City Hall Sid retires again, ending decades as Baltimore greeter

Baltimore City Hall lost one of its most familiar faces Friday, when Sid Grossman, the 92-year-old greeter known to many as City Hall Sid, retired again after more than two decades welcoming visitors at 100 N. Holliday Street.

Grossman had already retired from teaching physical education in Baltimore City schools in 1987, but he never really stopped working. For years he was a steady presence inside the building, often one of the first people visitors saw as they moved through the public corridors, checked in for appointments or headed toward the mayor’s office in Room 250. City Hall’s weekday rhythm, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., gave him a front-row seat to the everyday traffic of government.

Family members and colleagues gathered to mark the end of another chapter for a man whose job became inseparable from his life. Grossman once said of the work, “It keeps me alive,” a line that captured how deeply he had tied his days to the building and the people moving through it.

His retirement carries a wider meaning for Baltimore beyond a warm goodbye. Grossman watched administrations come and go, and he became part of the building’s institutional memory, the kind that does not show up in a budget or a press release. He also left a mark on Brandon Scott before Scott became mayor, making an impression when Scott was applying for his first City Hall job.

That connection gives Grossman’s farewell unusual weight. Scott is Baltimore’s 52nd mayor and the youngest person to hold the office in more than 100 years. He took the oath of office in the Rotunda of City Hall on Dec. 8, 2020, won re-election in November 2024 as the first Baltimore mayor in 20 years to do so, and later delivered his fifth State of the City address on April 21, 2025, before speaking again on March 31, 2026. Through all of that, Grossman remained in the same building, greeting the city as it changed around him.

With Grossman gone, Baltimore loses more than a familiar face at the door. It loses one of the people who made City Hall feel continuous, even as the names on the office doors kept changing.