Historic Ellicott City

Author's Comments

The granite here does something particular in late October afternoon light. It goes warm in a way you would not expect from stone, the rough-cut faces of these buildings catching the low sun and giving it back amber. I have walked the main street at various hours and the late afternoon is the only time it fully reveals itself. Ellicott City sits in a gorge rather than on flat ground, which means the street pitches steeply and the buildings rise on both sides at angles that feel European, almost accidental. Nothing here is ornamental. The storefronts are thick-walled and functional, built to last by people who understood the river below them was unpredictable and the hillside was not going anywhere. That solidity reads in photographs as weight and permanence. The B&O Railroad station at the bottom of the hill is worth the walk down. Oldest in the country and still standing, which is the kind of fact that becomes more interesting once you are standing in front of it with a camera and the afternoon is going golden around you. The relationship between the stone, the old rails, and the treeline above the gorge is worth some time. I would not call this a photographer's destination exactly. The street gets traffic and the sight lines are interrupted. But come in fall, come after three in the afternoon, and give yourself permission to work slowly up from the river. The light on granite is brief and worth the patience.

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