Chesapeake Home

By Sarah Achenbach & Bill McAllen

What’s your favorite place or space? Sarah Achenbach poses this question to Baltimoreans in Spirit of Place, a book that is part fine art photography, part oral history. While photographer Bill McAllen captures each interviewee in or near each chosen space, this cast of characters has no shortage of stories to tell.

While known for its blue-collar roots and kitschy charm, Baltimore also is home to a unique collection of architectural gems that tell of a distinctive history. As television producer David Simon reflects, “Men used to build monuments in this city, marking the simple but manifest achievements of product and capital, management and labor. And then inside…men and women would manufacture ever more of what the world needed.”

Spirit of Place celebrates the finest in architectural design and restoration, from the Bromo-Seltzer Tower to the Hippodrome; touts that, as Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes fame notes, “our Washington Monument is so much cooler than DC’s;” recognizes entire neighborhoods from Pigtown and Hamilton to Federal Hill; and heralds iconic symbols like the Domino Sugars sign and Natty Boh Tower. As Achenbach puts it, “We may admire architecture for its design, grace and function, but it’s the way we interact with a place…that gives it its soul.”

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130 pages/Charm City Publishing, LLC 2009