent movement to designate Woodberry as a Baltimore City historic district.

Ms. Betty Bland-Thomas, a long-time community activist and member of the South Baltimore Partnership, will lead this walking tour through the Sharp Leadenhall neighborhood in South Baltimore. This community is home to Ebenezer AME, the third oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the nation, and has been home to a vital African American community since the late 1700s. As in West Baltimore, residents struggled against displacement and demolition by highways projects in the 1960s and continue to organize against gentrification. The walking tour not only highlights this long history, but will also offer a chance to hear stories from long-time residents on their everyday experiences growing up in the neighborhood in the 1940s and 1950s.

When you look down Thames Street and smile at how “old-timey” it looks, what are you really looking at? Join architect David Gleason, president of the Fell’s Point Preservation Society, on a walk through the aged neighborhood to learn how to read historic buildings and uncover their unique histories. These houses and businesses have been reinvented and repurposed over 250 years in order to meet the changing economy of Baltimore--what can they tell us about those who lived and worked in Fell’s Point? Join us to “excavate” structures by exploring the layers of construction and change--you never know what you might discover hiding behind the facade!