Over the last few weeks of demolition, we’ve been finding newspapers behind walls and under floors.  Lots of great stuff I plan on posting down the road.  Most of the dates I’ve been finding have been 1953 so tonight I did a quick search for “Baltimore 1953”.  This short film is what I found:

Called “The Bal­ti­more Plan,” this 20-minute Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­nica film from 1953 describes an urban renewal plan of the same name, ini­ti­ated in 1945. Once a blighted area was iden­ti­fied, a cadre of city agen­cies (hous­ing, san­i­ta­tion, police, etc.) would con­duct inspec­tions and rig­or­ously enforce code vio­la­tions, forc­ing the own­ers to either vacate or fix up their prop­er­ties. A hous­ing court, the first in the coun­try, was set up as the final arbiter for stub­born cases. Another out­come of the plan was the Fight Blight fund, which issued long-term, low-interest loans to home­own­ers wish­ing to make repairs on their houses.

(http://blogs.citypaper.com/index.php/2010/10/the-baltimore-plan-1953/)

I hope to find some more info on this period of time.  It may have been the reason for all the repairs happening around the time our house was fixed up back in 1953.