For reminders of how she has spent much of her 68 years, Betty Hyatt needs only to look out the front window of her first-floor co-op in the 1700 block of E. Baltimore St.
Out there are the streets of Washington Hill, where the daughter of Russian immigrants played during the Depression, where the single mother raised five children, where the former church worker dreamed up ways to occupy restless neighborhood teen-agers.
She has devoted the past two decades to rebuilding those streets, to shaping solid rows of meticulous, red brick homes, some with marble steps and wrought iron railings, with doorway trim and cornices painted blue and green. Soon, she'll see the final pieces in place.
Since residents fought the wholesale razing of 27 blighted blocks north of Fells Point, the neighborhood has risen from a prime example of urban decay and neglect to a model of innovative renewal projects fueled by city-community partnerships and federal grants. By the mid-1980s, housing planners from Israel, Turkey, China and France were traipsing through co-ops on Fairmount Avenue, shopsteads on East Baltimore Street and dollar homesteads on Durham Street for **TC peek at redevelopment in the inner city. Ms. Hyatt, executive director of Citizens for Washington Hill since 1972, usually led the way.
Redevelopment stalled about seven years ago when federal money slowed to a trickle and other parts of the city were deemed needier. But today, workers are building affordable housing on the neighborhood's last major parcel. Planning resumed a year and half ago, federal financing came last fall and the first new homes should be finished next week.
The $4.5 million Washington Square includes 37 townhouses and 22 condominiums on four parcels of East Baltimore, Spring, Eden and Fairmount streets. Already, buyers have signed contracts to buy six of 10 new townhouses on East Baltimore, with three bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, walk-in closets and gas heat. Townhouses -- with market values from $72,000 to $91,000 -- will sell for $51,254 to $69,452 because of federal and city subsidies. One- to three-bedroom condominiums -- valued from $48,679 to $86,218 -- will sell for $34,674 to $63,718.
In a neighborhood close to public housing projects fighting their own battles with poverty, drugs and crime, Washington Square "will go a long way toward stabilizing the entire community," Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson said when the project broke ground last fall.
