Of all the things the rowhouse on East Oliver Street had been over the course of its lifetime, the most recent was what some locals delicately called a gentlemen's social club.
That would explain the huge pedestal bed surrounded by mirrors and bolted to the floor that had to be ripped out as the house was renovated to offer quite different services: The Spiral Dance Womyn's Center & Bookstore.
It is an unlikely feminist outpost in an impoverished neighborhood of boarded-up houses and corner drug dealers. With its patchouli-scented, Our Bodies, Ourselves vibe, it seems not just from another place but another time as well.
But Laurie Kendall, one of the co-founders, would dispute that she is a sister from another planet. And after just 1 1/2 years in the neighborhood, she seems very much at home as she high-fives one of the men who run a garage across the street - they hadn't seen each other since their guy, Barack Obama, won the election - and asks about his grandson.
No one in the African-American neighborhood was quite sure what to make of Kendall and her partner, Bobbie DeVoll, when they bought the rowhouse at 2505 E. Oliver in March 2007 and started transforming it. For one thing, they were white. And a lesbian couple - something Kendall said they neither advertised nor hid.
"Nobody really understood us when we said we're starting a women's bookstore and women's center," said Kendall, 48, an adjunct professor at Towson University and UMBC. "They said, 'In this neighborhood?' I would say, 'Can you think of one that needs it more?' "
The neighborhood watched as the women, aided by friends and volunteers, started tearing down walls, replacing the floors and scooping out the house. The bookstore, cheerily decorated with goddess banners and handicrafts, heavily perfumed with incense and candles, also serves as a venue for GED classes and programs in art, wellness and entrepreneurship.
That push to empower women caught the eye of the Open Society Institute, which will announce tomorrow that Kendall is one of eight "social entrepreneurs" to receive one of the group's community fellowships. The $48,750 grant will allow her to give up her teaching positions and devote herself full time to the center.
If Kendall and DeVoll initially were outsiders to the neighborhood, it didn't take long for them to be accepted.
