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Old trolley station near Roland Park will be restored
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The Baltimore Department of Transportation is restoring this old trolley station on University Parkway in Roland Park.
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Nestled in the broad grassy median on University Parkway, near the base of Roland Park, sits an old trolley station. It’s the sort of fixture some recognize and some don’t; some adore it as an artifact of old streetcar life, and some — certain branches of city government, for instance — didn’t even realize they own it.
At some point late this fall, a vehicle tore into part of the station (not, it seems, for the first time), and then yellow tape went up around the rubble. Then the Roland Park community’s office got a call from the city Department of Recreation and Parks asking who, precisely, owned the little building.
“He should have known it belonged to the city,” said Pat Eckenrode, the office manager. And that’s what they told the department.
The buck eventually stopped at the Department of Transportation, which will rebuild the collapsed wall by mid-January, according to Tia Waddy, a spokeswoman.
“They would restore it back to the best condition possible,” Waddy said a few days before the work began. But when asked what the department knew about the building, which looks from the street like an oversized brick gazebo, she demurred.
“We don’t know how old it is. The plates are faded,” Waddy explained. “We don’t have any historical information.”
But Paul Wirtz does. He’s 85 now and has lived much of his life in Roland Park; he recalls how heavily used and democratic the streetcar system was in his childhood, when servants and bankers alike would ride the No. 29 straight down the middle of Roland Avenue to Pratt and Calvert streets.
“I would guess it’s somewhere around 100 years old,” Wirtz said of the station house. The trolley was a top-notch amenity in those days, he said, and real estate agents would tell prospective homebuyers on University, “There’s a streetcar stop right there and, as you see, there’s a shelter for you while you wait.”
An artery into downtown punctuated with the elegant station on University, the No. 29 line was, according to Herbert Harwood, author of “Baltimore Streetcars: The Postwar Years,” responsible for Roland Park “as it is.”
kcullinan@baltimoreexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
5:43 AM MST on Sun., May. 6, 2007 re: "Official: Boys and Girls Club in Southeast may close after review"
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10:38 PM MST on Sat., May. 5, 2007
re: "Official: Boys and Girls Club in Southeast may close after review"
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Jenna taylor said:
This is terribly unfortunate. As a college student who works part-time at my local Boys & Girls Club I know how devastating this will be to some of the club's members. Many of the children see their Boys & Girls Club as a safe haven from the harsh realities they are exposed to at such a young age... being around adults who are good role-models and care about their futures is so critical to their development... with all the loaded people in D.C. someone with big bucks should step in and get the club financially back afloat.
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Examiner Reader said:
Maybe if they didn't their Executive Director a quarter of a million dollar$ a year they could afford to keep thier clubs open!
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