Remember ‘The City That Reads’? What story does Baltimore want to tell with its city slogans?

Look closely at the lime green wood bench at Fawn and Albemarle Streets and see the faint remnants of an old slogan —The Greatest City in America — still painted on it. The moniker was on thousands of benches as part of a city campaign in the early 2000s, and years later the words have become iconic — often featured as part of Baltimore-inspired art. “The Greatest City in America” is one of a string of nicknames, taglines and slogans Baltimore officials have adopted over the decades. They typically spoke to the vision of the time and were often used to counteract negative perceptions of a city often hammered by outsiders for its socioeconomic issues. Usually, these slogans were part of a advertising and branding campaign.