Upton, Baltimore

A statue of Billie Holiday is installed at Billie Holiday Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue in the neighborhood of Upton in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

The Royal Theatre, located at 1329 Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, first opened in 1922 as the black-owned Douglass Theatre. It was the most famous theater along West Baltimore City's Pennsylvania Avenue, one of a circuit of five such theaters for black entertainment in big cities. Its sister theaters were the Apollo in Harlem, the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Regal Theatre in Chicago, and the Earl Theater in Philadelphia.All of the biggest stars in black entertainment, including those in jazz and blues such as Cab Calloway, performed at the Royal. Ethel Waters debuted there, as did Pearl Bailey, who sang in a chorus line. Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller worked as accompanists. Singer Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, The Tympany Five, Etta James, Nat King Cole, The Platters, The Temptations, and The Supremes, as well as a 40-piece, all-female band touring with Count Basie called the Sweethearts of Rhythm, were all performers at the Royal. Baltimore City's first talking motion picture was shown there: 1929's Scar of Shame, featuring a black cast. It was here that Solomon Burke was crowned the King of Rock 'n" Soul in November 1963.As middle-class, white flight from Old West Baltimore continued during the 1960s and 1970s and accelerated after Pennsylvania Avenue was damaged during the civil rights riots, the entire community began a period of long decline. At the time of the riots, the Royal Theatre was owned by the JF Theatres chain. In 1971, the Royal Theater was demolished.The Royal Theater Marquee Monument was to be phase one of an ongoing series of projects that the Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Collaborative (PARC) would lead. PARC and the Pennsylvania Avenue Committee worked closely with the Mayor's Office, the Upton Planning Committee, and 14 community groups over seven years to erect the Royal Theater Monument in 2004. However, widespread urban blight still remains: the entire Pennsylvania Avenue corridor has long since been razed, and nothing survives there today insofar as theaters. In the vacant lot where the Royal Theatre once stood, there is a sign declaring the Royal Theatre Memorial Park, but nothing has come about to make the "park" anything other than a fenced-in area.

The Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel (or B&P Tunnel) is a double-tracked, masonry arch railroad tunnel on the Northeast Corridor in Baltimore, Maryland, just south of Pennsylvania Station. Opened in 1873, the tunnel is used by about 140 Amtrak and MARC passenger trains and two freight trains every day, as of 2008.The 7,669-foot (2,338 m) tunnel, which passes under the Baltimore neighborhoods of Bolton Hill, Madison Park, and Upton, consists of a single tube with two tracks. It is punctuated by two open-air cuts for ventilation of exhaust fumes and smoke—Pennsylvania Avenue Opening and John Street Opening—that divide the main tunnel into three "sub-tunnels", designated (from south to north) Gilmor Street Tunnel, Wilson Street Tunnel, and John Street Tunnel.

The Avenue Market, originally known as the Lafayette Market, is a historic marketplace built in 1871 in Upton, West Baltimore, United States. The market is on Pennsylvania Avenue and is near the Old West Baltimore Historic District. The market has seen multiple iterations, having been rebuilt after burning to the ground in 1953, renovated and given its current name in 1996, and renovated again in 2012. Another redevelopment is expected to begin in the summer of 2022.Upton–Avenue Market station in the Baltimore Metro SubwayLink system serves the area and includes the market in its name.

Home of the Friendless is a historic orphanage at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a three bay wide, five story high Second Empire style brick building constructed in 1870 as an orphanage. The building provided a home for orphaned and deserted children for six decades and was part of a three-building complex that housed from 100 to 200 children each year. By 1922 the Board of Managers and Trustees had decided to sell the property and move to the suburbs. The institution is now known as Woodbourne Center.Home of the Friendless was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

Upton, also known as the David Stewart Residence or Dammann Mansion, is a historic home located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a large brick Greek Revival mansion constructed about 1838 as the country residence of David Stewart (1800-1858), a prominent Baltimore attorney and politician. It is 2+1⁄2 stories high on a raised basement, three bays wide and two rooms deep, with a center-passage plan. In the late 1950s, a brick stair tower was constructed when the building was adapted for public school use.In February 2023 a Federal Grant with over $ 2,2 million was announced to help create this property as the headquarters of Afro Newspaper, an African American owned paper published in Baltimore since 1892. Afro Charities is the awardee of the grant which will also help to digitize thousands of images and copies of the newspaper; https://www.wbaltv.com/article/the-afro-american-newspaper-archives-history-preservation-upton-mansion/42866107 Upton was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Upton is included in the Baltimore National Heritage Area.

St. James Episcopal Church Lafayette Square, or St. James African Episcopal Church, founded in 1824, is a historic Episcopal church now located at 1024 W. Lafayette Avenue in the Lafayette Square Historic District of Baltimore, Maryland.In 2020, it reported 432 members, 95 average attendance, and plate and pledge income of $317,553.

Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church and Community House is a historic United Methodist church located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is an 1898 Gothic Revival stone structure of massive proportions. It features sharply pitched gables, a square parapeted 85-foot-high bell tower, lancet windows, and Gothic influenced interior decorative detailing. The Community House is a Georgian Revival influenced brick structure, four stories high and built in 1921. The congregation was organized in 1787 and was highly influential in the antebellum freedom movement, the establishment of the first black school in Baltimore after the abolition of slavery, and the movement to foster the institution of the African American Methodist church. It is known as the "Mother Church" of Black Methodism in Maryland. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, during their formative years, held their meetings at this historic church.Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church and Community House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The Union Baptist Church is a historic Baptist church building located at 1219 Druid Hill Avenue in central Baltimore, Maryland. The granite church was designed by New York architect William J. Beardsley and built in 1905 under the leadership of Rev. Harvey Johnson. The Gothic Revival structure features steeply pitched roofs, lancet windows, and distinctive buttressing on the front facade to provide support for the walls on a constrained lot size. The church was built for a predominantly African-American congregation established in 1852; its minister from 1872 to 1923, Rev. Harvey Johnson, was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

Public School No. 111, also known as Francis Ellen Harper School, is a historic elementary school located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a Romanesque brick structure that features an ornately detailed brick front façade. It was built in 1889 as Colored School #9 and is one of the few surviving schools built for black children and staffed by black teachers. The school is named after Francis Ellen Harper (1825-1911), a Baltimore-born African American poet.Public School No. 111 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Upton–Avenue Market station (formerly known simply as Upton station) is an underground Metro SubwayLink station in West Baltimore, Maryland located near the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Laurens Street. The station takes its name from the surrounding Upton neighborhood and the nearby Avenue Market at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is the ninth most northern and western station on the line.

Sellers Mansion was a historic home located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It was a large three-story Italianate / Second Empire style brick structure. It was constructed in 1868 by Edward Davis as the principal residence for Matthew Bacon Sellers, Sr., who was President of the Northern Central Railway.Sellers Mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.Sellers Mansion was demolished on February 24, 2023 after a three-alarm fire.