
Sep 18, 20250
VIDEO: 25 years ago, a call from Schaefer, unheeded, to preserve the Superblock
As the city razes more of Baltimore’s once-grand shopping district, travel back in time to when it was bustling with proud small business owners [Part 3]

For years, photographer Amy Davis and Baltimore Brew have been closely following the story of Baltimore's Superblock. That's the name city leaders gave Baltimore's beautiful old Westside shopping district when they seized acres of it 25 years ago for a big mixed-use development project - that never materialized. The merchants and building owners protested being displaced, preservationists decried the treatment of the buildings, many of them gorgeous old architectural gems. But the structures, never rescued, stood vacant and began to deteriorate. A fire last year prompted the mass demolition of many of them, prompting this series recording images of the destruction and reflecting on the bitter lessons of this huge civic fail.