Signs of People
Electric Park
"I was only two years old when we moved across the street from Electric Park, but I remember that the music kept me awake all night long and my mother had to frighten me to put me in bed." Catherine Carey, mother of all.
"The Electric Park closed in 1941, there was a snowstorm on a Sunday and it was so heavy that it made the pavilion collapse. The next day I had to go to school and the snow was higher than me."
"Back in the day everybody knew everybody on Winters Lane. One day, I got up a big rotten cherry tree that I had been told not to climb, in the front yard of a friend's grandparents' house. The branch broke and I fell, I had scratches all over my legs. People didn't have telephones, but some way the message would always get to your house before you did. Don't tell me how they did it. When I got home, my mama was standing at the gate, waiting for me with a stick in her hand."
Advertisement in the Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, July 16, 1910.
Greenwood Electric Park
Once home to what one reporter called the "finest dancing floor south of New York," Greenwood Electric Park included not only a dance hall but a picnic area and amusement park, complete with a Ferris wheel. Famous pianist, composer, and jazz pioneer Eubie Blake performed here, along with other local African American musicians.
The park opened in 1903 and was owned by Charles C. Woodland, a Black teacher and mail carrier who was a member of the Catonsville Cooperative Association, a group of African American men pooling their resources to invest in Black-owned businesses. African Americans were not allowed at most nearby amusement parks at the time and were often only allowed to picnic in certain segregated areas of public parks. In this way, Greenwood Electric Park served a profound role for the local historic African American community along Winters Lane, offering a source of connection during a time when Black residents in Maryland were denied their full rights of citizenship under Jim Crow laws.