The Catonsville Welcome Sign Wall
The “Welcome to Catonsville/Music City” sign is on a stone wall in the 300 block of FrederickRoad, near Beltway exit 13. But what do you know about the origins of the wall? Some background: In 1992 local resident James (Jimmy) Mohler reached out to the grandson of Victor G Boede concerning a construction issue at 300 Frederick Road, and the grandson, Victor G Bloede III, (who lived in Hawaii) provided the following background information about the wall and the original Bloede estate.
The stone wall borders the western boundary of the old Victor G Bloede estate in the Eden Terrace development. Eden Terrace was the most prestigious development in Catonsville, with numerous large mansions and estates. Victor G. Bloede was the developer and had the largest property and house in the development, which he called “Arden”. Unfortunately, much of Eden Terrance was demolished when the Baltimore Beltway was constructed in the early 1960s, and Eden Terrance was one of the few developments impacted by the overall Beltway construction effort.
The wall began at Frederick Ave. and ran North to the old barn of the Bloede estate. (I have indicated the location of the wall with a red line on the attached 1906 map of Eden Terrance). The rationale for the wall was to delineate the Eden terrace boundary and to provide a degree of privacy to home buyers facing Arbutus Ave. from the backs of homes that were being constructed on Glenwood Ave. to the West.
Per the grandson, around 1927 Frederick Road was being renovated and the streetcar tracks were being removed from the north side and relocated into the center. At that time Victor Bloede authorized the city and county to dispose of the debris from the project by dumping the rock and cement removed from the road along the western boundary of the property. He used these rocks and cement chunks for the construction of the wall. If you look closely at today’s existing wall, you’ll see that it’s constructed with a mix of stones and concrete, which were provided free of charge when the County moved the streetcar tracks and repaved Frederick Road.
The wall is 20” thick, 8 ft high and 900 ft long! The fact that it stands fully intact today, almost 100 years after being built is a testament to the engineers and laborers that built the wall. It’s an engineering marvel! The grandson also added that the Boede family maintained a series of ponds (7 to be exact) in the area between the mansion and Frederick Road prior to this time. These ponds were stocked with exotic fish and planted with water lilies and rare Egyptian Lotus. The ponds were fed by a spring source originating about halfway up the property. (If you look at the attached 1906 map, you can see where the “feeder” spring was for these ponds was located). These ponds were filled in with dirt and construction debris from the streetcar track relocation effort in the 1927 timeframe.
The original Catonsville sign was installed on the wall around 1993. It was designed by Jean Walsh, who was the President of the Catonsville Historical Society and wrote numerous articles about Catonsville history in the Argus and Catonsville Times newspapers. That sign was later stolen around 2013 and never recovered. Community representatives had it duplicated by local artist, Coyote Graphics/Carol Seigel, and reinstalled it, where it now welcomes travelers to Catonsville.