Unlocking Baltimore

Music Credit: “Lille” composed and performed by Johnny Ripper. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is American Artscape online. I’m Josephine Reed. 

In this edition of American Artscape, we are highlighting the profound impact of the arts in shaping inclusive and vibrant spaces.  And the initiative, Doors Open Baltimore, is a shining example of this. Founded in 2014 by architect Chelsea Thomas in partnership with the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, this event has provided free access to some of Baltimore's most distinctive buildings-- some renowned and many lesser-known. Its’ aim is to foster a deeper appreciation for the city’s rich architectural heritage throughout its many neighborhoods. A practicing architect, Chelsea Thomas herself has dedicated over a decade to designing spaces that not only resonate with Baltimore residents but also promote social progress. A senior associate at Moseley Architects as well as an ongoing leader of Doors Open Baltimore for its first decade, Chelsea’s work has been widely recognized—most recently in 2023 with the Community Architect Award from American Institute of Architects (AIA) Baltimore chapter. 

In our conversation, Chelsea Thomas discusses spearheading Doors Open Baltimore, the meticulous planning involved, the significance of community engagement, and the lasting impressions these experiences leave on participants.   Doors Open Baltimore demonstrates how architecture and design can influence community perceptions of their town, contributing to a more connected and thriving city. It illustrates the incredible potential of the arts to create bridges of possibility. Here’s Chelsea Thomas to tell us all about it

Chelsea Thomas: Doors Open Baltimore is an event that started in 2014. Simply put, Doors Open provides free access to buildings not normally open to the public. It's presented by the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, and it happens during one weekend in October. The main event happens on Saturday. That's where we have about 50 open house sites participating, and on Sunday is when most of our guided tours occur. The way it works is participants may visit any of the 50 open house sites throughout the day.  We really wanted the participants, the residents of Baltimore, to feel welcomed to explore the city, and particularly places that are not normally open to the public. I think that's the appeal to the event. We do also include a lot of museums. We're trying to bring attention to the lesser-known hidden gems throughout the city. So it's really a mix of all different types of buildings, settings that are involved in the event. 

Jo Reed: And as mentioned, Doors Open offers guided tours on Day two of the event—Chelsea Thomas

Chelsea Thomas: The guided tours cover a variety of building types, neighborhoods, and they are an opportunity to both get a more in-depth history and story of the building, but they are also a good way to see multiple sites at one time, such as our boat tour, allowing for a discussion of the inner harbor in general. We have recently expanded our guided tours to the county, so we have been able to expand our footprint, recently, to include sites that happen just outside of the city lines, like Henrietta Lacks Village in Dundalk, like Towson, like Hampton, the National Historic Site. 

Jo Reed: Doors Open Baltimore is a free event for all participants which adds another layer of consideration in selecting the sites and neighborhoods 

Chelsea Thomas: We go through a very long and thoughtful selection process for our sites. We feel strongly about keeping the event free, and we will always need to be creative in the way that we plan the event.  Our site selection process begins by our committee sitting down and reviewing some of the most popular sites from the previous year, some goals for obtaining new sites that we haven't featured before, and we make a list. We also create a map of the city, and we look at both clustering sites so that a participant can go to one neighborhood and see three or four sites at a time. But also we want to make sure that we reach neighborhoods we haven't been to in the past and cover a broad swathe of the city. we are also selecting sites with a broad range of interests in mind, so anything from a coffee roastery, to a church, to the Arabber stables, to a local park or a cemetery. Our strategic plan is to invite a new neighborhood every year moving forward. Baltimore has what they call main streets, which are business districts all over the city, one of which is the Waverly Main Street. We worked with the Waverly Main Street organization to create a list of sites from their perspective that would be good partners and good sites for participants to visit as a part of Doors Open and cross-promoted with Waverly Main Street to bring more local interest to the event. So, we are transitioning from selecting the sites as a small committee within the Baltimore Architecture Foundation to getting more outside feedback on what residents and local community organizers are interested in showcasing to the public. 

Jo Reed:  Chelsea Thomas founded Doors Open Baltimore a decade ago. And I had questions: what inspired her? Was there a pivotal moment? And on the more practical side, I wondered how she even began the process of planning a city-wide event. 

Chelsea Thomas: I was inspired to start Doors Open Baltimore because I spent some time living in Denver. While I was there, I attended the Doors Open Denver event and I instantly fell in love with the event. I still have my little brochure that I got from Doors Open Denver. I brought that back with me to Maryland when I moved home. This is where I'm originally from. I mentioned this idea to a colleague of mine, Sara Langmead, and she connected me with the executive director of AIA Baltimore at the time, Kathleen Lane. Kathleen was very supportive of the idea and had even said that they'd been thinking about doing something of this sort for a while. So she assembled an all-star committee, <laughs> and the first event planning started in earnest in about spring of 2014, with the first event being in October. So it was a very short planning process for that very first event. I think we had about 40 sites participate, and I consider that a really great success. It hasn't changed significantly in its overall fundamental setup since then. The very first year, we had a tiny budget and a lot of donated time and materials to make it happen. Younts Design, a brand-new company in 2014, developed our branding and our website, and last year, for our 10th anniversary, they refreshed our branding, and they've been a great partner all this time. 

Jo Reed: Chelsea explains why she thought Baltimore was a particularly ripe city for a program like Doors Open.

Chelsea Thomas: Baltimore was primed for an event like Doors Open, with its wealth of historic architecture, and it's one of the oldest cities in the country and there's a lot going on here that needs to be highlighted. I think Doors Open strives to achieve that. It strives to bring to light all the positive things that are happening in the city and it's constantly changing and growing. There's so many interesting places and things happening all the time, and that is our goal, is to bring awareness to all of this beautiful architecture and really cool events, art and music, and you name it. 

Jo Reed: Chelsea Thomas is certain that architecture and design can influence community perceptions of their city and Baltimore is no exception

Chelsea Thomas: Well, I believe architecture is for everyone. It's everything from a simple row house to a baseball stadium and prioritizing adaptive reuse of historic structures brings new life to struggling areas and shows a commitment to preserving cultural heritage. As these places are revitalized, the public perception improves. More importantly, people's everyday lives improve. So, this is really the goal of Doors Open, is to improve public perception. We have done post-event surveys after every event, and we find consistently that it is achieving that goal, and that's something I'm proud of. Baltimore sometimes gets a bad rep, but it's beautiful, and it's so much more than the news, and the more that we can share that with everyone, the better. 

Jo Reed: Baltimore is a city of many neighborhoods and Chelsea explains how Doors Open Baltimore works with various local communities.

Chelsea Thomas: Doors Open Baltimore engages the local community by hosting events throughout the year, such as trivia, happy hours. The Baltimore Architecture Foundation and AIA Baltimore participate in the Charles Street Promenade event that happens. There’s a free kickoff lecture co-hosted by the Baltimore Heritage. As a committee, we do outreach to the community organizations so that we can foster partnerships and then strengthen those relationships over the years. We draw a lot of our volunteers from the community as well. So we are really trying to make this a for the community, by the community. 

Jo Reed: And that includes incorporating community feedback into their planning process

Chelsea Thomas: We've received a lot of feedback over the years, and I'm happy to report that most of it is positive, but we do get some constructive criticism as well. We take all of that into consideration. We meet after every yearly event, and we have a lessons learned, and we try to incorporate the comments that we've received from the participants. A lot of times, we get requests for certain sites, and we try hard to bring those sites on when we can.  Last year, we held a People's Choice vote so that we could engage our followers in selecting sites for the upcoming event, and that's something that was pretty successful that we plan to expand in future years. And we're always looking for ways to make the event more accessible to all. 

Jo Reed: Educational programs and children's activities are an important part of Doors Open Baltimore. 

Chelsea Thomas: I see Doors Open Baltimore as fundamentally family and kid friendly. I believe that kids get a lot out of the event. However, we do have a lot of additional kids’ activities that happen as a part of Doors Open. We have done a scavenger hunt in Mount Vernon. We do a STEM activity at our Info Hub, which is the Center for Architecture and Design, which is where the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and AIA Baltimore are both based. A lot of our sites take it upon themselves to put together their own children's activities, or they might do a performance or something of that nature. So there's always a ton of stuff available for kids, young and old. We want to inspire the next generations of designers, architects, city planners. So we are constantly collaborating with Morgan State University's architecture program and many of our volunteers for the event are students at Morgan. 

Jo Reed: Even though Doors Open had been growing steadily, the pandemic did take a toll that they are still working to overcome.

Chelsea Thomas: We were getting thousands of participants prior to the pandemic. That was probably when we hit our high point. When the pandemic happened, we went all virtual, and then in 2021 we introduced back the guided tours so that we could provide a limited number of people that could social distance but still get back out in the world. But since then, we've just seen a slow return to in-person events. We still get thousands of visits, which is what we consider one person entering a door of one of our sites, and we track that data every year. But we are really hoping to build the momentum back up to pre-pandemic levels and beyond, of course. 

Jo Reed:  I wondered if the program kept some of its virtual programming—Chelsea Thomas says “Yes, but..”

 Chelsea Thomas: So, for me, the event is really about interacting with people and architecture and neighborhoods. It's about moving through perceived barriers as <laughs> well as literal ones. So the bulk of our event is still in person, but throughout the year, there are virtual programs held by the Baltimore Architecture Foundation. One of our partners, Baltimore Heritage, was doing these five-minute histories starting at the beginning of the pandemic, which you can find on YouTube, and they're incredible. Johns Hopkins, with Baltimore Heritage, has covered so many different places, buildings throughout the last four years on the five-minute histories. They're just little snippets of about these buildings. 

Jo Reed:  I asked Chelsea to reflect on the theme of this issue of our magazine, American Artscape, which is “Bridges to Possibility: Transforming Communities Through the Arts”.  And if she saw examples in Baltimore of the ways the intersection of arts and physical infrastructure foster robust and flourishing communities? 

Chelsea Thomas: Architecture connects communities by creating inclusive, shared cultural spaces. Doors Open seeks to introduce people to these spaces to help them feel welcome, to engage in new experiences.  The city of Baltimore has seen neighborhoods blossom around the establishment of our arts districts. For example, the Station North Arts District, Bromo Arts, Black Arts, and Highlandtown, we're seeing a lot of buildings being restored and reinvented in these areas. Doors Open Baltimore has featured many buildings from these arts districts, and they have their own open house events as well, which I would encourage anybody to look up and go check out. But this is where the exciting growth, and this is where the most interesting things in the city are happening right now, in my opinion. 

Jo Reed: Chelsea Thomas is a deeply committed socially conscious architect. Since 2013, she has contributed to the design of more than 2,000 units of affordable and mixed-income housing throughout Baltimore and the surrounding area. I wondered how this manifests in her work with Doors Open

Chelsea Thomas: I work on affordable housing as a career, and affordable housing design requires you to be creative with your limited resources, and that certainly translates to Doors Open. Resources are <laughs> limited, in both instances. So, with affordable housing and socially conscious architecture, the goal is still to create a beautiful and functional and dignified space. 

Jo Reed:  Not surprisingly, funders and partners are vital to programs like Doors Open Baltimore and that includes the National Endowment for the Arts who has awarded Doors Open several grants.  

Chelsea Thomas: Support from organizations like the NEA and our other supporters have enabled us to make the event happen for the first time. I mentioned Younts Design at the very beginning and other supporters who have donated materials and helped us with research and growth and outreach to underserved populations in Baltimore. Just the logistics of putting together an event with 50 sites and then 30 or more guided tours, it takes a lot of manpower, and support has enabled us to bring on event planner to enable us to continue to have this event for many more years to come. We have a lot of pride in our city and we want everybody to feel that sense of pride as well. There's so much out there that there is to be proud of. There are so many neighborhoods in Baltimore, some very well-known, some little-known, but every neighborhood has its own unique character. Not only the architectural character but the character of the people that live there. 

Jo Reed: I know it's like asking someone to pick their favorite child, but I wanted to know if Chelsea had any favorite moments in the years she’s worked on Doors Open Baltimore... 

Chelsea Thomas: One of them was the moment that we wrapped up the very first Doors Open, and we just all breathed a sigh of relief and thought “Oh my gosh, we just did this.” Because it was a huge undertaking, and we have never done it before. It was a relief. We felt like it was such a success. We had a little after party, and it was just a really great moment. Over the years, when I have had a chance to sneak off to a few sites to see how things are going, and I'm just an observer, I'm always blown away by the amount of effort a site has put into providing a great experience for the participants. It just makes me feel very joyful to see people coming in and touring a building, and they're just out there enjoying themselves. 

Jo Reed: That was architect Chelsea Thomas—she’s the founder Doors Open Baltimore. This year, Doors Open Baltimore takes place on Saturday, October 26, 2024. We’ll have a link to Doors Open Baltimore in our show notes. We’ll also have a link to Baltimore Heritage’s Five Minutes Histories that Chelsea mentioned in the interview. For American Artscape online, I’m Josephine Reed.