Community Architect Baltimore: Copycat - Baltimore's largest Arts Experiment Comes to an End

On the Auction Block

The Copycat building in Baltimore's Station North Arts District shows up in several chapters in of Baltimore's history. As a building constructed for the fabrication of an exclusive Baltimore innovation and invention - the crown cork for bottles.

Copycat building in Station North
(Photo: Eli Pousson, Baltimore Hertitage)

As a factory building that could adapt to changing needs from making clothing to accommodating municipal workers providing relief in the Great Depression, to printing presses spewing out reams of paper. The final chapter was a maze of artist studios with all the forms of live-work one can imagine, including indoor skateboard ramps. The future is uncertain.

Thus the building is testimony of Baltimore's industrial legacy and an example of artists being pioneers in urban rejuvenation. While future chapters are still unwritten, it is almost certain that its life as an art catalyst for Station North has come to an end. The building now faces the auction block and the need for substantial renovations to become useful for any use. This last chapter as a home and workplace for artists isn't as much about the building itself as about people, specifically the role of artists in a gentrifying district.

The auctioneer's description is dripping with developer speak which conveniently hides the torturous years of its most recent history where a landlord and a part of the artist community battled it out in court and in the press.

The Copycat Building is a rare landmark redevelopment opportunity located in Baltimore’s thriving Station North Arts and Entertainment District. This massive 265,000-square-foot, 6-level building encompasses a full city block and is a prominent feature of the Baltimore skyline. With its rich history and prime location, the Copycat Building is an ideal investment for a visionary developer.
Originally built in 1897 as the main factory for the Crown Cork & Seal Company, the building is a marvel of Victorian Industrial architecture. For decades, it was a hub of innovation, producing the world-famous crown-style bottle caps. In the 1980s, the building transformed into an iconic live-work space, becoming a haven for Baltimore's burgeoning art scene and fostering a vibrant community of creative professionals. This unique heritage makes the Copycat Building more than just a property; it's a piece of Baltimore history. The Copycat Building is strategically located in the heart of the Greenmount West Planned Urban Development and the Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Its location offers unparalleled access and visibility. (Alex Cooper website)

Baltimore Street Art 2022, Graffiti Alley

Artists as Window Dressing?

The view of artists is notably different. Two quotes in a 2022 article in the SUN illustrate this.

“Developers use artists like window dressing, once they’re done using the artist, they dispose of them and put up condos the artists can’t afford … and then you’re left with a bunch of people in condos listening to Ed Sheeran.” (Ed Schrader, musician)
“If you guys really think that Baltimore is going to be just as fun and cool a place to live in without any of the artists, any of the show organizers, any of the public art installers that make this city beautiful, you’re in for a really dark, disappointing dystopia.” (Cam Alvarez, musician)

Reflecting the increasing acrimony between artists and landlord is a website organized by Indigo Null, the most vocal spokesperson of the artists' discontent who also organized a rent strike against the landlord that lasted through the pandemic. In an op-ed in Baltimore Beat they claimed:

Indigo Null in their studio space (Photo: Baltimore SUN)

The building was never brought up to housing code or properly licensed in this transition, and was thus operating with severely inadequate fire safety, unabated lead and asbestos, faulty and dangerous wiring, and elevators that were often dangerously inoperational, among other issues.

After a four year battle Indigo Null was evicted in January of 2024, with media coverage. In a recent Facebook post rent strike organizer Null defended the rent strike with the dire conditions of both tenants and the building:

To be clear, the rent strike started because the landlord tried to evict the majority of the tenants in the building in a situation where many of us did not have any money coming in because of the pandemic. Rather than end up broke and homeless, we chose to preserve our resources so that we could end up in housing that wasn’t full of asbestos and lead. (Indigo Null)

"All Over Street" 2-5-2016 (Photo: Philipsen)

The Copy Cat - A Free Space

The third point of view is the one of the public. The Copycat as a hidden gem that was mysterious and a bit frightening in its otherness. It was an experimentation what can be done with space. The cavernous inners chopped up in such a confusing manner that it was easy to get lost which is beautifully demonstrated in this NPR video. Of course, creativity, innovation and artistic expression in pictures, music, sculpture and in the decoration of the spaces themselves. For a time, the public was eager to enter, the slight thrill from knowing that not everything was up to code and that may not find an exit mixed up with the excitement of a truly "free space".

Is Community Development Gentrification?

In many ways the Copycat landlord - tenant fight is also a reflection of the larger housing crisis and the ongoing lack of affordable housing which affects many segments of the population. Depending on the political stance, solutions vary wildly between a market driven view arguing from the supply and owner side and a view focusing on human hardships on the tenant side. Squaring safe and code compliant living with extremely low rent without subsidy may be quite impossible. The court taking up the Copycat conflict expressed the legal view of this conflict in dry words:

The balance between a property owner’s right to repossess his or her property after the expiration of a tenancy and a tenant’s right to safe and habitable living conditions during a residential tenancy. That balance has been struck by the Legislature through its enactment of a comprehensive statutory framework that governs landlord and tenant relationships, including its modifications to the common law ejectment action and the remedies afforded to tenants to ensure safe and habitable housing. Anna Velicky v. The Copycat Building LLC, No. 1, September Term, 2021; Christopher Walke v. The Copycat Building LLC, No. 2, September Term, 2021, Opinion by Booth, J.

In a city like Baltimore that is angling for any foothold that let it climb out of the deep troubles that deindustrialization has wrought, the fight over the Copycat building has an even bigger horizon. It encompasses the issue of the City's shrinking population, the many vacant buildings, the branding of the city as a heaven for artistic people and the need for safer neighborhoods. The City can't be a neutral bystander and has to step up to bridge and mitigate the conflicts between protecting renters and stabilizing communities. The Copycat building should matter to the City administration.

Studio space (Screenshot NPR video)

Bridging Artistic Vibe and Development

Baltimore has invested in the idea of being an attractive destination for creativity, arts, innovation and quirkiness. The Copycat building with its chaotically creative studio spaces was the perfect expression of this self image. The City designated four arts and entertainment districts and for some time Station North seemed to be the one flourishing the most. During its heydays between 2009 and 2014 Station North organized Art Walks dubbed All Over Street during which the public came in droves to see the hidden city, the work of artists, the creative live work-spaces, and to drink and party.

At the same time, Baltimore is working on stabilizing its ailing neighborhoods so they can keep their existing residents happy and become a destination for new residents. To this end the Greenmount Avenue corridor, the North Avenue corridor, Barclay, Johnston Square and Station North itself have made significant progress. Depressed property values, abandoned homes and vacant lots are a burden on existing residents and a detriment to attracting new ones. Therefore, one of the goals of neighborhood stabilization is to increase property values so owners can obtain loans, generate generational wealth, or sell their homes and developers can recover rehabilitation and new construction cost through rent or sale without subsidies.

City Arts Building in Station North (Jubilee Baltimore)

That makes keeping the artistic vibe parallel to neighborhood revitalization so difficult. When the neighborhood recovers, dirt cheap rents disappear. Is the path that the two musicians described in 2022 where the artists in the end get kicked inevitable? It was the case at the Bell Foundry in Station North, the H&H building in the Bromo arts district, the Copy Cat Annex and now for the Copycat itself. It will probably happen for the large complex in East Baltimore where the Crown Cork and Seal company had moved after moving out of their original quarters. In light of the Oakland fire then Mayor Pugh the City briefly stepped up to solve the problem of cheap artists housing that is also safe by creating the Safe Artist Space task force. The workgroup issued a report but didn't yield any substantial results, even though the City obviously tolerated a not code compliant Copycat building for some time.

Station North Matures

Today in Station North there are no longer All-Over-Street events, the artist hang-out at the Windup Space has long closed and so did Joe Square Pizza and a number of other places that gave Station North its original vibe. The Bell Foundry evicted all tenants soon after the devastating fire in a similar space in Oakland that killed 36 people. Then a developer snapped it up.

But things are not entirely bleak for artists. The Station North Arts District is still there, organizing events such as monthly art walks, with 20 venues this August. The Central Baltimore Partnership is working to revive the large former North Avenue Market where the Windup Space was and Liam Flynn were located.

The Market, 10-30 West North Avenue, demonstrates Central Baltimore Partnership’s collaborative approach.
In 2024, CBP and Central Baltimore Future Fund purchased this anchor in partnership with the building’s longtime owners Mike Shecter and Carolyn Frenkil and future owner, Twenty-Two Lanes.
The Market is now activated by interim tenants, including Baltimore Youth Arts, Club Car, and Mobtown Ballroom and Cafe, while plans and resources for the restoration are assembled. (CBP website)

The creative spirit in Station North is still alive. Open Works is flourishing as one of the nation's largest maker spaces, the Impact Hub is actively "supporting a community of innovators and entrepreneurs to scale and sustain their initiatives", two modern artist live-work spaces developed by Jubilee are fully booked.

North Avenue Market 2024 (Photo: Philipsen)

Area 405, a building around the corner from the Copycat may be illustrative. Its function as an artists refuge and creative center had also been in jeopardy because of code issues and the building's condition in spite of heroic efforts of an artist cooperative who owned the building since 2001 and provided a home to 45 artists working in the building, the Station North Tool Library, and the AREA 405 the exhibition space. After 20 years of independent artist-run ownership the anchor of the Station North Arts & Entertainment District, and Baltimore City had to close in 2021. But it wasn't gentrification that followed. Instead, the CBP together with developer Ernst Valery stepped in to save the structure and its use by artists with the help of a slew of funding sources including the France-Merrick Foundation, the Goldseker Foundation, the Baltimore City Neighborhood Impact Investment Fund, Reinvestment Fund, the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. Area 405 will host the annual "Sweaty Eyeballs" animation show on August 22.

“I cannot find another example of a community coming together to save an arts space like what has happened with Area 405. With a very strong development team, we took a calculated risk on a revitalization strategy. We couldn’t find the model, so we created it. I hope to see it replicated again in Baltimore and in other parts of the country. It is feasible, and it is critically important.” (Ellen Janes, Executive Director CBP)

CBP is not likely to come to the rescue of the Copycat, it would be far too big a bite in addition to all their other projects. Could it be that another entity steps up to save the Copycat from being moved out of artists reach? Whether it will happen or not, change will continue in Station North and across the city and the art scene will change as well.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Related article on this Blog: