At 756 Frederick Road, a bright yellow silhouette of Mike Eagle stands about 12 feet tall in front of the firehouse, arm out, pointing. Eagle spent years as a firefighter there. He told Baltimore Fishbowl before the unveiling, "This is not a fire station, it's a house, and for half of my life I lived here."
His is one of ten "Signs of People" that went up along Frederick Road and Winters Lane on Saturday, Oct. 10. Spanish artists Eva Salmerón and Ciro Márquez designed them, Kyle Miller fabricated them, and the Baltimore County Arts Guild presented them with the Catonsville Arts District. Neighbors nominated the people who appear on them, and the artists made the final choices from that list. On Thursday, Nov. 19, the same kind of process turns to a much harder question: what happens to the empty Catonsville Armory on Mellor Avenue. The first meeting is in the same clubhouse where the signs were launched.
How ten neighbors ended up 12 feet tall
The signs weren't commissioned around a list of famous names. The artists picked the ten residents from 43 nominees the community put forward, and Baltimore Fishbowl reported that engagement took two years and involved 249 community members. "Signs of People doesn't just work with the community, it depends on the community to take shape and content," Márquez told the outlet.
Each sign works on two levels. From a car, you see the yellow silhouette pointing toward a historic site. On foot, two sidewalk-level plates show a photo of the resident, quotes from their memories, history of the site, and a map of related places. A QR code leads to audio descriptions and directions. The project was paid for by the former Catonsville Historical Society, the Maryland State Arts Council, the Baltimore County Department of Planning, the Catonsville Women's Giving Circle, and Patapsco Heritage Greenway.
Some locations changed between the proposal and installation. A sign once planned for St. Timothy's Church isn't part of the final ten, and the Greenwood Electric Park sign ended up at 151 Winters Lane. Here's the installed route, in the order the signs were unveiled on Oct. 10.
| Stop | Address | Resident on the sign | Points toward |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 615 Frederick Rd | Louis S. Diggs, historian and author | Remus Adams Blacksmith Shop |
| 2 | 615 Frederick Rd | Rebekah Kaufman, former librarian | Old Catonsville High School |
| 3 | 2 Bloomsbury Ave | Grant Menefee, drum instructor | Albert Smith House, home of Catonsville's first newspaper |
| 4 | 720 Frederick Rd | Jim Heidelbach | Heidelbach Grocer and Butcher |
| 5 | 756 Frederick Rd | Mike Eagle, former firefighter | The Firehouse |
| 6 | 756 Frederick Rd | Lucille Boston and Mae McCoy | Catonsville Health Center |
| 7 | 151 Winters Ln | Catherine Carey | Greenwood Electric Park |
| 8 | 67 Winters Ln | Phyllis King | The Winters Lane neighborhood |
| 9 | 905 Frederick Rd | Sharon Stanton | Salem Lutheran Church |
| 10 | 1002 Frederick Rd | Josh Noppenberger | V. G. Bloede and the Post Office |
Each person has a page on the Catonsville Arts District's Signs of People site, and the district also links a broader interactive public-art map. The Post Office sign tells the story of Victor Gustav Bloede, who invented postage stamp glue.
Walking it as one loop
The official unveiling started at the Catonsville Clubhouse, 10 St. Timothys Lane, and the itinerary says you can walk from there to the first three signs. For the rest, it lists parking at each cluster:
- Remus Adams, Old High School, Albert Smith House. Park in the circle in front of the school, use street parking, or walk from the Clubhouse.
- Heidelbach, Firehouse, Health Center. Park at 757 Frederick Road or 24 Mellor Avenue.
- Greenwood Electric Park. Park at Jackson & Johnson Memorial Post 263 or the Banneker Park lot, 27 Main Avenue.
- Winters Lane. Park behind Grace AME Church, 67 Winters Lane, or at 24 Mellor Avenue.
- Salem Lutheran and the Post Office. Park in the Salem Lutheran Church lot.
Two stops will feel familiar to anyone who walked Frederick Road this summer. The Heidelbach sign stands at 720 Frederick Road, the address we covered when The Fishmonger's Daughter opened there. The middle cluster's parking on Mellor Avenue puts you on the same street as the building the next round of community input is about.
The stories on the plates are personal. Catherine Carey, 90, told Baltimore Fishbowl that Greenwood Electric Park, a social center for Catonsville's historic Black community, closed in 1941 when heavy snow brought down the pavilion on a Sunday. "The next day I had to go to school and the snow was higher than me," she said. Mae McCoy remembered Winters Lane this way: "Neighbors looked out for neighbors. You could go to anybody's house and eat. My mother was known for her crab cakes."
The building on Mellor Avenue nobody wanted
The Catonsville Armory at 130 Mellor Avenue went up in 1933, replacing an earlier armory on the site that burned down. For decades it was a Maryland Army National Guard facility, and in the 1970s it was a well-known endpoint for protests and rallies. The Maryland Military Department moved its Military Police units out around 2020 to 2021, and the building has sat empty since.
Southwest Visions, a nonprofit focused on economic development in Southwest Baltimore County, stepped in as steward. Executive director Jay Dillow described in a September 2025 interview with writer Joy Tsao, later quoted by Baltimore Fishbowl, how it got there. "The state had no interest in keeping it. They asked other agencies and universities—everyone said no. The county didn't want it either," he said. WMAR-2 News reported that the property moved from the state to the county to Southwest Visions' control.
What the building can become is still open. The project page lists its status as the initial assessment phase, with right of entry obtained. WMAR reported that structural, civil, and environmental evaluations will help decide whether the building can be rehabilitated or has to be demolished and rebuilt. Southwest Visions' Oct. 22 update says the outcome hasn't been decided.
Baltimore County has an example of how this can go. The Pikesville Armory finished its first phase of redevelopment in 2025 and has since hosted concerts, art exhibitions, and the relocated Pikesville Farmers Market, Baltimore Fishbowl notes.
Nov. 19, back at the Clubhouse
The first public engagement meeting is Thursday, Nov. 19, 6 to 8 p.m., at the BC Arts Guild Clubhouse, 10 St. Timothys Lane. That's the same building where the Signs of People ceremony opened on Oct. 10. Some earlier news coverage said the venue hadn't been chosen yet. The Southwest Visions project page now lists the time and place. The Neighborhood Design Center, a nonprofit founded in 1968, is running the sessions.
Here's how the process is laid out on the project page:
- Pop-ups around Catonsville this fall, for people who can't come to an evening meeting.
- Phase 1, starting Nov. 19. Ideas for possible future uses of the site and value statements for it, ending in a draft vision statement and a shorter list of possible uses.
- Phase 2, Thursday, Dec. 17. A second large evening meeting plus focus groups, to confirm the values and narrow the uses by community priority, feasibility, and room for more than one use. The time and venue haven't been posted yet.
- The new year. All public input gets pulled together and evaluated with county and state officials.
You can get updates through the project's sign-up form, and questions go to [email protected]. "This project is going to be a marathon, not a sprint," Dillow told Tsao, according to Baltimore Fishbowl.
The trail and the toast this weekend
Baltimore County closed the stretch of the Trolley Line Number Nine Trail between its two Oella Avenue intersections, past the Trolley Stop and The Breadery, starting the week of Aug. 31 to fix erosion along Cooper Branch. Crews added about 135 feet of boulder toe protection along one streambank. As of the county's Oct. 16 update, the stabilization work is done and the trail is open again, with minor repairs still going on.
Catonsville Rails to Trails is marking 30 years with Thrive Together, a Toast to the Trails, this Saturday, Nov. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. at The Chapel, 600 Frederick Road. That's a few street numbers from the first two yellow signs at 615 Frederick Road, so you can walk the route on Saturday afternoon and go straight to the toast. Twelve days later, the Clubhouse opens for the Armory meeting.
If you have friends or family thinking about Catonsville, the signs are a good first walk to take them on, and the Armory meetings are a good way to see how the town decides things. Shari moved here from California herself, and she likes knowing a place through its people and its history as well as its listings. For a broader look at the town and the rest of central Maryland, Moving to Maryland with Shari has a free guide. Download the Ultimate Moving to Maryland Guide.
