Otterbein, Baltimore
 |
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2013) |
Otterbein | ||
|---|---|---|
Area code 410, 443, and 667 | | |
Otterbein is a small
History
The original houses in the neighborhood were constructed in the 1840s and 1850s as single houses or as two-house "developments." The size of the houses, and the social status of their occupants, varied primarily based on their location within a square-block pattern. The largest homes and most affluent residents were located on the primary east-west streets (Barre, Lee, and Hill). These homes were built and lived in by a mixture of business people involved in leadership positions in some of the most important industries of the city, including construction (especially brick-making), shipping, shipbuilding, the
Otterbein experienced a new wave of immigration in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries by immigrants from Italy, Greece, Russia, and Poland. A Catholic church on Lee St. and an affiliated school on Hill St. helped serve many of these immigrants. The housing stock and overall affluence of the neighborhood declined throughout this period as wealthier families moved into larger homes in newly established neighborhoods farther away from downtown Baltimore.
The final stage in this decline began during World War II, as a need for war housing led the owners of Otterbein homes to split up the individual rowhouses into many apartments, leading to overcrowding, poor sanitation, architectural sloppiness, and deteriorating physical conditions. After the war ended, few workers remained in this inner-city slum but rather moved to the suburbs, while property owners did not reinvest nor reverse the earlier shift to apartments. Alley homes and backyard shacks especially deteriorated, while the factories, shipping, and shipbuilding industries which had supplied most of the area jobs largely left the area, leaving the Inner Harbor a desolate expanse of rotting piers, empty warehouses, and sunken ships.
The neighborhood was seized by the government during the early 1970s and emptied of its residents, churches, and other institutions in preparation for the building of
The changed path of Interstate 95 left the government in possession of hundreds of badly-deteriorated rowhouses in Otterbein. After starting to tear them down, the City of Baltimore decided to keep the remaining houses intact and inaugurate the largest urban homesteading program in the history of the United States. All of the existing original neighborhood houses were restored in the 1970s as a part of Baltimore's "dollar homes" urban homesteading program. After the success of this homesteading project in Otterbein was assured, the city allowed for the development of new townhomes and condominiums around the existing core of historic homes.
References
- Artslife - Otterbein; profile article; Baltimore Sun.