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RICHMOND
BALTIMORE 295
only imposing buildings to lend an air of cosmopolitan sophistication
to Baltimore. By the middle of the last century the little town created
by the Maryland assembly in 1729 had become a true city with a popu-
lation just under 170,000. Charles Street possessed an atmosphere of
domestic refinement and quiet elegance unsurpassed in any city in the
country. The city's busy dock, commercial, and industrial areas throbbed
with activity.42
It is a tragedy that the concept of great residential squares, like that of
Mount Vernon Place, was not to be duplicated significantly in the period
of rapid expansion in the nineteenth century as the railroad lines were
developed and the era of economic prosperity continued well into the
present time. The special commission appointed in 1817 to prepare a plan
for the city's growth adopted an almost undeviating gridiron scheme that
was to govern future development for some seventy years.
Figure 205 shows the plan approved by the special commissioners in
1818 as drawn by Thomas H. Poppleton, their surveyor, in 1823. The
gridiron pattern imposed on the undeveloped land surrounding the built-up
core was a mechanical extension of the module selected for the original
plat in 1730. Virtually the only deviations allowed to intrude were the
major highways radiating outward from the city which had been so im-
portant in the early years of its development in providing accessibility
between the port and its hinterland. In that plan there was little recognition
of the need to provide squares, open spaces, or other civic embellishments
to afford welcome relief from the relentless grid. The need for recreation
space in the growing city, as well as for focal points for architectural interest,
was ignored. The desire to capture the maximum economic return on urban
land, which was to characterize much of the growth of American cities in
the great period of national expansion, proved a stronger force than any
wishes to promote civic beauty through public action.
Figure 206 shows the city as viewed from the south shortly before the
Civil War. Its expansion beyond the already built-up area that appears in
this view was to be guided by the plan of 1818 for many years. Today
much of the original town as laid out in 1730 is undergoing urban re-
development. The Charles Center project represents a modern attempt to
create a new image for Baltimore's core, and other planning projects
have altered the pattern of the expanded street system developed over the
centuries. These efforts have come too late to save many of the handsome
town houses that once lined the streets leading up the hills from the harbor.
Many of the survivors have been converted to other uses, not always in
harmony with the original architectural form of the buildings. Mount
Vernon Place, however, has retained much of its fine urban character,
though there, too, unnecessarily tall buildings have threatened to over-
shadow the Washington Monument. Even with these intrusions, however,
this splendid civic open space stands as a reminder that not all worthwhile
urban planning projects date from the present century and as a testimony
to the wisdom of those few persons who saw that an economically vibrant
city could be beautiful in appearance as well as efficient in function.
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