The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death is a collection of miniature crime scene models on display at the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office. They were hand-crafted in the 1940s by an eccentric socialite who wanted to support the training of homicide investigators.

Based on actual cases, the Nutshell Studies require painstaking observation — blood spatters to analyze, tiny knots to discern. The smallest detail could be very important.

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death may be viewed by appointment. For fullest appreciation, bring a small flashlight and a magnifying glass.

Read more about the Nutshell Studies.

State of Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office
111 Penn Street
410-333-3250

Westminster Burial Grounds and Catacombs

The Westminster cemetery, dating from 1789, was once far from the city of Baltimore. Now it is surrounded by the University of Maryland. In 1852, the Gothic revival Westminster Presbyterian Church was built on the property, creating a catacombs underneath.

A shallow path is cut in the dirt between vaults and tombs, giving visitors an unusual and memorable experience. Many notable Baltimoreans are buried at Westminster, including several heroes of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Its most famous resident is Edgar Allan Poe, who rests there with his young wife, Virginia.

Westminster Hall and Burial Ground
Fayette and Greene Streets
410-706-2072

Davidge Hall

At the turn of the 19th Century, a group of prominent physicians began teaching medicine in a building on Liberty Street.

When locals heard that they were dissecting cadavers (UM was the first medical school in the U.S. to require the study of anatomy), an angry mob stormed the building and burned it to the ground.

A second building was completed in 1807. It was built with thick walls and a heavy wooden door, in case the mobs returned. And just to make sure, there is a hidden staircase to let medical students escape out back.

Today that stairwell is home to Hermie, a cadaver of undetermined origin who has been on that spot for generations, laid out on an old wooden necropsy table. A nearby whiskey barrel and plaque tell the story of Frank the Spade, the finest body-snatcher around. Bodies acquired by various means were shipped to other medical schools in barrels of whiskey. You don’t want to know what they did with the whiskey.

A visit to Davidge Hall is very worthwhile. It is America’s oldest medical school building. The lower Chemistry Lecture Hall features coal-fired burners where students did their experiments. Upstairs is a domed Anatomy Hall, in desperate need of repairs.

Davidge Hall is open to the public Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Davidge Hall
522 W. Lombard Street
410-706-7454
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Friendship Airport

On June 24, 2010 that relationship hits its 60-year mark, and although Friendship has been renamed Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, its success has continued to grow.

Back in 1950, June 24 was the archetypal 90+ degree, sweaty summer day. Then Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Senator Millard E. Tydings, and Maryland Governor William Preston Lane, greeted President Truman at 11 a.m., with the US Marine Corps Band playing “Hail to the Chief.”

The Presidential dedication marked the high point of a celebratory week of special events including concerts, exhibitions, special flights for handicapped children, aviation movies, and fashion models posing on the tarmac, wearing “Fashions for Flight.”

In his welcoming speech, Mayor D’Alesandro listed Friendship’s virtues: Miraculous engineering, planning, and governmental cooperation; an ideal location just 10 miles from Baltimore and 30 miles from Washington DC along a new super highway; and–not insignificantly–the lowest incidence of fog on the East Coast.

Planning for the 3,200 acre airfield complex in Anne Arundel County near Friendship Church began just after the end of World War II. Construction started in 1947. Originally owned by the City of Baltimore, the airport was purchased by the State of Maryland, through the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), in 1972 for $36 million.

The original white, cuboid terminal building, designed by James R. Edmunds, encompassed more than an acre of interior floor space and cost $3,724,000. The nine-story control tower–the highest in the country—dominated the building.

Inside, a fancy restaurant, cocktail lounge, conference rooms, game rooms with pin ball and slot machines, a children’s nursery, barber and beauty shops, a bank, and a book store lined the terminal’s public spaces.

President Truman kept his speech short—just eight minutes. He spoke of Friendship as “…a symbol of what local government and the National Government can do when they plan together and work together for the improvement of the country.” He concluded by saying: “Now I dedicate this Friendship International Airport to the growth and development of our country. I dedicate this great airport to the cause of peace in the world.”

BWI Marshall Airport

“Emphasis on customer service keeps the name ‘Friendship’ alive,” said Jonathan O. Dean, manager of the Maryland Aviation Administration’s Division of Communications.

In 2009, 20.95 million passengers used the airport, an increase of 2.3 percent over 2008, making BWI Marshall one of only two US airports to show any growth.

“It’s largely due to the strength of the marketplace,” said Dean. “We are convenient, customer-friendly, and easy to use. Additionally, we have the low fare gateways for Southwest and AirTran, and now Jet Blue…BWI Marshall offers among the lowest average air fares, frequently well below the national average.”

Making it even more accessible, BWI Marshall is the first US airport with a major rail station on the property. A continuous shuttle bus system directly connects railroad to airplane. Additionally, Light Rail connects the terminal with Baltimore, Timonium, and Hunt Valley, while the BWI Express Metrobus links to Washington DC’s Metro’s Green Line at the Greenbelt Metro Station.

Along with its role as a major air transportation hub, BWI Marshall has become a member of its neighborhood and an important resource for its community.

The 11-mile BWI Hiker-Biker Trail, circles the airport’s grounds and serves both commuters and recreational users. Much of the trail is surprising peaceful, and Andover Park, at the north side of the airport, provides a great overlook of the general aviation runway. A spur trail links to the terminal where a bike rack sits just outside of Concourse E, the Governor William Donald Schaefer International Terminal.

“We also have the Dixon Observation Area under 33 L(eft), a major commercial runway,” added Dean. “Friendship had a great outdoor observation area on the roof. People could see all of the aircraft operations. That’s no longer feasible, but the current airport has an indoor observation gallery, aviation exhibits, and tribute space for Thurgood Marshall.”

When asked about celebrations to mark 60 years of service, Dean responded that any events will be “…low keyed and will not affect the flying public.”

Reed Hellman lives and writes Alberton, Maryland. Visit his website at www.reedhellmanwordsmith.com, or e-mail your questions and comments to RHWay2Go@yahoo.com.

Photos: Jonathan O. Dean, Maryland Aviation Administration

Vintage Ocean City postcard

Here is a glimpse of a handful of snapshots–caught like flies on sticky paper when my family vacationed at the Hitch Apartments in Ocean City before our vacations became air-conditioned–over the opening holiday of the season.

“Remember when you guys were little …”

This was said by a woman bicycling down the Boardwalk early Sunday morning, May 30th, to a relative bicycling beside her. That simple phrase, “Remember when you guys were little … remember when we used to …,” is the essence of Ocean City, where my family has vacationed all my life.

Each summer creates singular memories–lots of good, some bad (from a rained-out weekend to pedestrian tragedies)–to be rolled out across summers yet to come.

That Pavlovian prompt, “Remember when you guys were little …,” arrives the moment I approach the Route 50 bridge connecting Worcester County to the ten-mile sandbar that becomes Maryland’s second largest city during the summer.

It hits when I see the light bulb sombrero of the Alamo Court Motel.

This is the kind of place where Tom Waits might sweat through a long weekend writing a few new songs about dime store watches and rings made out of spoons.

The Alamo Court motel

It’s where my family spent a long week back around 1971 with our cousins, the Adornato family. Maddeningly close enough to the ocean to smell it, but not close enough to see it.

“Your cousin Stevie ate a grilled cheese sandwich every morning,” my Mom remembered, unable to recall why we stayed there, only that “it wasn’t a happy time.”

But this past weekend–40 years down the road from our Alamo summer–was happy, a contented couple of days; just Mom and Dad and me at their condo on 87th street. The only thing we had to do was what we wanted to do, and that’s what we did.

As the hotels and Coastal Highway began to fill up, a guy staying next to my folks’ place, Al Vojik, sat on the porch and talked about growing up in the neighborhood near Johns Hopkins Hospital back in the 1940s.

“We used to call Bocek park [Edison Highway and Madison Street] the clay hill,” remembered Vojik, retired from the defunct General Motors plant on Broening Highway. “You’d dig out a little cave in the side of clay and play forts.”

There was a swamp behind the clay hills–a neighborhood now in ruins that travelers see from the Baltimore to New York Amtrak line–which may have given the area the now-forgotten name of Swampoodle.

The new Ocean Ciy library

I spent most of Saturday working on a not-quite-there-yet short story at the new Ocean City library on 100th street.

Opened in 2008, it’s a building designed to look like exactly what it is: a big house of books at the shore. And it replaced one that had been at 14th street and Philadelphia avenue since the early 1960s.

The library has always been an important part of the resort. In 1984, I received a letter from Watterson “Mack” Miller, a West Ocean City octogenarian famed for his swimming prowess and less-known for having debauched away a great newspaper inheritance between the world wars.

Mack was a janitor at the Castle in the Sand hotel. We became friends when I wrote about his old man and the sea ventures (more Johnny Weissmuller than Santiago) two and three miles beyond the waves.

During my visits to his shack on the fishing docks he told, with no noticeable regret, of a grandfather who wanted him to take over the family business, the Louisville Courier-Journal. Mack, known as Wock to his family, was more interested in beer steins and beckoning skirts, drinking his way across Europe before washing up penniless on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

We talked God and booze and books.

Watterson "Mack" Miller. Photo: Macon Street Books

“I ordered Ironweed at the [14th street] library,” wrote Mack after I’d offered my copy. “I noticed that the author got his start as a feature writer for the Albany paper ….”

Leaving the stacks on 100th street with Mack on my mind, my eye caught the Library of America edition of the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos, who died in Baltimore on September 28, 1970.

Tom O’Grady wrote that “… Dos Passos used libraries with a rare passion, and he used them perniciously. He drained them of all their worth. And when the organ was dead, a new life was born of its energy.

“In the years before his death, Dos Passos could be found almost daily at a small wooden table deep amid the stacks of the Peabody Library in Baltimore.”

In a library armchair on 100th street, I read a chronology of the writer’s life–“I’ve always thought you should concentrate on padding your own canoe,” he said of literary envy–before leaving for a nap and dinner with my parents.

(“That’s the whole secret: to do things that excite you,” said Ray Bradbury in the Spring 2010 Paris Review. “Also, I have always taken naps. That way, I have two mornings!”)

Mom fried shrimp in a light tempura, accompanied by salad and fresh green beans left over from a rib dinner the night before a few miles over the Delaware line.

Marina's beloved Moldova

While my father did the dishes, mom and I took an after-dinner walk, and I chatted up a Moldovan waitress at Layton’s on 92ne street as she poured me a cup of coffee. Her name was Marina (the same as Lee Harvey Oswald’s Russian widow), and this is her third summer working the resort.

(When I covered the beach for the Baltimore Sun in 1983 and 1984, most of the foreign workers were Irish. Now the majority, like the barmaids at the Alamo Court, arrive from the former Soviet Union.)

“There was this little drunk boy in here this morning,” said Marina, “and he knew that Moldova was next to the Ukraine.”

I was pleasantly surprised, as Americans don’t seem to be interested in much beyond the surface of things, particularly at the beach.

At the Bookshelf bookstore on 81st street, “literature”–Dos Passos and his kin across the centuries–is beyond a wall of crap between embossed covers and hidden in a chest of drawers.

“People who know books know to ask for the classics,” said Ann Hansen, who has run the store for years with her husband Roy. The couple was still cleaning up from a May 8th ceiling fire over the holiday weekend.

“The only other people are interested are students with a summer reading list and the foreign kids,” said Ann. “Young people from other countries want to read the classics they’ve already read in their own language in English.”

From the old bedroom bureau, I selected Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1962) by Heinrich Boll and closed the drawer like a coroner sliding a stiff back into the freezer.

I probably won’t get around to reading the Boll anytime soon (the greatest reading list in the world is made up of the books you intend to read next), but promise to shelve it out in the open and give it some air.

Anne Tyler's "A Slipping Down Life"

Near the register was a stack of Anne Tyler and I bought A Slipping Down Life (published 1970, released as a film in 1999) for my mother. I paid $3 for each.

Later, on the Boardwalk, Dad bought Mom a small bucket of Fisher’s popcorn for $5.50, and she will munch the caramel corn and read Tyler’s tale of an odd, shy girl named Evie on the porch while the neighbors work sudoku puzzles and sip iced tea.

Golden-agers on vacation until high school graduates and those who thought they were going to graduate invade the shore.

* * *

On the boardwalk: in the summer of 1973 I had to have a Faces t-shirt. The next summer, only an image of Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs LP would do.

The popular t-shirt this year judging by the racks rolled out onto the boards? Sexed-up liquid speed in shiny cans: Monster, Rock Star, Red Bull.

Rock is dead, they say…Not dead–or even scarce–are Boardwalk preachers. Standing in front of Biblical sand sculptures across from the Paul Revere smorgasbord, the believers take turns reading the gospels like Flannery O’Connor, minus the irony, with an oceanfront view.

Sunday morning: May 30, 2010, just a block or two away from the memorial to the world’s firefighters, came the story of the death of Lazarus from the book of John.

"The Raising of Lazarus," by Henry Ossawa Tanner

“Take away the stone …” he said.

Not far from the spot where the word was delivered is a bench with a small brass plaque. Nearly all of the benches along the Boardwalk are dedicated to someone who loved Ocean City, bench after bench of tributes by someone who loved that someone.

The bench I shared with a kid wiping the sleep out of her eyes before the Sunday morning shift at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum (this year with “Mirror Maze and Laser Race!”) is dedicated to the memory of Linda “Lynnie” Galyon.

It reads: “… hearts, roses, hugs and kisses … forever my love … Michael.”

How often will Michael sit on that bench this summer overcome by memories as waves crash behind him, while sunburned families push on with Thrasher’s fries in one hand and another on a stroller as the rides of the carnival go round and round?

Inner Harbor 1752

Inspired by an impressive collection of postcards and images at kilduffs.org, I decided to begin another project that’s been on my mind a while – creating a visual history of the Inner Harbor.

As an adopted Baltimorean, like many people the Inner Harbor was one of my first introductions to the city. In my memory, the Inner Harbor will always be bright and shiny new, with Harborplace, an aquarium and science center, and lots of people milling about. It represents Baltimore’s renewal and redevelopment.

I learned that the Inner Harbor didn’t always look that way. It used to be a dump, but long before then it was a busy port. I was fascinated by how the harbor evolved and grew over time.

Baltimore’s importance as a port dates to 1632, with the shipment of valuable black walnut to England – the first lumber from the New World.

The harbor is the reason why Baltimore exists. As the eastern seaboard’s furthest inland port, Baltimore was closer to America’s burgeoning farmlands and industrial production and a key transfer point between ships and railroads.

I also learned that the Inner Harbor defined the city in many different ways – West and East, South Baltimore and everywhere else.

Although we experience and remember the Inner Harbor in different ways, it is a touchstone that is familiar to every Baltimorean.

What I hope to do is collect a series of images that illustrate the changes of the Inner Harbor over time, starting with the earliest known image – John Moale’s 1752 painting of Baltimore Town – and up to the present day.

Contributions of images and comments are welcome. Send yours to evolution@welcometobaltimorehon.com.

Shot on location during its five-year run on HBO, Baltimore was more than a backdrop and setting for The Wire. From its corners to its classrooms to the corridors of power, the city was the prism through which issues and themes were refracted.

Here follows some of The Wire‘s more iconic locations.

THE PIT

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One of the major venues for the Barksdale crew were the Pit and the Tower, based on the McCollough Homes on the west side and other similar projects such as the Poe Homes and Lexington Terrace. Nearly all of Baltimore’s high-rise housing projects were demolished years ago.

HAMSTERDAM

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Baltimore never actually had “free zones” with open drug markets, as envisioned by Bunny Colvin. The filming location used for the first and largest of the free zones — known as Hamsterdam — was near Broadway and Gay streets. The homes in this area have been demolished and the blocks are now open space. This stretch of Lexington Avenue runs through what was supposedly Hamsterdam.

COLLINGTON SQUARE

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This eastside park, with a commanding view overlooking the Johns Hopkins medical center and the waterfront in the distance, was the location of several meetings during the course of The Wire. The eastside-westside basketball game was played on the court here.

LITTLE JOHNNIE’S

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The dockside S. Clinton Street restaurant where Vonda and the Greek hung out. Marlo met them here a couple of times as well. Interestingly, the location of the Major Crimes Unit building is just down the street.

CITY HALL

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Baltimore’s City Hall and War Memorial Plaza were a backdrop in several episodes. Facing the place, to your back, is the courthouse where Proposition Joe and Stringer Bell met in the rain — the same courthouse steps featured in Barry Levinson’s “…And Justice for All.”

ORLANDO’S

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Orlando’s strip club on South Broadway was the base of operations for Avon Barksdale’s crew during the first seasons of The Wire, until ambition got the better of Orlando. As it was during filming, the location is actually a strip club — the Ritz Cabaret. Stringer Bell’s copy shop is just a few doors down at 510 S. Broadway.

MAJOR CRIMES UNIT

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From this small dockside building on a desolate stretch of South Clinton street, Lt. Daniels, Lester Freamon and other members of the major crimes unit played a never-ending game of cat and mouse with violent drug gangs, mobsters and corrupt public officials.

POLICE HEADQUARTERS

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This quintessential Bauhaus building designed by Mies van der Rohe, used as the location for the Baltimore City police headquarters, was part of the original Charles Center redevelopment project in the early 1960s. A news ticker runs along the building across Baltimore Street.

MARLO’S COURT

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The ambitious and ruthless Marlo Stanfield met in this secluded park near Chase and Bond Streets. Herc lost a surveillance camera here as well.

LANVALE & BARCLAY

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Several locations were used as drug corners during the filming of The Wire. The intersection of Lanvale and Barclay was Bodie’s spot during the fourth season.

THE RIM SOURCE

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At the intersection of North and Gay, the Rim Source, with its windows distinctively outlined with blue neon lights, was one of Marlo’s meeting spots.

JOHN’S RADIO & TV

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Proposition Joe ran a repair shop at 301 S. Highland in Highlandtown, most recently a jewelry repair shop but presently vacant.

Baltimore’s noted buildings, gardens and historical landmarks are documented in countless coffee table picture books. Photographer Bill McAllen and writer Sarah Achenbach have taken a refreshing and thoughtful aproach in their collaboration, Spirit of Place: Baltimore’s Favorite Spaces.

Recently released by McAllen’s Charm City Publishing, Spirit of Place features 56 portraits of people in places that have special meaning to them. The book surveys people from all walks of life, from celebrities and civic leaders to ordinary residents, and shows them in their place of personal significance.

Each portrait includes brief architectural information and a first-person narrative crafted by Achenbach describiing why the location resonates in the subject’s memory. The book also includes essays by architect Tom Gamper, historic preservationist Tyler Gearhart, novelist Laura Lippman, and writer/producer David Simon.

The project grew out of a feature Achenbach and McAllen did for the December 2004 issue of Style magazine, where she is a contributing writer. McAllen, whose work is frequently found in regional lifestyle publications, is perhaps best known for his images watercraft and life on the Bay. He’s traveled the world with Pride of Baltimore II and once spent a year documenting the changing seasons at Green Mount Cemetery.

To hear more about Spirit of Place, listen to the recent appearance of Achenbach and McAllen on WYPR’s The Signal.

PHOTOS BY BILL MCALLAN

After a fair amount of work and a lot of trudging around town with a camera and handheld GPS, I’m pleased to unveil the first phase of Buried in Baltimore.

Buried in Baltimore provides GPS coordinates for each grave, a precisely pin-pointed Google map with optional driving directions, and a photo of the monument or marker.

This project is by no means complete. The list will be added to as time and resources permit. Coming up: Samuel Chase, Divine, Tamara Dobson, Walter Lord, Philip Berrigan, Spiro Agnew, and Johnny Unitas. If you’d like to contribute to Buried in Baltimore, shoot an email this way.

Your comments, feedback and suggestions are appreciated: Email.

On the southern border of BWI airport, you can sit at the end of the northwest-southeast runway as planes take off and land, so close overhead you can almost reach up and touch them.

The area features a playground for little ones and is one of the access points for the BWI bike trail. There is a portable toilet, and on summer weekends often a truck selling ice cream and snow cones.

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Over the years, while raising three kids we’ve explored every sort of place in Baltimore. The Maryland Zoo is nice, the National Aquarium has pretty fishes, and the Maryland Science Center is so-so. They all get a little pricey, and frankly, a little boring and predictable after a while.

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately — Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, St. Louis, New Orleans, Dallas — and noticed that the various travel guides in each city tended to list the same places. A zoo. A big museum. Each city has its “usual supects,” and the National Aquarium and Maryland Science Center are among ours.

Every place I visited, I tried to take at least one exploratory walk to get a sense of the history and character of the city. Sure, St. Louis has the Arch, but I was much more interested in the Eads Bridge and the old courthouse where the Dred Scott case was tried, and the fact that the original (and still operational) Tums factory was across the street from my hotel.

I encounter people who visited Baltimore, and they invariably say something about the Inner Harbor or the wonderful National Aquarium. That’s all fine and well, but there’s so much more for people willing to venture further than Light & Pratt. Sheesh, you could have walked to the Visionary Arts Museum or Babe Ruth’s house! Wouldn’t it be cool to go to the National Cryptologic Museum at the National Security Agency and get your hands on an actual Enigma machine, or ride a vintage streetcar? Want to visit the spot where Edgar Allan Poe died?

That is the genesis of Welcome to Baltimore Hon!, to create a site for people who love the city, who live here or plan on visiting, and are interested in more than the same old same old.

There are more interesting things in store here, including a cemetery tour, maps to all the bike trails and dog parks in the area, and tons more fun and interesting things to do.