Mrs. E Watson's
Mrs. Etta Watson offered a room in an apartment in the building on Bloom Street near the Madison Street YWCA.
Mrs. Watson lived in basement of the Bellevieu Building and advertised her tourist home in the Green Book from 1947 to 1953, although she continued to live in the building after she stopped advertising.
Known Name(s)
Mrs. E Watson's
Address
340 Blum Street (Bloom) Baltimore, MD
Establishment Type(s)
Tourist Home
Physical Status
Extant
Description
The Bellevieu-Madison Apartment Buildings are six-stories tall and five bays wide. A 1930 advertisement from the Afro-American Newspaper shows the floor plan with two 2-bedroom apartments and two 1-bedroom apartments for each floor. The ground floor provided commercial services such as a barber.
Detailed History
The Watson Tourist Home was in the Bellevieu-Madison Apartment buildings, just around the corner from the YWCA on Madison Avenue. Mrs. Etta S. Watson lived on the ground floor of the Bellevieu building starting in 1946, and her listing first appeared in the 1946 Green Book, running through the 1953 edition. Although Mrs. Watson is not listed in the Baltimore Telephone Directory as living on Bloom Street after 1953, the Polk's City Directory from 1956 indicates she still resided there and was a "beauty operator." Also, The Green Book lists the address as 340 Blum Street, which is a misspelling of Bloom.
