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The O'Malleys in Gardenville
In the picture:Back: Catherine, Eddie, Mary Louise, Louise (the mom), AG, Helen, Danny
Front: Jerry, Rhea, Patsy,
Summer 1938
A Historical Perspective by Pat Griffin
(son of Pat and Catherine Griffin, born in 1949)
Gardenville is Gardenville because, historically, the fields along what is now Belair Road provided Baltimore
with its fruits and vegetables. St. Anthony's was opened in 1884 as a mission church of St. Joseph's (Fullerton)
to serve the immigrant German farm workers in the area. In the late 1800s, the Baltimore City limits expanded beyond
North Avenue to the present configuration, and the street car lines were extended to Gardenville and Overlea, and farmers
began selling off their property in piecemeal fashion. The pace picked up in the early 1920s, and the post-WWII baby
and building booms finished the job by the middle 1950s. (Some of my earliest memories are of playing Fort Apache with
my younger brother Richie and my cousins Eddie and Kevin (Eddie and Dot's oldest sons, born in 1950 and 1951)
among the fallen trees and stumps that were briefly all that was left of the woods behind 4500 before it became
the 44 and 4500 block of Willshire.)
When Ed and Louise O'Malley moved their growing family to Gardenville in September, 1929, it was seen as a move to the country
that would be good for my Uncle Eddie's (the first of the nine siblings, born in 1918) asthma.
This, though they were only moving from 3210 Abell Avenue (just off 33rd Street, and down a block
from Union Memorial Hospital). Any of us who have ever walked to Memorial Stadium from the old neighborhood
(or ridden their bikes, as my sisters did) know that the total distance is almost insignificant these days,
but it was a world of difference then. (Until my brother Richie was born in 1951, my parents and I lived
in a place everyone referred to as The Ranch, because it was so much further out than even St. Anthony's - near
the present intersection of Frankford and Sinclair!!!)
Whether they knew it or not, Ed and Louise were also moving away from his family and closer to hers. Ed's three siblings,
Pat, Bessie and Katie, all lived near the corner of 21st and Boone Streets, about a dozen blocks south of Abell Avenue.
Louise was from Highlandtown, or Hollandtown, for the Germanic population there; St Anthony's was a German parish, and
Louise's parents were buried at Holy Redeemer, a cemetery originally incorporated by the Redemptorist Fathers who staffed
Sacred Heart and other German parishes in the City. Her brother Albert lived on Chesterfield Avenue. From my mother
Catherine's stories, it sounded as if 4500 was a popular destination for the Knop relations even before 1938.
As much as the semi-rural setting and proximity - to church and family - would lend itself to the task the nine siblings
would face in 1938 (the death of both of their parents, their father Edward in February and their mother Louise in October),
the terms of the purchase proved crucial. Mom told me on more than one occasion that her parents paid cash for their home.
Pictured below is 4500 Lasalle Avenue, as it looked in April 2004.
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Baltimore, Maryland