Boom times may return to Route 40 north of Baltimore. But the crumbling relics ? the former Magnolia diner that?s now the office for a junkyard, the Keyser Motel so often cordoned off by yellow crime-scene tape, the old Flying Clipper restaurant that became a liquor store ? may be among the casualties of progress.
As developers eye the run-down car lots, rent-by-the-hour motels and porno palaces along Route 40 as ripe for redevelopment opportunities, photographer Michael Lijewski rushes to document the area?s hidden history before it disappears.
“It?s a place that most people consider worthless, but the history there ranges from the obvious vintage motels and motor courts to the Colonial era,” says Lijewski, creator of the local history blog Falmanac. “Route 40 is our Route 66.”
At its peak, Route 40 stretched more than 3,000 miles coast to coast and traced the path of older roads through Maryland once traversed by American Indians and the Founding Fathers.
But as traffic headed to the interstate highways, Route 40?s hotels, filling stations and diners began to decline. Transients, addicts and prostitutes, not families, now check in to many of the aging, one-story hotels. Exotic dancers have replaced ballroom dancers. Porn stores operate out of onetime G-rated shops and newsstands.
Today, along Maryland?s rawest stretch of Route 40, from Essex to Aberdeen, the highway?s best years seem mere memories and pictures on fading postcards.
Lijewski, 43, has been snapping photos of Harford?s historic sites since 2006 to capture the aging homes, hotels and diners of Route 40. He shares the journey with his 84-year-old mother, Jane Lijewski, and his friend and fellow photographer Kim Choate.
“I?m hoping it makes people aware that there?s some value to these places, that they?re not something to look down on,” he says. “There?s a lot of stuff we go by every day that we don?t really think about keeping.”
Lijewski keeps alive a family history of looking at and learning from the past. He still recalls stories of his grandmother?s days as an Oklahoma homesteader and his great-grandmother?s life during the Civil War.
?Route 40 needs a face-lift?
As many as 60,000 new jobs will come to Maryland by 2011 as a result of the military Base Realignment and Closure. process Leaders in Baltimore, Harford and Cecil counties are banking that the areas along Route 40 will accommodate new businesses, housing and industry related to growth at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
“We?re interested in our heritage, but Route 40 needs a face-lift, and we?re really trying to give it that face-lift,” says James Richardson, Harford?s economic development director.
While a lot of builders want undeveloped land, Richardson says, the county has been rewriting its zoning code to encourage redevelopment along Route 40. That would make it easier to patch together smaller lots into parcels large enough to support office parks and industry.
Robert Cook, owner of the car dealership at Route 40 and Route 7 in Aberdeen, welcomes the new development.
“When we do business on the Internet, people will say they won?t go to Aberdeen to look at a car because they?re afraid of crime,” Cook says. “They have the attitude that this corridor is bad. I?ve lived here my entire life and just enjoyed every minute. But it?s about time the county starts paying some attention to us and doesn?t just give us all the Section 8 housing and all the industrial zoning.”
Reviving relics
Outside the Vagabond Motel in Edgewood, Lijewski spots the holes in the rusted, white-on-black sign. Here, colorful neon once lit up the night along Route 40 when it served as the mainartery for drivers traveling northeast from Baltimore, from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Postcards from that era show neon signs two and three stories tall, enticing drivers with promises of cross-ventilated rooms, television and comfortable mattresses.
Why not preserve some of the gems, Lijewski asks.
He points to Route 66 in New Mexico, where preservation grants and local investment have restored the neon displays of many historic hotels and motels.
“They?ve turned around what used to be a liability and capitalized on those old motels,” Lijewski says. “It didn?t take much ? a few kitsch-culture buffs bought them and got some help from the state to restore them.”
Farther south past Baltimore, other remnants of Route 40?s past have been swallowed up by strip malls ? such as the old Enchanted Forest amusement park in Ellicott City. There, a crumbling gate and dragon overlook a Safeway parking lot, and the portly plaster king of the fairy tale-themed park now points traffic to the shopping center.
Yet Ellicott City?s downtown, where Route 40 once followed Main Street, is a prime example of historic preservation and commercial reuse becoming a strong draw for shoppers and tourists, Lijewski says. The town is a haven for Civil War buffs and re-enactors, who can occasionally be found in full soldier?s uniform drinking modern microbrews at the Ellicott Mills Brewing Company.
“There are people coming specifically for the atmosphere and the boutiques of downtown,” he says. “Compare that to Bel Air and Harford County, where you have the actual downtown going to seed and a mall outside imitating Main Street.”
The beginning of the end?
For those who own the historic hotels and diners still intact along Route 40, the BRAC-based push for renewal has brought new promises and new pressures.
Joe Bayles, 53, owns the Holly Hill Motel outside Aberdeen, where three Colonial-style buildings overlook a yard that replaced a swimming pool and patio. As Route 40 motels go, Holly Hill retains its old charm, but Bayles says business isn?t what it was. He still gets the occasional traveler nostalgic for the highway?s golden age. But most of his guests are contractors at Aberdeen Proving Ground or workers renting by the week.
“I?m still making a good living, but our motel?s run its course,” Bayles says. “I need a retirement income.”
The 60-year-old building and its clientele are “high-maintenance,” he says, and he?s seriously considering a $1.5 million offer he got for the property.
Tom Fidler, a senior vice president of MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate Services, says his company has sold properties along Route 40, including a hotel in Belcamp, across the highway from a Super Wal-Mart.
Old buildings already are being cleared away to make room for new offices, housing and retail, stirring Lijewski?s fears that little of the corridor?s rich history will remain.
In 2004, the Bata shoe factory overlooking the Bush River in Belcamp came down to make way for the Water?s Edge Corporate Campus ? home to government consultants, high-tech software companies and other technology firms.
With the toppling of Bata?s distinctive warehouse, which had so many windows you could see all the way through the building, Harford lost a landmark, a piece of its history and a touchstone that set it apart from any other suburban setting, Lijewski says.
While not advocating preservation of every old building, he says his main reason for creating Falmanac.com and photographing Route 40 has been to get people to think more about the historic, sentimental or aesthetic value.
“As a blogger, I know my place: I can take a picture, write up a 150-word story to go with it, and get people to think about it a little bit more,” Lijewski says. “I don?thave the architectural expertise to say this building is structurally sound, or even the historical expertise to say everything that happened here.
“Ten years from now, the people who move here are going to hate us. To make a place livable, you need to feel like you?re grounded in some kind of geographic location that has a past, not just a housing tract and a Ruby Tuesday.”
