West Baltimore Walks at the 2011 ROOTS Festival

This weekend the 2011 ROOTS Festival comes to the Highway to Nowhere in West Baltimore, and we are leading neighborhood walking tours as part of it. Please join us if you can. The festival is a series of music, arts and community events, some outdoor and some indoor, starting at Franklin and North Gilmor Streets (just west of Martin Luther King Boulevard). As part of our continuing work with the Friends of West Baltimore Squares partnership, we’ll be at the festival both Saturday & Sunday, June 25-26, sharing information on upcoming programs and offering a series of West Baltimore Walks through the historic parks and innovative new gardens to the north and south of the Highway to Nowhere.

Baltimore Heritage at the Alternate ROOTS Festival

Saturday & Sunday, June 25-26
West Baltimore Walks at 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, & 3:00 pm
FREE!
RSVP today!

Meet at the corner of Franklin and Carey Streets at the festival.

The one-hour walking tours, led by Baltimore Heritage’s Eli Pousson, start from the “Community Bridge” at the corner of Franklin & Carey Streets. They will go through Harlem Park & Lafayette Square exploring schoolyard gardens and soaring historic churches, and through Franklin Square & Union Square stopping by the H.L. Mencken House and innovative vacant lot projects on Brice and Carey Streets.

Franklin Square & Union Square
June 25 at 1:00 and June 26 at 11:00 and 3:00)

Walking by bioswales on Baltimore Street, native plants in schoolyard gardens at Franklin Square Elementary School, an urban orchard by the Brice Street stables, and the H.L. Mencken house, our tour of historic Franklin Square and Union Square offers a great introduction to innovative urban greening efforts and the story of West Baltimore’s development from the Civil War through the present.

Harlem Park & Lafayette Square
June 25 at 11:00 and 3:00 and June 26 at 1:00)

Reflecting on the legacies of urban renewal in the inner block parks near Harlem Square and marveling at soaring religious architecture around Lafayette Square, our tour of Old West Baltimore neighborhoods highlights the endurance of two historic African-American communities and the challenges experienced following urban renewal efforts.

RSVP today or just drop by for a tour during the festival! Questions? Contact Eli Pousson at pousson@baltimoreheritage.org or 301-204-3337.