Volume 53 • Number 4
BHCA’s Annual membership meeting will take place on Tuesday, May 6 at 7 p.m. with the election of new officers and board members. Although open to all, only members who have paid their 2025 dues are eligible to vote. The event will be catered by Mera Kitchen with desserts and drinks.
Voters in Bolton Hill and three other neighborhoods making up Midtown, the special tax district, have voted by more than a two-to-one margin to keep the community service district operating. While the final vote is expected to be released and certified by the city comptroller’s office on April 18, Midtown officials shared unofficial results.
Bolton Hill’s Gary Anderson earned a place in the pantheon of graphic design when as a young man he won a contest to design a symbol that could be printed onto paper to signify that it was made of recycled paper. That symbol, with three arrows rotating in a circle, is now universally recognized as the recycling symbol, and can be found on paper products, trash receptacles, and merchandise across the globe.
On Wed., April 23 from 6 to 7:30 p.m., enjoy an evening with Scott Shane, recently a reporter for the New York Times. We’ll meet in the Community Room at Linden Park Apartments, 301 McMechen St. Shane will be discussing the life and times of Thomas Smallwood, a freed slave from Maryland and shoemaker who lived in DC.
It is impossible to view Isabel Pardo’s work without becoming intrigued by its imagery. Working primarily with gouache on paper, Pardo’s work overwhelmingly references mythology, history, and religious iconography. With fluid lines and clear colors, Pardo paintings include images of coiled snakes, overflowing fruit bowls, vines with thorns, hands gesturing, and, in an homage to St. Lucy, eyes on a plate.
Al Holsopple was on a bus to Annapolis in 2018 to participate in a Maryland General Assembly program when he met and chatted up another passenger, a retired Maryland state prison chaplain. That encounter, and many months of planning, fundraising and recruiting, has led to the creation of Lifting Labels, a non-profit jobs project for formerly incarcerated men and women here in Baltimore.
The Bolton Hill Garden Club this month approved a record $11,300 in greening grants to create or improve publicly accessible green spaces and beautify the Bolton Hill community. This year the club opened eligibility to the Madison Park and Marble Hill neighborhoods. Eleven projects—a record number— will be funded throughout the area, including one in Madison Park.
Tucked quietly into Bolton Hill at Mosher and Mason streets is a space that holds deep meaning for many—Ana Maria’s Memorial Garden. Originally developed under the leadership of longtime resident Marcia Ribeiro, the garden was created in memory of her mother, Ana Maria Couto, who passed away too soon in 2016 from cancer. Ana Maria was a frequent visitor to Bolton Hill and grew to love its charming streets, pocket parks and the warmth of its residents.
Spring has arrived at Fitzgerald Park at Bolton and Wilson streets. Grass is growing, flowers are blooming, dog walkers congregate with mothers with strollers. Few remember when, before the park was developed in the 1970s to honor F. Scott Fitzgerald, there was a thriving Jewish synagogue, and more recently a Baptist church visited by Dr. Martin Luther King, at that site.
They appeared mysteriously just a few days ago: two large so-far empty flower pots on the curb near the intersection of Laurens Street and Park Avenue, where traffic from the I-83 exit ramp and North Avenue has been a long-running danger and irritation to residents there.
