Carroll Park separates CHERRY HILL from PIG TOWN. One is populated by African Americans, the other by Euro Americans, and they played in the same park.
Monroe Street in the 1980’s was like Park Avenue, New York. Montgomery Ward was the store for all seasons and all things including appliances and furniture. Kurt Schmoke was there, as Baltimore’s first Black Mayor.
Life was good, and on the rise. To see interracial marriages bloom head to South Baltimore. There is where I learned to order a sandwich “all the way” meaning everything on it. The LITTLE TAVERN restaurants made the owners rich.
And thennnnn! Montgomery Ward sold to Mobil Oil. Curtis Bay where steel workers “made good money”, saw Bethlehem Steel take an exit.
What was the mayor going to do to keep “posivity” in South Baltimore?A casino was put right in the middle of the two communities. The Montgomery Ward estate of land and buildings became government offices. A casino was put right in the middle of the two communities. The Montgomery Ward estate of land and buildings became government offices. The African American population in Cherry Hill, had to find work elsewhere. The black owned supermarket took a “dive”. Walmart tried, but it was too out of touch with the people. It closed to everyone’s disappointment.
The politicians failed to connect to the people’s needs, did not replace the loss with industries for the less educated or unskilled. CHERRY HILL just over the WATERVIEW Bridge, was not “rising” but “falling” apart. But PIGTOWN was “moving on UP”!
The football and baseball stadiums are “a stone’s throw” away; money and businesses were, and still are, fighting for space. Take a walk along Washington Boulevard, North of Monroe Street, you would feel like Dorothy in the Land of Oz.
Cherry Hill has produced many educators, and a vast array of influential people, many of whom do not want you to know they came Cherry from “the Hill”. What have they given back to Cherry Hill?
Well Today! there is a movement ahead to make CHERRY HILL “rise again”! I was at one event.