This Hampden home lets the freak flags fly — and neighbors love it

Emily Davidson and Christopher Clark are used to strangers standing outside the fence of their corner house in Hampden, staring.

They’re all trying to figure out the meaning of the flag waving from a bracket on the second story.

For about two years, the couple has displayed a different flag every few weeks. Neighbors, especially kids from nearby Hampden Elementary/Middle School, anticipate which flag will appear next. The students also get to learn what each flag symbolizes, thanks to an informational blurb printed by the homeowners.

The flags have helped Davidson and Clark meet people in the neighborhood as their home becomes a budding community staple.

“I enjoy putting up interesting flags that match whatever is happening at the time. It all just kind of escalated,” said Clark, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute at the Rotunda.

The most recent flag flying in the wind is one honoring their elopement. The news made the rounds on Baltimore Reddit. A woman in a silver car whooped and congratulated the couple as she drove by one recent afternoon when they were on their porch.

Clark, originally from the United Kingdom, noticed how flying flags was a lot more common in the States — and that Maryland’s was everywhere. The entire front of the rowhouse on West 36th Street where the store Baltimore in a Box sits is painted in the Maryland flag’s red, white, black and yellow.

In 2019, Clark began rotating flags outside his rowhouse. But the effort drew a limited audience: He was on a dead-end alleyway near The Wine Source in Hampden.

That changed when Clark and Davidson met online, started dating and in 2023 moved into what would come to be known around the community and in some corners of social media as the “Flag House” of West 37th Street.

Davidson is often the one in their front-yard garden, where she tends to their roses, lavender and other herbs and flowers — and to questions about the flags.

She didn’t always have an answer.

Davidson suggested to Clark that they post an informational sheet inside a placard on the fence to describe the flags. That’s an unsurprising recommendation from a person with an archive and museum background. She’s a collections manager at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum near the Inner Harbor.

Davidson and Clark lean into whimsy with their flag choices. They’ve flown the flag of Gondor from “Lord of the Rings” to celebrate J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday. For Valentine’s Day, they flew the Chicago flag because of the mobster massacre on Feb. 14, 1929.

Sometimes the flags have an implicit call to action, including flying the National Park Service’s flag when it faced federal cuts. There were also the “Union Proud. Union Strong” flag and one to support libraries.

Andrew Campbell noticed the Flag House on his walk from Woodberry to work with the Johns Hopkins University’s dining team. He said he was impressed by the rotation of flags and the descriptions the couple provided. It’s a brief break from the normal sights on his walk, Campbell said.

“It’s reminding you about the rest of the world without political views tied to it,” he said. “It’s pretty refreshing.”

Since so many of the kids in the neighborhood are interested in the flags, Davidson suggested to Clark that they have a worksheet for kiddos to design their own.

Last fall, they introduced the activity and also made it a bit of a contest, promising to print a few flags to display. More than 100 printed worksheets have been picked up from a small box at their fence, and about a dozen have landed back in their mailbox with designs featuring aliens, stick figures and Hogwarts.

“The children of Hampden are an especially thoughtful, artistic and weird bunch, and I’m here for it,” Davidson said.

John Tilghman, 8, still gets a cheeky smile when asked about the purple flag in his room that’s usually tucked next to a blue reading pillow ... when it’s not an impromptu cape for soaring off his bed.

John’s flag is Ravens-inspired, though he noted on his worksheet that they weren’t having the best season then. The flag features two bird beaks piercing a football and what look like eyeballs, but John will argue that they’re actually smaller birds.

The Tilghman family watched as Clark clambered from the upstairs window of the Flag House and placed John’s creation on the bracket in January.

It even flew for a couple extra weeks because of icy, cold conditions.

“It was so cool,” John said.

The couple has also received small notes of thanks from neighbors and local businesses. Good Neighbor, a coffee shop on Falls Road, even commended them for being a good neighbor.

“We’re just trying to create some joy in this world,” Davidson said.

Their elopement flag depicts the puzzle pieces that make up their life together. There are pink flamingos like the plastic ones in their garden that get lost in the wild flowers when they bloom. There’s a pesky squirrel that nibbles Davidson’s tomatoes and eats the bird food. There’s the Maryland flag and nods to Cornwall, England, and Tennessee, where Clark and Davidson are from.

They aren’t sure how their nerdy hobby will evolve, but Davidson dreams that one day more houses on their block will get in on the flag-flying.

They added their Flag House to Sidewalk Joy, a worldwide map of free community curations that include collections of little walk-up activities and attractions. The Flag House joins a nearby trinket library with buttons, pins and stickers on Elm Street and a handwritten note exchange box on Powers Street.

Clark hopes the flags encourage people to think better about strangers. For Davidson, what their gesture provides is simple.

“It’s a moment that you’re just allowed to have on your own terms that might also provoke thought or build community,” she said.