The Distracted Wanderer

As I mentioned in yesterday's post about the Baltimore Washington Monument, this next post is going to be about the area around the monument which is referred to as Mount Vernon Place. Technically there are two distinct areas that branch out from the circle that surrounds the monument and form a Greek cross. The squares to the east and west are called Mount Vernon Place, while the north and south squares comprise Washington Place; however, it seems that most people lump the two areas together and for the sake of argument call the entire area Mount Vernon Place - which is what I'm going to do! As I mentioned yesterday, when the townspeople of Baltimore decided they wanted to erect a monument for George Washington the initial idea was to build it closer to town but due to a fear that the massive structure would collapse on neighboring houses, the monument was constructed on land located outside of the town itself in an area known as Howard's Woods. The land on which the mo...

Last Friday, for the third time in less than a year, I found myself heading back down to Baltimore aka Charm City (a nickname that was apparently coined back in 1974 during an ad campaign to polish the city’s image) so that my daughter Amanda could attend the Otakon Convention being held there. While she was mixing and mingling with other fans of the web-comic Hanna’s Not a Boy’s Name my plan was to take way too many pictures so that I could spend hours trying to organize them when I got back to Connecticut ! Arriving in Baltimore around 11:00 a.m. I first dropped Amanda off at the Convention Center where she immediately faded into the crowd of people dressed in their favorite anime garb then drove about a half-mile up Charles Street to Mount Vernon Place which has been referred to by many as “the heart and soul of Baltimore ”. It was a spot I had seen only briefly on my previous jaunts down to Baltimore last year but that I had wanted to explore further and now I had the perfec...