Yep, Baltimore gets it's influence from both Northern and Southern culture. You just have to look at the fractured picture of the state during the Civil War to understand how this came to be.

Well it is said we have all the efficiency of the south with the friendliness of the north....but seriously this Baltimore Sun article from a while back paints a a good picture of Maryland's "Middle Temperament" https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/bs-xpm-2010-03-28-bal-md-backstory28mar28-story.html

It along with DC are quintessential mid-Atlantic transition cities

Ellicot city, a town within 20 minutes drive has a museum that showcases how men from Ellicot city fought for both the north and south dur8ng the Civil war.

Maryland is a very strange state with lots of Southern and Northern ties. If you go down to Southern Maryland or the Eastern Shore, the accents are closer to rural to suburban VA. In Northern MD, they are a mixture of black AAVE DC, Italian, and southern PA, depending of the area. But that’s what makes the Mid-Atlantic so unique.

My family has been in Maryland since the early 1600’s. The civil war divided my family where most of the men were southern sympathizers and fled to the army of N. Virginia, some doing her in the rare MD battalions, others in my family mostly the women and their youngest children fled north to Jersey or New York because they were northern sympathizers. And the weirdest thing of all, not a single person in my family owned land or slaves, they were just drug into the “states rights” argument and those who saw themselves as southern fought for the south, those who saw themselves as northern, went north. I cannot forgive my grandfather for hocking my greatx3 grandfathers union uniform, rifle, gear and all that. I would have cherished that.

Maryland was a plantation state, and with that came all the aspects of an agrarian way of life including weak/few cities and towns. Baltimore's rise as an industrial city countered that mostly in the 19th century, but all the area around the city was sparsely populated or developed until post WWII. As with many Eastern cities Baltimore's infrastructure was usurped for use in building the suburban sprawl around it. Add to this until the 1950s Baltimore was the older wiser sister to Washington DC, sharing many things, but after the 2nd war Baltimore became the old maid while DC the jet set younger sibling. Most people in the DC area have never been to Baltimore. Baltimore has many firsts, in the country, and also is known for its quirkyness. Possibly due to its earlier industrial days and the mix of immigrants with Appalachian folks.

I lived in Philly for a short while and had to venture into NJ for work. I think you as a native of NJ, will find Baltimore very comfortable.

Baltimore has a lot of Appalachian cultural influence due to the large migration of West Virginians in the early-middle 20th century. At the same time a large black migration from the south occurred.

And Kentuckians

Per John Waters:

"I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay."

That was JFK who said that and he was talking about DC not Baltimore

It's a weird hybrid. I knew it was southern when I got here from New York because it was easier to find grits and randoms will say hello to you on the street, but it has a brusque-ness that is distinctly northern. And accents that are very foreign to a southern ear.

I dunno... I like it now? Always shocks me, because it was a very subtle adaptation and assimilation. I hated Baltimore for the first two or three years, initially. Such a strange, but lovely and sometimes unforgiving place. 🤷🏿‍♀️ Eudora Welty might have liked it, but she would have most definitely lived in Keswick or Evergreen.

Md’s state flag is comprised of half union and half confederate flags, too.

“I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.” -John Waters

Actually, the flag bears the arms of the Calvert and Crossland families, and pre-dates the Civil War by 200+ years.

Wasn’t the Crossland banner used by Maryland confederates who joined Lee’s army? And it was adopted as part of Maryland’s state flag on that basis post-reconstruction?

As an aside, not saying this is some sort of defining factor of ‘southern cultural influence’ by any means.

Yes that is correct and I’m pretty sure a state website tells that history.

This is a good description and matched my experience as someone who grew up in the DC-oriented parts of MD and moved to Baltimore. Though it was 40 miles away, and I’d visited a million times, the cultural differences were/are enormous. DC-MD doesn’t have that history that Baltimore does, which is where Maryland’s southern roots really show.

Baltimore is simultaneously the northern most city in the Old South and the most southern city of the North.