Surrounded by water on three sides, accessible from most of the city by a single road, Locust Point for years was a close-knit, working-class community where families toiled and lived in happy isolation from the rest of Baltimore.
As the site of Fort McHenry, a disembarkation point for thousands of immigrants, the home of two marine terminals and several storied industrial plants, the community boasted a rich history but was often overlooked or ignored by those who lived outside its mostly narrow streets of brick-and-Formstone rowhomes.
No more.
In the past couple of years, new workers and residents, many of whom once hardly knew Locust Point existed, have been drawn to this southern Baltimore community across the harbor from Fells Point and Canton.
Last month, owners took title to the last of 36 townhomes of Whetstone Point, a nearly block-square development in the heart of Locust Point, where the average home sold for $260,000. In less than five years, prices of older homes in the area have nearly doubled, to $117,000, with some recent sales topping $150,000. And one former factory is nearly fully leased as the Tide Point business center, even as the conversion of another old plant continues.
"We were a secret. Now we're not," said Joyce Bauerle, who is head of the Locust Point Community Association and has lived all of her 60 years in the neighborhood.
The rise in housing prices, in particular, is viewed with astonishment and anxiety by many longtime residents.
"The prices are amazing," Augie Goeller, 53, a dockworker and fourth-generation Locust Pointer, said late one recent afternoon at Oakes Brothers Tavern, a hangout for waterfront workers for half a century where a draft beer costs a buck. "You're talking some serious paper around here. What they're paying for a house now, you could have bought three blocks not long ago."
Many are apprehensively awaiting the results of the neighborhood's tri-annual property reassessments, due in December; others are worried about the long-term implications of Locust Point's growing popularity.
"It gives me concern about whether housing is going to be affordable in the future for families that have lived on the peninsula for generations," said state Del. Brian K. McHale, 47, a dockworker whose grandparents emigrated from Ireland to Locust Point at the turn of the century and who lives with his wife and two teen-age children in an abandoned grocery store he bought for $10,000 22 years ago and converted into a residence. "I don't know that my kids will ever be able to afford a house in this neighborhood."
