Chick Webb Recreation Center reopens in East Baltimore after renovation

Chick Webb Recreation Center reopened as more than a polished gym. The East Baltimore building now has refreshed basketball courts, a renovated pool, fitness spaces and a recording studio, giving the neighborhood a public place that can handle exercise, music, classes and community gatherings under one roof.

The reopening on April 16 put a fresh face on a site that has carried East Baltimore history for nearly eight decades. Built in 1947, Chick Webb was the first recreation center and pool for African Americans in segregated East Baltimore. The Baltimore City Planning Commission named it a city landmark in 2017, a move that helped protect the building from demolition and sent exterior changes through historic-preservation review.

The renovation enlarged the center from 17,192 square feet to 33,172 square feet with a new 15,980-square-foot, two-story addition. City plans also called for a multipurpose gym and event space, an exercise studio, classrooms, exhibition space, upgraded locker rooms and a recording studio honoring William Henry “Chick” Webb, the East Baltimore-born drummer and bandleader known as the King of Swing. The building’s renewed layout gives Baltimore City Recreation & Parks a broader tool for youth programming, after-school activity and indoor recreation in a part of the city where public amenities have often lagged behind need.

The financing tied the project to a larger redevelopment push in Perkins Somerset Oldtown. The Perkins Somerset Oldtown Transformation Initiative won a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant in 2018, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved a $12.24 million Section 108 guaranteed loan for the Chick Webb work. City officials first announced the renovation plans on May 24, 2023, and said then that it was the second of four recreation-center projects in the city’s Rec Rollout.

The center’s reopening also revived a long local promise that never rested on city hall alone. Webb died in 1939 before the fundraising effort for the center was finished, and Dr. Ralph J. Young and other community members kept the project alive, even helping buy property for it with their own money. Now the city says the renovated center and its programming will be free to the public except for summer camp programs, turning a landmark named for a jazz great into a daily-use asset for East Baltimore families, teens and older residents alike.