Walking Guilford

I took the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage 2013 Tour of Guilford today, which is part of their Centennial celebration. For tour details, visit www.guilfordassocation.org and click on Centennial events. You can also explore articles about the history of the community on their webpage.

I began at the Grace Turnbull home because I knew some of her carvings were in evidence there and I am a big fan of the Good Shepherd statue at 33rd and Ellerslie which she dedicated to Lizette Woodworth Reese. 

The tour included Sherwood Gardens which reminded me that whether walking or driving I can easily get lost in Guilford. Even though I studied the map, it was a challenge finding many of the stops along the way. But wandering lost can be its own reward; today it let me enjoy the architecture, hilly green slopes, winding lanes and old stately trees. 

As this wasn’t a history tour there was no guide to tell me the significance of old unmarked brick archways, but later Frank McNeil confirmed they were the entrance gates to the old A.S. Abell estate, former McDonald Farm, which stretched to York Turnpike, present day Greenmount Avenue. The Abell family sold the land to Guillford Park Company which consolidated with Roland Park Company and this great streetcar suburb was born.  

Toward the tour end was a home where Ogden Nash once lived with an entrance marked ZOO which I found out referred to a collection of his verses about animals.

A Google search brought me to a poem which might be dedicated to some former or current residents of this very wealthy neighborhood. 

It is called “Bankers are just like anybody else, except richer” and begins: 

This is a song to celebrate banks,                                                          

Because they are full of money and you go into them and all

you hear is clinks and clanks,

Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,

Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.

Most bankers dwell in marble halls,

Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,

And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,

Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it...

We can’t all live in Guilford; but that’s alright. It would, however, be nice if the concepts and designs of planned communities with fine architectural features, plenty of green space, flowers and trees could be extended more to neighborhoods of the poor, the working and the middle class.