The Water is Back On

photo by me
I snapped this photo yesterday on the way home for work. After much time and effort, the two fountains in Preston Gardens are now flowing again. According to the Downtown Partnership, these fountains have not worked in over 30 years. The return of the fountains is a part of an ongoing effort to turn Preston Gardens from the once underutilized - and often thought overgrown median - into a revitalized park in the center of downtown. New tables and chairs, plants, and flower baskets have been added over the last few months. The grass is often mowed and the landscaping is taken care of by a full time groundskeepers.

Free poetry on Tuesday afternoons has brought more atmosphere to Preston Gardens, which is now a destination lunch spot for many in the surrounding buildings. The sloshing of the fountain waters now adds to the ambiance, and helps to drown out some of the other city sounds.

The Downtown Partnership still has more plans for Preston Gardens, but more concrete details have not been made available other than the Master Plan that was released in the spring. What has been mentioned here before is the need for better traffic mitigation surrounding the park to make it easily accessible from both the western and eastern approaches. Traffic continues to zoom down lower St Paul Place (except when it comes to a standstill at rush hour), and the approach (and look of the park) from upper St Paul Place is still less than ideal. A redo of the upper side median, and better crosswalks all around would do much to improve this access. Other than that, things are looking good!

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 23, 2011 at 11:45 PM

    This is wonderful news. Preston Gardens is such a gem. I am glad someone is paying attention to it. The fountains will look great, esepcially with the new Mercy Medical tower across the street.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Club One was the House of Welsh

Image
 House of Welsh in 1943. Note the Guilford Elevated streetcar line. At one time, what was 301 Guilford Avenue (at some point over time the address was switched to 300 E. Saratoga St) was called the House of Welsh a long time Baltimore steakhouse and restaurant. Originally opened in 1900 it occupied the corner buildings for 98 years. A 1998 article in The Baltimore Sun details the history of the House of Welsh on the eve of its closure. With the demolition of these three buildings yesterday marks the end of some of the oldest houses that stood near downtown. The houses were build in the 1830s, some of the only other houses of the same period were on St. Paul Street and were demolished to make way for the new Mercy Medical Center tower. Inside these buildings make have taken place some of the more little known, but nonetheless interesting stories in Baltimore's history. In 1904, at the height of the Great Baltimore Fire, a telegraph line was hooked up inside the building
Read more

Getting Back into the Groove of Blogging about Baltimore

I took a four-year hiatus from posting anything here on the Baltimore Skyline blog for a lot of reasons. Part of it was pure laziness; I decided to post some things directly to the Facebook page instead, but even then I sort of just stopped doing that in 2017.  A big part of it was that I no longer worked in Baltimore starting in 2013, and I honestly did not get the chance to get out and take photos of what was going on around town. The family grew, work changed, etc., so the hours in the day seemed to be mostly full. Little time to dive into news, development projects, openings and closings. The funny thing is that with a growing family, I actually did get out to a lot of fun kid-friend events - trips to the Zoo, Science Center, Patterson Park, B&O museum, and so on - but I was more invested in who I was there with than anything else. When I wrote less about Baltimore, it became harder and harder to get back into it. After blogging for, at that point, over 7 years I found it cha
Read more

The Rotunda

Image
photo by CB Maryland Casualty Insurance Co. circa 1920-1930 (photo by MdHS) The Rotunda :   Originally built for the Maryland Casualty Insurance Co. in 1920-1921. Later converted to offices, a mall, and longtime home of the Rotunda Cinematheque. Renovated again into a mixed-use space with retail on the ground floor along with the ICON Residences at the Rotunda which opened in 2016.  MdHS photos: https://mdhsphotographs.tumblr.com/post/26843707551/maryland-casualty-company-building-701-west-40th
Read more