Allendale, Baltimore

Edmondson Village
Neighborhood
Rowhouses along Edmondson Avenue
Country	United States
State	Maryland
City	Baltimore
Time zone	Eastern (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	EDT (UTC)
ZIP code	21229
Area code	410, 443, and 667

Edmondson Village is a large neighborhood in the southwestern section of Baltimore, Maryland, encompassing the Edmondson Avenue corridor. Its communities include Hunting Ridge, Uplands, Rognel Heights, Edmondson, West Mulberry, and Allendale. It is located north of Frederick Avenue, and south of the Gwynns Falls Parkway, Leakin and Gwynns Falls Parks. Communities in the area range from middle class to lower income.

Racial succession and white flight occurred in Edmondson as a result of the real estate sales process of blockbusting between 1955 and 1965. According to The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, it was not uncommon at this time for neighborhoods within Edmondson to shift from 100% White to 100% Black in a span less than one year. In 1968, the section along Edmondson Avenue east of Gwynns Falls was one of the worst hit areas during the Baltimore riot of 1968 following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Since the 1970s, Edmondson Village has seen a steady increase in crime.

The Edmondson Village Shopping center is the focal point for the entire Edmondson Village area. Built by developers Jacob and Joseph Meyerhoff, the Edmondson Village Shopping Center opened to huge crowds on May 7, 1947. The Baltimore Evening Sun called the project “a suburban shopping center of harmonious design, said to be unique in American city planning.” Architects Kenneth Miller and James Edmunds combined traditional Colonial Revival design with innovative features including a terraced 500-car parking lot that made the shopping center one of first designed for drivers. For decades after WWII, shoppers enjoyed over 29 shops selling everything from fur coats to auto supplies to ice cream. A bowling alley arrived in 1949 and the Hecht Company opened a store across the street in 1958. In recent decades, the Edmondson Village Shopping Center has struggled with competition from larger suburban shopping malls, but still remains an important anchor for nearby neighborhoods.