I graduated from the Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus which was in the northern part of town, several miles from downtown Baltimore, back in 1984,
Yup, 30 years ago. Aside from a quick visit in 1985 I hadn’t been back to Baltimore since then.
While they had already started to develop the “Inner Harbor” area of Baltimore to re-make it as a tourist attraction when I was in college, there wasn’t much there at the time. I only remember from that time:
1. The Harborplace shopping galleries, opened in 1980
Harborplace, Inner Harbor, Baltimore
2. the U.S.S. Constellation, a Civil War era ship.
U.S.S. Constellation, Baltimore
3. The remodeled National Aquarium, opened in 1981; it’s the big building with a triangle on it in this panorama:
Panorama of the part of the Inner Harbor, Baltimore, June 2014
Note: Those glass highrise buildings on the far left, behind the brick building, are the new hotels in the neighboring Fells Point area where we stayed.
As my student budget didn’t cover expensive things like the Aquarium and boutiques in Harborplace, I rarely went down to the Inner Harbor when I was in college. It was fun to stroll through Harborplace on this trip to see that a fun hat store (“The Mad Hatter”) had survived over the years. I remember the proprietor was willing only up-to-a-point for college students to come in and try on her selection of crazy hats that they had no intention of buying.
Anyway, you can see an overview of the complete Inner Harbor area in the photos I posted a while back that were the scenes from our hotel window. It’s amazing to see how much they have redeveloped the area in the last 30 years; those 2 little buildings of the Harborplace, once the showpiece of the Inner Harbor, are dwarfed by all the buildings that have sprung up around them.
Baltimore Inner Harbor, June 2014
So, it’s not that just that you can’t go home again, as the saying goes. You can’t go back to a place you once knew slightly — a place that has focused on urban renewal for the past 30 years —without expecting everything to have changed to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable since the last time you were there.
So interesting. By contrast, from all you’ve shown in Tuebingen, one gets the impression that that’s a place that has changed very little over many centuries. But are there modern buildings (or neighborhoods?) there that stand out from the traditional ones?
Thanks, Will. It’s true that Tuebingen’s city center is the historic part, which has been maintained over the centuries to look pretty much the same. In other parts of town, there are modern regular looking buildings, but I guess I don’t take photos of them. 😉 Chris’ department, for example, is in a rather modern building that isn’t that exciting, but also isn’t very old. I’ll try to get a photo of it soon. 🙂
I like the aerial shot of Baltimore seeing the little buildings being surrounded by everything else that makes the whole place more interesting.
Thanks, Stan. Yes, I like the aerial shot, too – it gives you a good idea of how the harbor fits into the downtown area. Thanks to the nice check-in clerk at the hotel, who was a fellow Hopkins alumn, we got a room with a view! 🙂