Westport, Baltimore
| Westport | |
|---|---|
| Neighborhood | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Maryland |
| City | Baltimore |
| Time zone | Eastern (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC) |
| ZIP code | 21230 |
| Area code | 410, 443, and 667 |
Westport is a neighborhood in south Baltimore, Maryland. Westport is a majority African American neighborhood that has struggled with crime, housing abandonment, and unemployment in the past decade. The neighborhood is bordered by the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River on the east, the city neighborhoods of Cherry Hill, Brooklyn and the southwestern Baltimore County community of Lansdowne to the southwest, Hollins Ferry Road and the Mount Winans and Lakeland neighborhoods to the west, and Interstate 95 to the north, along with the South Baltimore communities of Federal Hill and Otterbein. The Baltimore-Washington Parkway (Maryland Route 295 - formerly Interstate 295) runs through the middle of Westport and intersects with Interstate 95, the main East Coast super-highway, north to south, Maine to Florida.
The neighborhood is mostly brick row homes built in the 1920s with small front porches of the "Daylight" style. The neighborhood consisted of mostly blue-collar workers who worked at nearby businesses which faced the waterfront of the Middle Branch and Ferry Branch (formerly the colonial "Ridgley's Cove") of the Baltimore Harbor and Patapsco River such as the Carr Lowrey Glass Company and the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company's Westport Generating Plant. A railroad bridge trestle for the old Western Maryland Railway and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to their Locust Point terminals in South Baltimore crossed the Middle Branch and runs east and west through the community. Over the years, the industrial core of Baltimore faded and many residents moved to the suburbs, leaving neighborhoods like Westport to fall into disrepair. Despite a concrete re-paving of the main commercial street of Old Annapolis Road and a planting of rows of new shade trees in the early 1970s, numerous businesses, branch banks and other stores and shops closed, including a branch library of the Enoch Pratt Free Library at Old Annapolis and Waterview Avenue. According to an article in the Baltimore's Department of Planning, in 2000, 22% of the homes in Westport were abandoned.
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