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Ashburton

“I’m looking at the neighborhood, through the eyes, in other words this is heaven”
- F. Bond, personal communication, February 23, 2007.

Ashburton, a growing community in what is now considered northwest Baltimore, had a simple beginning when it was founded in 1920 by John Street Gittings. The first home in this new development was built in 1921 by Blanche Van de Castle.²

The community originally comprised of about 300 acres that ran east including what is now Reisterstown Road moving south several blocks to below the Western Maryland Railway tracks and northwesterly across Liberty Road. Today, Ashburton is bounded by Wabash Avenue on the south, Seqouia and Dolfield Avenue on the east, Liberty Heights Avenue on the west, and Callaway Avenue on the north. Gittings christened the estate “Ashburton” recognizing his esteem for Alexander Baring, a British representative known as “Lord Ashburton”.³ Today Henlon Park is where the Gittings Plantation once sat. The Gittings farm remained in the Gittings family for more than 100 years while the Gittings house was passed out of the family’s hands and converted into a nursing home. It is positioned on top of a hill on Hilton Road and serves as a reminder of Ashburton’s humble beginnings. While Ashburton’s origin is modest in size, its sense of pride has always appeared larger than life. Since its inception in the 1920’s, Ashburton has undergone many changes – politically, economically, and very noticeably, demographically. So, what has kept Ashburton alive while other neighborhoods fall apart? The glue of this community is its prominent social organizations; most importantly being the administrations of the Ashburton Area Association.

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