A City Celebrates

This. This program is funded in part through grants from the Joseph Meyerhoff funds incorporated and Crown central Petroleum Corporation. A. Yes. Good evening I'm Howard K. Smith and this is Baltimore's harbor the stage for a

lot of American history right out there. A hundred and sixty odd years ago a lawyer named Francis Scott Key was so inspired by the fury and the failure of the British bombardment of Fort McHenry that he sat down and composed here what are still the most often recited words of the American language the words of The Star-Spangled Banner. Dwight yelled out several hail. Where in the Civil War occupying Union troops train their captain on this city. But it's not the old that has brought us and tens of thousands of people to the inner harbor tonight. It's the new completion of Harbor Place a major new commercial shopping eating gathering and enjoying place. This kind of rebirth in the center city is just one sign of a spirit of hope and optimism in cities that have grown old and decrepit and seemed hopeless. Today 75 percent of us live in urban areas. So with the help of the American city is very much the health of the nation and in many cities shows signs of new life and vigor. It's a cause for celebration here in Baltimore. Thirteen years of hard

work and sacrifice have paid off with a gleaming you Inner Harbor that is expected to give the city a new beginning. More about that later. Tonight the city celebrates its renaissance with a pop concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of sagittal and what better way to celebrate this resurgence of old fashioned optimism than with music that epitomizes some of the same spirit. The music of George M.. Some selections from the musical George. Yes. Yes. Yes.

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for us. For. Eat. Eat.

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Eat something. This next election captures the spirit of an earlier period in American history. It is the Battle Hymn of the Republic performed by the symphony. The pro cantare chorus of Columbia Maryland. Oh oh

oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. Oh oh oh oh oh oh

oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh oh oh oh. Oh oh oh oh oh

oh oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh oh oh oh

oh oh oh oh oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh what. Abraham Lincoln held. Together in its darkest hour. And it was against his towering standard that subsequent presidents have been measured but politicians are not the only people inspired by Lincoln. Aaron Copeland the composer instrumental in defining an American musical identity wrote Lincoln Portrait and 1942 Lincoln Portrait now narrated Varos by the distinguished American actor Richard gile. Not. Or.

This. Are. There. Are. No other.

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No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No it isn't. We cannot escape history. That is what he said. That is what Abraham Lincoln said.

Fellow citizens we cannot escape history. We've asked Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves no personal significance or significance. And one or another of. The fiery trials through which we pass. Us stop all this. For the latest generation. We leave the responsibility. On. The. It was born in Kentucky and raised in Indiana.

And live in Illinois. This is what he said. This is what Abe Lincoln said. Most of the quiet parts are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think of you. Do. We. See. A.

Man standing erect. He was six feet four inches tall. This is what he said. He said it is the eternal struggle between two principles right and wrong throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says you toil and work and bread and eat it no matter what shape it comes whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to destroy the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race. It is the same tyrannical principle. Lincoln was a quiet man. Abe Lincoln was a quiet

and melancholy man. But when he spoke of democracy this is what he said as I love you. So I would not be a master. This expresses my democracy. Whatever differs from this. To the extent of. His. No no. No. For. It. To.

Abraham Lincoln 16th president of the United States. Is everlasting in the memory of his country. On the battle ground the Gettysburg. This is what he said. He said. From these day we take increased devotion. Without a cause for which they gave their lives. So. Much. These did not have died. Under this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom to govern.

All. The people. By the People. Not. From the Earth. No. No. No. Aaron. Copelands Lincoln Portrait played by Richard Kiley. The Baltimore Symphony will now take a short intermission while the cannon are being prepared for tonight's finale. The 1812 Overture. It's a good time for us to find out more about what is the city are

celebrating tonight. Baltimore has had more than its share of important moments in American history but it is recent history that has sparked tonight's events history that started in the 1950s. City planner and builder James Rouse has been a part of the Baltimore Renaissance since the beginning. It began with the. With the city understanding back in 1952 that radical action had to be taken or the municipal corporation faced bankruptcy within a generation. And from that orning the business community and the city government began to organize to do something from the beginning. Planners recognize the importance of the Center City. The heart of the city is the one place that is every person's city and it's got to be a lively exciting and beautiful for the city to have the kind of personality that. People hope for. For 25 years. William Bushay as head of the greater Baltimore Committee a group of businessmen who developed the earliest plan and so the strategy was to plan projects that

could attract the private investor and to employ people and to increase the tax base and increase the opportunity for people to live productive lives. We're celebrating today that renaissance of Baltimore which is about 60 percent complete. The city has had a rebirth. This opening here is a concrete example of it. The opening bell Bushay refers to is Harbor Place a new commercial area and the inner harbor the inner harbor itself is a huge project of which harbor lays is the latest completed by Jim Rouse the inner harbor is really a new personality for the center of Baltimore. It's a new center of the city not the government center not the finance center but the principles center of human activity. Walter Sundheim has been active in Baltimore's redevelopment from the beginning. Anybody who comes here will see that it is a gathering place for all kinds of people in the city. It's gotten to be a central point for things that develop out of the neighborhoods in the city. One

of the things that is most important right now is that Baltimore is a city that has done a tremendous amount of work in its neighborhoods and without that work in the residential areas the inner harbor and Charles center would be practically meaningless. Some of that neighborhood work required a new kind of city planners the mayor of Baltimore William Donald Schaefer. Planners sometimes have an idea that everyone has to live in a individual home with grass around it. It has to live. They have to live the way the planners want to live. And what we have to do is in a way was teach the planners that people might like to live the way they want to live the big projects like the Inner Harbor have had an important impact in the neighborhoods that symbolic development has kind of encouraged the neighborhood people to pitch in and to think that there really is hope for Baltimore City and they have done so with a great passion. I think one of the most essential things in any redevelopment of the city forward movement of the city is close cooperation between the government

business and one third and that's the community. We have our homesteading program that's not the first in the country but probably the most successful because we use our general obligation bond money to make loans to the homesteaders so that they can renovate those properties once they've bought them for a dollar. We were the first city to have a program of loans to go with those dollar houses. In our in our small shopping areas we have commercial revitalization programs. And again. We use general obligation bond money to fix up the streets and the sidewalks that 10 or 15 years ago they were the very beginnings of what are now a very strong coalition groups where small neighborhood improvement associations came together for the strength and unity and began not only to react to problems but to innovate and to plan for their own futures.

Eleven years ago a group of neighborhood volunteers got together in this space and started something called the Baltimore City fair. Since then each city there is a trick attracted over a million visitors over two and a half days. And it is really served as the psychological springboard for the Renaissance in Baltimore. Further I think it served to make downtown Baltimore everybody's second neighborhood one of the keystones for the city's plans for redevelopment there's a new convention center and hopes for a thriving new convention industry that will provide jobs. City Councilman Mimi DePietro explains what this means to the city. But this is going to it's going to be great. The city of Balma because it's going to. Produce jobs. And we need people to work and bomb the city. We don't want a big welfare recipients and bomb the city. We want our people to work and a lot of our people wants to work and make a dollar. They want to earn that dollar. And the convention is going to bring the people here and our people is going to work for them. Not everyone shares this optimism.

Congressman Paran Mitchell these new developments will create jobs but they certainly will not create jobs on that scale sufficient to deal the unemployment the male city which is enormous. I think most people feel a lot better about the city. And because they do I think they have the burden again focusing on those areas that still have not been improved so that all the people will feel better right there. We just have a sizable percentage. Reverend Marium Bascombe works closely with the city's poor. I do not think that there has been a renaissance with regard to people. In terms of places and things so yes. But. Where job opportunity is general community improvement or concern. This is not the case. Other citizens are skeptical for other reasons. The new harbor I must say doesn't look as bad as I thought it was going to look like

but it still looks like a world where it doesn't look like a working port. Despite the skepticism and the problems that remain. There's no question that there has been improvement. Businessman Ken Wilson Yes there are more opportunities now than there have been before for black businessmen. And I think the example of the greatest example of that is the fact that Pobre place has now open and 40 percent of the tenants in that complex will be black. In its redevelopment. Baltimore has both borrowed from the example of other cities and now can itself be an example. Community organizer Lena boom has seen the changes on a grassroots level. The only way they can even talk about any success in any community is that you plan it with the community and you can have anything on the drawing board beforehand. Communities mostly know what their community is all about. What is needed there and it is set down from the very inception to begin to plan it then you have a successful community. If you don't then you will.

BUILDER Jim Rouse sees a broader perspective. The really important lessons to be learned from Baltimore them first the importance of scale. If you plan and develop with a large enough vision and a large enough scale that new uses new activities new functions new strength can be found that otherwise are out there. And secondly the business community working with city government but taking the initiative itself maintaining that initiative. So if there is a continuity of enterprise between. That. Over different administrations and city government. The third lesson is there's a city government. That is willing to take a creative initiative willing to take risk. Willing willing to be bold. The task of of almost every city in America is to get rid of the hangover of the past. And to

identify its resources and its strengths and marshal those into creating what is the right kind of a city for it to be and that any city can do if it has the will and and develops a process for doing it. Q And tonight's program a piece of Russian music that has become an American favorite. The 1812 Overture was written by Tchaikovsky to commemorate his country's victory over Napoleon. Tonight the company is joined by a 16 musically synchronized cannon. From South Bend Indiana and the U.S. Army field back. The 1812 Overture. To. The.

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This program was funded in part through grants from the Joseph Meyerhoff fund incorporated and Crown central Petroleum Corporation