It’s a few dozen steps down the north slope of the Wyman Park Dell near Charles Village. Upon the descent, the surrounding streets, nearby buildings, and neighboring art museum begin to fade behind a thicket of oak trees, nearly disappearing entirely by the time one reaches the bottom, where, on an early November morning, Bruce Willen stands before the park’s long, low lawn—a sort of sunken oasis in the heart of northern Baltimore City.

“This is the last remnant of the original stream valley,” says Willen, 42, looking around the hillside, speckled with picnics, a playground, and people out walking their dogs. “It’s mind-boggling to imagine, but where we’re standing, right under this walking path, is where it still runs today.”

He’s referring to the Sumwalt Run, a rocky stream that flowed openly from 31st and Charles Streets southwest to the Jones Falls River a century and a half ago. In the early 1900s, the city buried it into underground tunnels—the surrounding land filled in or flattened to build the roads, rowhomes, and neighborhoods we now recognize today.

It’s just one of some estimated 40 waterways that once coursed throughout the city but are now hidden both out of sight and mind. And this one, in particular, has been a wellspring of inspiration for Willen, an Old Goucher resident, Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, and multidisciplinary designer, whose public art installation, Ghost Rivers, was permanently installed throughout Remington last fall.

The mile-and-a-half, self-led walking tour shadows the Sumwalt’s original path—just follow the bright blue lines painted with thermoplastic across streets and sidewalks between 12 decorative, historically detailed metal signs. Funded by various grants, it will be maintained by Willen and the Greater Remington Improvement Association, with materials chosen for durability.

“This project has changed the way that I look at the city,” says Willen, who co-founded the Post Typography design studio, has performed in local bands such as Peals and Double Dagger, and whose other recent installations include the Library of Lost Gloves and Lost Loves at Druid Hill Park. “Now when I walk or drive around town and I see a low point in the landscape, I think, ‘Oh, there’s a stream under there…’”

Willen discovered the Sumwalt on an old city map about decade ago. But it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that a stroll over one storm drain on Lorraine Avenue reminded him—with an audible wssshhh—on what is now Site 8 of the Ghost Rivers tour.

“It was exciting, hearing the ghosts of the river, whispering up to me,” says Willen, who spent the next three years conducting research while meeting with city agencies, community organizations, and local residents, who were all equally enthused. “Very few knew about the stream. It’s easy to have no idea it was ever here.”

He hopes Ghost Rivers can bring that forgotten history back to the surface, while also adding context to the conversation. The more he studied the Sumwalt, the more he realized that its story, much like the waterway itself, intersected with an ecosystem of others—industry, immigration, climate—as shifts took place in both the natural and manmade environments.

This stream, for instance, was once frequented for recreation, dammed for agriculture, and harvested for commercial ice during once-consistently cold winters. As populations grew, sewage and stormwater systems were constructed for public health, with these tributaries enlisted as their main channels.

“The histories all weave together,” says Willen. “I hope that this project might inspire someone walking down the street to imagine the space they’re in, even if only for 20 seconds, in a slightly different way.”

And that could include the city at large, which was built around its Inner Harbor and Jones Falls, now buried under a deteriorating I-83, where one of Willen’s last three sites will be completed this spring, and where advocates have joined the growing nationwide call for municipalities to “daylight” these waters.

“Do we want to spend billions to rebuild a highway that cut the city in half,” poses Willen, “or do we want to create an opportunity to reconnect?”

In Reservoir Hill, a prismatic display has erupted over the asphalt and sidewalks. Last spring, Graham Coreil-Allen gathered neighbors to help paint the intersection at Whitelock Street and Brookfield Avenue with a carefully placed rainbow of literal street art, bolstered by flex posts and fresh crosswalk lines that, together, urge approaching drivers to slow their roll.

“Before it was a lot of speed-thru action going on,” says Lauren Miller, a local resident and volunteer at the Whitelock Community Farm across the street. Now, “it’s a cognitive thing. When you see brighter colors, you’re gonna look. You’re gonna stop.”

Since 2016, Coreil-Allen has run with that theory to make Baltimore City streets safer through his design-build business Graham Projects, working with neighborhoods, transportation officials, and traffic engineers on inventive art that doubles as a traffic-calming tool. The lifelong artist has built a brand on advocacy, engagement, and collaboration, becoming a sort of street-design expert along the way.

“My work is very much driven by the needs of communities,” he says. “No public art is ever going to make everyone happy, but the goal is to have an equitable process and something that builds bonds of spirit and, ultimately, trust.”

Interested in urban design since adolescence, Coreil-Allen immersed himself in making radical public art at the New College of Florida. After graduating, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he created work that called attention to issues such as pedestrian safety and affordable housing. He relocated to Baltimore in 2008 to earn his master’s degree at the Maryland Insitute College of Art, and his first permanent local street art project, “Hopscotch Crosswalks Colossus,” added four usable sets of painted footprints to an intersection in the Bromo Tower Arts & Entertainment District on downtown’s west side.

 

“When you see brighter colors you’re gonna look. You’re gonna stop.”

 

He’s since helped transform intersections across Baltimore. His portfolio only continues to grow, with the city—notoriously lacking in its pedestrian-friendly infrastructure—most recently announcing official partnerships with Graham Projects at busy intersections outside Druid Hill Park and Lake Montebello.

Coreil-Allen emphasizes that the spirit of his work is less about waging war on drivers than it is about humanism and empathy. He considers the roughly one-third of Baltimoreans who lack access to a car, per Census data: “Those people deserve the same level of safety and access as all the cars driving up and down the road.”

In an unexpected turn, his art also benefited from a burst of urbanist experimentation during the COVID-19 pandemic last spring through the city’s Design for Distancing program, which was created to help neighborhoods reorient public spaces for the pandemic era.

On Harford Road, Coreil-Allen worked with neighbors to reimagine three commercial blocks, filling a parking lane with benches and tables for seating, all set on a can’t-miss display of blues and yellows and protected by temporary barriers and planters. Using good old-fashioned community engagement, he crowdsources design details from residents, leads his own neighborhood association, and even co-chaired Mayor Brandon Scott’s Art and Culture Transition Committee.

How can he tell when his projects are successful? For one, there’s the before-and-after traffic behavior data gathered from his “walking audits” or collected by partners like MICA. And there’s the feedback from the actual users, like the bespectacled, elderly woman who approached him at Beaumont Avenue and York Road.

“Are you the designer?” she said, waiting for her bus near the painted, sunset-like medley of reds, yellows, and blues, featuring Adinkra symbols of birds and peace signs and more. Coreil-Allen smiled and shared his story. “I’m so glad you did this,” she said.

When asked to name local neighborhoods, Baltimore Highlands and Coldstream Homestead Montebello may not spring to mind.

But that could change as these ’hoods—and others—harness the power of public art to both brand and beautify. There’s the just-completed 30-foot-tall aluminum “R” sculpture in Remington by artist (and resident) Dominic Terlizzi. Or, in Baltimore Highlands, an East Baltimore neighborhood with a large Latino population, there’s the bus stop shelter with a giant red pushpin sculpture piercing the roof and the Spanish phrase “estamos aquí” (“we are here”) emblazoned across it.

And in Coldstream Homestead Montebello, near Lake Montebello, an installation of whimsical windmills designed by local artists Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn, and fabricated by Michael Hart, is generating excitement.

“It’s a boon to us to be able to reach individuals who may have otherwise just overlooked the community,” says the community organization’s executive director, Mark Washington.

Steven Gondol, executive director of Live Baltimore, a nonprofit that facilitates home buying in the city, agrees, saying such projects are both savvy and inspiring.

“When a neighborhood welcomes you with art, it shows that the community is organized and that residents care about their surroundings,” he notes. “In many ways, that’s the most beautiful part.”