Federal Hill Featured Apartment:
Baltimore-Federal Hill - We've got a newly-renovated one bedroom unit in Federal Hill 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 Federal Hill
The neighborhood is named for the prominent hill that is easily viewed from the Inner Harbor area, to which the neighborhood forms the physical south boundary. The hillside is a lush green and serves as a community park. The neighborhood occupies the northwestern part of a peninsula that extends along two branches of the Patapsco River—the Northwest Branch (ending at the Inner Harbor) and the Middle Branch. This peninsula is generally referred to as the South Baltimore Peninsula, and includes the neighborhoods of Federal Hill, Locust Point, South Baltimore, and Sharp-Leadenhall. While not physically a part of the peninsula, Otterbein is also included in the collection of neighborhoods which make up greater South Baltimore. Traditionally, Federal Hill was roughly triangular, bordered by Hanover Street to the west; Hughes Street, the harbor, and Key Highway to the north and east; and Fort Avenue to the south.
The Cross Street Market, a recently-renovated historic marketplace built in the
19th century, continues to serve residents and is the primary social and
commercial hub for the neighborhood. The primary business district is bounded by
Montgomery, Ostend, Light, and Hanover Streets, and is home to a large number of
restaurants of a wide range of taste, quality, and price, and many small shops
as well as a few larger, more practical stores. The neighborhood is a popular
destination for tavern goers and music lovers, with street festivals several
times a year. These are organized through a very active neighborhood
organization and business organization, as is the annual Shakespeare on the Hill
series of summer performances in the park atop the actual Federal Hill. The
neighborhood is also home to the American Visionary Art Museum and Maryland
Science Center.
Significant and historic houses of worship include Christ Lutheran Church,
Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, Light Street Presbyterian Church,
Lee Street Baptist Church, Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, and St. Mary's Star
of the Sea Roman Catholic Church. Federal Hill is served by Federal Hill
Elementary School, Francis Scott Key Elementary and Middle School, and Digital
Harbor High School. The public library is the Light Street Branch of the famous
Enoch Pratt Free Library.
Federal Hill is located conveniently to Interstate 95, Interstate 395, the
Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and Charles and Light Streets, which provide the
major north-south surface route through Baltimore. The western portions of the
neighborhood are within walking distance of the Hamburg Street and Camden Yards
stops on the Baltimore Light Rail.
From early in the history of the city, the hill was a public gathering place and
civic treasure. The hill itself was given the name in 1789 after serving as the
location for the end of a parade and a following civic celebration of the
ratification of the new "Federal" constitution of the United States of America.
For much of the early history of Baltimore, the hill was know as Signal Hill
because it was home to a maritime observatory serving the merchant and shipping
interests of the city by observing the sailing of ships up the Patapsco River
and signalling their impending arrival to downtown businesspeople.
Following the Baltimore riot of 1861, the hill was occupied (against orders from
Washington) in the middle of the night by Union troops under the command of
General Benjamin F. Butler, who had entered the city stealthily from Annapolis
via the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. During the night, Butler and his men erected
a small fort, with cannon pointing towards the central business district. Their
goal was to guarantee the allegiance of the city and the state of Maryland to
the Federal Government under threat of force. This fort and the Union occupation
persisted for the duration of the Civil War. A large flag, a few cannon, and a
small Grand Army of the Republic monument remain to testify to this period of
the hill's history.
In the 20th century, Federal Hill was a working class neighborhood, and by the
late 1970s was yet another struggling Baltimore inner-city neighborhood, with
increasing crime, racial tension, depressed property values, and an aging and
decaying housing stock. Many of the industrial jobs, particularly in the
shipyards and factories along the south shore of the Patapsco River, which had
long provided the main source of employment for neighborhood residents were in
the process of disappearing. The Bethlehem Steel shipyards on the east side of
the hill were one of the last to close, in the early 1980s. The
nationally-recognized urban homesteading program in nearby Otterbein, begun in
1975, helped spur interest among individuals and businesses in rehabilitating
homes in Federal Hill, and it soon became a hotbed of investment and
rehabilitation, particularly by young professional baby boomers who had grown up
in the suburbs but worked downtown and longed for the excitement and community
of urban living.
The investment and growth throughout downtown and especially at the Inner Harbor
through the 1980s and 1990s only increased the popularity of Federal Hill living
over the decades following the initial reinvestment period. A second period of
intense investment and rising property values began in the mid 1990s as the
neighborhood was again "discovered" by a new generation of young professionals,
which now included many of the children of the baby boomers. This second stage
of neighborhood investment has included not just single-family home
rehabilitation but increasingly large development projects on former industrial
sites, particularly on the edges of the neighborhood around the water's edge.
Within the core of the neighborhood itself, there has been an influx of new
restaurants and shops.
Much of working class South Baltimore to the south of Cross Street has been
redefined as part of Federal Hill particularly by those in the real estate
business. This distinction is not shared by the city government, academic
observers, many neighborhood residents, or official neighborhood organization
boundaries. One resident noted in an interview with the Baltimore Sun that he
"lived all his life in South Baltimore and then woke up one day in Federal
Hill." This remark is characteristic of the tension along lines of class, race,
and neighborhood identity that exists in many gentrifying communities, and is
particularly true of the so-called "South Federal Hill" and Locust Point areas,
along with the rest of the South Baltimore peninsula. The same real
estate-driven expansion of Federal Hill is pressing on on the borders of the
most blighted neighborhood in South Baltimore, the historic African-American
community of Sharp-Leadenhall which is one of the earliest African-American
communities in Baltimore. Residents there fear the loss of cultural and
neighborhood identity while at the same time hope for some share of the
improvement that has come to Federal Hill and other surrounding communities.
In Federal Hill, as in many other neighborhoods characterized by the demographic
shift and accompanying increase in property values that many refer to as
"gentrification", long term families and elderly residents can be forced out of
their generations-old homes due to rising property taxes.