The Residential Aspect of Culmore

Where is Home?

To illustrate the adaptation of the community to the Hispanic residence, we decided that the best place to start was by examining the residential aspect of the neighborhood, which consist mainly of Hispanic individuals.  Parkwood Apartments, located on Glen Carlyn Drive is the only housing complex within the boundaries of the Culmore area.  According to the assistant manager, Elfa Bauer, the complex was first built after World War II between 1945 and 1950.

Figure 4-View of Parkwood Apartments

Also, the assistant manager gave us some helpful information concerning the Hispanic population residing within the complex.  According to Mr. Bauer who has been living in the community for 10 years: “95% of the apartment’s occupants are from Central America, [of] whom most are El Salvadorian, and about 1% are from South America (Personal interview, 27 March 2002).”  We later asked Mr. Bauer if the apartment’s employment staff had any trouble adapting to the settlement of the large Hispanic population in the apartment.  He expressed that they did not have any problems adapting. In fact, Mr. Bauer stated: “the entire staff is from South America and speak Spanish, except for one individual who is from Africa (Personal interview, 27 March 2002).”  

The assistant manager also explained that the staff did not have any other major problems within their complex concerning payment issues or disruptive behavior.  Actually, when it comes to disruptive behavior, the residents are not the problem.  After concluding our discussion with the assistant manager at Parkwood Apartments, we definitely felt that our subjects occupied the majority of the area.  However, understanding how their occupancy effect the rest of the community was our focus. In other words, we wanted to know more about the lifestyles of the Hispanic tenants and how they made the area distinctive from others.  Therefore, in continuing our research on the matter, we visited the local businesses within the community.