Promising plan, huge challenge: A Harlem Park renaissance in West Baltimore

Sixty years ago, urban renewal came to Harlem Park, and the West Baltimore neighborhood has never been the same. In the cause of “slum clearance,” the city demolished dozens of houses with no plan to replace them or relocate their residents. Officials carved away half of gorgeous Harlem Square Park for a school and athletic fields, removed streetcar lines that connected the neighborhood’s residents to jobs and downtown shopping, and demolished 12 blocks of houses and businesses to make way for a doomed interstate connector that became known as the Highway to Nowhere.