Kitsch or folk art, it's undeniably Bawlmer

“The main reason it died out is because window air-conditioning came in. People said we don't need screens to let in air”

Every window and even the jalousie door in Lil Sims' skinny Formstone-encased rowhouse in Canton has a screen that her baby brother painted.

The look is a throwback to an era when rowhouses displaying painted screens brightened entire East Baltimore blocks.

The classic screen scene of the red-roofed bungalow in varied pastoral settings adorns several of Sims' windows. She's also got one of kids fishing and one of three kittens - scenes she liked.

'I just got done washing them,' she says, adding that she uses no soap. 'You just hose them down,' she says, explaining that the point is to remove the dirt, not the design, from these screens. Read more