Rediscovering Brooklyn: A Forgotton Architectural Landscape of Baltimore

Abstract

This project consisted of a reconnaissance-level architectural survey of Brooklyn, a working-class Baltimore neighborhood whose significance has traditionally been overlooked by historians and preservationists. Established in the 1850s as an independent town in Anne Arundel County, and annexed by Baltimore in 1918, Brooklyn has been largely omitted from the historiography of both jurisdictions. Architecturally, Brooklyn’s “inconsistent streetscapes” have been cited as a key factor in the neighborhood’s ineligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. This report aims to reframe “inconsistent streetscapes” as architectural variety that does not invalidate Brooklyn’s architectural significance but provides an opportunity to examine temporal changes to regional vernacular housing trends. Brooklyn consists of approximately 900 acres and over 3,000 buildings. Of the extant buildings, 97% were constructed prior to 1975 and are considered historic. The neighborhood is mixed-use, with housing as the dominant building type. Through the reconnaissance survey, 3,007 dwellings were documented. The architectural survey was supplemented with archival research to better understand the historic context of the neighborhood. Five periods of development were identified based on local or national historic events that seem to have impacted Brooklyn’s built environment. The impacts include changes in development trends, construction methods, and building styles. Each period of development illustrates Brooklyn’s evolving identity, marked by a persistent tension between urban and suburban development. While Brooklyn’s homes are modest in size and stylistic embellishments, they reflect the distillation of local and national trends through the lens of a working-class community. The “inconsistent streetscapes” are a feature of Brooklyn’s landscape that allows for further exploration into local vernacular housing trends and the history that shaped them. This variety, rather than signaling a lack of cohesion, represents a working-class neighborhood’s flexibility in response to local and national trends.