It's Saturday morning, and Cusack's is busy. The restored deli, coffee bar and sandwich shop at the corner of Bolton and Mosher streets is bustling with people, some sitting outside with newspapers and coffee.
Around the corner on Park Avenue, 40-year resident Mary Paulding Martin is watching the Wimbledon tennis matches on TV. But she takes time to show a visitor her mid-1800s rowhouse and her tiny garden, with its brick walk and volunteer magnolia tree.
Down the street at the Bolton Swim and Tennis Ltd., a private club, dozens of children and their parents make use of the pool and tennis courts. Their laughter can be heard over the high fence in the alley separating the club from a group of contemporary brick townhouses.
Up a block on Lanvale Street, Nancie Verkerke, founder and co-editor of the Bolton Hill Bulletin, the newsletter that has chronicled the neighborhood for more than 20 years, is about to show off the John Street Park, a tiny oasis of green in the center of a block of well-tended 19th-century rowhouses.
Mrs. Verkerke chats about the neighborhood crab feast honoring the police who patrol the community, the annual Festival on the Hill, a huge block party sponsored by Memorial Episcopal Church, the Easter egg hunt at Rutter Mill Park and "Happy Hour," the first Friday event at the church where everyone in Bolton Hill is invited for wine and hors d'oeuvres in exchange for $3 or an hors d'oeuvre for the food table.
Everywhere you wander in Bolton Hill -- 170 acres bordered by Mount Royal on the east, Eutaw Place on the west, Dolphin Street on the south and North Avenue on the north -- people are out and about.
A man in his 30s plays hide-and-seek with a fuzz ball of a dog on the corner of Lafayette and Bolton streets. A young couple, sitting on the front steps of a century-old rowhouse, are talking. A man in jeans and T-shirt paints the intricate Victorian lattice decorating the front porch of one of the few free-standing houses in the neighborhood.
On Eutaw Place, three older women, attired in Sunday best, walk away from the Marlborough Apartments, now senior-citizen housing. The Marlborough was once the home of the Cone sisters, who endowed Baltimore with their modern art collection.
This is Bolton Hill, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Most streets are handsome and well-tended, dotted with trees and sprinkled with nine little parks, and homes with painted doors and large shuttered windows.
