The Forgotten Legacy of Baltimore Writers

by Maya Walker and Jenna Nesky

Despite its title, “The City That Reads,” when Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to the greater Baltimore area in the 1930s, they didn’t come for literature.

The reason they moved was Sheppard Pratt, the hospital where Zelda was treated for schizophrenia. They lived in the dower house of the Hampton Estate, owned by a wealthy friend, and their company was entirely white. At the time, Baltimore was a city of segregation and generational wealth, which both Fitzgeralds often portrayed in their writing.

Spanning nearly two centuries, writers like the Fitzgeralds, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, and W.E.B. Dubois all came to Baltimore for different reasons. They found a hospitable yet impermanent home in the rowhouses and manicured lawns of the northernmost southern city. Though their lives contrasted, Baltimore allowed its middle and upper classes to push boundaries.

As Baltimore City and County both morphed into more accepting places for middle-income professionals, more writers have sought homes in Baltimore. Several colleges and universities are in the area, providing emerging writers with a welcoming community and inspiration for their craft. “Baltimore likes to tell a good story,” said Felicity Knox, an archivist and librarian at Towson University.

But in doing so, as Knox and others have said, Baltimore sometimes neglects its rich literary legacy.

“We are sometimes so busy thinking about the things that get us fast dollars that we don't necessarily think about the things that are meaningful and could make Baltimore less of a pit stop,” said Knox. With its visionary art museum, literary and art festivals, and well-known charm, Knox explained that “Baltimore has [a strange marriage] between art and quirky art specifically.”

Knox is dismayed that Auburn House, the dower house where the Fitzgeralds lived, was bought to be a university club. The Edgar Allen Poe house was nearly demolished, too, before becoming a museum with quirky hours and a devoted following.

“I think if you can't convince somebody that a house is worth preserving because of its future, you're not going to ever have a house preserved,” she remarked. “I don't know why Poe House is the outlier, maybe because it was in a space that not many people would have wanted to live in anyway.”

But, as Knox said, Baltimore does like to tell a good story, even if it means stretching the truth. “Baltimore really can't claim [Edgar Allen Poe],” Knox explained. “He was not necessarily a Baltimorean in the same way that so many artists have been.”

Much like the Fitzgeralds, Dubois, Hurtson, and Stein, modern Baltimore authors still split their time between Baltimore and other cities, but this fact does not make them less attached to Baltimore. Laura Lippman, for example, is originally from Atlanta but is considered a Baltimore author by readers and writers alike. Madison Smartt Bell teaches at Goucher College in Towson, but like the Fitzgeralds was not originally from the area.

Auburn House still stands on Towson University’s campus, though it never became a club. People of all sorts have passed through its halls. Most will never know of its most famous residents; there is no sign or other information. Their street, La Paix, has a sign just like any other in the area.

Zelda Fitzgerald died in 1948 when Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina caught fire, according to Citizen Times, her experiences in Baltimore burning with it.

Auburn House was later renovated, with an added kitchen on the left side. “[The house]...got a whole new name,” said Knox. “Kenway House. Who wants to live there?”