In 1633 Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, had a vision of what his new colony on the Chesapeake should be. Instructions to his brother and the other leaders of the expedition carefully outlined what he expected of this grant of land to the northward of Virginia, called
they were to first make a choice of a fit place for a fort with in which or near to it a convenient house, and a church or chapel might be built;
that they should cause all the planters to build their houses in as decent and uniform a manner as their abilities and the place will afford, and near adjoining one another,
and for that purpose, to cause streets to be marked out where they intend to place the town and to oblige every man to build one by another according to that rule.
This first setlement in Maryland was to be a new city in the wilderness, not unlike the best London had to offer. Instead the colonists bought an existing town on the banks of a river now called St. Mary's from the Yoacomacoes indians. They then proceeded to make the most of what they had purchased, including planting corn and making gardens "which they sowed with English seeds of all sorts," undoubtedly contributing the first significant intrusions into the botany of the upper Bay. At first the colonists did try to finish their houses in accord with Calvert's instructions, keeping them within the bounds of their town which they also called St. Maries. They even had corn to spare from what they had purchased from the indians, some 1000 bushels of which they dispatched for sale at Boston, where they bought salt-fish and other commodities they needed from a community that thought them so rowdy and disrespectful that they were told not to return.
Hall, Narratives, pp. 21-22; 75-77; Winthrop, It would not be long however, before the lure of profits from tobacco and the ease of transportation on the Bay and its tributaries would lead them astray from the urban vision of Cecil Calvert. Within less than a generation most people would be found in the agrarian world of dispersed settlement common not only to the 9,999 square miles of Maryland but to the whole of the Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem well into the twentieth century. With dispersed settlement came a growing distrust of the urban world that manifested itself as one of the principle myths of American culture: cities are evil and to be avoided if at all possible as places fit for habitation by only the newly arrived or morally depraved.
Kenneth Jackson and Stanley Schultz briefly outline the persistence and importance of this myth in By the 1770s there were few Americans who would not agree with Oliver Goldsmith's swain who flees the isolation of the countryside to the city only
to see profusion that he must not share;
Marx,
Perhaps more than any other political figure, Thomas Jefferson symbolizes the American attachment to the agrarian myth, and the fundamental distrust of the the city upon which it is based. In 1796, defeated in a bid for the Presidency, Vice-President elect Jefferson wrote a letter to the winner, John Adams, that Jefferson's good friend Madison, thought too revealing to deliver. In it Jefferson decried the pernicious influence of the urban politician so cleverly represented by Alexander Hamilton, and indicated a preference probably shared today by most Americans to avoid the problems caused by the City by hiding in the bosom of the countryside.
Jefferson wrote:
My inclinations place me out of his [Hamilton's] reach. I leave to others the sublime delights of riding the storm better pleased with sound sleep & warm birth below, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth, than spies and sycophants.
reproduced in facsimile in Stefan Lorant,
Of course, neither Jefferson, nor we can really avoid the consequences of the urban world. His solution, in part, was to treat the political support gained from cities like Baltimore as necessary evils, and to prosecute (some said persecute) Aaron Burr, his most important urban ally, for treason. Our options are not that simple or straightforward. By 1776, when Baltimore, a town of about 6,000 people (850 slaves) in a colony of 250,000 (80,000 slaves), attempted to gain a modicum of representation in the General Assembly, the fear of its influence was so great, and the hope that it would not continue to grow so strong, that two representatives were begrudgingly granted with the proviso that if the population would decline, even that modest presence in the politics of Maryland would cease to be.
Greene & Harrington, p. 7, 127; Papenfuse, Robert Alexander, p. ; >
Yet it could be argued that the urban presence on the Bay is the only hope for the future of the Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem, that a return to the city would not only help to promote and preserve a balance within the ecosystem but that it would also forestall further deterioration and decline. Indeed, it might be posited that a return to Cecil Calvert's vision of what life should be like on the banks of the Chesapeake not only has the potential of saving the Bay, but also within the history of the urban presence on the Bay can be found clues to what might have been, what might be, and, perhaps more importantly, documentation of what has occurred already to benefit the whole of the Chesapeake Bay Ecosystem. Attempting such a new view of the past will not be easy, but eminently worthwhile. As one author has eloquently put it,
The human population explosion with its accompanying technological explosion is disrupting the orderly development of the world's biosphere in a variety of ways. At the time of writing (New Year's 1990), the greenhouse effect appears to be the paramount disruption. Predictions vary as to the magnitude of the climatic change we should expect from this cause; some climatologists forsee an increase in annual mean temperatures throughout the world of as much as five degrees Celsius in fifty years. Such a change, if it comes will be unlike anything this continent has undergone since the disappearance of Wisconsin ice. ... Although anthropocentrism is usually unscientific, it does seem safe to say that "now": is a special time, a transition period; and that we (
E. C. Pielov, As students of the past we need to look at the evidence anew and differently to see if perchance there might be material from which new lessons can be drawn and new courses for
reproduced in Kammen,
In that way we may re-connect the mystic chords of memory and reassert the most human of characteristics of The intent here is not to explore the virtues of urban sprawl. To the contrary, the objective is to investigate what is to be learned from one geographcially compact city into which, by 1920 half the population of Maryland was concentrated, to examine what an urban critic of the 1870s called "Past Follies and Present Needs," as well as the triumphs and near triumphs of urban problem solving that intentionally or unintentionally positively affected the ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay.
What then are the lessons to be learned from the largest urban presence on the Bay? How have the resources of the city been used to the advantage of the population as a whole and towards the promotion of equilibrium or balance within the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem? The answers may fall into at least three broad categories: health care, land use (including its impact on the quality of life in general), and institutional reform (educational, governmental, and social).
Perhaps the least contoversial is the contribution of Baltimore to the improvement of health care. Baltimore, like other cities, was forced to pay attention to the health problems of its inhabitants. With disease rampant its economy suffered, trade fell off, people fled in horror. Only in the concentrated populations of the cities could hospitals flourish and the practice of medicine be advanced with such speed in response to wave after wave of epidemics (small pox, yellow fever, cholera, syphilis and AIDS to name but a few). Indeed the eradication of disease (smallpox, for example) could only come from the concentration of resources and talent in large urban places such as Baltimore. Once the nature of how diseases were transmitted was better understood, then the pressures for better water quality, sewage disposal, and generally healthier living conditions could be brought to bear on such practical solutions as enforced building codes, health inspections of food and eating places, clean water supplies and effective sewage disposal. With both the water supply and sewage disposal, Baltimore's track record, while not perfect, effected a change in the surrounding use of the environment so profound as to have far more than a slight impact on the restoration of equilibrium in the ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay.
[this section will deal in some detail with the Preservation of the Gunpowder watershed and the consequences of the development of the Back River Sewage Disposal Plant]
With regard to the effective utilization of the land within the city, Baltimore has not accomplished as much as it might have given the opportunities presented to it throughout its over 200 year history. Indeed there have been major lost opportunities such as the chance for ground rents to have been a major source of public funds for public improvements instead of the major means of private development they proved to be, or the aftermath of the Baltimore Fire of 1904, which could have been a time for reshaping the urban landscape in way that reflected the best of what such planners as Olmsted Associates had to offer, but only gave the city a somewhat better sewer system.
[this section will deal with developmental leasing concept of ground rents conceived of by Thomas Harrison in Baltimore in the 1760s and the missed opportunity when the State failed to confiscate Harrison's property for the benefit of the city and with the failure to implement the Olmsted plan and its implications for the city after the fire of 1904, concluding with a section on the importance of focusing public resources on enhancing the experience of place in the city along the lines argued by Tony Hiss in In matters of institutional reform, it easy to forget that some of the best ideas for educational, governmental, and social form have emerged from the urban context. With the fortune left by Johns Hopkins, considerable academic talent was focused for a considerable length of time on solving urban problems. Even the Johns Hopkins History Seminar was required to examine the real world of mental health care and social services and offer an historical context for their improvement. Mention need only be made of Professor Adams's prize student, Woodrow Wilson, Baltimore Mayor James Preston, and Hopkins president Frank Goodnow, to sense that substantive structural change in the organization and implementation of government could emerge from an urban academic setting.
[discussion of the administrative reforms resulting from the work of Wilson, Preston, and Goodnow]
In less obvious and more subtle ways the city also provided a vehicle for major social experimentation and change both for those who came new to the Nation, as well as for those subcultures within the large society who found in the city a way to salvage their own identity and forge their own sense of community and well being. Without a prospering jewish community in Baltimore, there could not have been a "Jew Bill" permitting jews to hold public office in the state. Without a market for a Baltimore [discussion here on the City's role in broadening the base of political participation under the most adverse of conditions (rural resistance to the expanded franchise and proportional representation); effective voices of change: Newspaper editors such as Niles and Grasty who insisted on informing all who could read as well as advocating change; important role of the free blacks in Baltimore played in providing a thriving subculture context for addressing both the horrors of slavery and the benefits of freedom brought by the Civil War. ]
The City provided shelter for those elements in the population that are generally perceived of as socially inferior, perhaps even pariah, that the rest of the world wished would either remain subservient or go away altogether. The city, if not amenable to integration, at least permitted a modicum of freedom not permitted elsewhere to such a degree, that led to a reasonably strong, vibrant subculture of African Americans that at one of the peaks of the cycle of begrudging acceptance in 1870 could parade 20,000 people through the streets of Baltimore in a celebration (the largest in the nation) of the accomplishments to date. It was a celebration not without warning (row after row of houses were shuttered and their inhabitants pretended not to be at home). From the Balcony of the Gilmore House facing the Battle Monument Frederick Douglass would give one of his most eloquent extemporaneous speeches setting the tone for the struggles yet to come. He recognized the importance of the cartridge box (military service), the ballot box (voting rights), and urged that attention be turned now to obtaining the jury box and the knowledge box.
[discussion of the importance of the symbolism of the Parade, Postmaster General Creswell and Frederick Douglass's speeches of May 19, 1870.]
Today, of course, the potential for the city to be the true melting pot of the Nation, has been severely undermined by the white (and some affluent African American) flight to the suburbs. Between 1950 and 1990 the population of Baltimore City declined from an all time high of 949,728 to 736,014 (a 22.5% decline), at the same time the non-white population grew from 226,053 to 448,261 (a 98% increase). While a litany of the ills besetting the city (from the near collapse of its physical infrastructure such as the sewers and storm drains to its staggering crime rate) might give pause to the most optimistic advocate of a return to the cities, there are compelling reasons why we should try. Anyone watching the evening news of the daily bombardment of Sarajevo or the dramatic increase in the number of homeless living in the subways of Moscow should sense that steps should be taken now to prevent our world from heading down the same path. By pooling resources, pulling (and administratively pushing) people into concentrated urban areas through the use of sizable tax breaks, reasonable cost housing (in the spirit of Cecil Calvert's model) and the forced relocation of new job opportunities to a few existing cities (including Baltimore) there may be a chance that a dynamic balance within the ecosystem can be restored and we can find ways to survive until, or even through the next ice age.
The Idea of the City as a course is not meant to supply answers, it is designed to promote discussion, broach new ideas, and promote the tolerance of new ways of looking at who we are, what we are and where we are going. Indeed the ultimate purpose of the MLA program is to help us think more clearly, understand our world a little better, articulate our thoughts more persuasively both verbally and in writing, and, as a by-product, learn to make the best use of the tools at hand, including the computer, the internet, and the World Wide Web. The reward is that mark of distinction and achievement, the MLA degree from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Continuing Studies, but the satisfaction comes long before through the process itself, through the reading, the discussions, the writing, and the dynamic exchange of ideas which are the hallmarks of what it means to be a master of liberal arts.
Thank you
Conclusion