Fell's Point, Baltimore


Fell's Point is a historic waterfront neighborhood in southeastern Baltimore, Maryland. It was established around 1763 and is located along the north shore of the Baltimore Harbor and the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River. The area has many antique, music and other stores, restaurants, coffee bars, a municipal markethouse with individual stalls, and over 120 pubs. Located 1.5 miles east of Baltimore's downtown central business district and the Jones Falls stream, Fells Point has a maritime past and the air of a seafaring town. It also has the greatest concentration of drinking establishments and restaurants in the city.
The neighborhood has also been historically the home of large immigrant populations of Irish, Germans, Jews, Poles and other Eastern European nationalities such as Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, and Slovaks, throughout its 250-year-old history. Since the 1970s, a steadily increasing number of middle- to upper-middle-income residents has moved into the area, restoring and preserving historic homes and businesses. Upper Fell's Point to the north along Broadway has gained a sizable Latino population, primarily from waves of Mexican and Central American immigrants since the 1980s, and is sometimes now called "Spanish Town".
This Fells Point waterfront is an upscale residential area and tourist destination featuring first rate hotels and restaurants. It can be reached by water taxi barges, on foot as it is a very short walk form the Inner Harbor, and by bus or car. Fells Point is one of several areas in and around Baltimore that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places,, the first designated from Maryland, and is one of the first registered historic districts in the United States to combine two separate waterfront communities.

History

First described by a European seafarer as "Long Island Point" in 1670, the area later to be known as Fells Point was a thin little peninsula jutting out southwestward between the streams of Jones Falls and Harford Run to the west and Harris Creek to the east and further east to Colgate Creek. Later land was patented with the title of "Copus Harbor". Nearby Baltimore Town to the west at the headwater of the Patapsco River's Northwest Branch was land patented under the name of "Cole's Harbor" and "Todd's Range" to William Cole and later sold to Charles and Daniel Carroll. This area was later established as a "port of entry" by the General Assembly of the Province of Maryland in 1706. After several local farmers and plantation owners originally planning to establish a town on the northeastern shores of the Middle Branch of the Patapsco were stymied by the objections of local owner William Moale, who thought the land was too valuable as a site of iron ore deposits. So the new town site was moved further to the northeast to the head of the Northwest Branch. Established as a town by the authority of the Colonial Assembly on July 30, 1729,, several streets were laid out in the "Original Survey" of January 12, 1730, with the main one going east-to-west called "Long Street" and several others intersecting from north-to-south such as Forrest, Calvert, running north from "The Basin" in 1730.
Joined in 1732, to the northeast along the banks of the stream "Jones Falls" by the laying out of several streets on a northwest to southeast angle by David Jones and named "Jones's Town" with streets such as Front, High, and Low. Founded by William Fell, who was attracted by its deep water and proximity to agriculture and thick forests, Fell's Point became a shipbuilding and commercial center. About 1763, William's son Edward Fell laid out streets and began selling plots for homes. The waterfront village port grew quickly, and eventually incorporated with nearby Baltimore Town to the west and Jones Town to the northwest in 1773 to form a new Town of Baltimore and later beginning in 1796 and taking effect in January 1797, becoming incorporated by the State of Maryland's act of the General Assembly to become the City of Baltimore.
In 1784, the combined town's market house system was expanded from the original first Centre Market on Market Place to the north from 1767. Two additional market areas were established shortly after the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1784. Known first as the "Western Precincts Market" and renamed later as the Lexington Market on land donated by Continental Army Col. John Eager Howard. To the east borders of the town in that same year was the new "Eastern Precincts Market", also later renamed Fells Point Market or Broadway Market which was located for several blocks length between Fleet Street and Thames Street at the harborside. Later the municipal market system extended to include 12 markets spread throughout the center city by the early 20th century. All became focal point and gathering places for their neighborhoods and attracted customers from the entire city and metropolitan area. The area grew wealthy on the tobacco, flour, and coffee trades overseas through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Fell's Point shipyards became best known for producing topsail schooners, sometimes erroneously called "Baltimore clippers", renowned for their great speed and handling. They were excellent blockade runners, and were frequently used as armed privateers. The schooner "Pride of Baltimore II" is based on the "Chasseur", built by Thomas Kemp, which was one of the most successful privateers built in Fell's Point during the War of 1812.
During the War of 1812, Fells Point's yards built and supported dozens of privateers which preyed on British shipping vessels. Consequently, Baltimore became a principal target of the British during the war, which eventually led to the attack on the city and the bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814. Because of this, many people have claimed the British referred to Baltimore as a "nest of pirates," citing Hezekiah Niles' "Niles' Weekly Register", the famous nationally circulated newspaper. However, no such reference has ever been found to support that claim.
It has been an immigrant neighborhood since the 19th century, in part because it was a major point of entry into the United States, but mainly because jobs were available in Baltimore's industries and on the waterfront. In the era before mass transportation, immigrants crowded into the cheap housing near the shipbuilding yards, warehouses and factories of Fells Point. This added to the multicultural fabric of the area, but also caused the more affluent to move into other parts of the city.
In 1835, the later famous abolitionist, writer/author, public speaker/orator, agitator and minister/ambassador Frederick Douglass, while still enslaved, was hired out to a shipbuilder as a caulker on Fells Point. In his published memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass recounts that, years earlier, the first time he had been sent to Baltimore, the Fells Point neighborhood was where he taught himself to read and write, copying the letters with which the men in the shipyard labeled boards and "making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers."
Fells Point remained a shipbuilding center until the Civil War, when it could no longer handle the larger ships then coming into use. Likewise, the shipping industry slowly moved away to larger facilities, some of the newer shipyards further downriver with deeper waters close to shore on the outer Patapsco River, and the Fells Point area became a manufacturing center, with innovations in canning, along with nearby Canton to the east, which was an early commercial/industrial and residential development by the Canton Company of the O'Donnell family and Pattersons in the early 1800s. and packing. The neighborhood escaped serious damage during the Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904, which destroyed the downtown financial area further west. Eventually, much of the manufacturing left the city by the 1980s, resulting in urban decay until preservationists in the 1960s, 1970s and late 20th century organized to save the area's historic buildings and neighborhood waterfront fabric along with Federal Hill on the other western side of the newly renamed with proposed redevelopment of the Inner Harbor from a proposed East-West Highway of Interstate 95 which was to run north to south down the East Coast states, begun in the mid-1960s.
After World War II, many out-migrants from rural Appalachia settled in Fell's Point. In the 1960s, following the civil rights movement, many African Americans settled in the neighborhood.
In 1965, city, state and some federal transit planners proposed to link Interstate 83, with Interstate 70 and Interstate 95, by building an elevated highway along the north shore of the Baltimore Harbor and Port. This project would have entailed extensive demolition within Fells Point, and across the river in Federal Hill/South Baltimore and the highway would have cut off the remainder of the neighborhood from the waterfront. An "expressway revolt" against the proposals was raised by local residents and derailed the project. Another proposal had I-83 going under the harbor in an alignment that completely avoided Fells Point, but that was scrapped as well. Fells Point's addition to the National Register of Historic Places prevented the use of federal funds for the road project, and contributed to the project's cancellation. One of the leaders of the revolt was social worker Barbara Mikulski, who was later elected a City Council member and later a U.S. Representative followed by as a U.S. Senator from Maryland, one of the first women elected to that upper chamber of the United States Congress and by 2014, one of the longest serving when she retired.
Fells Point achieved some fame as the central setting for the 1990s NBC TV network police drama , and has been the site of many films shot in Baltimore.
Fells Point, located to the east of the Inner Harbor, suffered extensive flooding during Hurricane Isabel in September 2003, with water as high as 10 feet.

Architecture

Fells Point includes a diversity of historic architecture. Flemish bond brick is used in some of the earliest homes, while row housing is prominent of nineteenth and early twentieth century construction. Gabled roof buildings and Victorian homes are also interspersed with other housing and use types.
Historic buildings include:
In 2012, Fells Point was selected by the as one of the Great Places in America, which "celebrates places of exemplary character, quality, and planning".

Annual festivals

Fell's Point Fun Festival started in 1966 in response to the proposed I-95 freeway that was to run through the neighborhood. The original purpose of the festival was to raise money to help save Fell's Point and to raise awareness of the historical significance of the neighborhood and its plight. The weekend-long Fun Festival, celebrated in October, has an estimated attendance of over 700,000. The event includes entertainment, arts and crafts vendors, and cultural and culinary offerings.
Fell's Point Privateer Festival is an annual weekend-long festival in April celebrating the privateer and maritime history of Fell's Point. Activities include educational demonstrations, a pub crawl, pet costume contest, and pyrate's ball.
Halloween in Fell's Point occurs annually on October 31 celebrating Halloween. The informal gathering takes place in and around Broadway Square and Thames Street. As the evening goes on, hundreds of individuals come dressed in costume and participate in taking photos, trick-or-treating, and pub crawling.
Fell's Point Olde Tyme Christmas Festival is held during the first weekend in December and includes a traditional Christmas market, pet costume contest, and a Reindeer Run pub crawl.

Demographics

At the census of 2010, 3,168 people resided in the neighborhood, 61% white, 24.9% Hispanic, 7.4% African American, and 6.7% other. 37.0% of occupied housing units were owner-occupied, and 17.4% vacant.
83.7% of the working-age population were employed, 4.0% were unemployed, and 13.1% were not in the labor force. The median household income was US$46,167. 7.5% of families and 12.6% of the population were below the poverty line.

In popular culture

Several films and television shows have been filmed in Fells Point.