“Have you seen how bad the dip has gotten on Lafayette west of Park Avenue?” a friend emailed last week. “It kind of provides some de facto traffic calming.” This provoked reminiscence of the hurricane-like flooding of Bolton Hill after a sinkhole developed 47 years ago at the intersection near Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.
“Gusher at Bolton Hill” was a Baltimore Sun headline on September 20, 1985. Three days prior, at 7:50 on a Tuesday morning, a 73-year-old, 30-inch water main at the intersection of Park and Lafayette avenues ruptured, sending a torrent of water, one-to-two feet deep, down those two streets. Water, gas and electric services were disrupted for much of the neighborhood, and a 30-foot-wide crater opened up at the intersection, exposing utilities and disrupting traffic for weeks.
Suzie Thieblot, who lived at that time in the 1500 block of Park Avenue, recalls the event as “exciting times.” She was walking around Park Avenue in “high boots” when the water was flowing. Her husband, Bob, took pictures of the flooding on Park Avenue and the resulting crater at the intersection of Park and Lafayette. “Once the flooding subsided, it was fascinating to look down into the crater and see the exposed city infrastructure,” she said.
The 30-inch high-pressure iron pipe that ruptured was below a 48-inch water main that runs under Lafayette Avenue. The 48-inch main was, fortunately, unaffected. According to the Sun, firefighters built diversions out of bricks and whatever was available to shield homes from the water. Thieblot said “we didn’t get water into our basement, but BGE quickly came to all the houses to inspect gas connections.” The Sun reported that some gas lines were infiltrated with water from the water main break, and BGE was working with the neighbors to renew service.
Lee Tawney remembers the neighborhood referred to the event as “The Big Hole”. It took nearly three weeks to repair the pipes and restore the roadway. During that time, Tawney says, “It was a party atmosphere — with people gathering around ‘The Big Hole’ every evening to assess progress and mingle with neighbors. It gave us a chance to do what Bolton Hill does best, always remind ourselves that we live in a neighborhood.” Bolton Hill Nursery School students, located in Brown Memorial church at the time, took frequent field trips to watch the workers and equipment repairing the utilities and filling in the crater.
My daughter, Avendui Lacovara, was then a high school student and we lived on John Street. We were walking down Lafayette on the Sunday following the water main break and a Sun photographer asked to photograph her walking through the filled-in crater.
“My photo ended up in Evening Sun with the caption Back to normal—well, almost, and I am walking through rubble! It was definitely not back to normal,” she recalls today. But soon utilities had been repaired, and services had been restored. “It was really exciting times for the neighborhood, and we were fortunate that the city and BGE responded so quickly,” she said.
–Sallye Perrin
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