New and Old #190
Friday roundup and commentary
America In Miniature, Baltimore Magazine, Ron Cassie, June 2021
In 2017, the Maryland Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America named its annual award after Welsh, who passed away in 1991. A coincidence perhaps, the America in Miniature catchphrase receded from public usage shortly thereafter. When Robert Ehrlich and Martin O’Malley served in Annapolis, Maryland road signs read, “Enjoy Your Visit.” In 2015, Gov. Larry Hogan replaced those with the even less poetic, “We’re Open for Business.”
That said, the lost slogan remains as true as ever, and Marylanders’ pride in their state’s rich beauty remains intact, as our ongoing obsession with the state flag demonstrates.
“America in miniature” is such a perfect slogan, and it remains true today, maybe even more true: Montgomery County has some of the nation’s most diverse cities; Baltimore, western Maryland, and the bay and Eastern Shore regions are all quite different from each other.
The article is a long mix of history and day-trip/road-trip ideas. It’s a little bit of a trip just to read and let your mind wander a bit on a busy week.
I had never actually heard this song before, and I only heard it this year because it’s one of the entries in the local radio station’s Christmas song choir competition. This blog post and the rest of the blog is fascinating stuff, if you like random historical details and bits of mystery. Enjoy!
“And so, I think that’s hard for folks who drive up and down the Pike every day, dealing with the traffic and trying to navigate the existing projects in the Pike,” he continued. “But my optimism is mostly focused on the future. Once we get through this, the Pike is going to be even more dynamic and vibrant, yet retain so many of the things that make it such an interesting and unique place in the county.”
Columbia Pike is one of the major corridors in Arlington County, Virginia, and it’s a prime example of a highway that serves as both a “place” and a through-route. It’s also a fascinating place to watch an old automobile-based landscape turn bit by bit into something quasi-urban.
Here’s a randomly chosen then-and-now from the last few years:
In some ways this is more interesting while it’s happening than when it’s done. Then again, I suppose we don’t know what the “final state” will look like overall, and then again, there may not really be a “final state.”
The Small-City Experience in the Midwest: An Introduction, Indiana Magazine of History (Volume 99, Issue 4), James J. Connolly and E. Bruce Geelhoed, December 2003
This is an introduction to a series of scholarly articles, the most interesting of which looks like “The Small City in American History.” The intro is fully readable, but the articles it’s introducing are behind Jstor paywalls. These two articles focus on the American small city as a distinct type of place, apart from small towns and big cities. That’s very interesting, and it’s absolutely true, as the authors suggest, that most of the discourse and scholarship on cities assumes we’re talking about large cities. They cite the Midwest as a region full of small cities. Pennsylvania is also full of places like this—Easton, Allentown, Bethlehem, Reading, York, Lancaster. Even Virginia has a few, like Staunton.
Give that a read, if you can.
Related Reading:
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50k seems to be a sort of sweet spot. The city is small enough that most people know all the parts of town. It's large enough to develop sizable communities of special interests, whether ethnic or occupational. There's usually a civic theater company or orchestra, with its own community.
A small city with a military base nearby is even stronger. Enlisted men live on base while most married officers live in town. The officers and their kids have been all over the world, so they contribute a cosmopolitan tone. The wives are encouraged to take part in civic affairs, and they keep social organizations going.
The 2003 special issue of the Indiana Magazine of History is a great share. I don't recall what else is in there, but I recommend the Timothy Mahoney essay. The old Chicago School sociologists and the consensus of urban historians have been preoccupied with urbanization and with urban settlements at the highest scale. While Mahoney's essay is another urbanization study, he has been concerned with the transitions from towns to small cities and from small cities to medium-sized cities. Please let me know if you are interested in discussing this and I will pull up my notes.