From the empty upstairs bar of Marie Louise Bistro on Charles Street, Marie Ransome looked out the window, reminiscing about when she first opened her business nearly 20 years ago.

Mount Vernon seemed so vibrant then, and there was “so much foot traffic,” especially on the weekend, she said. “Now it feels like a ghost town at night.”

This Central Baltimore neighborhood pulsed with nightlife in earlier decades. Its cultural institutions, like Center Stage, the Walters Art Museum, and thriving bars and restaurants on a long stretch of Charles Street, made it a top destination in the region.

One of the first signs of change was the diminishing “gayborhood.” The Hippo, a 35-year queer staple until it closed in 2015, is now a CVS with a giant security device that announces to passersby that they are being monitored.

The neighborhood’s losses seem to have accelerated over the past year.

The Mount Vernon Marketplace food hall shut down last summer. Residents learned in January that Eddie’s grocery store isn’t coming back anytime soon. Weeks later, The Brewer’s Art closed and filed for bankruptcy. Businesses have cut their hours.

So what happened? There’s no single answer.

Some argue that the business closures are isolated incidents, or that many Baltimore neighborhoods are similarly struggling. There are macro trends at play, too: Queer spaces everywhere are disappearing, and the pandemic permanently changed dining and socializing habits.

There are bright spots. Mount Vernon has a healthy residential rental market and employers with deep roots, such as the University of Baltimore and Agora Publishing. New businesses are coming; residents even feel confident that they’ll get their grocery store back.

And Mount Vernon-based health care provider Chase Brexton has more than doubled its workforce over the past decade, to about 650, said Alicia Gabriel, its creative director.

Empty storefronts, full apartments

Charisse Nichols, 51, who has lived in Mount Vernon for 24 years, thinks its location and features are iconic, and that it’s a neighborhood where you “design your own fun.”

The huge, historic rowhouses and stately public square around the white marble Washington Monument can look as picturesque as anything in Paris, she and other residents said.

But over time, the neighborhood has become “less of a destination, and more of a place where people live,” Nichols said, as nearby communities like Remington, Old Goucher and Station North have added restaurants and other amenities.

Mount Vernon is a diverse and popular place to live. About half of its residents are white, a third are Black, 13% are mixed race and 6% are Asian. The total population has declined over the past decade by a tenth, to about 4,500, a decrease largely on par with the rest of Baltimore. To the north, Midtown-Belvedere, often considered part of Mount Vernon, has a similar demographic profile.

Almost 90% of Mount Vernon residents are renters.

Rents are stable, and the occupancy rates are high, said Brooks Healy and Justin Verner of the real estate firm Harbor Stone Advisors.

“Transactions are happening,” Healy said of residential buildings. “People still want to live there.”

Retail is a different story.

Mount Vernon has a lot of relatively small commercial spaces on the ground floor of buildings. While these niche spots seem like a nice fit for boutique stores or coffee shops, it can be hard to find tenants, Healy and Verner said.

Closures in roughly the past year include the Starbucks at Charles and Preston streets and eateries San Pablo Street Tacos, Darker Than Blue and Eat.Drink.Relax, which was in the old City Cafe space.

Shirlé Hale-Koslowski, co-owner of the coffee and record shop Baby’s On Fire, thinks a shock wave is surging through small businesses in Mount Vernon, especially after the closure of The Brewer’s Art.

The shop’s business has been especially slow in the past year, Hale-Koslowski said, leading to a bigger marketing push and, in some cases, higher prices.

“We really want people to understand that we are in some sort of vortex of uncertainty,” she said.

Paula Fernandes, a Mount Vernon resident and former vice president of a neighborhood association, said residents can be stubborn when it comes to certain changes.

“They see change as a marker of a declining neighborhood, and that’s not how I see it at all,” Fernandes said. “I see it as part of the natural ebb and flow of a neighborhood.”

‘Getting people to come in is difficult’

At the northern edge of Midtown-Belvedere, the University of Baltimore is shrinking. Enrollment over the past decade has dropped by nearly 50% to 3,232 students.

A major office tenant in the area, Agora, is also in retreat.

During the pandemic, many Agora employees worked from home, and the company explored selling some of its substantial real estate portfolio, which includes historic buildings throughout Mount Vernon.

About 300 to 400 employees still have offices in the neighborhood, but many work remotely or no longer come in daily, said Jules Bonner, Agora’s chairman and president.

Agora used to have a “Mount Vernon card” that gave employees discounts at area coffee shops, restaurants and bars. But the neighborhood has lost a lot of its charm for both younger, more social employees and older employees with families, Bonner said.

“Getting people to come in is difficult,” he said.

Agora employees made up most of the pre-pandemic lunch crowd at Marie Louise, said Ransome, the owner. The restaurant eliminated lunch service, she said, and last year was her slowest ever.

She is trying to boost business through DoorDash pickup and by planning a more lounge-like setting for her upstairs bar.

Festivals and foot traffic

Mount Vernon was once Baltimore’s go-to neighborhood for festivals. That, too, changed.

First Thursdays, a concert series founded at Mount Vernon Place more than 20 years ago, moved to Canton Waterfront Park during the 2014 restoration of the Washington Monument and stayed there permanently.

Artscape, the country’s largest free arts festival, moved from its Bolton Hill, Mount Vernon and Station North stomping grounds to downtown last year.

Ransome and other business owners said the festivals introduced people to — and helped them fall in love with — Mount Vernon.

The neighborhood still has Flower Mart, the Washington Monument lighting and the Charles Street Promenade, an event that transforms the thoroughfare into a pedestrian playground for the day. Mount Vernon will be featured in the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage in April.

But the success of any area hinges not on one-off events, but on its day-to-day foot traffic, said Terri Harrington, a commercial real estate broker who has worked in and around Mount Vernon for decades.

She said the neighborhood should lean into its proximity to Penn Station and sell itself as an alternative to Washington, D.C. A planned renovation of the train station and a nearby redevelopment project have faced delays and funding challenges.

An influx of D.C. residents might alter the character of the area — something that could make Baltimoreans in many neighborhoods squirm.

Making new spaces

In the early 2000s, a building at Charles and Read streets went to auction. Residents worried it would be demolished and turned into a parking lot — so they worked with nonprofit developer Jubilee Baltimore to raise money and buy the building.

On its ground floor, Vicki Schassler opened Spirits of Mt. Vernon, a fine wine shop, and later added a fully operating bar. After 20 years, she sold it to former employees.

“What made that business such an integral part of our neighborhood was the neighborhood residents,” Schassler said. “I feel like it was not just my business, it was theirs, too.”

That conversion was a blueprint for reactivating the empty big green church on the square, Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church, said Jack Danna, president of the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association.

The church was stuck in legal limbo for years, but then a group of residents and area stakeholders, including Elizabeth Bonner, a principal at Agora, bought it. Now it serves as a community space, hosting concerts and a pop-up bookshop over the holidays.

In 2012, Monumental Life Insurance Co. moved downtown, vacating a historic six-story building that took up an entire city block. It didn’t stay empty for long.

Chase Brexton, which was occupying multiple smaller spaces, renovated and moved in. Meanwhile, Agora scooped up those former Chase Brexton properties.

Stepping up by going out

Alysha January and Aaron Jones live so close to The Brewer’s Art that they could smell the burgers cooking in the old Victorian rowhouse.

“A lot of people just assumed Brewer’s would be there,” January said. “You can’t take it for granted.”

People have gotten used to ordering groceries, meals and everyday items online, she said. They’re going out less, scrolling on their phones more. Lost are the connections among neighbors. And local businesses wither.

The husband and wife are two of Mount Vernon’s biggest cheerleaders.

Across from their Chase Street apartment, Jones owns and operates a tailor’s shop, Bushelers of Baltimore. January is the marketing and engagement manager for Charles Street Development Corp., which advocates for improvements to the corridor through Mount Vernon.

David Wiesand has owned McLain Wiesand, his custom furniture and decorative arts business, for 40 years, and more recently opened House Demiurge, a vintage shop.

On a recent walk, he passed the spaces that once held City Cafe and Plaza Artist Materials. Wiesand is turning the latter into a coffee and antique retail space called Pedestal Arts and Antiques.

“We have great things in Mount Vernon,” he said, “but some days it feels like we lose more than we gain.”

Spike Gjerde plans to open Bar Dalí, a tapas restaurant, in the former Mount Vernon Stable & Saloon. He thinks Mount Vernon is “one of the loveliest neighborhoods in the world” and Charles Street “one of the great avenues.”

He doesn’t have an opening date for Bar Dalí, a project in conjunction with Hotel Ulysses, which already features three acclaimed cocktail bars but is facing financial challenges.

Gjerde said he is confident in the hotel’s owners.

“There’s just so much creativity and energy in that corridor,” he said.

Before the pandemic, there was a “vibration” of activity in Mount Vernon, January said. That energy hasn’t fully returned. But occasionally it peeks out.

Walking home from her office downtown in the springtime, she said, she’ll pass the monument and see people sitting outside Sugarvale and Dooby’s, chatting, sipping and sharing food.

“And for that moment right there, you’re like, ‘Ahh, this is beautiful,’” January said.

“It feels like you’re in a painting,” Jones added.