A transformation into Perkins Square
The construction fence came down at Caroline and Pratt streets a few days ago and revealed a new, renamed Perkins Homes neighborhood. It’s now being marketed as Perkins Square and there are fresh and shiny apartment rectangles faced with light colored siding and aluminum entry doors.
Those old boxy brick 1940s public housing courts have vanished. It’s a squeaky clean new environment, sitting between Fells Point and Little Italy. Caroline Street, the main north-south thoroughfare, is emerging as a vastly different street.
What has arrived is called a mix of replacement public housing, additional affordable housing and market-rate rental housing. The differences between the three classifications are hard to visualize.
“Phase 1 has accessibility and vision/hearing-impaired units within a range of one, two, and three-bedroom apartments,” said a statement from the Baltimore Housing Authority. “Amenities and features include internet access, community kitchen, in-unit washer and dryer, on-site leasing center and supportive services office, computer lab, a fitness center, underground parking, and a playground.”
The old Caroline Street has virtually disappeared. The rough-looking lumber yards, beat up houses and commercial auto and truck repair garages are virtually gone. (There is a biker garage left but even it looks a tad upscale.)
Built in 1942, as the U.S. entered World War II, the old Perkins Homes were considered temporary — and maybe would have had a life of 40 years. Supply shortages during the war hampered construction but did not halt building of places such as Poe, Latrobe, McCulloh, Latrobe, Gilmor, Flag House, Lexington, O’Donnell Heights, Douglass and Armistead Gardens. Many of these old projects were replaced by newer structures about 15 years ago.
At the time, these housing compounds were racially segregated. Perkins Homes was constructed for white World War II defense workers and located near the harbor so they could board ferries and work in the Fairfield shipyards. The Supreme Court later struck down housing segregation and Perkins Homes were integrated.
The city’s intent is to make the rechristened Perkins Square into a place where all incomes can live. “Current and new residents will experience an economically integrated community of high-quality housing and excellent amenities woven into the community,” said the statement.
Perkins Square is being rebuilt in nine phases. Mayor Brandon Scott is expected to appear at a ceremony Saturday to mark phase one of a rebuilding effort that encompasses 244 acres.
The next section arrives in the fall and it will have 156 mixed-income rental units with 76 set aside for legacy Perkins residents. The whole project, with new parks, schools and a recreation center, will take several years to complete.
The new Perkins Square development fits into an ongoing mosaic of pieces that are transforming the old Southeast/East Baltimore as it was known 20 years ago.
If you walk southward on Caroline Street for about 10 minutes, you’ll encounter a high, new apartment tower going up at Harbor Point and just across the street, a branch of another East Baltimore favorite, Attman’s Delicatessen and its famous corned beef.
Along the way you’ll pass the in-progress remake of the old Meyer Seed Company. A new set of windows have been punched through its brick walls, showing the potential for a new use. Caroline Street has its own namesake building, the Caroline, with a “zero-proof ” beverage store called HopScotch.
And while the name Perkins Square has been chosen for this area, it should be noted that Baltimore already has a historic Perkins Square and a Victorian gazebo in West Baltimore off West Franklin Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. Perkins Square, the West Baltimore one, has enjoyed that name for about 150 years.
Time will tell which one will forever be known as Perkins Square.