Charles Village Featured Apartment:
Baltimore-Charles Village - We've got a newly-renovated one bedroom unit in Charles Village that has a great layout for roommates who need their privacy but also need a one-bedroom sized rent. In this apartment, we've put a door on the living room, so it can be used as a second bedroom. View More Listings -->
About Charles Village
Charles Village is a neighborhood located in the north-central area of
Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It is a middle-class area with many single-family
homes that is in proximity to many of Baltimore's urban amenities. The area was
first developed as a streetcar suburb in the early 20th century, and was then
known as Peabody Heights; the moniker Charles Village, derived from Charles St.,
the area's major north-south corridor, was coined in the 1970s as the beginning
of a process of conceptually grouping a large and somewhat heterogeneous area.
Charles Village in a strict sense consists of the area immediately to the east
and south of the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus. However, smaller
neighborhoods to the east and south of this area — including Abell, Harwood, and
Old Goucher — are considered by residents and other Baltimoreans to be part of
Greater Charles Village. The Charles Village Community Benefits District
Management Authority (CVCBDMA), the organizational arm of the Charles Village
Community Benefits District (CVCBD), covers a hundred-block area generally
bounded by 33rd Street to the north, Greenmount Avenue to the east, 25th Street
(east of Guilford) and 20th Street (west of Guilford) to the south, and Johns
Hopkins and Howard Street to the west. This area contains over 14,000 people and
700 businesses.
One of the Charles Village's defining features is its proximity to Johns
Hopkins' main undergraduate campus, and many university staff and students live
in the neighborhood, particularly in the areas immediately adjacent to the
campus. Perhaps as a result, Charles Village has for the past several decades
attracted a large population of artists, bohemians, and kindred spirits — its
residents being described as "hippies and hipsters" by some observers. The area
also has a reputation for being one of the more racially diverse neighborhoods
in a city that was largely segregated for decades. The neighborhood in general
becomes more affluent as you travel from south to north and from east to west.
Though there are the occasional apartment buildings, much of Charles Village's
housing stock consists of two- and three-story rowhouses built in the early 20th
century. Much of the houses have been well maintained and, along with the rest
of the city, the neighborhood has seen a boom in real estate prices in the first
half of the 2000s. Some of the larger rowhouses have been converted into
multi-unit apartment houses in more recent decades.
The neighborhood includes several small commercial districts, and is within
walking distance to the well-attended Waverly farmer's market. However, unlike
many of the trendier neighborhoods in the city, there are few large-scale retail
areas. That is in the process of changing, however, as two blocks of St. Paul
Street in the northern part of the neighborhood are being completely
redeveloped. By the time the project is complete in 2007, a former stretch of
rowhouses and small apartment buildings will be replaced by a large dorm for
Hopkins students and multi-story condominiums, all of which will contain
ground-floor retail. Some in the neighborhood are excited about the coming
additions to a somewhat sleepy area, while others are trepidacious of the
change. In Summer of 2006, the first phase of the new development will be
completed: a Barnes & Noble bookstore will open as an anchor to the retail space
of the dorm project. It will simultaneously serve both as the Johns Hopkins
student bookstore and as a standard retail outlet for residents of North
Baltimore City. The Barnes and Noble bookstore did not open in Summer of 2006 as
was expected, it opened in October 2006 on October 21st. The Barnes and Noble
bookstore consists of two floors, the first floor consisting of books and
magazines, a Starbucks coffee shop, some Hopkins textbooks and a lot of Hopkins
clothing and the second floor consisting of mostly Hopkins textbooks, with some
generic school supplies and computer supplies mixed in.
The Charles Village Community Benefits District is a special taxing district,
one of only two in the city, the other being the Midtown Benefits District in
Mount Vernon. Property owners in the district pay 12 cents per $100 of assessed
value over and above city taxes to support the district.
Two specific services provided by the CVCBDMA are security patrols conducted by
its private security forces and frequent sanitation services. The district also
serves to organize community sentiment for dealings with the city government. In
the words of the district's Web site, "The CVCBD has a full-time staff that
organizes promotional and community-based activities through community building
and economic development."
Some vocal residents feel that the district doesn't do enough or does the wrong
things. Critics point out that security patrols are rarely seen around Charles
Village except for the business corridor along Greenmount Avenue. Critics also
point out that the sanitation services and security services claimed by the
CVCBDMA, when they actually occur, are provided by Baltimore City departments
instead. However, the critics have also been known to dismiss photographic
evidence of CVCBDMA workers doing the work, as well as making unreasonable
claims of what can be done with limited funds.
A candidate running for the Baltimore City Council calling for its outright
abolition received less than a hundred votes at a recent election. The
Management Authority board claims it is responsive to citizen concerns given
that it is elected from Charles Village residents. The CVCBDMA has been
reauthorized through 2010.