Matching red brick and brownstone rowhouses behind white marble steps, with landscaped medians down Eutaw Place and Park Avenue.
What Bolton Hill looks like
Bolton Hill's blocks are matching three storey rows, red brick or brownstone with white marble steps at the sidewalk line and black cast iron rail work along the stoops. has one of the longest unbroken runs, cornice after identical cornice down the block. The street grid itself runs on a diagonal rather than Baltimore's usual square blocks. Most of the rows date from the 1870s through the early 1900s, the decades that put up these matching fronts one after another.
Park Avenue has a planted median between McMechen and Laurens streets, grass and trees splitting the roadway in two. The rowhouses facing it keep their original numbers set over the doors. A block over on Bolton Street, a small park breaks the row where neighbors tend a rose garden of their own planting.
Eutaw Place is the neighborhood's western edge, on the same diagonal plan, a planted walkway down its center. The stands on it in pale stone, three domes tiled in burnt orange with a Star of David set into the center one, built as a synagogue and now in use as a Masonic hall.
Toward the rows turn to rough cut stone, round corner turrets and arched doorways painted dark purple or green against the grey. Service alleys sit behind the blocks, narrow paved lanes between yards and garages where the rowhouse backs close in overhead.
Shot in Bolton Hill
For the Netflix series House of Cards, a Park Avenue rowhouse played Frank and Claire Underwood's first Washington townhouse. The production used only the outside of the real house, keeping its own door number as the fictional address.
House of Cards, 2013
Played a townhouse, Washington, D.C., present day
Only the exterior of this 1880 rowhouse appeared on screen, standing in for the Underwoods' first Washington home in the show's early seasons. The interior the camera shows was a separate set built at a warehouse in Joppa, Maryland, more ornate than the real rooms behind this door. Street View
What Bolton Hill can double for
Logan Circle in Washington, D.C.
House of Cards already used this neighborhood's own rows to play Washington. Logan Circle is the real version of that look, Renaissance Revival and Romanesque Revival rowhouses with bay windows and turrets around the circle. The scale and cornice work line up closely with Bolton Hill's own blocks. Logan Circle's steps run brownstone or painted concrete rather than marble, so a frame holding on the stoop needs dressing or a tighter crop above the sidewalk. Try searching Renaissance Revival rowhouses now.
Fitler Square in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia's own rowhouse blocks carry the same scrubbed white marble steps as Bolton Hill, a detail more associated with Philadelphia than any other American city. Fitler Square and the streets around Rittenhouse are three and four storey brick rows from the same late nineteenth century decades, with the same stoop at the sidewalk line. Philadelphia's bay windows run narrower and the brick reads a flatter red, so a tight shot on the steps and door holds up better than a wide block elevation. Try searching white marble steps now.
Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia
Monument Avenue runs the same trick as Eutaw Place and Park Avenue, a wide planted median splitting the roadway with rowhouses and mansions facing it on both sides. The architecture skews later and more varied, Colonial and Tudor revivals beside plain brick rows, so it reads better for the street shape than for the building fronts. Hold the frame on the planted median and the roadway rather than the facades, where the styles mix more than Bolton Hill's matching blocks do. Try searching planted median rowhouses now.
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