The City Fair launched in 1970 on a shoestring budget, run out of a vacant furniture building at Charles and Franklin streets. Office equipment included desks cast off from the school system. Naysayers, including the mayor, thought the whole idea naïve. Who would attend a three-day, county-style fair in downtown Baltimore two years after the ’68 riots? It turned out, 350,000 people that inaugural year. Nearly double the following September. Soon a million visitors.

“Bob Embry [then-Housing and Community Development director] invited Hope Quackenbush and me, who worked for him, to lunch to brainstorm something to bring people downtown,” PR maven Sandy Hillman remembers. “We came up with a civic celebration that would get city neighborhoods together in the same space at the same time. Tommy D’Alesandro, the mayor, was not convinced this was a good idea on the heels of the riots. Don Schaefer was the City Council president then and so we went to him. He loved it.”

Ultimately, the City Fair withered after being displaced by Harborplace. But it served as proof of concept for the Farmers Market, which Hillman got going in 1977, and Artscape, five years later. The 1970 fair also brought fireworks back to the Inner Harbor for the first time, reportedly, since 1781, when 50,000 Baltimoreans climbed Federal Hill to celebrate Maryland joining the United States.

The 1970s was a gritty, challenging time, of course. The fair’s opening acts often reflected, one might say, the era’s “nothing to lose” attitude. In 1972, The Great Zacchini, known as the Human Cannonball, was shot 200 feet over the Inner Harbor. In 1973, 68-year-old Karl Wallenda, pictured above, walked—and did a headstand—on a six-story, high-wire strung from the mast of the USS Constellation. In 1979, Doug Jones, a 26-year-old “Culligan Man” from Carroll County, climbed a 165-foot ladder and dove into 25 feet of water.

The true spirit of the fair, however, was its sense of togetherness. On its very first Saturday night, a late storm whipped through, toppling numerous booths.

“The next morning, people from different neighborhoods, across racial and demographic lines, helped each other,” remembers Bob Hillman, Sandy’s husband, and the City Fair’s first chair. “That rebuilding had a tremendous psychological effect, not only among the mix-and-match participants involved in the clean-up, but with everyone. It was an incredible statement about what a city can be.”

The annual fair didn’t include just carnival rides, local food, and off-the-wall stunts, but top-notch entertainment like Baltimore’s first lady of jazz, Ethel Ennis, and a certain Douglass High alum named Cab Calloway.

Rolling with unexpected weather issues, as well as scheduling snafus, is inevitably part of such event planning. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, booked as the closing act in 1971, for example, got lost on their way to perform. That prompted quick-thinking Sandy Hillman to divert the Orioles’ team bus, which was headed back to Baltimore from then-Friendship International Airport (now BWI) to the fair. The team had clinched the AL East title with a weekend sweep in Cleveland.

“They arrived as the band finally got there and had begun playing,” Bob Hillman recounts with a wry laugh. “The Orioles come out on the stage, and the place goes wild. Afterward, Jim Palmer, who had no idea that there was even thing called the City Fair, comes up to Sandy and says, ‘It’s amazing you got this all together for us in a couple of hours.’”

A Baltimore native and City College High School graduate, Robert Embry decided when he was in graduate school at Harvard that his talents would be best put to work in the city he called home.

After returning to Baltimore and winning a seat on the City Council in 1967 at age 30, Embry was recruited by then-Mayor Thomas J. D’Alesandro III to serve as commissioner of the Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development. He was instrumental in the development of now-iconic Inner Harbor attractions, including the Maryland Science Center, the National Aquarium, and the convention center. His tenure also oversaw the creation of the subway system and the “Dollar House” program of the 1970s, largely credited with the revitalization of neighborhoods like Otterbein and Ridgely’s Delight.

After a term as president of the Baltimore school board, Embry was tapped as head of the Abell Foundation, which saw its holdings grow exponentially after the sale of the A.S. Abell Co. to the Times Mirror Co. in 1986.

Thirty years into overseeing the largest private foundation serving only Maryland (it has doled out more than $339 million in grants and investments since its founding), Embry’s vision remains the same: to dramatically reduce the income and health disparities that exist in the city.

 

You chose to return to your hometown after graduate school at Harvard. Why are you so passionate about Baltimore?

My view of America is that its most profound challenge is to remedy the ill effects of its history with African-Americans, and Baltimore is a case study of those inequities. Baltimore is the city that I was born in and know the most about, and was one of the cities most challenged by these issues. So it was the place I thought I could have the greatest impact.

What do you see as some of the most pressing challenges facing the city right now?

The most immediate one is the crime rate. And that’s caused by a whole variety of other issues, which, in the long term, are arguably more important. That is, racial discrimination, lack of education, lack of jobs, housing, and so forth. But the most immediate issue, to me, is reducing the crime rate, which is having a dramatic negative impact, primarily on the low-income population of the city.

With all of these issues that need addressing, how does the Abell Foundation determine where to invest its funds?

The foundation’s primary focus is on the poverty issues in the city, so that’s what it devotes most of its money to, as well as education, job training, health programs, and housing.

What sort of progress have you seen since joining the foundation? Do you see things improving?

No. I would say that the city is more challenged today than it was 30 years ago. There are signs of progress. There’s a lot more entrepreneurial activity in the city than there was 30 years ago, there are more foundations and philanthropic dollars than there were. Most of the foundations of any size in Baltimore are focused on the same issues, on reducing poverty in the city. But overall, the city has seen a loss of population, increased percentage of poverty, and increased segregation in the schools—not only racial segregation, but income.

What gives you the most hope right now?

There are more and more programs that are cost-effective that are addressing this problem. There are numerous job-training programs that are successful in placing city residents in jobs. Thread and CollegeBound are making a significant contribution in increasing the number of low-income Baltimore City Public School students who go to four-year colleges and stay in college, and there are a whole host of anti-poverty initiatives that exist today that didn’t when I started at the foundation.

Is there a recent recipient of Abell Foundation funding that stands out to you for the impact it is making in the city?

There are many of them. Joe Jones’ Center for Urban Families; we’ve been helping since their founding almost 30 years ago. They have a tremendous track record in moving primarily inner-city men into employment. But there are many other job-training programs that are very successful.

Where do you hope to see the city in another generation— 20 or so years in the future?

I hope to see the income disparity and the health disparity that exists in the city dramatically reduced.

Where could those resources come from to make that happen?

I think it would have to come from the federal and state government; primarily the federal government.

What message would you send to people who want to get involved in helping their city, but aren’t sure where to start?

For somebody who has the ability to do more than they’re doing, there are numerous volunteer organizations, many of which you’re touching on in the magazine. There’s no one initiative that is going to appeal to everybody. But there are so many options, it’s hard to imagine there isn’t one for everyone who wants to give back.