Maryland Daily PhotoEvery Week Day a New Picture from MD

Lexington market has been around in one form or another since 1782.  This much you can gather from the sign on the door.  In 1782 it was an open air market and it wasn’t until the 19th century that the vendors of Lexington Market would find themselves under one roof.  The building you see today was built after a fire burned the market down in the 50’s.  The giant building, which extends over a city block, may not see the same volume of customers as it did many years ago when, for most of the neighborhood and much of the city, it was a primary source of meals and of groceries.  However, it still remains a popular place to buy foods of a common and of a unique nature.

In fact the neighborhood surrounding the market is next in line for a facelift.  While much of it is owned and used by the University of Maryland Medical school and various other medical organizations, much of the neighborhood’s retail economy was shut down decades ago.  It’s difficult to say what the result of new building in the area will be, but the odds are that Lexington Market will still be there at the end of it.

If you guessed that yesterday’s picture was the exterior of the Charles Theater, you were correct.  Once a streetcar engine shop, it was converted to a theater in the ’30’s.  The original complex also included a bowling alley and dance hall which are long gone.  With the struggles of the Senator, the Charles is now solidly Baltimore’s premiere independent movie house and is one of the few places left to experience movies as they were shown almost a century ago.

A housekeeping note from MDP:  You may have noticed the non-stop flow of spam to the site.  How couldn’t you.  To keep spam at a minimum, we’re limiting comment posts so that only those people who have previously commented on the site will be able to see their comments right away.  Unfortunately, that means that if you haven’t written a comment before, it will go into a queue to be moderated.  I will do my best to look through the queue and sort out the meaningful comments from the spam.  This will hopefully be only a temporary measure.  As always, I hope you know how much your visits to the site are appreciated and how much your comments have been appreciated as well.

This building, formerly an engine shop for the Baltimore City Passenger Railway streetcar company now serves another use as one of the city’s most beloved attracti0ns.     I can’t show the whole building right now or you’d know the answer before it is posted tomorrow.

Here’s the counterpart to last Friday’s shot of the Legg Mason Building.  From the same corner with an angle to the right, you can see this building: The current Bank of America Building.  I’ve previously talked about this building, but I feel that it’s one of those significant parts of the landscape that deserve a second post.

Here’s a shot looking 180 degrees from the picture of the clipper mill sign last week. What you find is the former London Fog headquarters and the Woodberry light rail station.   Like it’s neighbors this building has been converted into mixed use space.  The M on the lower for Meadow Mill (the building/complex’s new name) took the place of the L for London Fog.

Just a block or so away from yesterday’s post is this set of antennas.  In fact this area is referred to as “TV Hill”  because all but one of the major networks in town has an outpost here at this highpoint.   Newscasters in town will frequently refer to TV Hill, saying, “the weather here on TV Hill is ____,”  or “I’m reporting from outside the studio here on TV hill.”   There’s also a very visible sign on the hill that is visible from I-83 with the call letters for WBAL  Of course, the antennas which are visible for miles around would also be a good clue as to what goes on around this hill.

This is the observation car from the Capitol limited, one of the more popular trains of the B&O railroad, which ran on the line from DC to Chicago.  

I thought this was a neat post since, throughout the last two years, we’ve taken pictures of many of the stations along the MD portion of this line, and in fact yesterday’s picture of the bridge to Harper’s ferry would be the last place this train would pass in MD.     Here are some of the other places along the line that we’ve stopped:

Silver Spring (where it first enters MD)

Kensignton (next stop down the line)

Dickerson (mid-way)

Harper’s Ferry Tunnel

Though, largely just a namesake, Amtrak still operates a train called the Capitol Limited between DC and Chicago.

Here’s a final Christmas shot from Hampden:  a sleigh of crabs made from recycled metal parts and tools. 

Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday.  I’m assuming that a sleigh of crabs didn’t pass over your house sprinking old bay through your chimney, but if it did, I hope you took a picture.  

I’m preparing to go to work this morning, which officially marks the end of the season.   

Switching gears today (becasue it is a snow man made of bike wheel with gears) we’ve got another scene from Hampden.