What Is It??? Ellicott City and a Sense of Place

Have you very clicked through all the channels on television and lamented that “there’s nothing on!”? That’s my brain this morning. There’s absolutely no local story that is speaking to me today.

I’m going to bring something back from the past instead. It’s a question I’ve never completely resolved for myself and I think my readers can help.

What is Ellicott City?

In my mind it is Main Street. No, Route 40. (Stop, stop! They’re both right.) It doesn’t make sense to me. Is it the old and carefully preserved? Is it the endless parade of shopping centers and chain restaurants? This is not criticism. This is my way of explaining that I haven’t been able to wrap my brain around it.

Columbia, where I live, may be a wacky and artificial concept but, after some twenty-plus years I understand the lay of the land. I understand where the center of town is and how the community spreads out from that point. There’s no question that it may be easier to grasp precisely because it was a planned community.

Most places evolve over time. There may be city or town planners but things may happen in fits and starts and in ways unexpected by the original founders. And that may be why I have a hard time understanding Ellicott City. I want it to be either one way or the other: all Main Street, or all Route 40.

It isn’t. And I guess that makes it more interesting and offers more possibilities, even if I don’t “get it.”

So I’m throwing it out there to my readers. What is Ellicott City? What is its essence, its heartbeat, the key to its personality?

It occurs to me that in focusing on Main Street and Route 40 I may be missing other places that are equally important to understanding Ellicott City as a whole. I am open to new information.

On the WETA show “If You Lived Here” each episode includes clips with residents saying, “If you lived here, you’d know that…” and relating interesting things about their neighborhood that they felt made it special.

So, tell me about Ellicott City. If I lived there, what would I know that I don’t know now?

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