Federal Hill, Baltimore
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Federal Hill is a neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, United States that lies just to the south of the city's central business district.
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[edit] Location
The neighborhood is named for the prominent hill that is easily viewed from the Inner Harbor area, to which the neighborhood forms the physical south boundary. The hillside is a lush green and serves as a community park. The neighborhood occupies the northwestern part of a peninsula that extends along two branches of the Patapsco River—the Northwest Branch (ending at the Inner Harbor) and the Middle Branch. This peninsula is generally referred to as the South Baltimore Peninsula, and includes the neighborhoods of Federal Hill, Locust Point, South Baltimore, and Sharp-Leadenhall. While not physically a part of the peninsula, Otterbein is also included in the collection of neighborhoods which make up greater South Baltimore. Traditionally, Federal Hill was roughly triangular, bordered by Hanover Street to the west; Hughes Street, the harbor, and Key Highway to the north and east; and Fort Avenue to the south.
[edit] Amenities
The Cross Street Market, a recently-renovated historic marketplace built in the 19th century, continues to serve residents and is the primary social and commercial hub for the neighborhood. The primary business district is bounded by Montgomery, Ostend, Light, and Hanover Streets, and is home to a large number of restaurants of a wide range of taste, quality, and price, and many small shops as well as a few larger, more practical stores. The neighborhood is a popular destination for tavern goers and music lovers, with street festivals several times a year. These are organized through a very active neighborhood organization and business organization, as is the annual Shakespeare on the Hill series of summer performances in the park atop the actual Federal Hill. The neighborhood is also home to the American Visionary Art Museum and Maryland Science Center.
Significant and historic houses of worship include Christ Lutheran Church, Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, Light Street Presbyterian Church, Lee Street Baptist Church, Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, and St. Mary's Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church. Federal Hill is served by Federal Hill Elementary School, Francis Scott Key Elementary and Middle School, and Digital Harbor High School. The public library is the Light Street Branch of the famous Enoch Pratt Free Library.
[edit] Transportation
Federal Hill is located conveniently to Interstate 95, Interstate 395, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and Charles and Light Streets, which provide the major north-south surface route through Baltimore. The western portions of the neighborhood are within walking distance of the Hamburg Street and Camden Yards stops on the Baltimore Light Rail.
[edit] Early history
From early in the history of the city, the hill was a public gathering place and civic treasure. The hill itself was given the name in 1789 after serving as the location for the end of a parade and a following civic celebration of the ratification of the new "Federal" constitution of the United States of America. For much of the early history of Baltimore, the hill was know as Signal Hill because it was home to a maritime observatory serving the merchant and shipping interests of the city by observing the sailing of ships up the Patapsco River and signalling their impending arrival to downtown businesspeople.
Following the Baltimore riot of 1861, the hill was occupied (against orders from Washington) in the middle of the night by Union troops under the command of General Benjamin F. Butler, who had entered the city stealthily from Annapolis via the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. During the night, Butler and his men erected a small fort, with cannon pointing towards the central business district. Their goal was to guarantee the allegiance of the city and the state of Maryland to the Federal Government under threat of force. This fort and the Union occupation persisted for the duration of the Civil War. A large flag, a few cannon, and a small Grand Army of the Republic monument remain to testify to this period of the hill's history.
[edit] Recent history: A study in gentrification
In the 20th century, Federal Hill was a working class neighborhood, and by the late 1970s was yet another struggling Baltimore inner-city neighborhood, with increasing crime, racial tension, depressed property values, and an aging and decaying housing stock. Many of the industrial jobs, particularly in the shipyards and factories along the south shore of the Patapsco River, which had long provided the main source of employment for neighborhood residents were in the process of disappearing. The Bethlehem Steel shipyards on the east side of the hill were one of the last to close, in the early 1980s. The nationally-recognized urban homesteading program in nearby Otterbein, begun in 1975, helped spur interest among individuals and businesses in rehabilitating homes in Federal Hill, and it soon became a hotbed of investment and rehabilitation, particularly by young professional baby boomers who had grown up in the suburbs but worked downtown and longed for the excitement and community of urban living.
The investment and growth throughout downtown and especially at the Inner Harbor through the 1980s and 1990s only increased the popularity of Federal Hill living over the decades following the initial reinvestment period. A second period of intense investment and rising property values began in the mid 1990s as the neighborhood was again "discovered" by a new generation of young professionals, which now included many of the children of the baby boomers. This second stage of neighborhood investment has included not just single-family home rehabilitation but increasingly large development projects on former industrial sites, particularly on the edges of the neighborhood around the water's edge. Within the core of the neighborhood itself, there has been an influx of new restaurants and shops.
Much of working class South Baltimore to the south of Cross Street has been redefined as part of Federal Hill particularly by those in the real estate business. This distinction is not shared by the city government, academic observers, many neighborhood residents, or official neighborhood organization boundaries. One resident noted in an interview with the Baltimore Sun that he "lived all his life in South Baltimore and then woke up one day in Federal Hill." This remark is characteristic of the tension along lines of class, race, and neighborhood identity that exists in many gentrifying communities, and is particularly true of the so-called "South Federal Hill" and Locust Point areas, along with the rest of the South Baltimore peninsula. The same real estate-driven expansion of Federal Hill is pressing on on the borders of the most blighted neighborhood in South Baltimore, the historic African-American community of Sharp-Leadenhall which is one of the earliest African-American communities in Baltimore. Residents there fear the loss of cultural and neighborhood identity while at the same time hope for some share of the improvement that has come to Federal Hill and other surrounding communities.
In Federal Hill, as in many other neighborhoods characterized by the demographic shift and accompanying increase in property values that many refer to as "gentrification", long term families and elderly residents can be forced out of their generations-old homes due to rising property taxes.
