Long before Baltimore had its Harborplace pavilions, or the National Aquarium, or Oriole Park, there was Charles Center.
The 33-acre district in the heart of downtown might not be as well known as some of the newer spots, and tourists don't typically seek it out. But it is as significant as any other development associated with modern-day Baltimore because, in many ways, it was the catalyst for all that followed, including the even more ambitious effort to rejuvenate the Inner Harbor.
The planning of Charles Center also marked the first time that civic leaders attempted to address the signs of suburban flight and economic upheaval that public officials have wrestled with ever since.
This week brings, without fanfare, the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the master plan that guided the development of Charles Center - and, to a large degree, launched the much-vaunted renaissance of downtown Baltimore. It was on March 27, 1958 - 50 years ago tomorrow - that civic leaders first gathered in City Hall to present the plan for Charles Center to Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. during a crowded news conference.
Skeptics said they would never live to see it completed. But during the next three decades, Charles Center was constructed largely as envisioned - with more than a dozen office buildings, three apartment towers, hotels, underground garages, parks and a theater.
"I remember some councilmen saying, `It can't be done. It won't be done,'" former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer said this week. "But the good councilmen said, `Yes, it will. It will be done.' And eventually people got behind it - the business community, the residents, even the newspapers got behind it."
Hailed as bold and imaginative when it was first shown, and later criticized by some as producing buildings and public spaces that were more sterile and austere than in older parts of town, the plan nevertheless set the city on a path of revitalization that continues to this day with initiatives on the west side of downtown and the neighborhoods around the Johns Hopkins medical campus in East Baltimore.
Before Charles Center, people traveling between Philadelphia and Washington would routinely bypass Baltimore, Schaefer noted. But because of Charles Center, and the redevelopment that followed, "we've taken a little city where no one wanted to stop and we created a place where people want to come, want to live. ... That was the starting point," said Schaefer, who was a city councilman when the plan was unveiled.
