Howard Park: Exploring Baltimore’s neighborhoods
“This is the block where it’s scary to everyone,” Preston Greene says as we walk down the 4700 block of Liberty Heights Avenue, a once-vibrant stretch of Howard Park now marked by cheap carry-outs and a handful of shuttered storefronts. “There was a hardware store there, very small. This door is that of a halfway house – right next to a liquor store. A protected class of citizens. Are you kidding me?”
- August 16, 1982 – Improved shops in the 4700 block of Liberty Heights avenue. Photo by Ellis J. Malashuk, Baltimore Sun
- July 19, 1971 – John Bagby, a service station owner, shares frustrations of rising crime in Howard Park.
- August 16, 1982 – Diane Soloman waits in the 4600 block of Liberty Heights Avenue for her bus.
- Howard Park elementary school Date: 1973-09-23
- A wooded area sits in the Howard Park neighborhood of Baltimore. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- The vacant Ambassador Theater along Liberty Heights Ave. A fire broke out in 2012 and mostly destroyed the complex. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- The vacant Ambassador Theater along Liberty Heights Ave. A fire broke out in 2012 and mostly destroyed the complex. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- The vacant Ambassador Theater along Liberty Heights Ave. A fire broke out in 2012 and mostly destroyed the complex. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Shops, many shuttered, along Liberty Heights Road. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Shops, many shuttered, along Liberty Heights Road. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Small named pathways unique to Howard Park provide quick throughways amid long street blocks. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Small named pathways unique to Howard Park provide quick throughways amid long street blocks. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- One of the larger, more extravagant homes in Howard Park. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Signs of rehabilitation crop up around the neighborhood with new construction on older lots, or with older vacant homes being bought and rehabilitated. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Signs of rehabilitation crop up around the neighborhood with new construction on older lots, or with older vacant homes being bought and rehabilitated. To the left, a dilapidated home sits parallel to a newly built home. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Signs of rehabilitation crop up around the neighborhood with new construction on older lots, or with older vacant homes being bought and rehabilitated. Here, a rehabilitated home sits behind a fence. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Scenes from Howard Park, Md. (Kalani Gordon, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2015)
- Calvin Rodwell Elementary school, next to the ShopRite on Liberty Heights Ave. (Kalani Gordon/Feb. 2015)
- Front entrance under the marquee of the former Ambassador Theatre on Liberty Heights Avenue in Howard Park. A fire badly damaged the 1935 building, which had been used as a cosmetology school and a church. It was currently vacant. (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun, July 2012)
- Front entrance under the marquee of the former Ambassador Theatre on Liberty Heights Avenue in Howard Park. A fire badly damaged the 1935 building, which had been used as a cosmetology school and a church. It was currently vacant. (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun, July 2012)
- The Ambassador, an Art Deco theater built in 1935, was offered at a public auction, but the highest bid of $125,000 was too low for the seller. There were three bidders among the small crowd gathered outside the vacant theater at 4604 Liberty Heights Avenue in Howard Park. At left is an abandoned supermarket, which was torn down to make way for the ShopRite. (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun, July 9, 2009)
- The new ShopRite grocery at its opening in 2014. Photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor, Baltimore Sun.
- From left, Glord M. McGuire, Joan A. Brooks, and Tracie E. Hamm stand in front of an old elementary school located on Liberty Heights Ave. in the Howard Park Community. Photo taken November 7, 1996. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun)
- North Rogers Avenue in Howard Park is one of those streets where most people take care of their homes, and help keep this middle class neighborhood healthy. Photo taken January 2002. (Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun)
- North Rogers Avenue in Howard Park is one of those streets where most people take care of their homes, and help keep this middle class neighborhood healthy. Photo taken January 2002. (Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun)
- This is the location where new proposal to build a new supermarket on Liberty Heights Ave. Photo taken August 11, 2005. (CHIAKI KAWAJIRI/Baltimore Sun)
- John Saunders, president of the Board of Directors of Forest Park Senior Center, outside the former Howard Park E.S., now vacant, which is adjacent (and connected) to the Senior Center in the 4800 block of Liberty Heights Ave. Photo taken March 10, 1999. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
- 1 1/2 story frame houses on tree-lined Norwood Ave., near N. Rogers Ave. Photo taken March 10, 1999. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
- Gladys Savage, who has lived in the same house on Norwood Ave. for 35 years, took time out to mow her front lawn. Photo taken May 12, 1999. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun)
- New employees receive training about procedures in the self checkout lane from bookkeeper Lerelle Washington, right, at the new ShopRite store on Liberty Heights Avenue in Howard Park. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
- Charred debris inside the former theater lobby. (Baltimore Sun photo)
- Baltimore City firefighters work at the aftermath scene of a three-alarm fire in Howard Park at the Elmwood Apartments on the 3900 block of Gwynn Oak Ave. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
- Many people in Howard Park are opposed to BP Corporation’s proposal to build a service station on the site of the closed Howard Park Super Pride grocery store. The house in the middle and the one to the right are on Stonington Ave. in Howard Park. The house on the left is on Bosworth Ave. Photo taken on Oct. 31, 2001. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun)
Howard Park
» Border streets: Liberty Heights Ave., Hillsdale Road, N. Rogers Ave., Post Road, Eldorado Ave.
» Neighboring areas: Baltimore County, Grove Park, Purnell, Central Forest Park, Dorchester, West Arlington, Dickeyville
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» Help us catalog the signs of Baltimore City’s neighborhoods
Longtime residents of this West Baltimore community remember the halcyon days, and hope that at the very least, the facades of these shops could be restored to a more aesthetically pleasing form. But Greene, as president of the Howard Park Civic Association, has myriad issues that need addressing.
One of Baltimore’s biggest neighborhoods, Howard Park’s large single-family homes and 60-plus acres of urban forest have made it an attractive residential community and park-like environment within city limits since its annexation in 1918. But as Greene says, the neighborhood has been “in a downward spiral” for decades. A completely segregated neighborhood until the 1960s – according to howardparkca.org, there is “no record of a black resident … prior to August 1959” – Howard Park experienced years of white flight, high crime rates and overall decay.

Our guides, Preston Greene, Jon Schladen and Carlyle Winkler.
In Greene’s mind, however, the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. The tipping point came last July, when a ShopRite opened at 4601 Liberty Heights Ave. Considered a food desert ever since Super Pride closed on that lot in 1999, Howard Park is now home to the largest grocery store in the city.
The store serves as a significant source of pride for Greene, who, along with representatives of the Baltimore Development Corp., began lobbying the city for a grocer there in 2002. For years, residents of Howard Park had to journey to Mondawmin or the Reisterstown Road Plaza or other far-flung locations to buy groceries. Now ShopRite is here, and it even has a delivery service – ideal for Howard Park’s significant elderly population.
“This is the biggest thing in a long time,” says Greene, a retired IT professional who moved into the neighborhood in 1979. “We have movement towards the present right now. We have a youth capacity building program, a service learning project, which will help us identity the vacant and nuisance houses in the community. We’ve already run our pilot, and we will start up again in the spring.”
Leading that program is Jon Schladen, a senior planner for a military industrial complex who moved to Howard Park from Wilmington, Del., five years ago. The city estimates that Howard Park’s vacancy rate is about 14 percent, but the true figure is likely much higher.
“They don’t have the resources to survey a neighborhood like ours for vacant and nuisance houses,” Schladen says of the city. “A simple survey that we did, we found 14 vacant houses in an area where the city said we only had two. What we’re doing is using kits in the service learning program in essentially being the boots on the ground. If we can begin to understand our own condition as a community, we’re going to have much more power.”
Residential redevelopment and revitalization of the community are the overarching goals of the HPCA. But perhaps just as important are visual improvements. Greene hopes that slots revenues will go toward façade improvements on the Liberty Heights corridor. Litter on the side streets and throughout Hillsdale Park is also a concern.
“Every once in a while you’ll find a typical yahoo, but it’s generally a quiet neighborhood and crime is not my biggest fear here,” Schladen says. “What I fear is, you saw the areas we walked through with all the trash on the streets. That is my biggest fear. If we fall into that kind of behavior for too much longer, we’re just going to ignore the larger stuff around here, too. Preston’s right in going after development in the area. At the same time, you have to go after the smaller stuff as well.”
While Schladen, Carlyle Winkler (our third tour guide) and other involved community members work to address “the smaller stuff,” Greene is looking across the street from Shoprite at his next major challenge: redevelopment of the old Ambassador Theater. An iconic cultural landmark built in 1935, the theater screened its last film in 1968, “remained in use for over three decades as a dance hall, roller-skating rink, cosmetology school and church,” and then was ravaged by a fire in 2012.
Greene has organized subcommittees to address all Ambassador-related issues. It’s a significant undertaking that will require millions of dollars from investors, widespread community support, and government cooperation and assistance. But like everything else happening in Howard Park, Greene is committed to taking on that challenge and doing whatever he can to improve the neighborhood.
“We’ve got the physical assets that you see, [Forest Park] Golf Course, the big lots, big homes and all, but we also are a healthy neighborhood,” Greene says. “We have visions of great things. People see movement and want to get involved and have been. So Howard Park – we love it.”
Michael Rosen
Feb 01, 2018 @ 20:12:31
I grew up in Howard Park; in fact, on Howard Park Avenue, from 1955 to 1965. I went to #218 elementary school. Although my parents moved when I was in high school, I still think of it as my neighborhood. My son lives not far from there, today. A year or so ago, my sister and I were visiting relatives, and we took the time to drive over to our old home. The street looks just as we remember it. It’s truly a shame that so much of the area has fallen so low. I would love to see the Junction restored to its former glory, with the Ambassador leading the way.