The first "I Am An American Day" parade in Baltimore started at Thirty-third Street and The Alameda on May 17, 1942. The event (and similar marches and rallies across the country) was promoted by the Hearst Corporation, then owner and publisher of the Baltimore News American newspaper, as a way to celebrate the U.S. Constitution. Some accounts suggest the initial idea for "I Am An American Day" came from Arthur Pine, head of a New York public relations firm, after he was asked to promote a new song, “I Am An American,” by Gary Gordon. In 1940, William Randolph Hearst succeeded in pushing the U.S. Congress to name the third Sunday in May as “I Am An American Day” as a way to recognize immigrants who had received U.S. citizenship. The date was moved to September 17 in 1952 and, in 2004, an amendment by Senator Robert Byrd led congress to rename the event from “I Am An American Day” to “Constitution Day.”
In Baltimore, the annual parade moved to the streets around Patterson Park and quickly began to draw thousands of participants. The 1944 march saw an estimated 23,000 people. The next year, around 75,000 people came out to see 100 groups of marchers along with 50 "bands and drum, fife and bugle corps" By the 1970s, the parade had steady attendance from church groups, veterans organizations, and politicians developed into what the Baltimore Sun writer Liz Atwood later called "an opportunity for Baltimoreans to show their pride in being Americans." By the mid-1990s, the parade followed a naturalization ceremony for new citizens. Over the years, special guests at the parade included actors from popular soap operas and Hollywood movies. Huge crowds gathered for the route to watch and hear local high school marching bands and out-of-town draws like the Philadelphia Mummers Quaker City String Band. At the parade's height, the event drew over 300,000 people and lasted four hours or more.
In 1975, Maryland Institute College of Art photography professor Linda G. Rich was among the crowd. According to the Maryland Historical Society, Rich was new to Baltimore and was "struck not only by the patriotic display of the celebration but by the unique characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood: the rows of clean, white marble steps, the vibrant painted screens, the window displays full of religious and patriotic iconography." The next year, Rich, along with her students Joan Clark Netherwood and Elinor B. Cahn started what became the four-year-long East Baltimore Documentary Photography Project that captured over 10,000 photographs capturing the area's strong sense of community and unique identity.
Southeast Baltimore has changed in radical ways since the 1970s and the "I Am An American Day" parade changed as well. Unfortunately, in 1993, the city's effort to raise fees for the event led parade organizers to threaten to move the event away from Highlandtown and Patterson Park. Edwin F. Hale, Sr., then chairman of Baltimore Bancorp, wrote a check to cover that year's extra expenses but, in 1994, no other benefactor came forward and organizers moved the event to Dundalk in southeastern Baltimore County where it continues to be held through at least 2014.
In 1914, Luigi DiPasquale, Sr., an Italian immigrant to Baltimore, established a small corner store on Claremont Street stocking groceries and household goods for residents in the developing Highlandtown neighborhood. Over a century later, the business has kept up with the changing tastes of local shoppers. Now owned by Joe DiPasquale, the store on Gough Street is now a unique marketplace that draws shoppers from across the region seeking imported and locally produced Italian food.
Early on, the DiPasquale family butchered chickens and goats to offer fresh meat and produced household products, such as homemade bleach. Of course, Luigi, also known as Louie Moore, DiPasquale also played an active role in the community—organizing a band along with Larry DiMartino at Our Lady of Pompei church (established in 1923). In the 1940s, a growing number of Italian immigrants moved from Little Italy to Highlandtown as commercial development of the downtown area expanded.
In the 1980s, the shop’s current owner, Joe DiPasquale, took an extended trip to Italy, where he travelled the length of the country, fell in love with the country and, most importantly, the traditional foods. Joe’s wife family had only recently immigrated to the United States in the 1970s and he credits them as an influence. After his close study of authentic Italian cooking, Joe DiPasquale always orders the finest ingredients and foods he can find, whether it is imported or domestic. For example, while the Nutella hazelnut spread is produced in the United States, Joe noticed that the Italian-manufactured version offered a better flavor—so the store only stocks the imported option.
In 1988, DiPasquale’s expanded in a move from their original location on Claremont Street to the current site on Gough Street one block away. The business installed ovens to bake their own bread. In recent years, DiPasquale’s prepared foods have been featured on the Food Network’s “Diner, Dives, and Drive-Ins” and on the Travel Channel’s “Zimmern List.” The television fame brought an overwhelming influx of patrons. For weeks, lines of customers looking to buy lasagne and arancini di riso (deep fried balls of rice and meat) stretched out the door.
*As of 2022, Dipasquale's is no longer operating out of this building, but it is still in business in other locations in Baltimore
When Baltimorean William Painter invented the bottle cap in 1891, it didn’t take long for beverage companies (beer brewers in particular) to realize its value, and for Painter to realize he needed to build significant manufacturing facilities to keep up with demand. Painter's enterprise, the Crown Cork and Seal Company, opened its first big production facility in 1897 on Guilford Avenue and not long after expanded by opening a larger complex on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown in 1906. The Guilford Avenue complex continued as the base of operations for custom building the sealing machinery while the Highlandtown complex acted as the hub of Crown Cork and Seal’s manufacturing operations.
In 1910, the Highlandtown complex expanded again to include two new buildings. Both used mill construction with brick exteriors and granite trimmings as well as new advances like fireproof elevator shafts, fire escapes and ventilators. The five story building had two massive water towers that held 15,000 gallons each to be released in case a fire broke out inside.
Crown Cork and Seal’s Highlandtown complex became the base of machinery production in 1928 after the owners abandoned the Guildford Avenue plant. Despite its modern fire protections, however, the added activity at the complex and its constantly whirring electrical machines were at high risk of fire. In 1940, managers at the building made twenty-six calls to the fire department, almost all of which appeared unnecessary, until one signaled a very real five-alarm fire. Despite the loss of $500,000 in baled cork, the company minimized the damage and kept churning out bottle caps for the world’s beer brewers.
In 1958, Crown Cork and Seal moved its headquarters from Baltimore to Philadelphia and the owners sold a group of thirty buildings, including the Guilford Avenue complex, to the city for $1.5 million. The Highlandtown plant continued to operate for nearly 30 more years, but finally closed in 1987 as use of aluminum and plastic containers rose and the demand for glass bottle caps waned. Today the building houses artist studios and light manufacturing and is occasionally used by movie studios.
The first Patterson Theater to occupy 3136 Eastern Avenue opened in 1910. In 1918, Harry Reddish purchased the building to renovate and redecorate it. He reopened it two years later and renamed it the “New Patterson”. The Patterson Theater housed a large second floor dancehall with a wide stage and organ that could only be turned on by climbing under the stage. In 1929, the “New Patterson” closed.
The next year saw a larger Patterson Theater, referred to as a playhouse, built in place of the old building. It opened September 26, 1930, showing Queen High with Charles Ruggles. Built by the Durkee Organization, John J. Zink designed the 85x150 ft building. He used a plain brick exterior (one of the plainest Zink ever designed). But the ornate, vertical sign appealed to the public. The interior color scheme consisted of red, orange, and gold with matching draperies and indirect lighting from crystal chandeliers. The theater’s low back chairs and spring-cushioned seats held between 900 to 1,500 people at a time. During its construction, designers took great care to ensure crisp  acoustics for the showing of talking pictures. The Grand Theater Company, an affiliate of Durkee Enterprises, operated the Patterson Theater.
In November 1958 an usher accidentally started a fire that caused considerable damage to the auditorium. By the spring of 1975 the owners twinned the theater into two 500 seat spaces, but the  machinery remained untouched. In 1986, the old machinery proved deadly when a refrigeration company’s employee asphyxiated on Freon gas in the basement cooling system. The theater filled with firefighters who had to remove the maintenance man and set up large fans to push the colorless, odorless gas from the building. The Patterson Theater continued to operate until 1995, but by then the theater only showed discount films. It would be the last theater operated by the Durkee Organization.
Creative Alliance, a community organization geared toward bringing audiences and artists together, undertook an extensive multi-million dollar renovation of the old Patterson Theater. Renovations began in 2000 when Cho Benn Holback & Associates gutted and rebuilt the building’s interior. Creative Alliance kept the fireproof concrete projection booth but turned the remainder of the space into a multi-purpose art center with galleries, artist studios, a marquee lounge and a flexible theater. While the historic vertical sign was one of the last originals in the city, extensive deterioration meant it could not be salvaged. Instead, Creative Alliance had it duplicated and replaced just before their reopening in May 2003.
Work continued a few years later with the addition of a café. The original concrete fireproof projection booth remained and became the focal point of the dining room. Gabriel Kroiz, Chair of Undergraduate Design for the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University, recalls when the building showed movies:
“I have been going to the building since I was a kid. I saw Star Wars there when it came out. I remember when it split in two and started showing the films two weeks after they had been released for less money and then when they closed.”
Since the opening of the new building, Creative Alliance has hosted hundreds of new events, including live performances, exhibitions, films and workshops.
O'Connor's, a package store and restaurant, has been located since the early 1920s in the heart of Greektown at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Oldham Street. In the 1940s, this unassuming, two-story, brick building played a significant role in the city labor movement of the New Deal era. Baltimore steel workers fought to unionize between 1940 and 1942 and turned O’Connor’s into the meeting spot where they could discuss the progress of organizing efforts. Similar meetings took place at the Finnish Hall in nearby Highlandtown at Ponca and Foster Streets. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) moved their headquarters into the second floor of O’Connor’s and, in 1943, the committee became the United Steelworkers of America, a CIO union.
Ellen Pinter was part of the Finnish community of Highlandtown, and her father worked at the steel mill in Sparrow’s Point. She saw firsthand the effects of underemployment on the steelworkers and their families during the Great Depression. Some only received work for one to two days a week. Many families ran up debts at the grocery store or fell behind on rent. Some families took in boarders to try to make ends meet. Ellen took a job for $18 week working for the steel workers’ union SWOC around 1937 in the office on top of O’Connor’s.
In a 1980 interview with the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project, Ellen recollected:
"The quarters were small but the activity was small. I can vividly remember when the miners came to Baltimore and started the big organization drive of the CIO. The men were pouring into that hall with their pockets just bulging with dollar bills as they were signing up men into the union. There was such a tremendous upsurge of interest in the union. Of course, the mills were full of foreign-born people who knew the value of unions because they had come from European countries where they had been a little more politically astute. And Finns were aware of unionization and more progressive thought… Oh I can remember the Italians, the Finns, the Czechs, the Americans, they were organizing left and right then, in Bethlehem Steel Company."
Pinter also notes African American participation in the organizing activity—Finnish activists welcomed African Americans at the Finnish Hall during the early days of organizing activity, even though Highlandtown remained a segregated white neighborhood. Racial antagonisms, however, were not absent in the social activities of the union. For instance, Pinter remembers being at a union picnic; a black man asked her to dance and she accepted, only to have a white man cut in and demand to know how she could dare dance with a black man. O’Connor’s still remains in operation today.