The Skywalk

Back in the day, you could traverse Baltimore's downtown 20 feet above without setting foot on a crosswalk. This was the Urban Planners' Vision: the same urban planners who'd given us empty plazas, slum clearance, the project high-rises.

The Skywalk vision, though--that had a little more magic to it.

We all started working menial jobs at fourteen or so--every single one of us, rich and poor, privileged or not. These jobs generally came in the form of a mall of some kind, and our mall in Baltimore City was Harborplace--easy to get to by bus from pretty much everywhere. So we all worked down there, and many friendships and relationships in later life were formed by the connections we made at the Harbor, when the Harbor was new.

I didn't know about the Skywalk until some savvier friends showed me how it wound its way from the Light Street Pavillion (site of the original cargo docks) all the way through the business district, up through Charles Center, and the Mount Vernon corridor. The Skywalk was largely hidden (part of its "thing" or purpose) but more remarkably, most of it sat on top of an insane underground complex of garages where it was entirely possible to become lost forever.

The Skywalk meandered around a Mies Van Der Rohe building I'd later work in, and (much) later would access its airy lobby to see my divorce lawyer.  The Skywalk wound through a now-dead mall where one of my first boyfriends used to meet me in the mall's BK, all atrium/greenhouse windows and corridors to other places.

The Skywalk, in short, transcended the ordinary life of the street, and much as I despise the modernist creators of the high-rises and the empty plazas, I am sad to see the skywalk go away altogether. It was a romantic kind of back-alley, unknown place. Meant to make people feel safe by being "off the streets" it actually created a whole other set of badly-lit corners. Their buildings were cursed (even in the 2000s, women were continually shoved down the convenient laundry chutes of Charles Center's apartment buildings, with no explanations.)

More to come.