Sacred Places
Stone Sanctum at Stillmeadow PeacePark
A twelve-foot wall of exposed rock in a ten-acre urban forest.
WHERE
Baltimore, MD
SETTING
Neighborhood
PARTNER INSTITUTION
Stillmeadow Community Fellowship
Visit
Where it is
5110 Frederick Ave, Baltimore, MD 21229
What happens here
The Stone Sanctum is intended as an outdoor worship or reflective space, encountered on the trail. Across Maidens Choice Run, the Overlook Circle offers respite to visitors who cannot manage the park's steeper ground. The US Forest Service runs test plots through the wider PeacePark, and visitors can learn from the site's onsite stormwater management and sustainable landscaping.
HOW IT CAME TO BE
The stone was already a special place.
Drag to see the transformation.
01
The Need
The PeacePark's ten acres sit in the heart of the Beechfield and Irvington neighborhoods in southwest Baltimore. Much of it is very steep and therefore inaccessible, which meant part of the design work was finding ways to open portions of the site to people with limited mobility.
02
The Vision
Stillmeadow set out to give its community a meditative space, wildlife a habitat, and visitors an education in stormwater management and sustainable landscaping. Nature Sacred and Stillmeadow ran a community-centred master planning process, drawing in an ever-growing list of partner organizations and holding small-group "meanders" through the site to familiarize community members with it and invite them in. Five areas were selected through that engagement to be designated as nodes within the larger PeacePark, each with its own design intention. The Stone Sanctum is one.
03
The Transformation
The site is ecologically unusual, holding three distinct forest types, and the US Forest Service works there on test plots assessing regrowth and reforestation capacity. Its most distinctive feature was already in the ground: a 12-foot vertical expanse of exposed boulder. Encountering it on the trail makes plain that it is a special place, offering shelter, grounding, and inspiration, and the Stone Sanctum takes its name from it. Directly across Maidens Choice Run, the Overlook Circle adds a seating area reachable from the main sidewalk, so that people who cannot get to the rest of the park still have somewhere in it.
WHO TENDS IT
Pastor Michael Martin
Firesoul, Stone Sanctum at Stillmeadow PeacePark
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