Hamilton, Baltimore

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Hamilton is a mixed density urban neighborhood located in north eastern Baltimore City, Maryland.

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[edit] History

The neighborhood was originally farmland along the Harford Road corridor, which at the time was a major arterial route out of Baltimore City into the much more rural Harford County. The neighborhood began to be developed in the late teens and early 1920's and, for some areas, into the 1950's. Architecturally, most of the homes are similar to each other, and are larger, 20's and 30's era houses, with broad front porches and rather spacious yards, analogous to the suburban McMansions of today. Although, there are small pockets of the famous brick-faced Baltimore rowhouses scattered throughout the neighborhood, especially along Harford Road south of Echodale Avenue.

Generally speaking, Hamilton evolved into a mixed-race middle class throughout the 1970's and 80's, with pockets of a bit more wealth within. With the shuttering of the Arcade Theater in the early 1980's, a large, community oriented plaza and movie house was suddenly vacant, and urban blight began to creep into the commercial and cultural nexus of Hamilton, which runs from approximately Harford Road. and Echodale Avenue up to the intersection of Harford and Old Harford Roads.

[edit] Geography

The boundaries of Hamilton, like many urban neighborhoods are rather amorphous and hard to define, but is generally thought to include everything between Perring Parkway in the west, and across to Walther Boulevard in the east, with Southern Avenue forming, fittingly, the southern boundary and Northern Parkway forming the northern boundary. The land is for the most part gently rolling hills, with some surprisingly steep sections for Baltimore City (for instance, Bayonne Avenue, east of Harford Road.) The Herring Run flows through the western edge of the neighborhood, and it's immediate watershed is an urban greenspace which comprises Herring Run Park.

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