The Waverly Main Street mission is to expand growth of the Waverly commercial district through revitalization and economic development, commercial building and streetscape improvements, promotions and entreprenuerial development. We partner with district businesses, local residents, non-profits, and other nearby interests to solidify and further enhance the diversity and historic character of Waverly.
Waverly Main Street (WMS) is a Baltimore Main Street supported by Baltimore Development Corporation. It covers Greenmount Avenue between 28th and 36th Streets and cross streets between Barclay and Old York in the Abell, Better Waverly, Oakenshawe and Waverly neighborhoods. WMS works through four committees: organization, business development, promotions and design.
WMS President Bonnie Bessor: 410.916.1062
bbessor@gmail.com Waverly Merchants Association meets 6pm on the 3rd Monday of the month at Darker Than Blue Cafe where it sponsors "Listening to the Vendor Voice".
Current officers are Casey Jenkins (President), Denise Washington (Vice President), Ricky Herman (Treasurer) and Ben Blackwell IV (Secretary).
Waverly Merchants Association: 410-419-9135
cjen140333@yahoo.comdaddycool4@msn.com gwdw3501@yahoo.com rrherma@msn.com
Waverly Main Street HISTORY
Long before Captain John Smith sailed up Chesapeake Bay into Patapsco River and European settlers found their way to what we consider Waverly Main Street,
Piscataway and Susquehannock tribes beat down a foot path that served as a trade route we call York Road and Greenmount Avenue.
As Baltimore developed into a world port, this became a "rolling road" along a wooded highpoint, Britain's Ridge, draining into Jones Falls and Herring Run Valleys along which settlers rolled barrels of tobacco to shore for shipping.
In 1688 England's Lord Baltimore granted Huntington and Merrymans estates in this colonial territory. In 1736 Thomas Gorsuch built a house here calling it Homestead.
In 1741 York Road was laid out as Baltimore's main overland connection to the north and was used to deliver Pennsylvania farm goods to Belair Market in Old Town.
Stage coaches traveled the road moving people, tobacco, livestock, food products and bringing hay, straw and cattle feed to market. A toll house at the current intersection of Greenmount Avenue and Vineyard Lane charged users of the road and served as a hub of commerce and communications. York Road Turnpike was linked to Falls Road Turnpike on the south at Vineyard Lane and on the north at Merrymans Lane, most of which we now call University Parkway except for a block behind the present day Waverly Farmers Market.
The York Road also connected with Baltimore & Harford Turnpike at Quaker Lane, now Loch Raven Road. Near 30th Street was the Quaker Lot where Friends coming to meet in town boarded and fed their horses. This area was also called Friendship because it was a Quaker settlement.
By the 1830's a hamlet featured Jacob Aull's shoemaker shop, a corn husk depot, a blacksmith and three stone houses. The closest place for York Road travelers to stay overnight was up at Cold Spring Hotel in Govanstown.
In 1836 on Waverly Avenue (31st Street at Barclay) Baptists congregated in a sabboth school for convalescent soldiers moved up from Fort McHenry to higher ground to escape the threat of malaria. In 1846 Baptists built a chapel where stands today Huntington Baptist Church a block west of what became Waverly Town Hall.
In 1843 St John's, Huntington held its first service in stone barracks used during the American Revolutionary Wars. A church was constructed in 1846; a new one was built to replace the first one lost to fire in 1858. This site at Greenmount and Old York remains St. John's in the Village today. It was where Lizette Woodsworth Reese prayed, taught school and is buried, but not before making this area famous with her acclaimed poetry and two novels, A Victorian Village and The York Road. Bells were installed in 1910 and have been ringing ever since. They were made by the McShane Foundry in Baltimore. It is a chime of eleven bronze bells. They have called the village to prayer, celebrations, weddings, funerals, state occasions, and victory for 100 years.
A Methodist church was located on the York Road at the site of the current Goodwill.
After their move to the 33rd Street Boulevard their Greenmount Avenue space had a miniature golf course on the second floor. Catholics built St. Bernard’s on Gorsuch.
Reese described beloved pasture and woodland in her writing. This is what attracted wealthy merchants escaping the heat and stench of the port during the summers in their Guilford, Huntington, Brady, Tinges and Patterson estates. By the 1880's estate life required and supported a village.
Sidewalks were constructed of wood and streets were paved with oyster shells.
In 1886 heirs of the Gorsuch estate subdivided and developed their land into small cottages and country residences featuring Victorian architecture. Street names were added and changed. Jefferson Street became Homestead. Madison became Montpelier. Brady became 30th. Waverly became 31st.
Huff and Bateman's general stores and Livingston's drug store were the heart of a business district. Horse drawn double-decker cars moved on a rail line in the center of York Road. Huff had a free feed trough in front of his store to attract travelers. Business was conducted at a Town Hall where the Order of the Golden Eagle also held social events. When the area was annexed by the city in 1888, Henry Tyson, President of York Road and City Passenger Railway, selected the name Waverly for the new post office because Huntington was already taken.
At the Brady site - now 29th and Greenmount - baseball came to town in 1889.
Oriole Parks were built and rebuilt. The last was a wooden stadium serving Baltimore fans from 1914 until 1944, when it was destroyed in a great 4th of July Weekend fire. The field was left vacant as a playground except for some commercial warehouses.
In 1959 Barclay School #54 was built on part of the field.
The tollgate was removed in 1894. Electric cars replaced horse drawn ones in 1893; cars were stored in a barn at Greenmount & 34th until it burned in a fire.
By the turn of the century, public transportation and development brought the country closer and closer to the city. More and more folks were commuting into town and Waverly was becoming known as both a suburb and thriving community.
York Road Turnpike had by then been straightened out into Old and New York Roads.
The 20th century brought gasoline stations, bowling alleys, bars and taverns, markets and supermarkets, drugstores, clothing stores, candy stores, five and dimes, tailors, shoe shops, tobacco stores, newsstands, restaurants, and, of course, automobiles, to Waverly Main Street. The Boulevard joined the Waverly as our second motion picture theatre.
By 1919 there was a tree-lined boulevard called 33rd Street which would come to be synonymous with sports legends from the Colts and Orioles. Hundreds of thousands of fans passed through our commercial corridor to attend games at Venable, Municipal, and then Memorial Stadium.
While baseball and football fans now head to the harbor for games and folks mostly drive to suburban shopping malls to see a film, we still have our very own Waverly Fire House #31 and its over 100 years old. We have our own Waverly Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. We have the only open air farmers market which is open every Saturday in the year! The 32nd Street Market a/k/a Waverly Farmers Market keeps alive a sense of community and village that attracts hundreds of patrons from near and far every weekend. We have Pete's Grill open for breakfast on Greenmount Avenue where once before the Great Depression was a bank. Waverly Grill was also a bank. Goodwill was a Methodist Church. Old Waverly Post Office on Homestead is a hardware store. The newsstand on the corner of 32nd & Greenmount now sells hip urban wear and memorable tee-shirts instead of The Baltimore Sun or News-American.
Gone may be Green Door, Northside, Donohoe's and Schuman's Taverns, Dutchman's Cafe, Louis Rabai's Bakery, Martha Washington, Virginia Dare, Kettle Kraft, Adler's, Woolworth's, Brandau's, White Coffee Pot, Burriss & Kemp, the soda fountain at Schwaab's, Parisian Tailoring Shop, Bread & Roses Coffee House, Thirty First Street Women's & Gay Bookstore, Sam's Belly Food Coop, Uncle Lee's, Sunny Surplus, The Porthole. But look at what has adopted and morphed into their former spaces!
Bigotry, crime, depressions, diseases, drug addiction, fires, plagues, prohibition, wars and zealotry have taken their toll as have the loss of trees, the pouring of more and more concrete and the increasing pollution of our air; but stroll along Waverly Main Street and take in its hundreds of years of continuously evolving, surviving village life!
