World City Guide

Culture

The performing arts have a history as long and distinguished as Baltimore itself. The American national anthem was penned in these parts and, with the patronage of the highest members of American society, culture flourished in these parts.

The central booking agency for most venues is Ticketmaster (tel: (410) 752 1200 or (800) 551 7328; website: www.ticketmaster.com). There is also Baltimore Tickets, at the Visitors Center, 451 Light Street (tel: (410) 752 8427).

The magazine Baltimore Ambassador, which lists cultural performance and events in Baltimore can often be found in hotels. There is also a monthly magazine, Baltimore Magazine, which lists events and offers dining suggestions, as well as City Search (website: www.baltimore.citysearch.com) and the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, 100 Light Street, 12th Floor (tel: (877) BALTIMORE or (877) 225846673; website: www.baltimore.org) provides up-to-date information on cultural events.

Music: The city’s main classical music venue is the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (tel: (410) 783 8000; website: www.baltimoresymphony.org). 1212 North Cathedral Street, Mount Vernon. The Music Director Designate, Yuri Temirkanov, does not limit performances only to classical music. Concerts range from Marvin Hamlisch and Linda Ronstadt to jazz inspired events and Celtic celebrations on his agenda. The Lyric Opera House, 110 West Mount Royal Avenue (tel: (410) 685 5086), is nearby and the resident Baltimore Opera Company, (tel: (410) 727 6000; website: www.baltimoreopera.com) is just starting its 52nd season. The Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1 Mount Vernon Place (tel: (410) 659 8100; website: www.peabody.jhu.edu/cons), the oldest such school in the USA, often schedules free recitals and concerts.

Theatre: Baltimore has numerous theatres spread across the Downtown area. At the Theatre Hopkins, a brick barn dating from 1804, located at Johns Hopkins University (tel: (410) 516 7159; website: www.jhu.edu/~theatre), British and Irish plays are regularly performed. Center Stage, at the State Theater of Maryland, 700 North Calvert Street (tel: (410) 332 0033; website: www.centerstage.org), produces a wide theatrical range, from Shakespeare to Beckett. The Everyman Theatre, 1727 North Charles Street (tel: (410) 752 2208; website: www.everymantheatre.org) has its own resident company, performing ‘Off-Broadway’ plays in an intimate setting. The Vagabond Players, 806 South Broadway, Fells Point (tel: (410) 563 9135; website: www.vagabondplayers.com), perform modern classics to recent Broadway successes, such as Death of a Salesman (1949) and Blood Brothers (1983). At the Morris A Mechanic Theatre, 25 Hopkins Plaza (tel: (410) 625 4230; website: www.themechanic.org), performances are non-profit making and cover drama, music and dance.

Dinner-theatres range from variety style to classic Broadway shows. Bobby B’s Palace, 2132 Turkey Point Road (tel: (410) 687 8838; website: www.aljolson.com), specialises in impersonations of great performers, such as Al Jolson. The town of Timonium is only a 15-minute drive from downtown Baltimore and the country’s largest and very highly critically acclaimed Timonium Dinner Theatre, 9603 Deereco Road (tel: (410) 560 1113), is located here. The menu at this family-owned and operated establishment always includes some interesting homemade specialities.

Dance: This is not covered by any separate company, and includes everything from classical to Broadway shows being staged at the various theatre and music venues (see above).

Film: The Senator Theatre, 5904 York Road (tel: (410) 435 8338; website: www.senator.com), was built during the golden age of Hollywood and is one of few surviving examples of a real neighbourhood movie theatre. As well plenty of ordinary cinemas showing the latest Hollywood releases, there are a couple of specialist venues for arthouse releases. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive (tel: (410) 396 7100; website: www.artbma.org), takes certain themes for its screenings, whereas the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral Street (tel: (410) 396 5430; website: www.pratt.lib.md.us), is broader in its programme range.

Because of its varied topography, Maryland has proved a popular destination for Hollywood film-makers. Two Baltimore-born directors, Barry Levinson and John Waters, have been responsible for putting their hometown on the movie map. Levinson’s Baltimore-based films, starting with Diner and later including Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990) and Liberty Heights (1999), pay tribute to life in 1960s-era Baltimore, when the director himself was growing up in the city. Waters, on the other hand, aims his attention toward the quirky side of life in Baltimore – films such as Hairspray (1988) and Serial Mom (1994) have become cult classics. Baltimore has also been the setting for many other films, including Patriot Games (1992), the Pelican Brief (1993), Twelve Monkeys (1995), the Blair Witch Project (1999) and the 2004 smash hit, Ladder 49.

Literary Notes: Strongly associated with Baltimore and standing on either side of the fence are two literary giants – writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and H L Mencken (1880-1956), critic par excellence. Poe’s house, 203 Amity Street, is now a museum. His grave is at the Westminster Cemetery, on the corner of Fayette Street and Greene Street. Mencken, who became most famous for his biting, perspicacious and profound work as a literary critic, lived at 1524 Hollins Street, Union Square. His major work, The American Language (1921), had a huge influence on American writing in the 1920s.

Francis Scott Key (1799-1843) became famous for his poem, ‘The Defence of Fort McHenry,’ penned while watching the American flag flying during the unsuccessful British siege of Baltimore. In 1931, it was adopted as the US national anthem, ‘The Star Spangled Banner’.

Much of the town’s literary past centres on the Mount Vernon district, which also hosts the annual Book Festival in September. Meanwhile, F Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was treated for mental illness at the Johns Hopkins University. Fitzgerald (1896-1940) finished Tender is the Night (1934) while living in the area. Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), creator of the ‘hard-boiled’ private detective Sam Spade, was born in nearby St Mary’s County. His novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930), was made into the classic 1941 film of the same name, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart as the detective.

Other writers have an acquaintanceship with the city. John Pendleton Kennedy, credited with inventing the idea of the genteel South, lived at 12 Madison Street. He was a best-selling novelist in the 1820s. The master of silly poems and snappy aphorisms, Ogden Nash, moved from Rye, New York to Rugby Road in Baltimore. He lived in Cross Keys, when he died in 1971. Pulitzer Prize-winner Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), was born in Baltimore, while Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) studied at Johns Hopkins University. Russell Baker, a New York Times Baltimore columnist, based his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1995) on his boyhood, and author Anne Tyler features modern-day Baltimore in her novel The Accidental Tourist (1985).