Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-07-30 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

Lucy Curbeam, who will be 85 years old in two weeks, lives between two boarded-up, rotting row houses in the 1600 block of North Washington Street, several blocks above Johns Hopkins Hospital. There are 23 row houses on her block. Fifteen are abandoned, at least officially. Curbeam is keeping count.

She has lived in her little home for 46 years now, and owns it. The place is warm, cozy and immaculate. She was married for 50 years but her husband, Ulysses, a steel worker who had asbestos poisoning, died 11 years ago. Almost everyone else has fled, but she stays here. She says she has no choice.

“Ain’t got the money to go nowhere,” she says softly, “and don’t want to be in any assisted-living place. This is where my children come to visit, and my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren.”

The house is a showplace of flowers and sentimental family photographs surrounded by decay. To her left, the original owner of the house died 43 years ago. A series of renters followed, but none in the past 12 years. Meanwhile, the building fell apart. One night the chimney collapsed into Curbeam’s house. Wind and rain came rushing in.

On both sides, she says, homeless men have moved into the empty structures and attempted to survive tough winters.

“One man froze to death in there nine years ago,” she says. “Another one, he was so cold he went to Hopkins Hospital and they had to cut his toes off.”

Some of this, she tried to explain last week to Mayor Sheila Dixon, in a community meeting at the Israel Baptist Church. The church was packed, and everybody listened as Curbeam stood at a microphone and described years of frustration in which she has talked to mayors and City Council members and housing officials and police, and “might as well talk to this wall.”

“I don’t want you talking to the wall,” Dixon said.

“And there’s a breeze coming through my house,” Curbeam said.

The next morning, she stood in her tiny back yard and pointed to the second floor of the house next door. You could see sunlight coming through the emptiness that used to be a roof. She gestured down a long narrow alley, at things broken and falling down and decaying.

“Used to be,” she said, “children played in this alley. They’d ride their bicycles up and down. Now look.”

Directly across Washington Street is a big empty building. A long time ago it was the Ritz Movie Theater. Then it became a Brown’s Super Market. It’s been empty for about a decade. Along Curbeam’s side of the street, one house after another is boarded up. One has an 18-inch-high statuette of Jesus nailed to the front boards.

But much of this neighborhood seems beyond salvation of any kind.

“All these boarded-up houses,” Curbeam said, “they don’t mean nobody lives in them. People move in sometimes. With kids, too. They stay a while, and then they move on to some other empty building. That’s happened up and down this street. You know, this used to be a good, clean block with lots of families. Now, people don’t care, I swear.”

She sat in her living room, a trim, neatly dressed woman who worked as a housekeeper for many years, and she dwelled on the cleanliness for a moment.

“I go outside and sweep the whole block,” she said. “Not just my house, the whole block. I live in the block. Live in it. I don’t put no trash in the street, but I don’t mind taking it up, because I live in it. And you see people sitting out there sometimes, dropping that trash, and not one of ’em lives here. They’re just out there for nothing.”

A floor fan blows air around her living room. An entire neighborhood has fallen down around her, and Curbeam holds on, and wonders if anyone at City Hall has any idea what her life is like, or cares.

“I live in this house,” she said. “I go to church on Sundays. I live on $1,300 a month from Social Security. When night comes, I lock my door and ask the Lord to take care of me. And I try to treat people right, and get along, and help others when I can.”

Lucy Curbeam should expect equal treatment from a city that should treasure her presence.

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com