Belvedere Square

I'll get to you. Hello, everybody. T And we're back with another of our five-minute And today I'm at Belvedere Square, just off of York Road and just south of Northern Parkway. If We've got some fruits and sandwiches and all of that. Got it started in 1986, but really it can trace its roots back to the 1940s when Hoshel Cone put one of its first suburban style department stores here. But we're going to j Let's j Now York Road had been a footpath, a trail from Native American peoples for eons. But by about the middle of the 1700s, enough folks of European descent, settlers, were here that York Road became a turnpike. Farmers carrying their goods from Northern Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania down to Baltimore's markets and to the port and out to the world. By the middle of the 1800s, transportation had improved, including somet So that in 1874, York Road got what was called the Horse Car Railway. T By 1900, the area had five blacksmiths and two carriage shops. After all, were along a thoroughfare. People's wheels broke and needed to be repaired. And that's when t By the 1930s, land was so valuable, more valuable for real estate than for agriculture purposes. And even during the Great Depression, farms were disappearing, houses were popping up. And then in 1939, we got the great and enormous Senator Theater, all 1500 seats. That spurred even more development, but also was really a sign of how many people were already living in the area of Govins back in the 1930s. About 10 years later is when Hoshel Cone opened up its department store here at the intersection of Belvedere and York to South and Northern Parkland. We're going to talk about Hoshel Cone in a second. But then in 1986 is when Belvedere Square, the formation that we kind of know today, got here. Well, let's turn one click backwards to Hoshel Cone. It got its start in, I they started their store, Hoshel Cone, at Howard and Lexington, that famous department store corner. By 1920, it had become the biggest department store in Baltimore. But in the 1930s, it got walloped, maybe more than any other department store in the Great Depression. Its profits falling by 50% or more. But after the war, after the Depression, after the war, it bounced back with t It was really a pioneer nationally in t In 1947, it put a store on Edmonton Avenue. In 1948, it store here. It went on to put Hoshel Cone stores in the Herondale Mall and Social Security Mall in the mall in Col By the 1960s, it was so successful that a young investor named Warren Buffett bought shares in Hoshel Cone, giving it yet another boost. In 1948, it store here with sleek and modern, with steel and glass, a curving atri It was a far cry from the downtown stores. It'six floors of kind of packed merchandise on the top floor, a formal tea room. T As t We had the senator already here for about 10 years. But one of those other places was a restaurant called Thompson'seagirt House. It relocated in 1949 from the waterfront in Cannes, serving Maryland seafood specialty stuffed rockfish and crab cakes. Serving them, however, to the Maybe you were too back then. Another store that located here was Hesse'shoes. 1948, it's a sleek, modern design for its building, won an award from the American Institute of Arc The arc Back then, the kids loved it because it had slide that you could zip down getting from the second floor to the first floor. Dog owners loved it because it had t And parents loved it because it had a barbershop inside the store. So you could have some kids, some of your kids getting shoes, some of your kids getting a haircut, and the antsy ones running up and down the stairs and down that slide. All right, but back to Belvedere Square. Hoshel Cone did very well in the beginning for about 20 or 30 years, but by the 1970s and really early 1980s, it was in a downward spiral. That's when a local developer, James Ward, purchased it and turned t Out went to Hoshel Cone and it went pure one imports, if you remember that store, maybe still do remember that store. And upwards of three dozen local vendors, Fadley Seafood had a place here. Places The restaurant Chain C And in the early years, t And this is when, By the late 1990s, it was in a downward trend, so much downward that then Mayor Martin O'Malley threatened to condemn it and get the city involved. I don'think he had to do that, but a group of real estate developers j So you would have stores on the inside, but also activities on the outside. You had new places coming in That lasted for about 10 years, then it's changed hands to another group of local developers that continued on with its sort of mixed offices and shops and restaurants. And then another 10 years later, right after COVID, it changed hands again to its current ownership, bringing back some places at Waters is still here, but also new places All right, I'm going to wrap up and say that in many ways, Belvedere Square is a far cry from the carriage repair places in Blacksmiths 100, 150 years ago. But in many ways, it's the same place. It is that same hob of commercial activity in Govins on York Road heading into and out of Baltimore. Thanks so much and we'll