Towson University culture center aims to unite, preserve Asian American and Pacific Islander communities

BALTIMORE -- While Baltimore doesn't have any Asian American and Pacific Islander neighborhoods today, history shows the city used to have a few.

Despite the lack of any kind of central neighborhood, Towson University's Asian Arts & Culture Center is working to unite AAPI communities -- but also preserve the history of the city's AAPI past.

Nerissa Paglinauan and Joanna Pecore, from the center, are putting the final touches on this year's Asia North Exhibition & Festival.

 It's one of the only annual AAPI celebrations in the Charm City.

"There are many silos of communities, of different cultures," said Paglinauan, program manager at the center. "Unless you're already in that community, you don't really know what's going on until an annual festival may pop up."

Each year, the event is held in Station North, which was Baltimore's unofficial Koreatown.

Pecore stumbled upon this history when she first moved into the area around 2014. She -- as well as other researchers at the center and community partners -- have since been collecting this history as part of the center's Greater Baltimore Asian Community History Project.

"I looked and there was a little Wikipedia article," Pecore said. "We started doing research, we realized that each community has thier own historical trajectory."

Jong Kak and other restaurants in Station North are often the landmarks people recognize from this history, which the Station North Arts District is also working to preserve.

Pecore said many Korean Americans left the area after the 1990s because of safety concerns.

There also used to be a Chinatown in Baltimore. Suzy Schlosberg, a John Hopkins University student who helped the center's research into the neighborhoods, found Chinese Americans initially were closer to the port before eventually establishing a neighborhood along Park Avenue in downtown.

Schlosberg also found the Chinese American presence started to decline in that neighborhood around World War II.

"A 1937 [Baltimore] Sun article mentioned about 400 Chinese people [in the neighborhood], it always kind of was a small community," she said.

While there's no central AAPI neighborhood or area in Baltimore, Pecore and Paglinauan are cotninuing to create community -- whether that's through Asia North or other initiatives.

Asia North festivities begin Friday, May 3, and go on until June 1.