Oldtown Mall

This abandoned place has a history long as its city, Baltimore.

Old Town, also known as Gay Street, was constructed in 1818. It was a shopping district and thriving and diverse middle-class neighborhood resided around it. Old town had more than 60 stores in its heydays before it suffered waves after waves of decay, along with the city.

After WWII, suburbanization and white flight caused blight and the population in this area went smaller and smaller. In 1968, right after Martin Luther King Jr. murdered, riot stormed many places in Baltimore and Old Town did not survive.

After the Belair Market closed altogether in 1990s, the City of Baltimore proposed many times converting or revamping this historical places but as you may see if you were to go there, It is not even poverty - population around it today is close to zero. Adding a fountain and a clock tower eventually only drew more graffiti.

While nature quietly taking it nowadays, this absolutely central area in Baltimore reminded glorious old days when the city was built by the rich, the poor, the Black, the White, the immigrates and locales.