Curtis Bay is a residential / commercial / industrial

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

in the southern portion of the City of Baltimore,

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

, United States. The neighborhood is on steep sloping heights, about four city blocks wide (west to east) and fifteen blocks long (north to south) and above and surrounded on three sides (northeast - east - southeast) in a highly

industrialized Industrialisation ( UK) or industrialization ( US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive reorganisation of an economy for the ...

waterfront area in the southern part of the city, and receives its name from the body (

cove A cove is a small bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creek (tidal), creeks, or recesses in a coast ...

) of water to the east in which it sits. The cove of "Curtis Bay" with two small branches - Stone House Cove and Cabin Branch is fed from the southwest by Curtis Creek which in turn is formed further south by Marley Creek and Furnace Branch/Creek in

Anne Arundel County Anne Arundel County (; ), also notated as AA or A.A. County, is located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 United States census, its population was 588,261, an increase of just under 10% since 2010. Its county seat is Annapolis, wh ...

. Adjoining nearby to the east is Thoms Cove near Hawkins Point at the north end of the Marley Neck peninsula. Curtis Bay cove itself also has a dredged deep water channel with considerable port facilities and waterfront industries and is a branch of the main stem of the

Patapsco River The Patapsco River ( ) mainstem is a river in central Maryland that flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The river's tidal portion forms the harbor for the city of Baltimore. With its South Branch, the Patapsco forms the northern border of Howar ...

, which forms the extensive frontage of Baltimore Harbor and Port, northwest off of the

Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula, including parts of the Ea ...

. The residential community of Curtis Bay is along three major north–south thoroughfares of Curtis Avenue, Pennington Avenue ( Maryland Route 173 on which most commercial businesses are located) and residential Fairhaven Avenue and a partial street of Prudence Street. Running west to east are fifteen smaller residential streets named alphabetically for various types of trees. "The Bay", as it is often called colloquially, also offers a variety of housing,

townhouse A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of Terraced house, terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type o ...

rowhouse A terrace, terraced house ( UK), or townhouse ( US) is a type of medium-density housing which first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row ...

s, individual homes, (both constructed of wood-frame, brick, stone and concrete block/stuccoed) and corner stores, taverns/bars. Curtis Bay is also home since 1897 to the

United States Coast Guard Yard The United States Coast Guard Yard or just Coast Guard Yard is a United States Coast Guard operated shipyard located on Curtis Bay in northern Anne Arundel County, Maryland, just south of the Baltimore city limits. It is the Department of Homela ...

(formerly the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service until 1915) on Hawkins Point Road / extending south from Pennington Avenue ( Maryland Route 173) on Arundel Cove off Curtis Creek on the border line with neighboring suburban

to the south. During the middle and late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a quarantine station and

lazaretto A lazaretto ( ), sometimes lazaret or lazarette ( ), is a quarantine station for maritime travelers. Lazarets can be ships permanently at anchor, isolated islands, or mainland buildings. In some lazarets, postal items were also disinfected, usu ...

run by the United States Government agency (future

U.S. Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services which manages public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The assistant se ...

) along Thoms Cove between Sledds Point and Hawkins Point. There is a large

Polish American Polish Americans () are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 8.81 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.67% of the U.S. population, ...

community in Curtis Bay. The former town hall, real estate office, volunteer fire station, and meeting/assembly hall on the second floor for Curtis Bay was constructed on the heights overlooking the new town and rapidly developing industrial waterfront along Fairview Avenue (now Fairhaven Avenue) facing Filbert Street by a successor developing firm, the South Baltimore Harbor and Improvement Company in 1905. In 1925, the United Polish Societies purchased the building and named it Polish Home Hall and it became central to the Polish ethnic experience in Curtis Bay, functioning as a social, educational, and political center for Curtis Bay's Polish community into the 1970s.

Air quality

A large coal train terminal owned by

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

has been the subject of recent controversy on air quality in Curtis Bay. Many residents have complained about coal particulates layering the community in a grey film. A 2023 collaboration study found that coal particles were found in 100% of the samples throughout the community during 3 rounds of sampling in August, September, and October 2023. Samples were taken near residences, a businesses, a church, a park, and a school up to 3/4 miles away from the train terminal. The study concluded that coal dust found its way into the community daily with the coal dust leaving the terminals fence line approximately every 1.5 hours. Co-collaborators for the study included Community of Curtis Bay Association (CCBA), South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT), Mt. Winans Community Association, SB7 Coalition, Air and Radiation Administration at the Maryland Department of the Environment, Department of Environmental Health & Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland.

References

External links

Community of Curtis Bay Association
{{authority control Neighborhoods in Baltimore Polish-American culture in Baltimore Polish communities in the United States Maryland populated places on the Chesapeake Bay Poverty in Maryland Environmental impact of the coal industry