Mount Vernon Place is Baltimore’s best urban room: four sunken park squares in a cross around the 1829 Washington Monument, ringed by brownstones and the Peabody Institute. The squares’ mature tulip poplars and the four-story rowhouse walls keep at least one quadrant shaded at every hour — walk the cross clockwise and you can stay in cover all afternoon.
These picks run the squares and the surrounding blocks. Read Street and Tyson Alley carry the rowhouse shade north; the Walters’ portico takes the southern approach.