History

History of COP
Citizens of Pigtown underwent a name change in 2006 from Southwest Community Council, Inc. (SWCC) to its current name. SWCC began meeting in 1971 and became an incorporated community association in 1973.
As a good representation of the groups early efforts, the below submission was taken directly from the Southwest Community Council Tenth Anniversary Reception Program, which was held on Tuesday, May 25, 1982 at 7:00 pm at The Church of Saint Paul the Apostle:
The Southwest Community Council began to meet in October 1971 at St. Paul's Church. Twenty-two people attended the first meeting. The four problem areas discussed at this meeting were:
  1. Trucks using Washington Boulevard and Hamburg Street
  2. Housing in need of repair throughout the community
  3. Sanitation and rat problems
  4. Industrial zoning designations.
These problems are still being monitored and worked on by the SWCC.
As a PAC Group for the Washington Village Urban renewal area, the SWCC has saved and rehabilitated homes. This is an on-going process. SWCC have supported Barre Circle and Barre Village as they’ve grown out of the devastated Fremont area. Other accomplishments include:
  • Establishment of the Washington Village Community Health Center
  • Creation of the Washington Village Library
  • Construction of the new school #34, Charles Carroll Barristor Elementary, built on a lot that the SWCC kept a bus repair company from using
  • Nine Carroll Park Festivals
  • Participation in the City Fair
Many problems brought to the SWCC by area residents have been work on and solved. Others are being worked on now. Our area has come back to being residential and a good place to live.

History of the Neighborhood
The industrial history of Pigtown begins with the brickyards established in the late 1700s on land belonging to the Mount Clare plantation, owned by Dr. Charles Carroll of Annapolis. Carroll acquired some 2,368 acres southwest of the fledgling settlement of Baltimore Town in 1732 and soon put it to both agricultural and industrial use. Rich in natural resources, the Mount Clare Plantation became one of the nation’s first agricultural and industrial complexes, complete with a gristmill, brick kilns, and an iron foundry – one of the nation’s earliest. In 1754, Carroll’s son, Charles Carroll Barrister (1723-1783), inherited the Mount Clare estate and proceeded to turn his father’s modest farmhouse into a grand Paladian country seat.

After Carroll’s death in 1783, a number of brickmakers bought  parcels of the original estate and established brickyards and kilns. Several of these entrepreneurs, such as George Warner, James Berry, and Alexander Russell, gave their names to the streets later laid out by their brickyards, most of which were located on either side of the Washington Road, an area known as Carroll’s Field. The 1798 Federal Property Tax List identifies fourteen brickmakers working in South Baltimore.

The Pigtown Historic District comprises of some thirty-six city blocks lying in southwest Baltimore, south and east of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad yards. Developing initially as a community for railroad workers in the 1840s along  Columbia Avenue (now Washington Boulevard), Ramsay, McHenry, and Poppleton streets, the area grew quickly during the industrial expansion of the 1850s and 1860s. Small two-story houses were built for working men on the narrow streets running south of Washington Boulevard, while three-story, gable-roofed, and early Italianette houses lined Washington Boulevard and Scott Street for the shopkeepers and upper-level managers.

Development in the Pigtown Historic District is intimately linked with the hallmark events of the industrial revolution, particularly the growth of the B&O Railroad, the nation’s first. The location of the railroad on West Pratt street ignited the rapid growth of related industries around it, such as locomotive works and traincar-building shops, and quickly grew the community’s working class population. Examples of every form of urban vernacular residential architecture built in Baltimore built between 1830 and 1915 can be found in Pigtown.

In 1827, leading businessmen of Baltimore joined together to found the nation’s first railroad company and decided to break ground