HMRTA 2025-2026 Quarterly Membership Meetings:

As in 2023 and 2024, HMRTA will host quarterly membership meetings in 2025 and 2026 in the winter, spring, summer and fall, along with a bonus holiday edition at the end of the year. Go to our Calendar to subscribe.

Prior meetings in 2025: Winter 2025 (online): Sunday, February 16th, 5pm; Spring 2025, in person at the Secret Garden, Sunday April 27th, 4pm-6pm, Fall 2025, in person at the Secret Garden, Sunday September 14th, 4pm-6pm

Upcoming:

Holiday 2025 (in-person, location TBD): Sunday December 7th, 4pm-6pm

Board Meetings: Second Thursdays

The board meets on the second Thursday of every month, excluding holidays. We prefer to meet in person, usually at someone’s dining room table, though occasionally we meet online.

Members are very welcome to attend as non-voting participants. Email the board with a request to attend the meeting, and we’ll share the location or link.

To reach the board with your ideas or concerns, suggest an item for the agenda, get on our mailing list, or to simply introduce yourself, email us at hmrta-board@googlegroups.com and we’ll get back to you.

About Us: The Historic Mount Royal Terrace Association (HMRTA) is a 501(c)(3) community nonprofit organization, incorporated in 1999 in the Reservoir Hill Neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland.

Our Mission:

HMRTA aims to positively impact the lives of residents living within its boundaries (Mount Royal Terrace, North Ave, Druid Park Lake Drive, Park Ave) by actively participating in neighborhood and city-wide civic affairs; sharing information and resources; working to enhance neighborhood safety and preserve its historic character; and strengthening community partnerships.

Who We Are:

We are an all-volunteer Maryland 501(c)3 nonprofit with a DIY spirit and a mission to advocate for ourselves at the local, state, and federal level. Our members build our own little free libraries, help clean our streets, care for our neighbors and show up for other community associations, including the Reservoir Hill Association (RHA), an umbrella that seeks to unite the neighborhood groups across Reservoir Hill. We have worked in partnership with the Upper Eutaw-Madison Neighborhood Association (UEMNA), Bolton Park Neighbors, Newington Neighbors, Residents Against the Tunnels (RATT), and more.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected our neighborhood in a huge way. Many longtime residents moved out, and many new residents moved in. In 2020, then-president and longtime HMRTA member Amelia Trevelyan passed away; in 2022, we also lost Elizabeth Schaaf, a beloved member of our board and founder of the Lennox Street community garden.

In 2023, we elected five new members to the board, and established a long-term calendar of quarterly public meetings, monthly board meetings, and top-line community goals. In 2024 and 2025, we’ve continued to advocate strongly for the needs of our community at local, state, and federal levels.

Historic Mount Royal Terrace Association Board of Directors:

Freda Alvarado Fanning, President
Monica Navarro Leonard, Vice President
Carl Young, Secretary
Livia Labate, Treasurer
Barbara Bourland
Leanna Brisson
Morgan Ashley Bryant
Andrea Cuenca
Gyasi Moscou-Jackson

Contact the board: If you’d like to get an issue on the agenda, share an event with our membership, or invite us to a party 🙂 you can reach the entire board with one email: hmrta-board@googlegroups.com. Reach out anytime, and one of us will get back to you.

For the uninitiated, Google Groups are massively helpful for all-volunteer nonprofits like HMRTA, because Google Groups are built to relay information now and in the future. We know that emailing a group is not always intuitive, but it works for us, both as a listerv to help current board members to use our time efficiently, and as a message board whose posts can be quickly searched by future board members to find out history of an issue, its status with our elected officials, etc etc.

Basically: emailing the group as a whole helps us help each other, and it’s free to our small nonprofit, so don’t worry about wasting our data our spamming us. CC hmrta-board@googlegroups.com on your emails to elected officials, city agencies, local nonprofits, or anything else that you think needs support or visibility.

Membership: If you’d like to be a part of HMRTA, we’d love to have you. Submit the form on our membership page to join our organization. You’ll be added to our Google Group, which you can use to communicate with other members.

As per our current bylaws, “The Corporation shall serve the area of the City of Baltimore encompassed by the following streets and blocks:

• Park Avenue: 1800 block (buildings on east side), 1900 block (buildings on the west and east sides), 2000 block (buildings on the west and east sides), 2100 block (buildings on the west and east sides), 2200 block (buildings on the west and east sides);
• Mount Royal Terrace: 1900 block, 2000 block, 2100 block, 2200 block, and 2300 block;
• West North Avenue: 600 block;
• Lennox Street: 600 block (buildings on north and south sides); and
• Reservoir Street: 600 block (buildings on north and south sides).

1. a) Membership Requirements: Persons meeting the following criteria shall be Members of the Corporation:

1) Be at least 18 years of age;

2) Reside within the boundaries (as defined in Section 3 above) of the Corporation; and

3) Complete Annual Membership Form, which includes name, address, and contact information, and which has had the address verified by the Board. Verified Members will be entitled to vote no fewer than twenty-two (22) days following address verification.”

How we came about: In the 1970s, founding members of HMRTA received two HCD Community Block Grants to install a sound screening berm and landscaping (designed by the neighborhood design center). These grants also allowed for the installation of the ‘Lady Baltimore’ statue, urns and the stone plaza of which materials were provided by the city, but all of the labor was provided by neighbors. HMRTA evolved in the mid-1980s from that group, and was incorporated in its current form in 1999. The park was dedicated by Mayor William Donald Schaefer in 1980 and thus celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2020.

Over the past three decades, neighbors have worked together through the HMRTA to help each other complete CHAP applications, find grants and funding, maintain plantings and prunings of our green spaces, pick up trash, and communicate about the issues that affect all of us.

In recent years, HMRTA have been the beneficiaries of both Parks & People funding as well as Partnership for Parks funding to enhance and maintain the beauty of our 140 year old community.