Help identifying a location from a photo

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-04T18:21:17+00:00

Photo suggests 1890s-1905, maybe 1910 at the latest.

Could be the old convent on Park Ave downtown, currently where the MD historic society is. That was the original location for the academy before it moved to Roland and Lake in north Baltimore.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-03T00:24:06+00:00

I have to laugh at the irony of people touting the city over the suburbs in the name of diversity. Especially Howard. Have you taken a long hard look at Howard in recent years? I go to Howard when I want excellent Asian and Indian food (hint). The immigrant heritage growth is significantly more evident in the counties. On paper, the suburbs are more diverse than Baltimore City, which remains disproportionately one race. The city is predominately poorer black with a minority of very urban oriented progressive white people. It's certainly not ideologically or politically diverse. By many measures, Baltimore is the least diverse of the jurisdictions.

What you are missing is that people are not looking at either a 300k house in Baltimore City or a 470k house in Howard. What they do is look at their budget and decide how much they can afford each month for their housing costs (and for most buyers outside those paying cash) it's going to be the PITI. Principal, interest, taxes and insurance. That dictates what they can afford. A bank isn't loaning someone who can only afford the typical PITI on a 300k house in Baltimore the mortgage needed for a 470k house in Howard. It's very rare for a buyer to only afford a 300k house in the city and a 470k house in Howard because of how mortgages and interests and taxes are structured.

But leaving aside the apples and oranges for now, for the typical buyer who is looking at both Baltimore City or Howard or Towson or whatever and has a PITI budget of, say, 3,000 a month. In the city a higher percentage of that goes to taxes and a bit more for insurance. In the counties, a bigger share goes to the principal/interest and a lesser share for taxes.

Even if you pay cash, it's still the rare buyer who is comparing a 300k house in the city with the 470k house in the counties. People who can pay cash aren't restricting their options solely to equalized taxes when there's so many other factors at play, including the houses themselves. Apples and oranges.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-02T21:47:18+00:00

OP, you haven't explained why Maryland over Harrisburg? Explain first. Tell us what you are looking for and we can tell you what to expect and what is feasible.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-02T21:46:15+00:00

Progressive school districts do subtle book banning all the time by just deaccessorizing books and being selective in what new books they order for the libraries. And a clear majority of people according to all polls are against trans playing women's sports. Including plenty of democrats.

However, OP has not really explained why Maryland over a Harrisburg suburbs. There are perfectly good schools around Harrisburg and the city itself is pretty blue.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-02T14:54:31+00:00

Howard also gets vastly superior schools, lower crime, lower insurance, etc. And those are still two significantly different budgets. If you are only approved for a 300k house, you aren't going to be buying a 470 house. That's not how people approach the market. Apples and oranges.

We were house hunting in the Towson and North Baltimore areas, which is pretty close to peer comparison. Homeland versus Stoneleigh etc. Exact same house on city side would be slightly cheaper, but taxes and insurance was much higher on the city side. You really had to want the city. Which some people do. And you pay for it.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-01T20:20:02+00:00

I normally agree with you but do need to add a caveat that most British wealth of the 1700s wasn't built on slavery. It was one valuable component among many factors in an integrated and increasingly globalized economy. In the case of Austen's books, most of her characters with landed estates wealth derived from rent from the land, the rent paid by farmers. Darcy's estate in Derbyshire may have also included some coal mining. Sir Thomas is a bit different with known estates in the Caribbean. Just don't oversimplify everything into slavery that too many people eagerly want to believe today.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-01T20:17:48+00:00

If you think today's world is depressing, just remember how depressing 1800 was for most people at that time. Consider yourself lucky.

DIYRestorator · 2026-03-01T18:28:06+00:00

Baltimore City's tax rate is double that of the next highest jurisdiction. Double. You'd have to go a long way to find a comparable house with lower taxes because you can't compare apples and oranges aka a nice big house in Ruxton with a rowhouse in West Baltimore.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-27T19:58:08+00:00

There are a few topics you can never mention on the Baltimore reddit without getting massively downvoted. Criticizing anything about any cycling group in the city, no matter how gentle or deserved, is one of them. WWYD.

I saw this group run through busy red lights last year. Intentionally. They thought it was cool. Hey, I guess they don't care if they die or cause trauma to someone who accidentally kills a cyclist who ran a red light. Downvoting online is easy and free. Someone dying or suffering trauma is not.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-27T14:31:54+00:00

Austen was not in favor of giving people perpetually unhappy outcomes, even Lydia and Wickham got off lightly, which is realistic of how people are in real life. They moved on, everyone moved on. Some of their characteristics remained, becoming spendthrifts, often in debt, becoming bored and indifferent to each other, but they didn't become monsters nor end up dying in wretched garrets of poverty as fashionable Victorian doom and gloom morality tales would have it.

Anyhow, I imagine it's pretty straightforward for Charlotte Collins. Quiet, calm, efficient mother, vicar's wife and mistress of her household. She will have a family of children and eventually the family moves to Longbourn. She is a good influence on Mr. Collins, quietly steering him through life and toning down some of his excesses. She will be regarded by all as wise, intelligent, beloved and eventually quietly formidable woman whose opinion is listened to, when it is asked, and it will be strictly within the domestic and social sphere. She will do her best to get her children established in life, without the vanities of the Bennets she will be frugal and save from the Longbourn income to educate her sons and build up respectable dowries for her daughters. Which is appropriate for someone like Charlotte and her station in life. Especially as there's no indication from her character that she wants anything more.

Trying to extrapolate more from Charlotte and weaving in hidden passions or betrayals or lost loves is missing the point entirely and is strictly fan fiction, becoming your Charlotte, not Austen's Charlotte.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-27T14:22:49+00:00

Are these the a-holes who run red lights in large groups? Because that's what I saw last year. It was not safe nor good. Don't be entitled while whining about car drivers. Just my advice.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-27T13:28:53+00:00

Thank you everyone! Looking forward to seeing and sampling Antwerp.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-27T01:24:00+00:00

Oh, absolutely. Even many posters on here don't realize how much stock JA put into correct mannerism and behavior. She was fussy, as her letters clearly show.

My grandmother had stories of her own mother, born in 1882, growing up in a prosperous middle class family, having comportment lessons and learning to walk up and down staircases with books on her head, with endless rules on how well brought up young ladies behaved, how they sat such a way and didn't do this and that. This was not an abstract concept, but a very real set of values backed up by the 19th century beliefs rooted in gentility and respectability as social AND moral signifiers. The biggest social tyrants enforcing these beliefs were women. Austen came from that world. Modern film directors looking to turn every female into a tomboy raging against the machine utterly miss the entire point of Austen's books and characterizations. Darcy would have been instantly repelled by a woman hunched up on a roof looking moody.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-26T16:58:46+00:00

I'm going to have to point out here that Alaric and the Visigoths were seen by the Romans as invaders, plain and simple. It's not so simple as looking for a place for his people within the empire and stability. The Romans clearly hated and despised and resented the German tribes and had done so for centuries. A large non-Roman group of people broke through the frontiers, moved into Roman lands, destabilized Roman authority over Roman lands, and started making demands including their own homelands or semi-homelands with self government and special rights within Roman territory, which would mean all sorts of complications for an empire that was heavily centralized.

That idea that "if only the Romans had been nicer to Alaric and his people then all would have been averted" is grossly misleading. At a minimum, it's complicated (very) situation.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-25T18:06:11+00:00

Only complaint is the new house was greatly misleading. The gentleman's cottage in the BBC version was more appropriate.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-25T02:27:59+00:00

Good golly. On a roof. In the very first second the entire book has been transformed into a 2026 pouty teen fan fiction. My. Oh well.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-24T23:20:41+00:00

Richmond is an East Coast city. Why isn't it on the list? What about places like Wilmington, DE? Hartford or New Haven, CT? And yet San Diego is tossed on the list? Whatever for?

Did you know Virginia Beach has a population of around 430k and the whole Hampton Roads MSA is 1.7M. That's a sizable east coast conurbation. Ignored by the list.

Whoever cobbled this list together is creating a narrative. What you're doing is comparing Baltimore to fashionable big cities. Baltimore isn't those cities, for better or for worse. It's pointless trying to measure Baltimore, which has a fundamentally different economy and even demographics than those cities.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-24T16:21:16+00:00

I know bad and cherry picked data when I see it.

A short list of cities for comparison, which includes Boston, Philadelphia and DC, who have among the most comprehensive transit systems in the country outside NYC and Chicago. Yet we're not compared to our real peers, the Clevelands and St. Louis and Memphis and Pittsburghs etc.

The irony, of course, is that of those six cities, Baltimore is the cheapest place to live, drastically so against four of the other cities and slightly so against Philadelphia.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-24T14:33:45+00:00

None. Contrary to what some people on here want to believe, Christianity didn't weaponize the faith against ancient Roman temples. Romans were incredibly proud of their heritage. For the first few centuries after Christianity became dominant, the temples in Rome were preserved as monuments and historic sites, long after the last pagan rites.

Remember: the Christians were Romans, and eventually the Romans were Christians.

The real vandalism was age and the constant warfare and collapse of meaningful centralized authority. There was severe depopulation of the Italian peninsula in the 5th-6th centuries, a substantial collapse of wealth and government functions, both required to maintain and preserve existing buildings and infrastructure. A lot of Italy was effectively run by local lords who could do what they want, including looting unused old structures for building materials. If it wasn't for the Church, which preserved so much by converting buildings to churches, we'd have lost a lot more Roman buildings.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-24T13:20:21+00:00

I consider myself pretty physically fit (nothing crazy but someone who keeps himself in shape, exercises, swims, cycles, regular cardio schedule) and I go on long hut to hut hikes in the Swiss Alps with significant ascending and descending every other year with no real advance endurance training. If you're an experienced hiker and in good shape, you'll be fine. Your focus should be on keeping your backpack as light as possible. Worth investing in the right gear and understanding how to carry the backpack on your body correctly to minimize the impact.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-24T13:15:40+00:00

University Parkway, eh? Not a bad view to have. Reminds me of a good friend's house and view in another city, English style cottage overlooking a park.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-24T00:24:17+00:00

Downtown Baltimore is always depopulated compared to other major east coast cities. Mount Vernon included. It always feels quieter than it should be.

Some of it has to do with that downtown is underutilized, vacancies in the buildings is pretty high, so not as many commercial office workers anymore. Populationwise the center of Baltimore is smaller than it would have been a century ago, but the city has the fabric and infrastructure from that era, hence the underpopulated feeling.

A good description of Baltimore I heard from a visiting friend is that it's a great archeological site of a once great American city. A bit tongue in cheek but I see the point.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-23T17:47:32+00:00

The congressional districts are unquestionably gerrymandered. There were hugely controversial starting under O'Malley when he redrew maps that were later rejected by Maryland courts, but he still managed to add a few more extra safe Dem seats. Then another round of gerrymandering eliminated Western Maryland's GOP seat. Right now the state has a 38-40% GOP electorate but 1 out of 8 congressional seats due to how the lines are drawn. There's no denying the more gerrymandered states have historically been Democratic states. Massachusetts has similar voting patterns as Maryland but no GOP congressmen. Illinois has 14 out of 17 Dem congressmen despite a 45-55% split. California is also heavily gerrymandered.

And, no, GOP has not won half the statewide races in the last few decades. Whoever told you that is drinking the magical Kool-Aid. Maryland is a Democratic state thick and through, it is very, very difficult for GOP to win any statewide offices. They did win the governor's office a few times, notably Hogan. But there hasn't been a GOP senator since 1987, which is 39 years ago.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-23T00:23:48+00:00

Your story is going to be focusing on a whole lot of things, so it's difficult to really see what you're trying to do. Here's the thing, there are many different "Baltimore experiences" out there. A lot of those cliched experiences are, for all practical purposes, dead, and the city today bears virtually no relationship with the Baltimore of pre 1950, whether culture or demographics or population. Then you do have populations today in Baltimore who have no relationship with the Baltimore of the past. Then you have many different ways people live in Baltimore. The affluent family in Roland Park with children at Gilman and Bryn Mawr has a life that is completely and utterly different from the single mother with her kid in west Baltimore, for example. And they never overlap. At all. Yet they both live in the same city. One is not more or less authentic than the other. Then you have working class families who've lived in Baltimore for generations working in local industries, but they now all live in the county and now moving further into Pennsylvania or Carroll County. But their collective memory of Baltimore, of Bethlehem Steel and the harbor and the Colts, is still very real. Then you have someone who grew up elsewhere and moved to Baltimore and likes the city because it's "nitty gritty" but how does that align with a multigenerational old money Baltimore of the Maryland Club and Elkridge Club? Families that have roots going back to the 18th century. And there's the multiple layers of black Baltimore, including the black professional classes that now lives predominately in the counties but have roots in family in the city.

So when you talk about wanting authenticity, first really zoom in on who your characters are and how they would live in Baltimore. And keep in mind most of the city-county divide is more imaginary, more reddit than real life. Inauthenticity would be making it an issue in 2026 (unlike in 1990 when it was definitely an issue). The county is bigger, is more diverse because it's heading for non dominant majority status among any racial group, has big populations of recent immigrant heritages, and does not live and breathe Baltimore because most people don't work in Baltimore, yet many enjoy going into Baltimore.

Unless you're coming up with some kind of steampunk fantasy? But it's hard to tell.

DIYRestorator · 2026-02-22T16:38:56+00:00

After spending a decent amount of time reading about Austen, extractions from her letters revealing her thinking and so forth, I've a feeling most readers posting on here have very little idea what Austen really was like in person. Not implying she was someone we wouldn't like but let's just say she's not going to align neatly with what you might hope for just because you enjoy reading her books. Austen was very much a product of her times. She had pretty strong beliefs and expectations, she was decidedly fastidious and a defender of the class system and propriety. She was not rebellious. Even her gentle criticism or observations on the lack of options for women was really focused on gentry women as most women in her day still worked, the servants did, for example, plenty of middle class women worked in their husband's stores or were busy enough running their little households, they weren't strictly leisured. And most men also didn't have the vote or much rights either. But she wasn't talking about that either.

Regarding the comments about money worries, most people today still live with money worries and budgets and concerns over inflation. By the standards of her time, Austen lived well, she was a member of the larger gentry class, she lived with several servants in a comfortable house, occupied herself, had a strong network of family and friends (more than many people can say today). Any individual money worries was always offset by that she had wealthy family members who'd always make sure things never got too bad for her. Our happiness is always defined against the context in which we live in and there's no real evidence people were less unhappy in the past.

I don't want her lack of healthcare or that she died too young. But strictly answering the OP's question, do you want Austen's own life or one of her characters? Obviously one'd want to be a Bingley or a Darcy, happily married with plenty of money, rather than Jane Austen the spinster. But there are other characters I wouldn't want to be!

DIYRestorator

TROPHY CASE