When the federal government redlined Baltimore in 1937, a curious corridor on maps separated two prestigious neighborhoods, Guilford and Northwood, which both barred blacks and Jews.

That corridor ran along Greenmount Avenue from Woodbourne Avenue to 25th Street. In an effort to protect Guilford and Northwood, the federal government chose that Baltimore corridor as a unique national pilot program to demonstrate how rehabilitation could reverse gradual deterioration and make a neighborhood more desirable for whites and private investment. The Roland Park Company’s president, John McC. Mowbray, spearheaded the effort.