The Gritty History (and Gentrification) of Fells Point

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR IN 1812, a disconcerting letter from Capt. Richard Moon to the Secretary of the Navy was reprinted in The Weekly Register, a Baltimore-based magazine among the most widely read of its era.

Referring to himself as the “[former] commander of the privateer Sarah Ann,” Moon reported his Baltimore-commissioned schooner had been captured. Worse, Moon wrote, the British claimed six members of his crew were, in fact, treasonous subjects of the king and “are to be tried for their lives.” Among those imprisoned was George Roberts, described as “a coloured man and seaman” and someone Moon knew to be born in the U.S., married, and living in Baltimore. Only following further correspondence between diplomats did the seamen escape execution.

After his release from a Jamaican prison, Roberts continued to fight the British on the high seas, signing on as a gunner aboard the Chasseur. Newly constructed in the shipyard of Thomas Kemp at the corner of Washington and Aliceanna in Fells Point, the topsail schooner quickly became the best-known of the swift Baltimore clippers. In 1813, the Chasseur raided six British vessels, sending all but one up in flames when they were finished. The following year, its crew, including Roberts, divested another dozen and a half British merchant ships of their cargo, the spoils shared among its captain, seamen, and shipowner. (During war, the difference between pirates and privateers depended upon one’s perspective. Governments in need of naval help sanctioned the often lucrative, if risky, seizure of its opponent’s vessels by normally illegal means.)

The Chasseur, from which the popular Southeast Baltimore bar takes its name, also became famous for boldly proclaiming a single-handed blockade of the British Isles. In total, the Fells Point docks were home to 58 such privateering vessels, credited with the capture of more than 500 ships. The attempted British invasion of the Baltimore harbor in the fall of 1814 (think “Star-Spangled Banner”) was in good measure to rid the “nest of pirates” from Fells Point.

When the Chasseur returned and saluted Fort McHenry after the war’s end, its crew were hailed as heroes. The already legendary schooner was dubbed the “Pride of Baltimore.” Its ship’s captain, the renowned Thomas Boyle, who had lost men in battle and had been wounded himself, praised Roberts for displaying “the most intrepid courage.” Readjusting to civilian life as a free Black carpenter and laborer, the ex-privateer purchased a home for $150 on Ann Street in Fells Point. Such was Roberts’ reputation, that over the ensuing decades, despite the horrific racism of the era, he marched in uniform alongside the city’s prominent citizens on civic occasions. His 1861 obituaries—he lived to 95—recalled his patriotism, “many hair-breath escapes,” and desire to always be remembered as “one of the defenders of his native city should the necessity have arrived [again] to take up arms in its defense.” His “brave character,” it was noted, was “adorned with amicable [and charitable] disposition,” such that “news of death will cause heartfelt sorrow.”

Battle between the Chasseur, a Fells Point privateer, and British schooner St. Lawrence off Havanna, 1815. —Adam Weingartner, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Roberts’ service was not unique, however. It’s estimated 20 percent of the War of 1812 privateers were African American. Other Black Americans, free and enslaved, worked in Fells Point’s busy shipyards, building the vessels that undid the British navy and merchant fleet. (In a terrible irony, they were also forced to caulk ships used in the foreign and domestic slave trade.)

Free Black seaman and a hero of the War of 1812, George Roberts —Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, PVF

It’s no coincidence the Caulkers Association, one of the first Black trade unions in the U.S., was formed in Fells Point or that a Black former ship’s caulker named Isaac Myers founded the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company in Fells Point, a cooperative that employed 300 workers at its peak. Nor is it a coincidence that Frederick Douglass learned to read and write in Fells Point and escaped slavery posing as a free Black sailor. The same month that Douglass escaped from Fells Point, 133 people of African descent were shipped from Baltimore to New Orleans for enslavement on Louisiana plantations.

Some 250 years ago this month, on the cusp of the American Revolution, Baltimore City annexed both nearby Jonestown and Fells Point, taking its early shape. But from its clipper ships and compelling Black history to its yellow fever outbreaks and child labor horrors; from its boarding houses, brothels, and bars to its inflow of Polish immigrants and landmark “Stop the Road” battle; from its rebirth in the 1970s to its ongoing gentrification—the iconic waterfront neighborhood with its “Belgian block” cobblestone streets has a gritty, colorful, complicated story all its own.

And let’s not forget the tales of sailors getting shanghaied from Fells Point pubs; or the tattooed, hard-drinking, blacksmith and ward boss George Konig Sr., whose election-day street fights with the Know-Nothings in the 1850s were straight out of The Gangs of New York; and a certain bar where Edgar Allan Poe is said to have had his last bender. Its narrow lanes and alleyway are filled with secrets and stories.

he hamlet that sprouted on the small, hook-shaped peninsula on the northwest branch of the Patapsco River was on land purchased by Quaker William Fell, who followed his brother Edward here from Lancashire, England. It’s a bit confusing because all the male Fells seem to be named either William or Edward, but it was William’s son Edward, a colonel in Maryland’s provincial army, who first laid out the budding town’s streets in 1763. The Fell family cemetery, awkwardly squeezed today between rowhouses on Shakespeare Street, contains the remains of William Fell, his son, Edward Fell, and his son, William. (There was no Admiral Fell. The Admiral Fell Inn, it's been said, takes its name from an episode about a drunk admiral, not named Fell, stumbling into the harbor—“the admiral fell in.” Management at the inn has changed hands since it opened in 1985 and says the name is merely a play on words, but it’s too good of a story not to repeat.)

Early Fells Point developer, Ann Bond Fell. —Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, 1986.105.4

Edward Fell advertised his plan to sell plots of his land near “Baltimore-Town, Maryland on a Point known by the Name of Fell’s-Point” a year earlier in the old Maryland Gazette. Grammarians will note the apostrophe after the family name, which has dropped out of general use, but not without heated debate over the years. More importantly, it was not Col. Edward Fell who ultimately developed the wooded, 100-acre lot he inherited on the water and the surrounding 3,000 acres he consolidated. He died at 33. Rather, it was his first cousin and wife, Ann Bond—once described as “the Jim Rouse of her day”—who sold the plots.

Wealthy in her own right, Ann Bond Fell proved a shrewd businesswoman. She vigorously promoted Fells Point, which was competing with Baltimore Town for investment. She fended off gossipy attacks in the local broadsides and rumors of unhealthy water in Fells Point. She also struck up forward-thinking contracts, which stipulated that purchased property would revert to her if not developed within two years. (The City of Baltimore might take a cue from Ms. Fell in its dealings with developers and slumlords.) She later remarried a well-to-do county landowner, but not before she made him sign a prenuptial agreement, ensuring her holdings would be passed down to her children.

18th-century Fells Point street map. —Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point.

If it isn’t obvious yet, the neighborhood street names—Ann, Bond, Fells, as well as Lancaster, Thames, Shakespeare, Aliceanna, Caroline, Bank, Gough, Wolfe, and Washington— date to this 1700s period, marking “The Point” as one of the oldest active waterfront communities in the country. Fleet Street, it’s believed, pays homage to Capt. Henry Fleet, a British Chesapeake Bay explorer. Other names have changed. Wilk Street, now Eastern Avenue, was known as “the Causeway”—a notorious stretch of “houses of ill-fame” frequented by sailors. Market Street became Broadway, which since 1786 has been home to one of the city’s oldest public markets.

The names of Fells Point’s lively alley streets have changed, too. Though not necessarily for the better. Strawberry Alley, home to the Methodist church attended by Frederick Douglass as a young man, became Dallas Street. (Douglass later returned and built five rowhouses on the street, including one available on Airbnb, that remain to this day.) Happy Alley became Durham Street, which today is full of murals and mosaics celebrating the girlhood home there of Billie Holiday. The alliterative Argyle and Apple Alleys were renamed Regester and Bethel Streets.

The rebranding of the “alleys” to “streets” after the Civil War might be considered the first attempt at gentrification in Fells Point.

The leveling of two majority-Black alley streets—sections of Dallas and Spring, part of a “slum clearance” effort on the edge of Upper Fells in the late 1930s—might be the second. They were demolished to make room for white immigrant families—in what became the Perkins Homes housing project. Recently, the majority Black residents of Perkins Homes have been moved out and the low-rise Perkins buildings have been knocked down in favor of a new mixed-use development, which is supposed to include a percentage of housing that is affordable for its former tenants.

Pay day for the stevedores, c. 1905. —Library of Congress

emarkably, the streets of Fells Point, like many in the earliest years of the city, were not formally segregated during its so-called “golden era,” which peaked with the War of 1812 and lasted until the Civil War. (Baltimore’s infamous housing segregation law, which stated that no Black resident could move onto a block in which the majority of the residents were white and vice versa, came in 1910.) All seven of the residential alleys in Fells Point had white and Black households, as Mary Ellen Hayward, author of Baltimore’s Alley Houses, discovered when she examined the city’s first directory to note “householders of color” in 1808. Eight of the larger streets, too, were at least somewhat integrated with Black caulkers, laborers, laundresses, blacksmiths, barbers, and their children—a trend Hayward traces through subsequent directories. When Douglass, known as Frederick Bailey as a boy, lived in Fells Point with the slave-owning Auld family, “a [nearby] German baker had a shop on the southwest corner of Aliceanna and Happy Alley,” Hayward writes, “but there was also a ‘colored grocery’ on the same block.”

Two of the oldest wooden homes standing in Fells Point, at 612 and 614 Wolfe Street, became homes to Black caulkers in the 1840s and 1850s. All during these decades, as tobacco receded as an economic driver in Maryland, the free Black population in Fells Point and Baltimore grew dramatically.

Two of the more unlikely stories of the period involve a self-taught Black artist named Joshua Johnson and a French-speaking Black Cuban immigrant named Elizabeth Clarisse Lange, both of whom lived in Fells Point. Born into slavery, Johnson, became an accomplished and sought-after formal portrait artist and is recognized as the first African-American professional painter in the United States. Lange, meanwhile, is under consideration by the Vatican for canonization. From 1818 to 1828, with fellow immigrant Marie Magdelaine Balas, she offered previously unavailable free education to children of color out of her Fells Point home. Later known as Mother Mary Lange, she founded the first permanent African-American religious order of nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, and the school that evolved into Saint Frances Academy in East Baltimore (and recently graduated the 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Most Outstanding Player, Angel Reese).

But even with the presence of Douglass, who, at about 12 years old, purchased his first book, The Columbian Orator, from Nathaniel Knight’s bookstore on Thames Street—perhaps worth consideration as Baltimore’s first radical bookshop—it is not correct to view Fells Point through the lens of slavery and abolition, says local Black historian Lou Fields.

Black maritime business owner Isaac Myers, c. 1875. —LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“The proper lens is economic, it’s about the building of Baltimore, and because the Inner Harbor is naturally shallow and Fells Point has a deep water port, that’s where life gets started,” says Fields, who has been leading Douglass tours of Fells Point for 23 years. “At that time, it was a maritime community. Everybody was working to make a dollar, a quarter, or whatever it was.” He notes that some of the first whites to come to Baltimore from Europe were indentured servants: “The first Blacks who came to The Point, like the first whites, came to supply a labor force to clear land, build houses, and build roads.” Landowners found they were more suited to the work than the Indigenous people—Baltimore is part of the ancestral land of the Susquehannock and Piscataway tribes—so they brought in more enslaved people from the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland.

“That said, Frederick Douglass’ life changed dramatically because he was sent to Baltimore,” continues Fields. “He might not have survived otherwise. But once he’s here, he also sees Black men, women, and children auctioned off at the foot of Broadway and others separated from their families and put on ships headed to New Orleans.”

Eventually, Douglass joins the East Baltimore Improvement Society on what is now Durham Street, where he gains some education from older free Black ship caulkers and meets his future wife. There were physical confrontations between white workers and Black workers for jobs on the docks—and Douglass nearly gets killed when he’s attacked by several men—but he also writes about a pair of Irish immigrants who encourage him to escape.

“The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went, unasked, and helped them,” recalls Douglass in his 1845 memoir. “When we had finished, one of them came to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, ‘Are ye a slave for life?’ I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free.”

“Fells Point is a place with a lot of history, a lot of issues, a lot of different people from all walks of life thrown together in a tight geographic area,” Fields says. “It’s the most fascinating neighborhood in the city.”

Local historian Lou Fields stands next to the Frederick Douglass memorial sculpture.-Photography By J.M. Giordano

y the 1960s and into 1970s, much of Fells Point was set for demolition. Viewed by city leadership as a waterfront slum, Fells Point was deemed better to pave than preserve. The shipbuilding yards had disappeared with the advent of the steamship, which required a deeper channel than even Fells Point offered. The canning industry, which overlapped and then replaced the shipbuilding industry and once filled more than a hundred packing houses around the harbor, had all but disappeared as well, following longer growing seasons and a booming trucking industry to the south and west.

Tugboats at Fells Point, circa 1950s.—Photography by Tom Scilipoti

Rukert Terminals on Brown’s Wharf remained one of the last surviving cargo warehouses in operation. The toxic Allied-Signal chromium plant in now-rebranded Harbor Point was still a major employer. However, there were few others beyond the sprawling H&S Bakery plant.

Synonymous with Fells Point since 1878, Baker-Whiteley’s tugboats remained a daily sight on the water, echoing the past as the neighborhood’s future became the subject of intense debate, activism, and lawsuits. (The tugboats would leave, too, in the early 1980s, moving to Locust Point after the New York-based McAllister Brothers acquired Baker-Whiteley. In general, port business didn’t so much leave Baltimore as migrate further out around the harbor from Fells.)

Meanwhile, transportation planners laid out an east-west expressway across Lancaster Street to connect I-70 in the west to I-83 in the center of Baltimore—with I-95 east of Fells Point, one of the final pieces of Maryland’s interstate network.

The city told residents the highway was inevitable, and their rowhouses and businesses stood in the way of progress. With few options, many took the marketpriced checks and relocation fees and left, some happily no doubt, for the suburbs. Whole blocks, almost a hundred homes and structures in all, were condemned to make room for a massive interchange over today’s Harbor East and a six-lane, elevated highway through the heart of Fells Point’s historic district.

It was in the middle of the Fells Point “Stop the Road” citizen uprising in 1972 that Tony and Laura Norris stumbled across a dingy bar called The Lone Star among the vacant rowhomes and dilapidated boardinghouses. Both were musicians and teachers, but Laura had gotten ill and couldn’t work for a period and while they were figuring out what to do next, a friend ventured to Fells Point looking for office space. Unable to find anything suitable, a realtor pointed him toward a small saloon for sale. “He came back and said, ‘Let’s buy a bar,’” the now-82-year-old Tony Norris recalls. “So, I called a Baltimore friend who was in California teaching, and said, ‘Loan me $3,000,’ or whatever it was for the down payment. At that time, you could buy almost everything in the neighborhood. I think we paid $14,000 for the liquor license and the building, but there wasn’t much there. There was an old room in the back that had a kitchen that had never been finished. One of our customers who was handy said, ‘Well, I’ll help fix the kitchen up.’”

Among some junk and antiques in a midtown garage, Norris found a stained glass window dedicated to the memory of a mysterious Bertha E. Bartholomew, which went on display with back lighting behind the bar. That memorial window provided the inspiration for one of the city’s beloved institutions of the past half-century, and most well-traveled bumper sticker ever—EAT BERTHA’S MUSSELS.

From top: Bertha’s owners Laura and Tony Norris in front of their beloved bar and restaurant today; the memorial stained glass window and the inspiration for the name of Bertha’s.—PHOTOGRAPHY BY J.M. GIORDANO

When Bertha’s opened, a few other bars changed hands and an otherwise-declining neighborhood—that easily could have gone the way of Philadelphia’s waterfront community, which had recently been waylaid for I-95—became invigorated by an unlikely youth movement.

Which isn’t to say there weren’t colorful old joints or neighborhood stalwarts that stuck around. There were always a lot of bars (and complaints about bars) in Fells Point, the nature of an old port of call. Helen’s Corner, run by Helen Christopher, whose merchant marine husband had been lost at sea, catered to tugboaters. Now the Admiral’s Cup, Christopher sold it in 1985 with the stipulation she could continue living upstairs for the rest of her life. Jimmy’s Restaurant, a greasy spoon and gathering spot for shift-workers and politicians alike, had been around since the late ’40s. The Acropolis night club, owned by the same Greek family, featured belly dancing. Miss Irene’s at Thames and Ann—home to The Point today—remained a smokey, rough-around-the-edges bar with cheap beer, a big pool table, and hard-drinking regulars.

Leadbetters Tavern, the Cat’s Eye Pub, and The Horse You Came In On in the 1970s.—COURTESY OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FEDERAL HILL AND FELL’S POINT

But The Thames Café (“Thames and Dames”) got sold and remade as Leadbetters Tavern, named after the blues musician Lead Belly. A well-known Baltimore figure named “Turkey” Joe Trabert opened Turkey Joe’s a few doors from Bertha’s. A 1775-built tavern called Al’s and Ann’s on Thames Street was rechristened The Horse You Came In On in 1972, after a long-haired, twentysomething named Howard Gerber bought it with a down payment won at Pimlico. Things were a bit looser in those days. The day that The Horse You Came In On opened, a friend of Gerber’s literally rode a horse through the front door and up to the bar. Some believe the saloon is not only the oldest continuously operating bar in the U.S., but also the last stop of Edgar Allan Poe before he was found delirious in the street on Election Day 1849. (One theory holds Poe’s death resulted from a Mobtown practice known as “cooping,” in which eligible voters were kidnapped, drugged, or forced to drink, and then disguised to cast multiple ballots.)

In 1975, Irish-American Kenny Orye, who convinced some he ran guns for the IRA, and Tony and Ana Marie Cushing opened the Cat’s Eye Pub on Thames Street, taking their name from a West Virginia distillery where Orye’s uncle bought his moonshine. Contrary to what’s been published elsewhere, Ana Marie Cushing says with a smile, the previous Harbor View tavern there had not been a biker hangout, but a lesbian bar. By the late 1970s and early ’80s, the Cat’s Eye’s back room had become a place to be after closing time, recalled Steve Bunker, a former seaman who operated the nearby China Sea Trading Company with a parrot perched on his shoulder. “At 3 a.m. you could run into politicos, hookers, sailors, deal-makers, illegal Irishmen, riffraff, and refugees,” Bunker, who now lives in Maine, wrote years later in the Fells Point newsletter. “You didn’t ask too many questions about your stool mates, you just drank your beer, passed a joint, and enjoyed the company.”

Before Orye died from an overdose at 33 in 1987, he organized an Irish wake at the Cat’s Eye for a departed IRA leader. It was equal parts publicity stunt to raise awareness for the IRA cause and joke on city officials and the press: The body in the casket wasn’t real. Five years after Orye’s death, longtime Cat’s Eye bartender Jeff Knapp, who normally resembled Abe Lincoln and once snuck into the St. Patrick’s Day parade dressed as the patron saint of Ireland, was honored with a New Orleans-style jazz parade for his funeral.

Ghost tours of Fells Point claim the ghosts of Orye and Knapp still work the Cat’s Eye bar.

The music and bar crawl culture developed over time as more pubs opened kitchens and got permits for live music. But things were not excactly popping in the early ’7os. “When [Bertha’s] first opened, someone would say, ‘Let’s go over to The Horse or the Cat’s Eye for a beer’—there was this sense we were all in it together—and you’d get into your car and drive around the corner and have no trouble parking right in front,” the now-84-year-old Tony Norris says. “It was that empty down here.”

Dreamlander Edith Massey in front of her store, Edith’s Shopping Bag.—EAST BALTIMORE DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT COLLECTION. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY.

The Fells Point art scene had begun blossoming earlier. By the late ’60s, the old Hollywood Bakery on Broadway had turned into a full-blown artist colony of former Maryland Institute College of Art students. Divided into 22 rooms and studios, the entire place rented for $100 a month, giant bakery ovens included. Others began squatting in and renting previously condemned houses from the city while the “Stop the Road” fight continued in the courts. By 1973, at least 15 houses that the city had bought out earlier were rented to people who wanted to live in and repair them. A $7,500 home went for $75 a month with the generous provision that repair materials could be deducted from the rent—the nascent start of a now-50-year rehabbing movement.

The Fells Point Gallery, founded in 1969 by MICA alumni, became a destination. Then, a second-hand bookstore opened. Many still looked down upon “seedy” Fells Point at the time, but others saw it as Baltimore’s version of Greenwich Village. The Fells Point Corner Theatre, now in Upper Fells, raised its first curtain, appropriately, at the corner of Shakespeare and Broadway in 1970. The still-thriving Vagabond Players moved into the former Corral’s Bar on Broadway in 1974.

In the late ’60s, John Waters, Glenn Milstead, aka Divine, and friends began making pilgrimages to Fells Point, finding new partners in subversion. MICA graduate Vincent Peraino, who was among the influx of artists, became Waters’ set designer. Susan Lowe, a painter who later dated Orye (some of her paintings still hang in the Cat’s Eye), appeared in nearly every Waters film. Other Fells Point Dreamlanders included Mink Stole, George Figgs, Paul Swift, Peter Koper, and Bob Adams. “The Hollywood Bakery, that was Vincent’s commune, and it was right next door to Pete’s Hotel, where Edith Massey worked as a bartender and we hung out,” Waters recalls with a laugh. “It was the worst possible time down there and it was the cheapest possible place. Drinks were 30 cents. Divine hated it. He called it a ‘hobo bar.’”

Waters shot all over Fells Point and Massey opened a thrift store, Edith’s Shopping Bag, with Adams following her memorable appearance as “the Egg Lady” in Waters’ 1972 movie hit, Pink Flamingos.

“Fells Point was welcoming to all kinds of people, that was the thing that was so amazing,” Waters continues, noting he once did a fashion shoot at the Apex adult movie theater on Broadway, which somehow coexisted among the churches and families in Upper Fells. “Paul Swift would jump up and dance naked on the bars. They weren’t gay bars. It was gay and straight. It was trans. Trans even then, and everybody really got along. It was just cultural outlaws that didn’t fit in their own minority.”

“The artists would hang around with the tugboat guys and stevedores in the bar—we used to open at 8 a.m. for guys getting off their night shifts—that’s just how it was then,” says Cushing.

Fells Point Fun Festival, late 1960s, with a “Stop The Road” banner hanging on the side of a building.—COURTESY OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FEDERAL HILL AND FELL’S POINT

The Art Gallery building, c. late 1970s.—COURTESY OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FEDERAL HILL AND FELL’S POINT.

At the same time, pioneering preservationists had moved to Fells Point. One visionary was Lu Fischer, who lived in Ruxton and was married to a doctor but bought a waterfront rowhouse with intentions of restoring it, unaware a highway was planned through her block. “Perhaps no other town on the eastern seaboard boasts 18th-century houses facing the water such as we have here in Fells Point,” she wrote in a letter to The Sun in 1966. Former Councilman Tom Ward helped found the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point the following year. Bob Eney, who’d grown up in Dundalk before a stint in the Army and a career as a department store display artist in New York, was another champion. Photographing and documenting some 200 homes and buildings, Eney led the successful campaign to get Fells Point listed on the then-new National Register of Historic Places in 1969—the first inclusion from Maryland—wooing officials with walking tours, drinks, and dinners at Haussner’s in nearby Highlandtown.

According to Eney, one of then-Vice President Spiro Agnew’s female staffers, who secretly supported the Fells preservationists, passed their completed National Register forms to Agnew to speed approval. Not realizing the obstacle that placement on National Register would present to the highway he and local contractors favored, Agnew dutifully forwarded them on and “in three days we were on the National Register,” Eney recalled in 2004. “The contractors [who’d been bribing him for years] were furious with Agnew because he was so dumb. He had no idea what he had done.”

The annual Fells Point Fun Festival, in fact, was first organized as an anti-highway fundraising effort. At the 1969 annual street party, Barbara Mikulski, a then-33-year-old social worker, shouted her opposition as future Mayor William Donald Schaefer tried to make his case for the highway. “The British couldn’t take Fells Point, the termites couldn’t take Fells Point,” announced Mikulski, part of group calling themselves Radio Free Fells Point. “And we don’t think the State Roads Commission can take Fells Point either.”

The granddaughter of Polish bakers, Mikulski is a link between Fells Point’s long immigration history and the fight to the stop the highway. “My great-grandmother landed in Fells Point somewhere at ‘the foot of Broadway,’ which is what we called that area then, not Fells Point,” Mikulski says. “When she came to this country and lived on Chester Street near Holy Rosary, she could read, but she was from Poland. One of the things she did to learn English was to buy a newspaper and go down to the Broadway Market and practice the language and the exchange of money, and so on. People were helpful and she could trust that she wasn’t going to be taken advantage of. The churches were like settlement houses because they were bilingual.”

Prior to the Eastern-European wave, Fells Point was the arrival station for thousands of farmers and laborers from Germany and Ireland. St. Patrick’s Church, now serving a Spanish-speaking congregation on Broadway, is the city’s oldest Catholic parish, dating to 1792. Germans came to Baltimore early and often, with many fleeing their homes after the failed 1848-1849 revolution. The Irish, in the 1840s and 1850s, arrived as refugees, some in desperate condition as they were pulled onto the Fells’ docks from vessels known as “coffin ships” because of the number who succumbed during the Atlantic crossing.

But by the 1870s, Poles were the dominant immigrant group. The first Roman Catholic Polish parish—St. Stanislaus Kostka on South Ann Street—formed in 1880. The city’s first Polish newspaper launched in 1891. A second parish, Holy Rosary Church, where Sunday morning Mass is still said in Polish, was founded in 1887. St. Casimir’s in Canton was founded in 1904. Which is not to romanticize the immigrant experience. Women—and children—went to work in the Fells canneries and as seasonal laborers on Maryland farms. Mikulski later bought a house on Ann Street in part, she admits, because it was in the path of the highway. “She was ready to lie down in front of the bulldozer,” says Tony Norris, the Bertha’s owner, who has known Mikulski since the early ’70s. The Norrises subsequently traded rowhouses with Mikulski and remained a neighbor for 20 years. When she was elected to Congress in 1976, her Eastern Avenue office was only steps from her grandparents’ bakery.

“It was a great neighborhood because people tended to live, work, worship, and shop in the same area,” says Mikulski, who was born in 1936 and retired from Congress in 2017, after becoming the first woman to chair the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

“In terms of the battle of ‘the Road,’ there was the parochial crowd, the preservationists, [artists], the business owners—we were all in it. Were the town hall meetings contentious?” Mikulski adds. “It’s Bawlmer, hon.”

Barbara Mikulski giving a speech.—EAST BALTIMORE DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT COLLECTION. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY.

The fundamental problem behind the conception of “the Road”—including the stretch known as “The Highway to Nowhere” that got built through majority-Black West Baltimore—is officials did not appreciate the value of working-class neighborhoods, Mikulski says. “That was certainly the attitude of Robert Moses,” the New York highway builder who first designed Baltimore’s planned east-west highway. “He did not see the value, he didn’t see the jobs that were there, and he didn’t see what I call the social capital. It was the relationships that were, and are, important in those communities.”

The artifacts, both living and dead, of those Polish roots are all over. Sophia’s Place, a Polish deli selling stuffed cabbage, among other specialties, continues in the renovated Broadway Market, as does Ostrowski’s Polish deli on Bank Street. Patterson Park’s monument to Gen. Pulaski, a Revolutionary War hero, and the Katyn Memorial in Harbor East hardly need mention.

Eventually other groups came, though situated farther from the waterfront. After World War II, there was a huge migration of Lumbee Indians from North Carolina into Upper Fells. The Baltimore American Indian Center on Broadway was founded in 1968. And, of course, all up and down Broadway and Eastern are dozens of Mexican and Central American businesses and restaurants.

Cocina Luchadoras, Sophia’s Place, and Cat’s Eye Pub.—PHOTOGRAPHY BY J.M. GIORDANO

It’s ironic perhaps, but ever since “the Road” though the Fells “slums” was defeated for good in the late ’70s, gentrification has been a sensitive subject.

By 1985, former warehouses and factories were already being turned into expensive apartments. “Speculators see Fells Point as an opportunity,” Bunker, the former owner of the China Sea Trading Company, said in a Sun story.

“It’s just not the same,” Manuel Alvarez, a chief engineer for the departed Baker-Whiteley tugboat company, told the same reporter, adding he had little desire to visit Fells Point anymore. “It’s just too...trendy. It’s not just the way it used to be.”

In an oral history a generation later, Ed Kane, who founded the Baltimore water taxi operation in the ’70s, said he thought Fells Point “still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up.” It’s been in “state of transition,” he said, for “more than 200 years.”

A ghost sign reading “Vote Against Prohibition” remains visible today.-PHOTOGRAPHY BY J.M. GIORDANO

Gentrification remains a concern for some of the older folks who recall places like Leadbetters, which was sold in 2016, and the Wharf Rat, which was one of the oldest buildings and bars in the city when it was sold in 2021. They say the original English character of its zigzagging streets and tiny pubs is all but gone.

Duda’s Tavern, in a storied Thames Street building that once boarded sailors, is still a family-run operation after more than 70 years. The Norrises, however, are in the process of selling Bertha’s.

A Starbucks has opened, and the Atlas Restaurant Group continues to buy up property and open bars and restaurants, raising questions about Fells Point losing its idiosyncratic touches. Some worry the H&S Bakery plant will leave and be replaced by a highrise office or condo complex like those in Harbor East—where height restrictions were lifted in the 1990s for the subsequent development projects.

The numbers speak for themselves: The median home price in Fells Point rose from $77,600 in 1990 to $349,650 in 2014. The percentage of residents with a BA degree or higher was 33 percent in 1990 and 70 percent by 2014.

With gentrification what often comes is a loss of what sociologists call “third places,” where people spend time between home and work. First United Evangelical, an 1851 German church on Eastern Avenue, for example, is now luxury apartments. The 96-yearold Patterson duckpin alleys are currently under conversion to condominiums—though some lanes may remain after a protest.

However, the 19th century St. Michael’s Church in Upper Fells is now a brewpub and the former St. Stanislaus today hosts a yoga and fitness studio—21st century “third places.” There are others, like the cozy Greedy Reads bookstore, which opened in 2018.

Six years ago, the upscale Sagamore Pendry hotel on Thames opened inside the long-vacant, recreation-pier building—once home to the fictitious headquarters of the Baltimore Police Department in the ’90s show Homicide: Life on the Street.

The question may be, does it matter whether Fells Point residents know the Pendry was first constructed as a $1 million—a pricey sum in 1914—dual-purpose maritime warehouse/state-of-the-art ballroom and recreation center for the Fells immigrant community?

Is preservation still a rallying point and part of the glue that binds the Fells Point community together, and if so, for how long?

Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point president David Gleason sits in front of the 1765-built Robert Long House.-PHOTOGRAPHY BY J.M. GIORDANO

“When I was a kid, it was a different world, we didn’t have all these cars, these high-rises and yeah, a lot of houses were vacant,” says 46-year-old Andy Norris, who took over running Bertha’s from his parents and lives in Upper Fells. “My parents would say, ‘Go outside and play,’ and I’d take a ball and beat the ball against a vacant house and then three other kids would be hanging out with me and we’d play a game of some kind.

“I get the new business owners and the changes,” Norris continues. “I don’t hate it, like a lot of the oldtimers. They’re coming from a good place. In their minds, they’re doing the best thing that they can do for the neighborhood. I believe that. Now, is it the best thing for the neighborhood? I don’t know. The thing about Fells Point is that had so much character, and characters, such charm. But people got older and sold their places and the new people, who are buying them, this is how they see their future.”

Norris acknowledges the water and rowhouses will be always be here. As will reappointed warehouses and Thames’ Belgian block streets. But what else? “What I guess I mean, is that a neighborhood or is that just brick and stone?”

ALLY HUTCHINS HAS SPENT MOST OF HER LIFE behind the bar at 1919. On a Wednesday evening in late October, the 60-year-old Baltimore native stands with her back to the register, taking drink orders from patrons who arrive as soon as the side door opens at 5 p.m.

“Hi, Dominic—what can I get for ya?” she shouts to a regular, her gray braid swinging as she lets out a raspy laugh and The Young Rascals’ 1967 “Groovin’” plays softly on the stereo.

Hutchins is at home here. Her family bought this corner rowhome and its blue neon sign back in 1984, and she now lives upstairs with her husband, John, and their bull terrier, Sniffy. Usually, though, she can be found downstairs, amidst the tchk of beer cans and above the other loose-leashed dogs who mosey in through the back alley of this tiny neighborhood hole-in-the-wall, tucked back off busy Fleet Street on the far eastern edge of Fells Point.

In fact, blink, and you can miss it. Though not once you’re inside.

“Put something up and it never comes down,” says Hutchins, looking around the shrine-like walls, plastered in fading photographs, folk art, bumper stickers, cattle skulls, and Christmas lights that glow year-round—a hodgepodge patina reflecting the cast of local characters who have made this place their bar.

“We’ve had two deaths here, one wedding, and some people have even told me they got pregnant because of my drinks,” says Hutchins with a wry smile. “But at the end of the day, it’s just a bar. Sometimes magic happens. Sometimes nothing does.”

Of course, such stardust does not grace every drinking establishment, and those like 1919 are becoming an endangered breed. Today, we call them dive bars, once considered an insult but now an undeniable term of endearment, particularly in these changing times. As longtime owners age out, new developers increasingly move in, leaving a sleek homogeny of high-end cocktail bars and hipsterfied microbreweries in their wake.

Dive bars, by contrast, defy simple definition, ranging in the eye of the beholder from simple, old-school, corner taverns, beloved for their gruff barkeeps, to rough-around-the-edges drinking dens, with loud music and dim lighting. Always, they sell affordable drinks and lack most modern amenities. Maybe there’s a jukebox, or a dartboard, and often, a well-worn pool table. The faint whiff of cigarette smoke is commonplace. As is Keno.

Don’t expect a website or social media—just know that they close late, or at a last-minute time of their choosing, and a handful still open at sunrise. Night and day, there are regulars, many of whom live within crawling distance of the front door.

“People would probably strike if we closed, so we keep going,” says Ana Marie Cushing of Cat’s Eye Pub on Thames Street, even as longtime neighbors like BAR and The Wharf Rat fall like dominos.

Above: Scenes from 1919 in Fells Point.

In Baltimore, neighborhood bars were once a dime a dozen—some straightlaced, some rowdy—with seemingly every block offering a beer and a shot to a mix of shift workers, sailors, artists, newspapermen, and other street-roving souls. In 1968, the city had 2,200 liquor licenses to today’s 1,221, and by 1979, Baltimore magazine predicted that, soon enough, “New bars will all look the same, and how a drinker is to tell one hanging-fern/exposed-brick/butcher-block-tabled spot from another escapes [us].” That, of course, proved alarmingly prescient. Then the coronavirus pandemic closed even more of these one-of-a-kind haunts for good.

“When one place goes, a little piece of you goes with them,” says Andy Norris, second-generation owner of Bertha’s Mussels, which will shutter on South Broadway this month after 50 years in business. “People come here from other places and find their own families. Which epitomizes Charm City.”

Indeed, these bars are intertwined in this town’s identity—frayed tethers to its underdog spirit and blue-collar past, crumbling temples of simpler times. Here, conversation conquers digital scrolling, and community is formed over strong-pour communion. At their best, these are everyman spaces—where regardless of age, class, race, or gender, everyone can come together over the Orioles, Utz, and Natty Boh. Though some have undoubtedly opened their arms to outsiders more than others.

“We welcome everybody,” says Ben Franklin, veteran bartender at the Mt. Royal Tavern in Mid-Town Belvedere. “That is, until you become an asshole—then we throw you out.”

No nonsense. No nostalgia. No irony. No frills. No fuss. Baltimore dives hold the line between the past and future, where behind brick glass and Formstone facades this city can remember where it came from, and, with a good buzz, consider where it wants to go.

At the very least, we can still pull up a barstool and push the limits of last call just a little bit longer, particularly at watering holes like those listed below.

“This place has given me life,” says Hutchins, noting that her daughter, Zana, who manages 1919’s live-music lineup, hopes to take over the bar one day. By 6 p.m., it’s standing-room only, and no one seems to mind.

“I’ll probably stay until I can’t get up and down the steps anymore,” she says. “Besides, what else am I going to do?”

A vintage cigarette machine greets you at Club Charles.

3 MILES HOUSE

REMINGTON

There are few places in Remington where the old and newly revitalizing neighborhood collide more than this blush-colored hole-in-the-wall on Miles Avenue. For the last two decades, 3 Miles House has been an enclave for longtime locals to wind down after a hard day’s work. Most regulars knock back cans of red-label Budweiser. Scratch-offs are sold behind the bar, along with Newport cigarettes for the smoking patio out back. It’s the old guard for the first few hours of service, but on weekend evenings, more recent residents trickle in for the lacquered jukebox and games of darts under the watchful eye of a painterly portrait of John Wayne.

Know The Way: Get buzzed in through the 27th Street door, next to the mural of the bar’s late house cat, Missy, who was known to curl up against customers.

THE BOILERMAKER

Beloved by bartenders, this shot-and-a-beer combo was apparently named for the post-shift drink of steam locomotive workers in the 1800s. Whether downed as a slow sip or quick chaser, it remains a cheap, stiff way to take a load off. Never go wrong with a bourbon and Boh.

Above: An old pay phone and abundant memorabilia at 1919; the 1919 mascot, Sniffy.

1919

FELLS POINT

There is a good chance you’ve driven down Fleet Street a thousand times and never known that on the edge of a quiet alley sits this hidden gem of a neighborhood bar. Once you discover its blue neon sign, you’ll want to return time and time again to this narrow Fells Point rowhouse, covered in an eclectic mix of mementos gathered over the last 38 years. Amidst dusty chandeliers and colorful string lights, it’s a whimsical swirl of weird and wonderful that bottles some dwindling essence of Baltimore, where artists, musicians, and other bohemian types mingle with both lifelong and come-lately neighbors over cans of beer, booze on the rocks, or owner Sally Hutchins’ special dirty martinis. On weekends, expect an impressive lineup of live alt-country tunes, from bluegrass residencies to their monthly hootenanny.

Must Love Dogs: Enter like a local through the side door, where repeat customers often bring four-legged friends for happy hour.

BUCK FOWLER’S TAVERN

OVERLEA

Google might say that Buck’s on Belair Road—pronounced “b’lair” in these parts—is permanently closed. But past northeast Baltimore’s autobody shops and car dealerships, on the literal city-county line, you’ll find this circa-1950 tavern is still kicking, though just barely. Into the ’90s, the family-run, former “stag bar” (aka men only) was a popular hangout for Colts players like Art Donovan and Bruce Laird, but many of its biggest fans have kicked the bucket in recent years. Even so, the Coors Light sign turns on daily at 11 a.m., with WBAL on the TV, a Sun on the oak bartop, and perhaps the city’s best dartboard in the back room. During a recent lunch beer, one local, whom the tenured bartender referred to as “the mayor,” topped off his own tequila and talked about how bustling the place used to be. Take his advice: “If you’re not looking for a lot of wild and crazy excitement, come on down, sit with the old farts, and have a beverage.”

All In The Family: The second-generation proprietor, Chuck, passed away in 2004, when he was eulogized in The Sun as “the host with the most,” leaving the business to his son-in-law.

R.I.P. WHITE LABEL

There was a time not that long ago when every Baltimore dive kept a rail bottle of white-label Pikesville Supreme behind the bar. First distilled in Maryland in the late 1800s, the rye whiskey was discontinued in 2016, much to the chagrin of imbibers with frugal wallets and decent taste.

BUTTS & BETTY’S

UPPER FELLS

The red neon in the oblong windows of Butts & Betty’s speaks to the sort of all-service glory days that this 87-year-old stalwart once offered near Patterson Park. Unlike the packaged goods advertised on aging bar signs across the city, this Gough Street bar touted sandwiches and money orders, while a newer marquee with some missing letters also now trumpets lottery, NFL, and a working ATM. Sadly the hot pastrami has disappeared, like most of the Bethlehem Steel workers who used to show up for drinks and dinner at 6 a.m. Pizzas now get nuked behind the bar to help buffer the Jameson and Jell-O shots that flow so freely here. Keno and a purple pool table encourage you to stay awhile, while neighborhood pups, like Penny the pug, greet guests like they own the place.

Leading Ladies: The bartenders of this fourth-generation, family-run, woman-owned business are that just-right blend of surly and sweet that makes a modern Bawlmer hon.

CAT’S EYE PUB

FELLS POINT

If Baltimore had an official honky-tonk, it would be down the cobblestones of Thames Street and up through the turquoise portal of Cat’s Eye Pub. Seven days a week, this Fells Point anchor cranks out a serious roster of live music—from rock-and-roll and blues to funk and jazz by notable local and regional favorites like Nothin’ But Trouble, Sean K. Preston, and Ursula Ricks—luring a rug-cutting crowd, always ready for a good time. Maritime memorabilia nods to the neighborhood’s past, when watering holes like this old faithful were safe harbor for the tugboat captains and visiting sailors of a working waterfront. As fancy hotels, valets, and bouncers move in on the surrounding blocks, Cat’s Eye, circa 1975, keeps the salty-dog flame burning. Pick one of the 35 beers on tap, ogle at the old oil-painting homage to Ireland, and ask for second-generation owner Tony Cushing, who is often behind the bar and ready to pour a round of shots.

Love Letters: After several coats of paint, management has conceded that the bathroom graffiti is a rite of passage. Grab a Sharpie and leave your mark.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Let’s pour one out for those that have left us lately.

Above: The main bar and the exterior neon at Club Charles in Station North.

CLUB CHARLES

STATION NORTH

We got into a heated debate at the Mt. Royal Tavern over whether Club Charles qualified as a dive bar. Low lighting? Check. Cheap beer and shot combos? Check. A Rock-Ola jukebox featuring an incredibly curated catalogue that ranges from David Bowie to Björk? Check, check. Sure, Club Chuck, as it’s affectionately known, is hard to categorize, but in our eyes, this Art Deco hideout has all the charm, edge, and crimson Lynchian lighting that fits the bill. Open Wednesday to Sunday until 2 a.m., it’s a rendezvous for night owls of all ilks, often featuring a cast of creative characters and the occasional visit from our own Pope of Trash, John Waters. Trust in the front window’s neon “Cocktails” sign—the bartenders here make bona fide concoctions, often featuring macabre names like Persephone and Corpse Reviver. We opt for the rye Manhattans.

Pulp Fiction: Owner Joy Martin’s mother, Esther, opened the bar as The Wigwam in 1951, which Waters once described as “Studio 54 for bums.”

Above: Sipping a beer at The Drinkery; the U-shaped bar of The Drinkery in Mt. Vernon.

THE DRINKERY

MT. VERNON

Waxing rhapsodic about last-of-their-kind dives is especially true when it comes to stalwarts like The Drinkery on Read Street. An institution of the local LGBTQ community since 1972, this butter-yellow building on the western edge of Mount Vernon is one of the longest-standing gay bars in Baltimore, with the loss of other inclusive establishments perhaps epitomized in The Hippo becoming a CVS. Inside, the V-shaped bar follows the shape of its snug room, and all around it, a buoyant crowd rubs elbows while Whitney Houston blasts through the stereo. Order a cold can of Union Craft Brewing’s locally made Divine IPA, or a mixed drink of your choosing, but buyer beware—these are heavy pours. (Luckily, there’s a throwback snack machine to soak up the spirits.) “Dive bars are just more fun,” says manager Larry Evener. “There’s camaraderie—everybody gets to know everybody.”

Boogie Shoes: On our last visit, the back corner turned into an impromptu line dance, and all were welcome to join.

NO SMOKING

It’s been 15 years since Maryland banned smoking inside bars and restaurants, and while we don’t miss the overflowing ashtrays, we do have a soft spot for the few old dives that never got rid of their retro cigarette machines. Some places still sell packs from behind the bar.

FRAZIER’S ON THE AVENUE

HAMPDEN

There’s a decision that must be made when visiting Frazier’s on 36th Street in the heart of Hampden: to enter the cavernous Cheers-like hall to the left, with its back billiards, compact bar, and shlumpy leather couch amidst a cacophonous swirl of ’80s music and ole Bawlmer odes—Pimlico, Memorial Stadium, Arrow Beer. Or to enter the small, rock-and-roll-ish side bar to the right, with its single pool table and fading framed posters from the 1979 City Fair. “It’s crazy over there, isn’t it?” said one regular on a Thursday evening, referring to the former as we sidled into a green laminate booth in the latter. The side bar opens at 5 p.m., while service starts at breakfast or lunch with hangover-curing comfort food next door. Both spaces draw a diverse mix of locals for $2.50 happy-hour drafts and a late last call of 2 a.m. Their infamous karaoke is over, unfortunately, but trivia now takes place on Tuesday nights.

Back In The Day: Circa 1939, the original Frazier’s used to be located on the now-residential corner of West 33rd Street and Elm Avenue.

IDLE HOUR

RIVERSIDE

One might not expect to find a corner bar best known for its devotion to Chartreuse on a list of local dives, but next year, Idle Hour turns 20, and all along, the beloved South Baltimore haunt has straddled its good taste with an unpretentious irreverence, making it right at home in the once-working-class neighborhood of Riverside. For certain customers, house pickleback shots are preferred over that signature green liqueur, which has been made by French monks since the 1700s (and which this bar was once supposedly the top-seller of in the entire United States). On your way in under its tiny tin awning, smack a favorite bumper sticker on the collage-like front door, then grab a well-worn stool and listen to the record player spin all night. A few years back, their loyal following helped raise over $50,000 to keep the red lights glowing on Fort Avenue. Here’s to another 20, at least.

Rock On: The bar hosts BYO vinyl and DJ nights, with listening sessions currently in collaboration with WYPR’s Essential Tremors radio show.

Above: Iconic brick glass, a taxidermied marlin, and Utz chips for life at Mary’s Tavern.

MARY’S TAVERN

UPPER FELLS POINT

Searching for a dive bar in Upper Fells, you’ll likely walk right by Mary’s on a sleepy corner of Gough Street on your way toward its neighbor, Butts & Betty’s. Don’t come looking for loud music and sticky counters. Instead, owner Jim Poniatowski keeps his pint-size parlor impeccably tidy, and he’s always on call, either in his backroom recliner or at the bar watching technicolor TV shows. Walking inside is like stepping back in time to the bygone days when every Baltimore block had its own standby, tended by the folks who lived upstairs. We stumbled upon this multi-generation, circa-1959 treasure years ago and have kept it close to the chest ever since, in hopes that it would stay as unchanged as it was that first evening. Red awnings and wood paneling wrap the room in warmth, and cold cans of Boh are served with an itty-bitty beer glass, like the shift drinks of yore.

Greatest Hits: Mary’s has one of the last legit jukeboxes in the city, spinning classics like Elvis and Patsy Cline.

BAR SNACKS

Everyone knows that Baltimore is Utz country, and a good indicator of a local dive is often found behind the bar, where a small rack hangs fun-size bags of these Pennsylvania-made potato chips. Extra points for those with the crab flavor or Party Mix.

Above: The Sistine Chapel mural ceiling at the Mt. Royal Tavern; making important jukebox selection decisions at the Mt. Royal Tavern; the iconic neon sign at the “Dirt Church.”

MT. ROYAL TAVERN

MID-TOWN BELVEDERE

In our eyes, the Mt. Royal Tavern might be the best dive bar not just in Baltimore, but the entire world. In this city, though, it is the ultmate granddad of such institutions, where locals know it as MRT, or simply the “Tavern,” or even more aptly, the “Dirt Church”—that unorthodox mecca congregating all walks of city life for nights of bacchanalian revelry along its long blue bar and beneath its Sistine Chapel-replica ceiling. “Beware pickpockets and loose women,” one sign warns, though the clientele is largely an amicably inebriated MICA-meets-buccaneer bunch. Follow the red neon sign inside, where cheap beer, hefty shot glasses, and bags of Utz are in stock seven days a week, starting at 10 a.m. Pay your hand-written tabs with cash only and chat up your barkeeps, who are full of colorfully R-rated stories. (The bar once installed a “cuss bucket,” which didn’t last long, of course.) The back smoking alley is a party in its own right, and the real-deal jukebox is one of the best in town, featuring everything from The Misfits to Tom Waits and Howlin’ Wolf.

Pen Pals: Ask your bartender for the gift pack: a house postcard to send to someone special and a matchbook that dubs the bar “where art is bullshit and good bullshit is an art.”

MUIR’S

FEDERAL HILL

Once a neighborhood of factory and waterfront workers, the Fort Avenue stretch from Federal Hill to Fort McHenry used to be a haven of blue-collar bars. These businesses have been replaced by condos and coffee shops, but Muir’s is still there, with its pinnacle spire and “Beer Wines Liquors” neon sign. Circa 1944, it’s the oldest continuously owned bar on the block and still run by the namesake family. Don’t let the bright lighting and white walls of recent renovations fool you; this is still a true-blue corner bar, with one retired barmaid turned neighborhood barfly recently schooling us on her mashed potato recipe. (We’ll take it to the grave, Sharon.) They open before lunchtime, Monday to Saturday, when Natural Light beers and neat Jim Beams are go-to orders.

Harbor Heritage: Three generations of Baltimore’s industrial muscle have run this bar. The original owner, Roland Muir Sr., was a tugboat captain; his successor, Roland Jr., was a longshoreman (and National Brewing Company employee); and his nephew, Tom—the current owner—works at the Port today.

Above: Scenes from Mum’s in Federal Hill: graffiti and stickers cover the walls; darts and pool are still favorite pastimes.

MUM’S

SHARP-LEADENHALL

On a leafy residential street on the western edge of Federal Hill, Mum’s is a far cry from the Mother’s Grilles and Mad Rivers that make up much of the rest of the neighborhood. The gritty dive is a cocoon of dark wood and crotchety service, with a sign shouting “THIS IS NOT A FRAT PARTY” to the packs of post-college kids who sometimes stumble inside. One Wednesday night this fall, the L-shaped bar was full of low-key locals, ranging from millennials to boomers, with one young couple playing pool beneath the seemingly sole light source: a green-glass billiard lampshade. The old jukebox has been digitized, and we’re patiently waiting for live rock concerts to return by the boarded-up fireplace, where a life-size cut-out of Luke Skywalker now watches over in their stead.

Hot Shot: Forget Fireball—first timers should order the “Number 1 Special,” which includes a can of Boh and a shot of “Evil,” aka a sweet, house-made, cinnamon-honey ode to the Lithuanian liqueur, viryta.

OTTOBAR

REMINGTON

Most folks know of this hallowed Howard Street business as a rock club, with music lovers usually wandering down the alley to crowd its mosh pit for concerts beneath the twinkle of a grungy old disco ball. Upstairs, though, is another story, where a mishmash of red vinyl booths, checkerboard linoleum floors, local art, and a lone pool table create an oft-overlooked yet quintessential dive. Open nightly, the Ottobar lounge is a rough-and-tumble retreat for hipsters and hard-rock enthusiasts, featuring a constant rotation of events, from drag shows and dance parties to their infamous Metal Monday showcase. The logo famously features a martini being stirred by the namesake bar cat, but we tend to lean toward Natty Bohs and whiskey-ginger ales.

Music Maven: If you get the chance, chat up owner Tecla Tesnau, who has many a story after being with the business since its humble downtown beginnings, circa 1997. “These crazy little bars are great places to get steeped in the pulse of the city,” she says.

Above: Playing the slots at Pol’s Cafe; shooting pool at Pol’s.

POL’S CAFÉ

CANTON

One local bar owner told us that we had to check out this weathered Canton pool hall. It’s where he and his staff would often end up after closing time, which makes sense—following a busy night of hospitality, Pol’s is the kind of unassuming corner joint where the industry, or any neighborhood regulars, like the ones who rooted on the Ravens during one fall visit, can be truly anonymous. This Foster Avenue elder dates back to 1934, which, upon closer look, you can clearly see in the silver bar, the brick-glass windows, and the pink-and-cream subway-tiled walls. TVs and video poker now distract visitors waiting their turn at eight-ball.

Earn Your Stripes: The billiard table, with its golden trophies lining the top of the mantle-like bar, is a stop on the local pool-league circuit.

Scenes from Shamrock Inn: Tending bar; pool trophies line the wall; racking solids and stripes; a game of eight-ball heats up.

SHAMROCK INN

HAMILTON

Harford Road used to be a serious strip for unfancy bars, from Dead Freddie’s to Holiday House. Slowly they’ve closed or changed hands, but Shamrock Inn remains—a city-limits melting pot that, with a blessing from habitué John Waters, was voted one of the best bars in America by Esquire magazine in both 2007 and 2011. It’s one of the few places “that hasn’t been affected by real estate porn,” wrote Waters back then, and that’s certainly still true today. Past the cobwebbed cigarette machine, snag a busted barstool and signal owner Terry for a beer from the packaged-goods cooler. “You actually like that stuff?” asked one eyepatched pool shark swigging a Natural Ice when we ordered our first Boh. Whatever you’re drinking, you’re here to watch the wannabe Cool Hand Lukes heckle each other over solids and stripes. On occasion, cover bands and DJ sets also fill the back room.

Order A Poor Man’s Crab Cake: Eating food at a dive bar is a bit like Russian roulette, but this compact flat-top-fryer combo fuels a full food menu, from grilled cheese to Baltimore coddies, aka “the poor man’s crab cake.”

LET’S GO O’S

Whatever your opinion on TVs in bars, there are few better ways to bond with strangers in Baltimore than by bellying up for a Ravens or O’s game. Remember the din of local drinkeries when the Birds made it to the American League Championship Series in 2014?

Above: Pouring a Boh and a display of Baltimore’s boxing history at Venice Tavern in Highlandtown.

VENICE TAVERN

HIGHLANDTOWN

On the corner of Conkling and Bank streets, a white sign with a giant green arrow points down sidewalk steps to one of the last basement bars in Highlandtown, if not Baltimore. Born when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Venice Tavern was founded by Italian immigrants Mary and Frank DeSantis, who sold spaghetti and 15-cent beers out of this subterranean lair beneath their own home. Now run by fourth-generation great-grandson, Dominic, the bar’s black-and-white photographs reveal that not much has changed. A portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the patron saint of Repeal Day, still presides over the bar, which is open Monday through Saturday, starting as early as 8 a.m., but now craft beers have been added to the taps, like Diamondback’s Green Machine and Brewer’s Art’s Resurrection. Imbibers range from Gen Z pool players aiming for the corner pocket to blue-collar barflies betting their luck on video slots.

Local Lore: Baltimore’s boxing history is on full display here, with vintage fliers and a hand-drawn mural celebrating the lightweight achievements of Dominic’s grand-uncle.

WALT’S INN

CANTON

On the beaming plastic sign at the corner of O’Donnell Street and East Avenue, the number seven has been painted over, indicating that this once-nightly neighborhood bar has felt the changes faced by many of its kind in the wake of Covid-19. They’re now only open on weekends, but the Canton throngs still know to shuffle down to the tin awnings, Formstone siding, and porthole windows of Walt’s on Fridays and Saturdays, when the seasoned songhouse hosts arguably the best karaoke in town. Be sure to join on the chorus when some brave singer picks Wilson Phillips, Tracy Chapman, or Jon Bon Jovi. But let the Solo cups foretell just how rowdy (and, oftentimes, bro-tastic) this bar can be.

Hot Tip: Muster the courage needed to trill your favorite tunes with the help of infamous house Jell-O shots, which, on one recent visit, meant pumpkin pie flavor with a crown of whipped cream.