Homeland Runs Two Halloweens a Year, and They've Never Once Shared a Date

Homeland doesn't have a clubhouse. It has six lakes, laid out in a chain down Springlake Way when the Olmsted Brothers designed the neighborhood as a garden suburb in the 1920s and 30s, and for nearly a century those lakes have functioned as the only common room the neighborhood needs. That detail explains more about how the fall calendar here actually works than any list of pumpkin patches could.

Two blocks east, on the other side of York Road, a completely different Halloween is happening at the same time of year, run by a different organization, with a different budget, drawing a different crowd. The two events don't compete for the same night. They've simply never needed to, because nobody in Homeland is trying to build one big neighborhood party out of them. There are two, and residents who only know about one are working off half the calendar.

The Party That Never Left the Lakes

The Homeland Association, the nonprofit that has governed the neighborhood since 1950, sponsors a children's Halloween party every year, along with National Night Out, an annual picnic, and a Christmas Eve tradition of caroling around the lakes that runs about half an hour and requires kids to rehearse beforehand. None of this happens at a rented hall. Because the Association has no clubhouse, its events happen outdoors, in the common areas the Association itself is legally responsible for maintaining, sidewalks, lanes, and the lakes among them.

That maintenance obligation is written into Homeland's deed covenants, which also require homeowners to get written approval from the Association for exterior modifications, the same architectural review process that has kept the neighborhood's 1920s and 30s housing stock looking consistent for over ninety years. Worth Magazine once named Homeland one of the top fifty urban neighborhoods in the country, and the case for that ranking is less about any single house and more about this kind of unbroken civic follow-through: an association still running the same handful of outdoor gatherings, in the same handful of shared spaces, generation after generation.

The Association holds its own annual meeting every October too, usually at the Church of the Redeemer, which means the same month that produces the kids' Halloween party is also the month the neighborhood's governing body sits down with its paid members to handle the business side of keeping those lakes and lanes in shape.

Two Blocks East, a Completely Different Show

Belvedere Square runs its own trick-or-treat event most years, and it looks nothing like the low-key gathering around Homeland's lakes. Past years have brought a DJ, a choreographed Thriller or Monster Mash performance from the White Marsh Ballet Academy, trunk-or-treating from groups like the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland, and a costume contest with a small entry fee that has gone to causes including the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter and Govans Elementary School in different years. The Belvedere Veterinary Center has treated pets. The exact date has moved around from year to year, landing on a Saturday one year and a weekday evening another, so the way to catch it is to check Belvedere Square's own event calendar rather than assume it repeats on the same date it did last year.

The organization behind it, the Belvedere Square Merchants' Association, only became a formal nonprofit in 2023, which is recent compared to the Homeland Association's 1950 charter. But the merchants it represents have been building toward a fully leased, fully programmed market for a while. In spring 2025, three new tenants filled the last vacant spots in the food hall, a pretzel shop, an LGBTQ+ boutique, and Kesh & Fresh, a plant-based Moroccan eatery and juicery that had spent a few years working the farmers market circuit around Maryland and D.C. before landing a permanent spot. Mackenzie Retail's Henry Deford, who has leased the property for over a decade, pointed to Belvedere Square's position between Roland Park and Rodgers Forge as part of why the market filled up while other Baltimore food halls have had a harder time keeping tenants and foot traffic steady.

That fully-leased roster is what a Homeland resident walks into this time of year: Neopol Savory Smokery, Atwater's, The Pizza Trust, Ceriello Italian Market, Ejji Ramen, Mason's for lobster rolls, Prigel Family Farm for ice cream and cheese, Hex Ferments, Jinji Chocolate, and now Kesh & Fresh, all inside a market that Belvedere Square itself describes as pulling in more than 10,000 visitors a week. The Senator Theatre sits right there too, a single-screen icon since 1939 that added three more screening rooms during a restoration and got named one of the top 20 movie theaters in the world in 2014, which makes a fall movie an easy add-on to a walk through the market.

Here's how the two events actually compare, side by side:

The Trail That Doesn't Lead to Either One

Homeland's western border opens onto the Stony Run Trail, a walking path that follows the old Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad bed through roughly three miles of stream valley, connecting fifteen neighborhoods and passing near Johns Hopkins University on its way south toward the Jones Falls. The trail is stewarded by Friends of Stony Run, a volunteer nonprofit that has run trash cleanups, bird walks, and habitat restoration work since organizing in 2011, and its presence on Homeland's western edge means the neighborhood is bordered by two entirely different kinds of gathering space in two entirely different directions. Belvedere Square, to the east, is commercial, lit, and loud in October. Stony Run, to the west, is quiet, wooded, and mostly known to the people who already use it, since there's no official trailhead sign marking most of its entrances.

Homeland's own lakes sit in between, which is part of why they've held onto their role as the neighborhood's actual center for eighty years of Halloween parties and Christmas Eve caroling. They don't have to compete with the trail's stillness or the Square's crowd. They're just the one common space that belongs to Homeland itself, run by Homeland's own association, on Homeland's own outdoor calendar.

What the Calendar Actually Adds Up To

None of this requires choosing sides. A family in Homeland this fall can walk the kids to the Association's party at the lakes, catch Belvedere Square's trick-or-treat event on whatever date it lands this year, and still have the Stony Run Trail sitting quietly on the other side of the neighborhood the whole time, unbothered by either one. The reason it works is structural. Two different nonprofits, one founded in 1950 and one in 2023, run two different events, in two different directions, and neither has ever needed the other's calendar to make its own tradition land.

That's Homeland's actual shape this time of year: a neighborhood small enough to run its own Halloween out of its own lakes, and close enough to a much bigger one that residents never have to pick just one.

If you're weighing a move into Homeland, or you already live along the lakes and want a read on what your home is worth in today's market, Jessica Dailey has spent years working this specific stretch of North Baltimore and can walk you through it neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block.