Ding dong, the spider lights are gone.
Anyone who may have visited Baltimore’s North Avenue in the halcyon days between 1910 and 1960 would have sent you a postcard from one of the three small but fashionable hotels there. They’d have told you about the three or four first class movie houses, the “Sports Arena” (read: ice skating rink with fake icicles on the façade), the big dance hall, and the several chic restaurants and watering holes. In town for a weekend, they might have mentioned a trip down to Fort McHenry or Druid Hill Park, but they’d have found plenty to do right at North and Charles. They might have mentioned an afternoon of ice-skating (in July, even) followed by tea in the Parkway Theatre’s mezzanine tearoom. If they weren’t tempted by the movie at the Parkway—one of the city’s most sumptuous theatres—they might have caught a picture at the Aurora. Dinner might follow at Hasslinger’s, known later on as the Chesapeake, famous for its fork-tender steaks stuffed with oysters. And what better way to work off dinner than an evening of cocktails and dancing at the Chateau Hotel’s roof garden? (Personally, I’m dying for the Chateau to make a comeback, primarily so that I can bomb passing friends with dinner rolls from four stories up.) Here it was that Noxzema was born, in Dr. Bunting’s drugstore in the Chateau; and here at the corner of Charles was the city’s first honest-to-goodness streetlight, planted sometime in the early ‘20s.
North Avenue’s days were numbered by 1960, though. It wasn’t far enough downtown to—well, to be downtown, and it wasn’t far enough out to be part of the suburban fashion. The gorgeous old residential areas around it were no longer the height of fashion.
Still, the street once called “Baltimore’s Gay White Way” held on for a few years; my parents marched me down to the Parkway, then renamed the Five West (for its street address—never mind what’s carved in stone on the building) to see a few movies that I’ve long forgotten. The North Avenue Market plugged along until a disastrous fire forced its closing in the early ‘70s, and a few of the old businesses tried valiantly. Goldbloom’s clothiers stuck around until all of the partners died, and Ken-Ray Business Machines is still there today. The North Inn bar is still around, if not particularly fashionable now.
There was one aspect of North Avenue that I alone liked, it would seem, in all the city. In the late ‘70s the city government realized belatedly that North Avenue had gone south, and tried ineffectually to stem the tide that had already withdrawn. Plans for grand arches and plazas were made, but the only result was a four-block stretch of particularly goofy light fixtures.
These were the Spider Lights. They looked like thirty foot tall tarantulas on sticks with glowing globes on the end of their legs. They were supremely silly, but to me, all the more endearing for their oddity. And, when they worked properly, with all of their garish globes shining bright, they brought a bit of the lost gaiety and effervescence back to the grand old avenue. No one could have ever mistaken them for objects of beauty, but they had a whimsy to them, a “so hideous that they’re cool” quality invisible to those who can see only artistic purity and practical functionality.
And now they’re gone. Good taste—which inexplicably allows the eyesore of the Morgan Millworking building and the freakish Victorian hulk of the Hotel Waldorf to stand—has eschewed the Spider Lights, and they’re as surely gone as the matinee shows at the Aurora. I think that it’s a sign of North Avenue’s comeback. The blocks of Charles just below North are THE place to be now, with a movie house, a live theatre and three fashionable restaurant/bars. And I think it’s starting to spill over onto North again.
It should go without saying that I eagerly await the day that I can again see a movie at the Parkway, dance and throw things at the Chateau roof-garden, and dress up for drinks at the North Inn. I will not miss the sadness that pervaded the forgotten North Avenue of 1982. I will miss very much, however, the silly hopeful glow that the Spider Lights cast over an otherwise grim period for midtown’s Gay White Way.
Anyone who may have visited Baltimore’s North Avenue in the halcyon days between 1910 and 1960 would have sent you a postcard from one of the three small but fashionable hotels there. They’d have told you about the three or four first class movie houses, the “Sports Arena” (read: ice skating rink with fake icicles on the façade), the big dance hall, and the several chic restaurants and watering holes. In town for a weekend, they might have mentioned a trip down to Fort McHenry or Druid Hill Park, but they’d have found plenty to do right at North and Charles. They might have mentioned an afternoon of ice-skating (in July, even) followed by tea in the Parkway Theatre’s mezzanine tearoom. If they weren’t tempted by the movie at the Parkway—one of the city’s most sumptuous theatres—they might have caught a picture at the Aurora. Dinner might follow at Hasslinger’s, known later on as the Chesapeake, famous for its fork-tender steaks stuffed with oysters. And what better way to work off dinner than an evening of cocktails and dancing at the Chateau Hotel’s roof garden? (Personally, I’m dying for the Chateau to make a comeback, primarily so that I can bomb passing friends with dinner rolls from four stories up.) Here it was that Noxzema was born, in Dr. Bunting’s drugstore in the Chateau; and here at the corner of Charles was the city’s first honest-to-goodness streetlight, planted sometime in the early ‘20s.
North Avenue’s days were numbered by 1960, though. It wasn’t far enough downtown to—well, to be downtown, and it wasn’t far enough out to be part of the suburban fashion. The gorgeous old residential areas around it were no longer the height of fashion.
Still, the street once called “Baltimore’s Gay White Way” held on for a few years; my parents marched me down to the Parkway, then renamed the Five West (for its street address—never mind what’s carved in stone on the building) to see a few movies that I’ve long forgotten. The North Avenue Market plugged along until a disastrous fire forced its closing in the early ‘70s, and a few of the old businesses tried valiantly. Goldbloom’s clothiers stuck around until all of the partners died, and Ken-Ray Business Machines is still there today. The North Inn bar is still around, if not particularly fashionable now.
There was one aspect of North Avenue that I alone liked, it would seem, in all the city. In the late ‘70s the city government realized belatedly that North Avenue had gone south, and tried ineffectually to stem the tide that had already withdrawn. Plans for grand arches and plazas were made, but the only result was a four-block stretch of particularly goofy light fixtures.
These were the Spider Lights. They looked like thirty foot tall tarantulas on sticks with glowing globes on the end of their legs. They were supremely silly, but to me, all the more endearing for their oddity. And, when they worked properly, with all of their garish globes shining bright, they brought a bit of the lost gaiety and effervescence back to the grand old avenue. No one could have ever mistaken them for objects of beauty, but they had a whimsy to them, a “so hideous that they’re cool” quality invisible to those who can see only artistic purity and practical functionality.
And now they’re gone. Good taste—which inexplicably allows the eyesore of the Morgan Millworking building and the freakish Victorian hulk of the Hotel Waldorf to stand—has eschewed the Spider Lights, and they’re as surely gone as the matinee shows at the Aurora. I think that it’s a sign of North Avenue’s comeback. The blocks of Charles just below North are THE place to be now, with a movie house, a live theatre and three fashionable restaurant/bars. And I think it’s starting to spill over onto North again.
It should go without saying that I eagerly await the day that I can again see a movie at the Parkway, dance and throw things at the Chateau roof-garden, and dress up for drinks at the North Inn. I will not miss the sadness that pervaded the forgotten North Avenue of 1982. I will miss very much, however, the silly hopeful glow that the Spider Lights cast over an otherwise grim period for midtown’s Gay White Way.
posted by Daniel | 12:19 AM
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