Irvington is a family-oriented community with residences built over a century ago. The neighborhood has many activities throughout the year for children and adults such as an Easter Egg Hunt, annual community yard sale, annual picnic/block party, a Halloween parade for the children and a dance for the adults, and Santa visits our neighborhood children every year.

The community also sponsors a Citizen on Patrol program, whereby neighbors volunteer for one night a month to patrol the neighborhood for suspicious activity. Irvington also contains a three block business district along Frederick Avenue convenient for local shopping needs.

300-acre London Park Cemetery incorporated in 1853 contains Union and Confederate graves on opposite "hills." Maiden Choice Run and other green areas bordering the community give it a very green atmosphere. Minutes from the beltway and served by both local buses and trains to Washington D.C., Irvington provides a very nice choice of bedroom community. Furthermore, Irvington is minutes away from shopping centers, downtown Baltimore, the Baltimore-Washington International Airport and the Amtrak commuter train.

Frame architecture, large wrap-around open porches with large yards, Italianate homes, row-shaped "swell-front" houses and daylight row houses. Prices range from $40,000 for a traditional rowhouse to $100,000 for a newly remodeled, five bedroom, Victorian home. The average home price in 2004 was $65,072.

Kensington, the area of Irvington near the corner of Wilkens Avenue and Beechfield Road, consists of approximately 210 single-family homes built in the late 1930's. The neighborhood is split by the city and county boundaries with city residents in about 1/3 of the homes.

Present day Irvington and the surrounding area was originally called "the Hunting Ridge" by European immigrants. In the last quarter of the 17th century, the Lord Proprietor made numerous land grants on "the Hunting Ridge." Land records indicate that the first settler of the area was a Quaker from Anne Arundel County named Thomas Coale, whose 450 acres was surveyed on August 17, 1673. His land was called "Maiden's Choice" and occupied the present-day site of Loudon Park Cemetery. During the next 50 years, land grants continued to be made for huge acreage in the area, but by the early 18th century these farms were subdivided and the population of the area began to grow.

Modern-day Irvington actually began with "the road." "The road," built sometime before 1765, led from Baltimore to Frederick Town. Originally a Native American trail, it was later used by trappers as they brought their packhorses laden with pelts and salt to the markets of Baltimore Town. "Wheelbarrow men," convicts who built and maintained roads under the watchful eye of armed overseers, set up log cabins occupied several miles apart along "the road." Today "the road" is Frederick Avenue.

The community of Irvington is surrounded by cemeteries, one of which explains Baltimore's unique location as the northernmost southern town and the southernmost northern town. In 1861, the government bought a plot of land for the burial of 2300 Union and 275 Confederate soldiers. Today the cemeteries are a reminder of the neighborhood's, as well as the region's, history, while simultaneously allowing the neighborhood to maintain the seclusion of its rural origins as the city has grown in all directions around it.

The name Irvington is far newer than the first inhabitants of the area. In 1874, C. Irving Ditty, an attorney and Collector of the Port of Baltimore bought a large section of land in the area that would later take his name. Ditty laid out and named the local streets, both of which, streets and names, are still used today.

Click here (http://www.livebaltimore.com/nb/list/irving/history/) for more information on the Neighborhood's History.