Even on a day with no rain, water can be heard flowing underneath Remington at the intersection of West 27th and Fox streets.

About 30 to 40 feet below a maintenance hole cover, Sumwalt Run — a creek that once flowed above ground — continues to move through the city’s stormwater sewer system, Baltimore artist Bruce Willen said.

Now, he’s bringing the history of Sumwalt Run to the surface with “Ghost Rivers,” a permanent public art installation celebrated Thursday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the neighborhood.

“It’s just this very cool, weird, hidden history about our city that most of us have no idea exists,” said Willen, a 42-year-old resident of Old Goucher in North Baltimore who graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. He founded Public Mechanics, a Baltimore design studio, in 2020. “This stream, and these various streams, they’re still there. They’re kind of ghostly; you catch whispers of them occasionally, when you listen to a storm drain.”

“Ghost Rivers” consists of a wavy blue line winding overtop some of the city’s streets and sidewalks, marking the path where Sumwalt Run used to flow on the Earth’s surface, parallel to its current route below the pavement. Accompanied by signs with historical information to facilitate self-led walking tours, it’s the culmination of Willen’s research into the creek over the past three years.

The idea for the project germinated eight or nine years ago, when Willen said he examined an 1876 city map that showed the waterway cutting through Remington.

In the early 1900s, Sumwalt Run, fed by natural springs starting as far north as Guilford and Pen Lucy and emptying into the Jones Falls, was moved about 30 to 40 feet underground and channeled into 8-foot-wide culverts lined with bricks, Willen said. The culverts were built near the creek’s natural path, he discovered.

“These waterways that once existed in Baltimore … they’ve been piped underground in certain places so that we can drive over them, or so that we can live on top of them,” said John Marra, ecoliteracy and engagement manager at Blue Water Baltimore, the environmental nonprofit that partnered with Willen to edit, fact-check and supply more context to the project’s educational information.

Baltimore has a two-pipe sewer system, Marra said: one for sewage and another for stormwater drainage, of which Sumwalt Run’s culvert is a part.

Marra couldn’t put a number on how many streams and creeks that once coursed through Baltimore continue to exist in a different form underground; Willen estimated there are as many as 40 or 50.

“Baltimore’s a water-centric city. So much of that water lives beneath our feet and people don’t even realize it,” Marra said. “My hope is just that people are going to get more curious. … The Sumwalt Run is one [underground waterway]. How many others are there?”

Willen’s “Ghost Rivers” project doesn’t impede Remington’s streetscape, where the first installment of nine walking tour stops was completed this month. Yet the wavy graphic “Ghost Rivers” line stands out from other street markings.

For three days in October, Equus Striping, a pavement marking company, affixed the blue line made of thermoplastic — the same material used for traffic markings — to streets and sidewalks in Remington using heat, Willen said. At each stop along the route, matching blue signs convey bits of history, with more information accessible online via a QR code.

In addition to digging into archives at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Maryland Center for History and Culture, and elsewhere, Willen spoke with neighborhood residents to learn more about their homes.

“From the very beginning our community was excited to help support and steward this project to the finish line,” Greater Remington Improvement Association President Corey Jennings told The Baltimore Sun in an email, noting that Willen first presented the project to the group in early 2021. The process involved multiple rounds of public feedback and door-knocking, he added.

“Remington covered then quickly forgot about the buried river of [Sumwalt Run],” Jennings said. “With the installation of Ghost Rivers we hope to bring back this memory and we are committed to preserving this artwork even as it is transformed and changed by human activity, like [the] Ghost Rivers that it represents.”

On Thursday evening, Willen celebrated the first phase of his installation with a ceremony outside Remington plant shop B. Willow, with refreshments from Peabody Heights Brewery. Dozens of people turned out to walk a short portion of the “Ghost Rivers” trail, in a parade led by a blue and green “Underground Water Goddess” puppet, designed by artist Valeska Populoh and built in collaboration with community members in 2021.

“When you have the art and you have the beauty [of “Ghost Rivers”], it tells people that this is a neighborhood that’s cared for,” said the Rev. Steve Holt, rector of the Church of the Guardian Angel in Remington. The church was built on the edge of Sumwalt Run’s valley in 1904, a “Ghost Rivers” sign at the site explains.

Partners of Willen’s project include the Greater Remington Improvement Association, Blue Water Baltimore, Baltimore National Heritage Area and Friends of Wyman Park Dell.

“Doing anything that speaks to more environmental awareness and education is very exciting,” B. Willow owner and Remington resident Liz Vayda said. “Especially when it’s something like this, that really beautifully blends education [and] getting people outside to do this interactive walk.”

On Sunday and Nov. 11, Willen and Blue Water Baltimore will lead free guided walking tours (all the slots to participate are already filled). Next year, three more stops on the trail will be completed in Wyman Park Dell and near Jones Falls, rounding out the installation. The project, in addition to bringing a piece of Baltimore’s geographic history to light, also prompts viewers to contemplate the environmental impact of pushing some of the city’s waterways underground.

“By converting this really complex natural system into a concrete tube, essentially, it creates all sorts of issues in terms of water quality, runoff and pollution in the [Chesapeake] Bay and the harbor,” Willen said.

Whereas the natural environment surrounding a waterway (with trees and soft ground) would absorb water, paved surfaces lead to more runoff, Willen and Marra explained, which can sweep debris into waterways and cause flooding. Since the stormwater sewer system was built, storms have evolved with climate change, Willen added.

The social fabric of Baltimore — another facet of the city’s topography that Willen’s project highlights — has also changed over Sumwalt Run’s lifetime. At one stop along the “Ghost Rivers” trail, a sign describes a “trickle” that became a “flood of tens of thousands” of migrant workers from the Appalachian Mountains who relocated to Baltimore neighborhoods, including Remington, Hampden and Old Goucher, an area of North Baltimore referred to as “Little Appalachia.”

“That really shaped the human landscape of Baltimore … in the same way that a waterway shapes the physical landscape,” Willen said.

At its core, the project is an invitation to “peel back these layers in the urban landscape and see the history,” he added. “There are so many layers to our city.”