Docked in the northwest corner of the harbor, the magnificent USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, a National Historic Landmark, and the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy.
She was built in 1854, using a small amount of material salvaged from the 1797 frigate USS Constellation, which had been disassembled the year before. Before the Civil War, the Constellation was used to intercept slaving vessels. Although the U.S. had outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808, many illegal ships still tried to transport human beings to America鈥檚 shores. At the onset of the Civil War, the Constellation was involved in the U.S. Navy's first capture on May 21, 1861, when she captured a ship known as the 鈥淭riton,鈥 an illegal slave ship.
The USS Constellation remained in service for many years after the Civil War. She provided aid relief during the Irish famine, sailed in World War II as a flag ship, and for two decades was used as a training ship for the United States Navy. She was the last sailboat in the U.S. Naval Fleet.
In 1968, the ship was relocated to the Inner Harbor as part of the city鈥檚 urban renewal plan. Since then, the ship has undergone several multi-million dollar renovations, and today, the USS Constellation is open to tour. Visitors can walk all four decks, talk to crew members, and even participate in a cannon drill.
Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse takes its name from its original location鈥攖he rocky shoals where the mouth of the Patapsco River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The sandy, soft bottom of these shoals necessitated the construction of a screwpile-style lighthouse (as opposed to a straightpile model) where a hexagon-shaped building perches on pilings that are screwed into the bottom of the waterway. Built in 1856, Seven Foot Knoll is one of the oldest Chesapeake lighthouses still in existence and the oldest screwpile lighthouse in Maryland.
Managed by the U.S. Lighthouse Service, and later the U.S. Coast Guard, Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse served as a general aid for the navigation of ships. Keepers, therefore, had the crucial job of making sure the lighthouse was constantly functioning. Every night at sundown, keepers were responsible for lighting the beacon lamp and keeping it lit until sunrise the next morning, which required vigilance, as well as regular maintenance. Each morning, keepers cleaned the beacon lens and lamp thoroughly, so that they were ready for use in the evening. When there was fog, the fog bell had to be sounded continuously. This required winding the station's bell machine every 45 minutes until the fog lifted.
Although the Lighthouse Service did not officially permit keepers to bring their families to live in the lighthouse, at least two families did live there during the 1870s. Eva Marie 鈥淜nolie鈥 Bowling, who was born in the lighthouse in 1875, recalled life in the lighthouse in an interview for a 1936 article in the Baltimore News. The lighthouse itself contained five rooms with space for both a library (the children were homeschooled by their mother) and a piano, she recalled. The small space underneath the lighthouse contained a hog pen and a chicken yard. During severe weather, the animals were transferred to the house for their safety. Storms also provided additional food, she added, when the family took advantage of the wildfowl who got caught in heavy winds and were dashed into the side of the lighthouse.
Conditions at Seven Foot Knoll were tough. Life in a lighthouse was isolating, and during winter months, it was challenging to heat the structure due to weather conditions and limited coal rations. In early 1900s, staff changed six times over a three-year period. In the 1970s, a report revealed that the lighthouse keeper鈥檚 position went vacant for over a year because of the remote location.
In the 1930s, the US Coast Guard considered automating Seven Foot Knoll. The shipping and maritime world protested, citing the heroic work of a lighthouse keeper who had rescued five people from drowning after a barge sank. Ultimately, however, the lighthouse was automated in 1949.
In 1997, the lighthouse was moved to Pier 5 on the Baltimore Harbor as one of the Baltimore Maritime Museum鈥檚 exhibits. Today Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse is operated by Historic Ships in Baltimore who oversee several ships in the harbor including the USS Constellation and USS Torsk.
In 1912, The Baltimore Sun heralded the forthcoming construction of the Broadway commercial and recreation pier. Citing the success of similar piers in New York and Boston, the Sun declared that piers for recreation 鈥渇urnish a place for mothers and children to get a breath of fresh air [and] for young people to enjoy themselves in innocent, wholesome amusement. In summer a recreation pier is a godsend to the poor housed in ill-ventilated, closely-packed rooms. The Broadway pier will fill a genuine need.鈥
The pier opened in 1914 as a multipurpose building for both industry and leisure. It became a focal point of the Fells Point community. The Bay Belle steamer ran from the pier to the Eastern Shore for summer outings. There were Christmas Eve dances that filled the hall with 400 persons, roller skating, and organized games for young people. Lessons in English were often held at the pier to serve the local immigrant community who hailed from Poland, Ukraine, and Bohemia.
In 1931, the USS Constitution was towed up the Chesapeake from the Charlestown Navy Yard in Massachusetts and berthed at the Rec Pier. Less than an hour after she had docked, a small crowd of 100 people gathered to see her.
The pier was extended by 90 feet in 1948 to make a home for the Harbor Police. It underwent another renovation in 1991. Over ten thousand engraved bricks, purchased by Baltimoreans for $50 each in a Buy-A-Brick campaign grace the surrounding walkways.
The pier became a national star in its own right, when it was chosen to be the site of Baltimore police headquarters in the television show, Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999). After the show ended, the building sat vacant until 2017 with the opening of the Sagamore Pendry, a luxury hotel owned by Under Armour CEO, Kevin Plank.
How the National Aquarium came to be in Baltimore is the story of three different aquariums that, over time, became one.
Our story begins in the middle. In the 1970s, Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer and his Commissioner of the city Department of Housing and Community Development, Robert C. Embry, visited Boston and became entranced with the city鈥檚 waterfront New England Aquarium. Returning home to Baltimore, Schaefer was determined to include an aquarium as part of the forthcoming inner harbor development.
In 1976, Baltimoreans voted to fund the aquarium, and ground was broken in 1978. But construction of the aquarium, with its distinctive glass pavilion and concrete turret lit with neon waves, experienced a series of setbacks, and Mayor William Donald Schaefer promised to take a swim in the new aquarium if it didn鈥檛 open on July 1, 1981. It didn鈥檛. And on July 15, as promised, the mayor took the plunge. The Sun reported that before of a crowd of around 300 spectators:
鈥淭he Honorable William Donald Schaefer, wearing a turnoff the century bathing costume in place of his dignity, clutched a large rubber duck and stepped into the seal pool, disappearing up to the brim of his straw boater.鈥
The mayor chatted with three seals and reclined on a rock with a woman dressed as a mermaid. Frank A. Gunther, Jr., the chair of the aquarium board, joined him.
The cost of a ticket to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, as it became known when it opened to the public in August 1981, was $4.50鈥攎ore than twice it was promised to be (and approximately a tenth of what a youth ticket costs over 40 years later).
About that somewhat confusing name. Although Congress granted the aquarium in Baltimore the right to use the title 鈥淣ational Aquarium,鈥 there was already a 鈥淣ational Aquarium鈥 in Washington, D.C.. Located in the basement of the Department of Commerce Building (later known as the Herbert C. Hoover Building) since the 1930s, this aquarium traced its history to the first national aquarium, founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1873. The Woods Hole aquarium moved to Washington in 1878 and remained there until 2013, first under the auspices of the federal government, then under the National Aquarium Society, before the National Aquarium in Baltimore took over the management in 2003. When the federal government decided to renovate the Hoover Building in 2013, 1,700 animals were moved to the National Aquarium in Baltimore (now known as the National Aquarium), and the National Aquarium in DC quietly closed its doors.
Today, the National Aquarium is the largest paid tourist attraction in Maryland; over 50 million people have visited since its opening in 1981. The aquarium is home to 20,000 different animals, including sloths, reptiles, and tropical birds. Its tanks hold over 2.2 million gallons of water. Over the decades, the aquarium鈥檚 footprint has expanded to include the Pavilion on Pier 4 (1990) and the Australia: Wild Extremes exhibit (2005). In 2024, the National Aquarium Harbor Wetland Project opened with plantings of over 130 shrubs and 39,000 grasses designed to attract and protect wildlife like diamondback terrapins, jellyfish, oysters, blue crabs, and river otters. This project echoes the National Aquarium鈥檚 mission to research and conservation and helps give the public a glimpse into what Baltimore looked like two hundred years ago, as well as what it might look like a few years from now.
On March 23, 1868, the S.S. Baltimore arrived in Locust Point, ushering in a wave of future Americans with origins across Europe. Their journeys are remembered in this community through the Baltimore Immigrant Museum and the Baltimore Immigration Memorial.
Between the early 1800s and 1914, nearly two million people arrived in Baltimore via boat. From the time of the Civil War to the onset of World War I, Locust Point was the second largest point of entry for European immigrants after Ellis Island in New York. This was mostly due to location; at Locust Point people could arrive by sea and venture across America by rail, thanks to the country鈥檚 first railroad, the B&O.
Germans made up the greatest number of immigrants during that period. Thanks to the North German Lloyd Steamship Company - One Ticket Program, one ticket offered passage on a steamship in Bremen, Germany, across the Atlantic, through customs at Locust Point, and then potentially onto a B&O Railroad car to anywhere the B&O went in America. Baltimore had the fourth largest German immigrant population in the mid-1850s. The three cities with more German immigrants were all end point of the B&O: Milwaukee (the actual endpoint was nearby Chicago), St. Louis, and Cincinnati. Baltimore also became home to significant numbers of immigrants from Lithuania, Poland, and Bohemia.
Some famous Baltimoreans whose relatives immigrated through Locust Point include: Frank Zappa (his father and all grandparents were born in Italy); Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas (all four of her grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants); radio personality Ira Glass and composer Phillip Glass (of Latvian-Jewish descent); David Hasselhoff (his great-great-grandmother immigrated from Germany to Baltimore in 1865); Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (her mother immigrated from Italy); and baseball legend Babe Ruth (his grandparents were born in Germany).
Today鈥檚 immigrants to Baltimore hail mostly from Central America and Africa.
The Baltimore Immigration Memorial asks visitors to consider the many individuals who came to the United States looking for opportunity. Designed by local artist Alex Castro, the memorial sits at the edge of Hull Street, overlooking the harbor. It consists of large concrete discs once used to support vats containing Proctor & Gamble products like Tide and Ivory Soap. Concrete balls and cones are interspersed throughout, giving the waterfront park movement.
In 2006, Castro described his vision for the memorial in an article from The Sun: "This is not a museum鈥t's a place to orient oneself to the many places in Baltimore that speak to immigration history and a place to collect oneself, in a quiet way. It's a place to begin to tell the story of where the ships docked, how people took trains to the Midwest, what the city looked like from the water ..."
鈥淯ltimately, it's a place about aspiration,鈥 he added. "We're all human. That's the one thing we share. We all have aspirations that pull us along."
The sepia-toned Canton railroad transfer bridge rises out of the harbor near the Canton Waterfront Park like an industrial Arc de Triomphe. It is one of three such structures鈥攔emnants of an early chapter in Baltimore鈥檚 industrial maritime and railroad histories鈥攖hat remain in the city (the other two transfer bridges are in Locust Point and can only be seen from the water.).
Built sometime in the 1910s for the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington Railroad (which, in 1902, had merged with the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad), the Canton railroad transfer bridge stands 38 feet high, 53 feet wide, and 14 feet deep. This steel bridge allowed for the transport of railroad cars across the harbor on 鈥渃arfloats鈥 between Canton, Locust Point, and the Inner Harbor.
After the formation of the Canton Company of Baltimore in 1828, the company purchased 3,000 acres of the O鈥橠onnell estate to build houses, iron works, and railroads. Along the waterfront, the company leased out property for breweries, canneries, shipbuilders, and other industrial concerns. The area that is now the Canton Waterfront Park was leased to the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad as a railyard, a place for trains to unload their goods and take on new cargo. Because Baltimore prohibited locomotives from passing through downtown, trains would stop on the outskirts of the city, where the train cars would be uncoupled and hitched up to horses who would pull the cars through town one at a time. This process was slow and expensive. A quicker solution for transferring train cargo was transporting railcars across the harbor via the railroad transfer bridge.
Harbor tides prevented barges from pulling up directly to the pier because the water levels could change dramatically. The railroad transfer bridge worked akin to a gangplank on a ferry and served as the intermediary between shore and barge. Railroad cars were rolled onto the transfer bridge and then onto a barge fitted with railroad tracks, decoupled, and floated across the harbor to Locust Point where the cargo was unloaded. Oftentimes, the process was reversed, so the rail cars could rejoin their engines.
Although no longer in use, the Canton railroad transfer bridge stands as a testament to innovation in engineering and Baltimore鈥檚 industrial heritage.
For Baltimoreans of a certain generation, it鈥檚 hard to imagine the harbor without Harborplace. Bolstered by the enthusiastic support of Mayor William Donald Schaefer, the brainchild of urban pioneer, James Rouse brought millions of visitors to downtown Baltimore and inspired imitations around the globe. The Urban Land Institute cited Harborplace as 鈥渁 model for post-industrial waterfront development around the world.鈥 For a time, 鈥渢he Inner Harbor鈥 was synonymous with 鈥淗arborplace.鈥
Located within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the Baltimore Harbor is formed at the mouth of the Patapsco River, which leads to the Chesapeake Bay and then the Atlantic Ocean. The Inner Harbor was never more than 15 feet deep, limiting its use as a seaport to shallow boats plying the Chesapeake Bay; ocean-going vessels preferred the deeper ports of Canton and Fells Point. As part of an effort to make the harbor of Baltimore Town deeper, two brothers, flour merchants Andrew and John Ellicott (Ellicott City is named after them) invented the first dredger in 1783. Also known as the Mud Machine, it removed debris, mud, and sediment from the harbor floor to increase the depth of the water.
Land around harbor was always valuable. The first big development came around 1800, when landowners just north of the harbor started filling in the marshy land just below today鈥檚 Water Street to get access to the 18-foot deep port. They built piers and docks and transformed the harbor into a Chesapeake Bay maritime hub with boats arriving daily from the Eastern Shore laden with seafood and produce. On a busy day during oyster season there may have been upwards of 100 boats docked in the harbor.
By the time of the 1904 fire, the area had become dilapidated. The Fire Commission observed: 鈥淭he warehouses were in even worse condition, any of the docks being nothing more than mudholes and so narrow that no modern vessel even of moderate size could even get beyond the ends.鈥
After the fire, the city used its power of eminent domain to condemn the land around the harbor, take it away from private owners, and make it publicly owned and publicly managed land. New piers were built, including Piers 4, 5, and 6鈥攑robably the first reinforced concrete structures built in seawater in America. The city leased the piers to private companies like United Fruit and Standard Oil. But even then, part of Pier 4鈥攖he Public Pier--was reserved for the citizens of Baltimore.
Up until around World War II, the harbor was a hub of maritime activity in and around the Chesapeake Bay. After World War II, new highway construction and the building of the Bay Bridge in 1952 meant less reliance on ships to transport products from the Eastern Shore to Baltimore. In 1960, the large public Marsh Market, just north of the harbor, closed. In 1962, the steamer, The City of Norfolk, made its final run.
The city reacted to these changes by re-envisioning the harbor as a place for industry to a place of recreation. First, in 1963, Mayor Theodore McKeldin expanded the urban renewal zone that had been created in 1958 to guide the expansion of Charles Center to include the Inner Harbor. Subsequently, the majority of the buildings around the harbor were demolished and replaced with surface parking lots, which became magnets for fairs and festivals. Around 10,000 people attended the City Fair to take part in the festivities, as well as take in the spectacle of the harbor. In 1971, The Baltimore Sun observed: 鈥淭he docks, the boats, the setting itself are the showstoppers more than the food or the booze or the rides.鈥
City Fair was just the beginning of the movement to bring people to the harbor as a tourist attraction. In 1976, thousands of people came to the Inner Harbor to see over 50 tall ships docked there in celebration of America鈥檚 Bicentennial. The Science Center also opened that year. The National Aquarium followed in 1980, and the Six Flags at the Power Plant launched in 1985.
In 1978, the city sponsored a ballot on the referendum of whether to lease out part of the harbor to a private developer to build what would become Harborplace. Fifty-four percent voted yes.
Harborplace opened in 1980. In the first three months, 7 million people visited. In the first year, more people visited the Inner Harbor than went to Disney World. On the opening day of Harborplace, Martin Milspaugh, head of Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management, the urban renewal agency that guided the redevelopment, said: 鈥淗arborplace is the missing ingredient of the Inner Harbor. Instead of a series of attractions, we鈥檒l have one massive attraction on the shoreline.鈥
The Harborplace pavilions on Pratt and Light streets featured local merchants and restaurants and was both popular and profitable in its early years. In surveys done at the time, 20% of the people visiting Harborplace were from outside of Maryland and 80% were Marylanders.
Harborplace spawned many imitations. Over 200 harbors across the world copied Baltimore. Harbourside in Sydney, Australia is almost an exact replica that is also currently under redevelopment.
Despite its success, Harborplace changed hands several times. In 2004, it was bought by Chicago-based General Growth Properties, and in 2012, New York-based Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp bought it. In 2019, Harborplace went into a court-ordered receivership with a manager appointed from New Jersey. And in 2022 Baltimore-based MCB real estate purchased it.
In 2024, another referendum around zoning changes and use restrictions, including removing height restrictions for new buildings, allowing for residential development, and expanding the footprint of how much land the city might lease to private owners, was put before Baltimore voters. The referendum was passed to allow for a potential new development to the harbor.
The story of Harbor Point is the story of innovation, invention, and reinvention. Harbor Point is the former home of Baltimore Chromium Works (now AlliedSignal), a company built around Isaac Tyson鈥檚 discovery of a local source for chromium in the early 1800鈥檚. It is also the current home to Constellation Energy, an energy company that also has roots in 19th century Baltimore.
Baltimore Chromium Works was the brainchild of Isaac Tyson. If you鈥檝e ever painted any walls of your home in red, yellow, or green paint, you have Tyson to thank.
In the early 1800s, Isaac Tyson was a college geology major who came home to Baltimore County on a break from classes when he noticed a rock used to prop open a screen door at a local country store. He recognized it as chromite, a mineral that contains iron and chromium oxides.
Tyson knew that chromium was a key ingredient in paint manufacturing: it is the magic ingredient that allows pigments to stick to paint. During the colonial era, colored paint was expensive and had to be imported from Europe and having green or red walls was a marker of wealth (think of James Madison鈥檚 house in Virginia where the walls are a vibrant color known as Miami Green); the interiors of most homes were simply painted white.
Tyson was the first to determine that specific ecosystems correlated to rich chromium veins (Soldiers Delight in western Baltimore County was among local areas Tyson mined for chromium). He set out and walked from Virginia to Vermont buying up farms that had chromium veins, and at one point, controlled 95% of the world鈥檚 chromium.
Tyson鈥檚 company Baltimore Chromium Works (later Allied Chemical) was headquartered on Harbor Point. The company used this location to refine chromium, a procedure that is dirty and highly toxic. Hexavalent chromium is also a significant carcinogen (it鈥檚 the same chemical that Erin Brockovich advocated against). Waste from the refinery was dumped into the harbor, which became significantly polluted.
Harbor Point eventually became a $100 million superfund site. To clean up chromium polluted soil, a giant wall was erected around the site, and an industrial sump pump removed contaminated water 24 hours a day. Post-clean-up, the empty space was used to host Cirque du Soleil and later served as a temporary beach recreation area. Today, the area is dedicated to mixed development, including being home to the headquarters of Constellation Energy, a company whose story goes back two centuries.
Constellation is an energy supplier that provides electricity and natural gas to Baltimore Gas & Electric (BG&E), a local utility that was the first gas utility in the United States. Somewhat improbably, this utility had its origins in an art museum.
In 1816, Rembrandt Peale, son of the famous portraitist Charles Wilson Peale, used gas lighting to illuminate the Peale Museum, his gallery and museum that became the first purpose-built museum in the United States. Gas lighting was not only a novelty; it also allowed Peale to sell tickets in the evening, so people could visit the galleries after sundown. Historical records report that passersby would stand on Holliday Street in front of the Peale Museum marveling at the brightness of the light coming from its windows, which was an unprecedented sight in a world of candles and oil lamps.
Peale was an innovator and an entrepreneur, and by 1817, he had started the Baltimore Gas Company and secured the contract to supply gas streetlights throughout Baltimore, the first city in America, and among the first in the world, to be lit by gas; hence its nickname, 鈥淟ight City.鈥 Peale manufactured the gas in a shed at the back of the museum. It was supplied to the city in wooden pipes made from hollowed out logs. Two hundred years later, the business Rembrandt Peale founded at his museum continues to provide power to the city.
The ghostly traces of the words 鈥淏altimore and Ohio Railroad鈥 painted on the brick wall give a clue to the former life of the substantial building that anchors the east end of Fell Street. Designed by architect E. Francis Baldwin in 1897 for the B&O Railroad, Henderson鈥檚 Wharf was one of the largest and most up-to-date tobacco warehouses of its day. Its subsequent renovation a century later is a fine example of how Baltimore has been a pioneer in reimagining old industrial buildings and transforming them into spaces for contemporary living.
Henderson鈥檚 Wharf was originally known as O鈥橠onnell鈥檚 Wharf, named after Captain John O鈥橠onnell, the founder of Canton and one of the wealthiest men in the United States at his death in 1805. In 1850, James A. Henderson, a merchant, purchased the property and made it a major steamship hub. By 1865, the Sun hailed the sendoff of the steamship Somerset from the wharf and anticipated the excitement of the community and the profit to be made: 鈥淭he pioneer of the ocean line of steamships between Liverpool and Baltimore鈥ill doubtless be witnessed by many persons, as it is an event of the greatest moment to all the various mercantile interests of Baltimore. It is understood that a number of merchants of this city have given orders to European agents to have goods sent them direct from Liverpool by the Somerset on her return trip and the gentlemen having charge of the line are also assured that she will return with a full number of steerage passengers. The prospects of the Ocean Line are altogether of an encouraging character.鈥
By the 1890s, a different kind of journey was available to Baltimoreans as companies like the Sassafras River Company offered steamship day excursions across the bay to destinations like Worton Manor Beach.
B&O announced their proposal to build a warehouse on Henderson鈥檚 Wharf in 1894. A Baltimore Sun headline in 1896 announced:
A BIG WAREHOUSE: To Be Erected by the B. and O. Railroad Company for Tobacco Storage HENDERSON'S WHARF THE SITE The Building Will Be the Largest Structure of Its Kind in Baltimore Its Cost Will Be About $200,000 and It Will Have Capacity for 25,000 Hogsheads--In Size It Will Be 250 by 300 Feet and Six 糖心影视 High--Important Addition to the City's Terminal Facilities
The warehouse boasted two-and-a-half foot thick walls with more than 30,000 sq feet of floor space divided into four sections, each with its own elevator.
Both the size and the scope of the building were designed to keep the tobacco inspection and storage industry within the state of Maryland, instead of sending Maryland tobacco out-of-state to Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky to be processed. The B&O cited not only the capacity of their new warehouse as an advantage but praised the location as well. Railroad tracks ran into the building, the better for loading and unloading from trains. Similarly, the harbor location allowed ships carrying tobacco crops from the Eastern Shore or Southern Maryland easy access to the warehouse, and tobacco destined for foreign ports could be loaded on railroad barges to be transported to any part of the harbor to be sent abroad.
The warehouse was used for various purposes until it was abandoned in 1976. In 1984, a fire swept through, causing significant damages. The building underwent a $9.75 million renovation in 1991 that retained some of its original architectural elements including its lovely archways. Since then, Henderson鈥檚 Wharf has been used as a variety of residences, including apartments, condominiums, and currently, as a luxury hotel.
A raked mast of a Baltimore Clipper ship stands tall on land in Rash Field on the south end of the Inner Harbor. Accompanied by a block of pink granite inscribed with four names of lost crewmembers, the installation serves as a memorial to the Pride of Baltimore I.
The Pride was modelled after the Chausseur, a clipper ship launched from Fells Point in 1812 and captained by Thomas Boyle, a privateer, known for his highly successful acquisition of goods captured from British ships. In 1814, Boyle undertook a journey across the Atlantic, past the blockade of British ships on the Chesapeake. When he reached England, he boldly issued a proclamation stating:
I do therefore, by virtue of the power and authority in me vested (possessing sufficient force) declare all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands and seacoast of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in a state of strict and rigorous blockade. And I do further declare that I consider the force under my command adequate to maintain strictly, rigorously, and effectually, the said blockade.
Boyle was incredibly successful in maintaining his blockade and returned home to Baltimore in March 1815, continuing to collect goods and evade capture. His ship was renamed 鈥渢he Pride of Baltimore.鈥
The twentieth-century version of the Pride of Baltimore was launched in 1977 as an ambassador ship as part of the project to revitalize the inner harbor and to represent the city and state during its travels around the world. The clipper ship logged 150,000 miles before a sudden squall in the Atlantic, near Puerto Rico, capsized the ship in 1986. There was no time to send a distress signal. Eight crewmembers survived four days in a lifeboat. The captain, Armin Elsaesser, 42, and three crewmembers, Vincent Lazarro, 27, engineer; Barry Duckworth, 29, carpenter; and Nina Schack, 23, deckhand, were lost.
In 1988, a second Pride of Baltimore was launched as a memorial to Pride I and its lost crewmembers. The Pride of Baltimore II has sailed 250,000 miles and visited 40 different countries.
Of the many repurposed industrial buildings in Baltimore鈥檚 urban landscape, perhaps none is as extraordinary as Silo Point. Looming high above the brick rowhomes of Locust Point, Silo Point luxury condominiums began life as a mammoth grain elevator built by the B&O Railroad in 1924. At that time, it was both the largest and the fastest grain elevator in the world and reflected Baltimore鈥檚 important position in the grain export industry in the early to mid-twentieth century.
Designed by the engineering firm of John S. Metcalf Co. of Chicago and Montreal, the building is made up of two interconnected structures: a concrete workhouse which stands 220 feet tall and a concrete grain bin structure that rises to 105 feet. Additional structures were added later. During the grain elevator鈥檚 heyday, ten miles of conveyor belts carried 3.8 billion bushels of grain from train cars onto cargo ships annually.
The grain elevator ceased operations in 2002 and sat vacant until its conversion to Silo Point by Turner Development Group in 2009. The residential tower is now home to 24 floors of 228 condominiums. The Baltimore Sun described the new building as having 鈥渂rutalist concrete walls,鈥 in addition to a fitness center where basement catacombs used to be, outdoor sculptures constructed out of grain extracting machines, recycled circular gears given new life as lobby coffee tables. It also has commanding views of the harbor.
The B&O grain elevator was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Among a sea of church steeples that dot East Baltimore, the five domes of St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Church stand apart with their burnished glow. Since 1992, the Cossack Baroque style church, modeled after Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, has been home to Baltimore鈥檚 Ukrainian Catholic community, though the founding congregation pre-dates the current building.
Since the 19th century, Baltimore has witnessed three waves of Ukrainian immigration. The first began in the 1880鈥檚 and continued through World War I, with most Ukrainians arriving in the United States at that time hailing from West Ukraine. These immigrants were Catholic and established the first St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Church in 1893 meeting mostly in private homes or at other local Catholic churches.
The second wave of Ukrainian immigration occurred in the 1930s, when Ukrainians left their homeland to escape Soviet persecution and the threat of being sentenced to Soviet labor camps or sent to Siberia. The Holodomor famine, which resulted in millions of deaths of Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, was another factor that motivated immigration. The famine was man-made, the result of programs implemented by Josef Stalin that took farms away from peasants and forced them to live on collective farms. As a result, agricultural productivity plummeted, causing severe food shortages. When Ukrainians rebelled against the Soviet agricultural collectivization policies, Stalin put towns in Ukraine on a blacklist and prevented them from getting food.
In the 1980鈥檚, Jewish Ukrainians again immigrated to the United States to escape the rising antisemitism present in the Soviet Union. During this time, 70% of Baltimore鈥檚 Soviet Jewish population were Ukrainians, with one-third of them hailing from Odessa.
Although St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church moved locations several times, it was important to the congregation that they remain in East Baltimore where a Ukrainian community had planted roots and grown. By 1912, the congregation moved from meeting in homes to having services in a building at 524 block of S. Wolfe Street. The current church, located on the corner of Eastern and Montford avenues, across from Patterson Park, was consecrated in 1992.
From the beginning, the new church stood out from other East Baltimore houses of worship. Modeled after the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, St. Michael the Archangel boasts five teapot-shaped onion domes covered in gold leaf and 45 tons of copper. The outer surface of the church is covered in stucco. The bell from the church on S. Wolfe Street was moved to the current church鈥檚 bell tower.
Overall, the estimated cost of St. Michael the Archangel totaled $1.25 million, including the lot on Eastern Avenue, purchased from the city for $10,000. A 2022 article in The Sun reported that some funds for the church came from parish pierogi sales.
In the 1660s, David Jones, a Quaker farmer, selected a location for his farm in the relatively new area of Baltimore County (founded in 1659), just north of what was known as Coles Harbor, and along the banks of a river that he called Pacific Brook. Today, that location is part of Baltimore City; Coles Harbor has become the Inner Harbor; and Pacific Brook we know as the Jones Falls. The settlement that grew up around Jones鈥 farm is the neighborhood now called Jonestown.
The Jones Falls runs 17.9 miles, starting as a stream in northwest Baltimore County, near Garrison. It becomes a small river after reaching Lake Roland and ends in the Baltimore Harbor. It was once considered bucolic. One historical account reported that 鈥渇or many years, it [Pacific Brook] was a source of pride for Baltimore City and the envy of other cities. It was famous then as a fragrant and beautiful stream. At one time, the stream was pure and undefiled, a scene of many baptisms.鈥
Change came rapidly.
By 1711, Jonathan Hanson built a stone mill near the current day Fallsway, where the Baltimore City Impound Lot is located. By 1726, the area was filled with tobacco houses, a store, and many residences. By middle of 1850鈥檚, twelve mills stood on the banks of the Jones Falls, along with soap makers, tanners, and even more residences. All used the waterway to carry away their waste.
By the late 1800鈥檚, the Jones Falls had become a source of public health concern. City leaders considered different ways of solving this problem. B&O Railroad engineer Ross Winans suggested building a series of reservoirs upstream and flushing them out occasionally to clear the Falls of detritus. Another proposal imagined diverting the river over the Back River into what is now Essex and Middle River. The third solution essentially proposed putting the Jones Falls into big pipes and running it under the city. This is what the city of Baltimore decided to do.
In 1915, Mayor Preston kicked off the campaign just north of Penn Station. Henry Barton Jacobs, the head of city鈥檚 public safety commission spoke at the event, announcing theatrically: 鈥淚 have come to bury the Jones Falls, not to praise it.鈥
Diverting the Jones Falls into 7,000 feet of underground tunnels solved some鈥攂ut not all鈥攐f its problems. In 1926, the river caught fire and exploded dramatically because it was full of hazardous materials. Glass shattered in downtown buildings. Manhole covers were propelled through the air. Near the of the entrance to the harbor, a 40-foot wall of noxious flames rushed out of the pipe and down the river.
Today, the buried stream is visible downtown near Jonestown, close to the Port Discovery Children鈥檚 Museum where a small canal-like structure runs parallel to President Street before emptying into the harbor at Aliceanna Street.
In 2014, a new species appeared in the Baltimore Harbor. With 5 feet tall googly eyes, a playful persona, and a steady diet of harbor detritus, Mr. Trash Wheel is cleaning up the harbor one swallow at a time.
The brainchild of local inventor John Kellet who founded Pasadena, Maryland-based company Clearwater Mills LLC, Mr. Trash Wheel is officially known as a 鈥渨aterwheel powered trash inceptor.鈥 He was given his name and persona by the Waterfront Partnership for Baltimore as part of their Healthy Harbor initiative. Mr. Trash Wheel hit the harbor in 2014 and has picked up over 16 tons of trash and litter since then.
Mr. Trash Wheel uses the stream current and solar power to turn its giant wheels making him the world鈥檚 first sustainably powered trash interceptor. He waits for trash moving downstream to come to him, carried by the wind and rain during storms when trash flows unfiltered into our streams and into the Baltimore Harbor. The trash is then funneled by a containment boom to the front of the device where a series of rakes scoop it up and load it on to a conveyor belt. The belt moves the trash into a dumpster that sits on a floating barge in the back of the device. When the barge is filled with trash, it is removed and replaced with an empty barge so the process can continue.
Today, there is a Trash Wheel family comprised of working trash wheels in other city communities. Professor Trash Wheel works at Harris Creek in Canton. Captain Trash Wheel patrols Masonville Cove in South Baltimore. Gwynnda, the Good Wheel of West keeps the mouth of the Gywnns Falls near I-95 clean. And Mr. Trash Wheel makes his home at the mouth of the Jones Falls. The trash wheels collect over one million pounds of trash per year, including a guitar, a full-sized beer keg, and even a ball python!
While Baltimore is remembered for the city鈥檚 role in fabricating ships and railcars, the companies that made the large machines required to build those ships and railcars have largely been forgotten. The Detrick & Harvey Machine Company buildings is one of the last remnants of Baltimore鈥檚 place in the history of machinery manufacture.
The Detrick & Harvey Machine Company began downtown, a block from the Inner Harbor, in an area of Baltimore where both the buildings and, ultimately, the streets themselves were lost to the 1904 Fire. Before Jacob S. Detrick founded his machine company on Preston Street, he operated the Enterprise Machine Works (featured in the 1882 volume 鈥淚ndustries of Maryland鈥). Around 1883, Alexander Harvey, a recent graduate of Harvard University and Baltimore native, joined Detrick in his machine shop by and the two soon formed the partnership of Detrick & Harvey.
The company outgrew Detrick's original downtown location by 1885 and moved north to Preston Street just east of the Jones Falls. There they began the construction of an impressive factory complex. Around 1890, the company鈥檚 name changed to the Detrick & Harvey Machine Company. They were well known for their metal working machines, notably their planers and the band saw filing machine first offered by Enterprise Machine Works. Alexander Harvey passed away in 1914 at age 57.
The next year, on August 17, 1915, the Bethlehem Steel Company purchased the company and the complex became the Bethlehem Steel Detrick & Harvey Plant. Examples of large D & H machines are in two notable local collections: a large planer at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum's repair facility and another at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The Yellow Cab Company purchased the facility in 1929 and continue to operate there until the early 1980s.
Walters Bath No. 2 opened in 1901 serving residents living in the busy industrial neighborhoods of southwest Baltimore. The construction of the bathhouse was supported by Henry Walters, art collector and philanthropist. Despite living in New York, Walters supported the construction of four bathhouses spread out spread out across the city to improve public hygiene and sanitation. Bath No. 2 on Washington Boulevard is the only one of the four that still stands. Designed by architect George Archer, the bathhouse features a less-ornate version of the Renaissance Revival architecture that was popular at the turn of the twentieth century. The forty-foot front fa莽ade with four bays facing the street is the only part that is more than strictly utilitarian in design. A large stone plaque across the top of the building reads "THE WALTERS PUBLIC BATHS." Unlike earlier luxurious bathhouses, which date back to the early nineteenth century in Baltimore, Walters bathhouses were erected to improve the sanitary conditions of the crowded industrial city that Baltimore had become. The bath offered a shower, spray, or tub bath to those who usually could not afford access to similar facilities. To oversee this step forward in public health, Baltimore City created the Free Public Bath Commission to supervise the bathhouses as well as comfort stations, swimming pools, school shower programs, and portable shower baths, all of which were operating by 1925. When the building opened in 1902, Bath No. 2 charged three cents for adults and one cent for children for soap and towels, and 2 陆 cents per hour for laundry privileges. Later, the public bath system upped the fee to five cents, a charge that remained until the entire public bath system was closed at the end of 1959.
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Adorned with graceful arches and elegant art deco lights the eight story Beaux Arts Hecht-May Co. building at the corner of Lexington and Howard streets (designed by Smith and May architects) was originally built in 1908 as an annex to the Bernheimer Brothers Department store. In what must have been a first for Baltimore, the building initially featured a rooftop garden and hosted cow milking demonstrations. The store sold groceries, clothing, and a variety of household goods.
In 1923, Bernheimer Brothers merged with the Leader Department Store and four years later The May Company bought the combined Berheimer-Leader store and incorporated it as one of their outlets. In 1959, the May Co. purchased the Hecht Company and this building became the Hecht-May Company's main Baltimore location. Though this building's life as part of the Hecht Company began in the twentieth century, the story of the Hecht Company reaches far back to the mid-1840s.
Samuel Hecht, founder of the DC-based Hecht Company, emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1844 and worked as a peddler. Four of Hecht's five sons worked in the family business but one in particular - Moses Hecht - stood out as an early and persistent entrepreneur who proved critical to the family's success. Moses began working at one of Hecht's earliest Baltimore outlets, Hecht's Reliable on Broadway, at age 13 and went on to become the store's general manager within two years. He helped to bring the store record profits thanks to innovations like the one-price-per-item policy, guaranteeing everyone paid the same price for the same merchandise without needing to bargain with store employees.
Hecht's retail empire grew quickly and lasted for over 100 years. By the late 1800s, the Hecht Company operated a general store at Baltimore and Pine streets, a carpet store on Lexington, and an upscale store known as The Hub at the corner of Baltimore and Light Streets. When the 1904 Baltimore Fire destroyed The Hub's first location, the business relocated to Baltimore and Charles Streets - the site of the Mechanic Theatre today. At their Howard and Lexington location, Hecht's customers could purchase everything from sheets and towels to formal wear and pianos. The store featured an art gallery on the eighth floor and customers frequently punctuated their shopping trips with lunch in the Courtyard Restaurant or tea in the Skyline Tearoom.
In 1949 Hecht's opened a store in Annapolis and continued to open locations throughout the Baltimore-Washington area up until the 1970s. This store closed in the 1980s when Hecht's consolidated several locations. Renovated in 2007, the building is now home to a branch of Rite Aid and the upper stories house rental apartments.
with research support from Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks and Landscapes
In south Baltimore, Latrobe Park still has traces of Olmsted design elements. Originally only 6 acres in size, this park was created to serve the working class neighborhoods on the Locust Point peninsula. Unlike much larger plans for Patterson and Clifton Parks also begun in 1904, what distinguishes Latrobe Park was the amount of active recreation that had to fit in a tight space. In 1904, the Board of Park Commissioners retained the Olmsted Brothers firm to provide a plan that would accommodate a children鈥檚 play area, a men鈥檚 running track, and a small women鈥檚 fitness section. A broad promenade would overlook the park with trees and plantings while a grand stair with a fountain at its base would be the central entrance. In the middle of a wide lawn a grove of trees would provide a shaded haven for the public to sit and relax, or listen to band concerts. This design combined old sensibilities of parks as natural retreats with new ideas that parks could promote recreation. Construction began in 1905 and much of the Olmsted design materialized. Over the years, the park has grown and added tennis courts and a baseball field. Today, a berm constructed for the I-395 Fort McHenry Tunnel obscures the view of the water, but the shipping cranes of the marine terminal are visible. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Latrobe Park. Through great community effort, neighbors upgraded the playground and planted trees.
with research support from Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks and Landscapes
For almost two centuries, Baltimore鈥檚 Patterson Park has preserved its historic integrity while serving the recreational needs of an urban population with varied cultural, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. The dramatic geology, topography, and hydrology that define Patterson Park have critically influenced its development, but the park鈥檚 real identity is found in its fusion of its historic and natural features. In 1827, Patterson Park was established by William Patterson, an Irish immigrant and entrepreneur, when he donated six acres of land to Baltimore Town for use as a "public walk." The heart of the early development of the park is found in its western segment, a high, rolling, well-drained site with panoramic views of the harbor and downtown. The historic center of this section is Rogers鈥 Bastion, a significant War of 1812 landmark. Over the years, the park grew steadily, augmented by four major land acquisitions. The Olmsted Brothers鈥 influence occurred after the last land addition. Beginning in 1905, the firm was engaged to design improvements to the eastern side of the park, which was largely devoted to active recreation. In particular, the Olmsted plan designated plantings to adorn and demarcate the various recreational facilities. In 1997, two hundred trees, representing two hundred years of Baltimore鈥檚 history, were planted by volunteers in accordance with a new master plan. The park remains functionally and historically intact and continues to demonstrate both a coherent identity and strong sense of place. Today the park is 115 acres.
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with research support from Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks and Landscapes
Today, Wyman Park is a complex of highly-contrasting park spaces, half-hearted links, and a variety of associated urban edges. The 1904 Olmsted Brothers report singled out the Wyman Park section with its 鈥渙ld beech trees and bold topography鈥 as 鈥渢he finest single passage of scenery in the whole valley.鈥 By 1888, the Wyman Brothers had dedicated a part of their large estate to public uses. The center of the estate would become the new campus of Johns Hopkins University. The school鈥檚 trustees subsequently gave the remainder of the land to the City as a public park. In the 1910s, each section of park received specialized attention from the Olmsted Brothers firm. Although the larger stream valley section was interrupted by railroad tracks and sewer lines, the Olmsted designs treated it as a natural reservation with pedestrian paths and a meandering parkway. In contrast, the plan manipulated Wyman Park Dell into a miniature version of a signature Olmsted pastoral park. Over the years, indifferent landscaping, lack of additional parkway treatments and large parking lots contributed to the erosion of any sense of connectedness between the two main park spaces. Some of the Wyman land was sold back to Hopkins in the 1960s. Buildings began to fill in smaller green spaces in the area. Both main sections of Wyman Park remain valuable natural preserves for their surrounding neighborhoods and the city as a whole.
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with research support from Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks and Landscapes
Clifton Park is Baltimore鈥檚 fourth oldest country landscape park after Druid Hill, Patterson, and Carroll Parks. Around 1800, Baltimore merchant Henry Thompson purchased the rural property and began transforming the farmhouse into a federal style mansion called Clifton. In 1841, Johns Hopkins purchased the estate and hired William Saunders, a Scottish immigrant and professional horticulturist, to improve the grounds. Hoping his eponymous university would one day relocate to Clifton, Hopkins left it to the school. During the Hopkins trustees鈥 tenure at Clifton, the landscape gardens were not well-maintained. Baltimore City condemned part of the estate to build a reservoir (now the site of a high school) and the impressive American gothic style valve house. In 1894 when the value of stock in the B&O Railroad plummeted, the trustees sold Clifton to Baltimore City for $1 million to raise operating expenses for the university. In 1895, the Baltimore Park Commission began making improvements for a public park and invested in the rehabilitation of various gardens and roadways. The Olmsted Brothers 1904 report recognized Clifton as one of the city鈥檚 major parks that would anchor the system. The firm recommended that a comprehensive plan be prepared for Clifton, but instead, the Park Commission retained them to design a series of projects over the course of nine years. The first project was an athletic ground in the southern part below the railroad, where an Olmsted era stone wall still remains. The Olmsted Brothers also designed a swimming pool, which at the time was the largest concrete swimming pool in the country. In addition, they planned a band shell, which was damaged by fire significantly in 1947. A renovated and stripped band shell stands in its place today. Later additions to the park that are also historically significant include Baltimore鈥檚 first public golf course (1916) and Mothers鈥 Garden (1928), originally dedicated to 鈥淭he Mothers of Baltimore.鈥 Following decades of abuse, Clifton鈥檚 Italianate villa is stabilized and the current tenant, Civic Works, is restoring the interior.
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At its peak in the late nineteenth century, the Poole & Hunt Foundry and Machine Works employed over 700 people, making it one of the largest employers in the Jones Falls Valley after the textile mills. The company manufactured an impressive array of machinery: turbines, boilers and looms for the mills, screwpile lighthouses, railroad machinery, and transmission equipment for cable cars. Perhaps their greatest contribution was to the construction of the United States Capitol Building, to which the company manufactured the structural elements of the dome and cast the columns of its peristyle, made structural elements for the House and Senate wings, and built the derricks, steam engines, and lifting equipment that made the construction of the Capitol possible.
Robert Poole emigrated as a child from what is now Northern Ireland to Baltimore in the 1820s. When he was old enough to work, he found employment at the machine shop of Lanvale Cotton Mill (located near where Penn Station is today) and later worked at Savage Mill. In the 1830s, Poole worked for Ross Winans, the millionaire engineer for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Through these early jobs, Poole gained experience working on machinery for mills and the railroad鈥攖wo key markets for the company he would later form.
By the late 1840s, Poole was running his own shop in downtown Baltimore with partner William Ferguson. After Ferguson retired in 1851, German Hunt, an executive at the firm, became a partner. The shop burned in 1853 and the company relocated to Woodberry along the Northern Central Railway and near the prospering textile mills. Poole oversaw the shop while Hunt handled the business side downtown. By 1890, the complex included a massive 80 foot high erecting shop, signaling the impressive scale of machinery being manufactured by the company.
In 1854, Captain Montgomery Meigs, a US Army Corps of Engineers official in charge of the US Capitol extension project, commissioned Poole & Hunt to build steam engines and derricks for the construction of the Capitol Building, along with structural ironwork for the roof. Within a year, Meigs offered Poole & Hunt the opportunity to bid on work for the columns of the Capitol dome. The firm won with an extremely low bid, 2/10s of a cent per pound. Poole & Hunt continued to work on the columns until 1859 when Meigs was replaced and the contract for the remainder of the columns went to New York foundry Janes, Fowler, Kirtland & Co.
By this point, Poole & Hunt had made a name for themselves. Robert Poole would build his Second Empire mansion "Maple Hill" across the Jones Falls in Hampden overlooking his factory, while German Hunt resided in fashionable Bolton Hill. Poole involved himself in the lives of his workers by funding the construction of housing, churches for multiple denominations, a general store, and a circulating library. The library closed after Poole donated funds to the construction of an Enoch Pratt Free Library branch in Hampden. The company also cast the iron columns for the library, which originally shared the building with the Provident Savings Bank, also controlled by the Poole family. Robert Poole and German Hunt were also involved in establishing the Woman's College of Baltimore, which became Goucher College. German Hunt served on the college's first board of trustees and Poole donated a significant amount of cash to the endeavor.
In addition to overseeing the lives of local residents, Robert Poole and German Hunt maintained close relationships with the textile mill owners. Robert Poole's daughter, Sarah, married James E. Hooper, who would become president of the Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Company before splitting off and forming Hooperwood Cotton Mills adjacent to Poole's industrial campus.
German Hunt retired from the company in 1889. Poole made his son George partner and renamed the company Robert Poole & Son. The company was now the largest machine shop and foundry in Maryland, employing over 700 workers at its peak. It garnered national acclaim in trade journals for its impressive manufacturing feats. The Leffel Double Turbine, used to power mills, was praised for its efficiency and durability, and became popular with manufacturers across the country. By the 1880s, the company made a name for itself building machinery for cable car powerhouses along the East Coast and in the Midwest. In 1901, the Calumet and Hecla 65' sand wheel manufactured by Poole, the largest of its kind in the world, made the cover of Scientific American, bringing more national attention to the firm.
Robert Poole died in 1903 and the company continued under the name Poole Engineering & Machine Company. In 1905, the company added an administrative building to the campus. In 1916, to meet manufacturing demand, a new erecting shop was added. World War I brought a new wave of commissions to the company. The company manufactured naval artillery mountings and operated an ammunition works in Texas, Maryland.
In 1934, hard hit by the depression, the company sold much of its original campus to the Franklin Balmar Company, which during World War II was commissioned to provide components to the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb. Some of the buildings were sold to Hooperwood Cotton Mills. The campus was later used by the Aero-Chatillon Company to manufacture components for aircraft carriers.
A kitchen cabinet manufacturer was using the site in 1972, and by the 1990s, a rock climbing gym had taken over the massive erecting shop and artists had set up studios on the campus. In 1995, a large fire that began at the rock climbing gym claimed the life of a firefighter and destroyed the erecting shop and machine shops.
After years of vacancy, the development firm Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse tackled the large site with a preservation and rehabilitation focus. Designed by architects Cho Benn Holback + Associates, the site is now a thriving complex of residences, offices, shops, restaurants, and even a new crop of hard-at-work artisans. The burned out erecting shop was transformed into apartments, and condos were built on the site of the original machine shop. Not least of its notable attributes, the restoration of Clipper Mill has won, not one, but two historic preservation awards from 糖心影视.
Officially dedicated on July 13, 1839 and born out of the garden cemetery movement, Green Mount Cemetery is one of the first garden cemeteries created in the United States. After seeing the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery in Connecticut in 1834, Samuel Walker, a tobacco merchant, led a campaign to establish a similar site in Baltimore. During a time in which overcrowded church cemeteries created health risks in urban areas, Walker's successfully garnered support and commissioned plans from architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II to establish the Green Mount Cemetery on sixty acres of the late merchant Robert Oliver's estate.
During his life, Walker spared no expense tailoring the beauty of the estate, and left the grounds highly ornamented upon his death. Latrobe's design incorporated all the beautiful features associated with garden cemeteries including dells, majestic trees, and numerous monuments and statues. Amongst the towering hardwood trees in the cemetery is a rare, small-flowered red rose known as the Green Mount Red. Created by Green Mount Cemetery's first gardener, James Pentland, the Green Mount Red can only be found here at Green Mount and on George F. Harison's grave at Trinity Church Cemetery in New York.
Walking into Green Mount Cemetery, the first thing visitors notice is the imposing Entrance Gateway designed by Robert Cary Long, Jr. An example of the Gothic style, the gateway features two towers reaching forty feet and beautiful stained glass windows. The haunting chapel, designed by John Rudolph Niernsee and James Crawford Neilson, is made of Connecticut sandstone and features flying buttresses and an impressive 102 foot spire.
Green Mount Cemetery is famously known as the resting place of a large number of prominent historical figures ranging from John Wilkes Booth, to local philanthropists Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt. The graves and sculptures that scatter the cemetery make Green Mount Cemetery a treasury of nineteenth century art.
William Henry Rinehart, considered the last important American sculptor to work in the classical style, had many commissions at Green Mount, and is credited with some of the cemeteries most awe-inspiring pieces. Commissioned by Henry Walters for the grave of his wife, Ellen Walters, Rinehart's "Love Reconciled as Death" depicts a classical Grecian woman cast in bronze strewing flowers. Poetically resting on Rinehart's own grave is his bronze statue of Endymion: the beautiful young shepherd boy who Zeus granted both eternal youth and eternal sleep.
Perhaps the most striking sculpture in the Green Mount Cemetery is the Riggs Memorial, created by Hans Schuler. Schuler was the first American sculptor to win the Salon Gold Medal in Paris, and his mastery shows in the Riggs Monument depicting a grieving woman slouched over a loved one's grave, holding a wreath in one hand and a drooping flower in the other.
Baltimore is a city known for its sculptures. John Quincy Adams famously toasted "Baltimore鈥攖he monumental city" during a visit in 1823. The moniker is well deserved. Baltimore possess the first monument to George Washington in the United States. And during a time when Washington DC was recovering from the devastation of the War of 1812, Baltimore was erecting monuments to its triumph. Baltimore was also home to great sculptors. William Rinehart got his start in Baltimore owing to the patronage of William Walters. After an illustrious career, Rinehart endowed his estate to the Maryland Institute College of Art for the teaching of sculpture. Hans Schuler attended the Rinehart School of Sculpture, having emigrated to the United States at a young age from Germany with his parents. Upon graduation, he moved to Paris to study at the Julian Academy on a scholarship. In 1901, he became the first U.S.-based sculptor to win the Salon Gold Medal for his sculpture "Ariadne." It was in Paris that Schuler met William Lucas, an agent of Henry Walters, son of William Walters. Walters, a collector of fine art, purchased "Ariadne" for his gallery, now the Walters Art Museum. In 1906, Schuler returned to Baltimore and established a studio at 7 E. Lafayette Avenue, where he would become the city's leading sculptor and contribute to Baltimore's legacy as the Monumental City. Schuler's studio was designed by architect Howard Sill in an eclectic style, combining elements of several architectural styles and including architectural elements sculpted by Schuler himself. Sill designed the interior to accommodate the large scale of Schuler's work. The studio had one floor with a 24-foot ceiling. Large double doors allowed for the moving of large monuments. In 1922, a crane was installed inside. For six years, Schuler lived in an apartment near the studio with his wife, Paula, and daughter, Charlotte. By 1912, Schuler was established enough to hire Sill's apprentice, Gordon Beecher, to design a two bay wide, three bay deep, and two stories tall residence attached to the studio and capped with a mansard roof. As with the studio, Schuler sculpted architectural elements for the residence. Schuler received many commissions during his lifetime. One important patron was Theodore Marburg, a diplomat who, when he was not advocating for the League of Nations, was advocating for city parks and public art in Baltimore. Marburg founded the Municipal Art Society and would go on to save Schuler's career after nearly ruining him. His commision for a figure of Johns Hopkins hit a dead end after the university refused to take it. Schuler's compensation covered materials and little more, and the loss of income almost led to him selling his house. Schuler recovered and commissions came regularly until the United States entered World War I. Schuler considered working in a munitions factory, but Marburg intervened and provided more commissions, saving Schuler's career. Schuler became director of the Maryland Institute of Art in 1925. During his tenure he continued to work on commissions in his personal studio. He died in 1951 at the age of 77. His son, Hans, Jr., had been his full-time assistant, and like his father, worked at the Maryland Institute of Art. In the years that followed, the Institute began to lean more towards modern art in its teaching. A firm believer in the traditional techniques passed down from his father, Hans, along with his wife Ann, also a teacher at the Institute, formed the Schuler School of Fine Arts in 1959. The school trains students in the techniques of the Old Masters and offers courses in drawing, painting and sculpture and is located in the Schuler studio and residence that Hans Schuler, Sr. built. Both buildings remain historically intact with few changes.
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Mount Clare is considered to be the birthplace of American railroading. It holds the oldest passenger and freight station in the United States and the first railroad manufacturing complex in the country.
Mount Clare is considered to be the birthplace of American railroading. It holds the oldest passenger and freight station in the United States and the first railroad manufacturing complex in the country. The first Mount Clare Station building was erected in 1830 after Charles Carroll deeded the land to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company. In May of that year, the first railroad was completed to Ellicott's Mills (now Ellicott City) at a distance of about 13 miles. The first passenger car to make the trip was the horse-drawn "Pioneer" which made the trip on May 25, 1830 in one hour and five minutes. On August 28 of that year, the first American locomotive, "Tom Thumb", made its debut run on the same route, but took ten minutes longer than the horse-drawn Pioneer. The manufacturing complex at Mount Clare became a leading innovator in locomotive technology. Phineas Davis and Ross Winans created the first commercially practical coal-driven American locomotives at the site. In 1850, the B&O erected an ironworks where the first iron railroad bridge was designed. The circular roundhouse was completed in 1884 and was at the time the largest circular building in the world. The Mount Clare Station is now part of the B&O Railroad Museum. The museum has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the United States. Visitors can take take a train ride on the first mile of railroad tracks laid in the country.
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In August 1933, F. Scott Fitzgerald moved with his family to 1307 Park Avenue. Fitzgerald had been forced out of his previous home in Towson due to a house fire attributed to his mentally ill wife, Zelda. Their rowhouse, a ten minute walk from the monument of Fitzgerald's famous distant-cousin, Francis Scott Key, quickly became a place of turmoil, and was the last place where he and Zelda lived together.
Fitzgerald couldn't get back on his feet at his new home. His first published novel in ten years, "Tender Is the Night," tanked after its April 1934 release, selling only 13,000 copies to mixed reviews, and left Fitzgerald under immense financial strain. Everyone in the house was affected. Zelda and Fitzgerald's daughter, Francis Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, acted as a go-between for their landlord, forced to constantly ask her father for rent money.
Zelda, who spent her weekdays hospitalized at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, had a brief period of wellness during the first few months at 1307 Park Avenue and was allowed to go home and take painting classes at the Maryland Institute College of Art. However, her mental illness soon worsened and she was moved to the expensive Craig House sanitarium in New York, only to return to Sheppard Pratt in May 1934 in worse shape than ever.
While Zelda was in the hospital, Fitzgerald's dependency on alcohol grew. Writer H.L. Mencken, a friend of Fitzgerald who lived nearby in Mt. Vernon at the time, wrote in his journal in 1934: "The case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is a boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance."
Along with crippling alcoholism, Fitzgerald suffered insomnia and night terrors. He also became increasingly political, reading Marx and befriending Marxist literary critic, V.F. Calverton, who frequented the Fitzgerald home and who Zelda referred to as the "community communist."
After a turbulent two years, Fitzgerald and Scottie moved out of their rowhouse at 1307 Park Avenue into the Cambridge Arms Apartments across from Johns Hopkins University where Fitzgerald's career continued to worsen. His controversial three-part essay in Esquire, known as "The Crack Up," sullied his reputation in the eyes of his editor and agent.
In April 1936, Fitzgerald transferred Zelda to Highland Hospital in North Carolina and gave up his Cambridge Arms apartment the following summer due to rent trouble. After a brief stint at the Stafford Hotel in Mt. Vernon, he moved to Hollywood to write movies and became further estranged from his wife; she living in mental hospitals on the East Coast, and he living with his lover Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist, in Hollywood.
Fitzgerald's Bolton Hill home at 1307 Park Avenue is now dedicated with a blue plaque in his honor, and remains a private residence.
Ottmar Mergenthaler was only 18 years old when he immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1872 to work with his cousin August Hahl at his machine shop in Washington, D.C. Four years later, after Hahl moved his shop to Baltimore, inventor Charles Moore approached Mergenthaler to redesign a faulty typewriter created to quickly publish legal briefs. Mergenthaler threw himself wholeheartedly at the project, and the result was the invention of the linotype鈥攁 machine that revolutionized the print industry and what Thomas Edison referred to as "the eighth wonder of the world."
It took Mergenthaler ten years of tweaking before the first linotype debuted at the New York Tribune. The machine accelerated the printing process by allowing typesetters to easily create molds of type, that is a "line o' type," using typewriter keys. Newspapers could run more efficiently and feature more pages. Linotypes continued in widespread use until the 1960s and 1970s when they were replaced by phototypesetting equipment and computers.
Mergenthaler operated out of Baltimore throughout most of his career. His first shop was a small operation at 12 Bank Lane (the site of the current Blaustein Building at One North Charles Street). He later established a larger factory in Locust Point. In 1894, Mergenthaler moved into a house at 159 West Lanvale Street with his wife and three children. The house was built between 1874 and 1875 by Joseph S. Hopkins, nephew of Johns Hopkins.
Mergenthaler's health was in serious decline when he moved into his Lanvale street home. He suffered a serious attack of pleurisy in 1888 and again in the summer of 1894. His symptoms were so severe he could no longer manage his factory. After brief stints in Arizona and New Mexico, where he hoped the climate might cure him, he returned to his Baltimore home in 1898 where he remained until his death on October 28, 1899.
The Edgar Allan Poe statue sitting in the Gordon Plaza at University of Baltimore has a colorful past. The statue was commissioned in 1911 by the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association of Baltimore and was the last work of renowned American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel. Born in Richmond, Virgina, Ezekiel was a decorated Confederate soldier who moved to Europe in 1869 and, in 1910, was knighted by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy for his artistic accomplishments.
The Women's Literary Club established the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association in 1907 and hoped the statue would be completed for the centennial of Poe's birth in 1909, but a lack of funds, a series of mishaps, and poor timing delayed the statue's arrival in Baltimore until 1921. Ezekial completed the first model in 1913 but a fire at a custom house destroyed the sculpture en route to a foundry in Berlin; the second model, completed in 1915, was destroyed in Ezekiel's studio by an earthquake; and the third model, completed in 1916, was due to be shipped across the Atlantic, but was delayed another five years due to World War I. By the time the statue arrived in Baltimore, Ezekiel had already been dead for four years.
After the statue's arrival in Wyman Park during the summer of 1921, more complications arose. The inscription, a quote from Poe's famous poem "The Raven," had two typos and read: "Dreamng(sic) dreams no mortals(sic) ever dared to dream before." In 1930, Edmond Fontaine, incensed over the typo on the word "mortal," came to the park in the middle of the night and chiseled away the incorrect "s." The police arrested Fontaine for his vigilantism but he was never prosecuted.
Over the years the Poe statue suffered from neglect, vandalism, and weather damage. In 1983, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore recommended the statue be moved to the Gordon Plaza at the University of Baltimore where it still stands today. The statue has become a mascot of sorts for the university, and during the NFL playoffs it can be seen bathed in a purple light in support of the Baltimore Ravens, a team named after Poe's famous poem.
The Duchess of Windsor, born Bessie Wallis Warfield, moved into the three-story brownstone at 212 East Biddle Street with her mother in 1908. It was the first home they could call their own as they were dependent on the charity of wealthier relatives ever since Wallis鈥檚 father died shortly after her birth 12 years earlier. Little did she know that one of the three bedrooms would be for the man her mother planned to marry, John Freeman Rason. Wallis was crushed. She had envisioned a life of independence with her mother, free from relying on the financial help of others. Wallis threatened to run away, but reluctantly came to terms with her mother's decision.
The marriage was held in the parlor of their home on June 20, 1908. The climax of the wedding came when Wallis, perhaps out of spite, snuck off to the kitchen and dug her hands into the cake in search of the good-luck tokens hidden inside. When her mother and stepfather came into the kitchen and saw the ruined cake, they stood speechless. Suddenly, Mr. Rasin laughed, picked Wallis up, and twirled her in the air. This act of forgiveness touched the young Wallis, and she never gave her stepfather any more trouble.
Unfortunately, John Freeman Rasin died suddenly in 1913. Without the financial security of her stepfather, Wallis and Alice had to move out. They moved to a small apartment building called Earl's Court, at the corner of Preston and St. Paul streets.
Wallis went through two failed marriages before meeting Edward, Prince of Wales in 1931. In 1936, Edward became King Edward VIII of England, but abdicated the throne on December 10 of the same year to marry Wallis. Edward and Wallis were married on June 3, 1937, and remained so until Edward's death in 1972. Wallis died in Paris on April 24, 1986.
In 1937, Wallis' old home at 212 East Biddle Street was turned into a museum, but it was not a commercial success. The biggest hit of the museum was the bathtub. According to the museum's tour guide, Mrs. W.W. Matthews, nine out of ten visitors sat in the house's bathtub for good luck, including a bride and groom who sat in the tub while Mrs. Matthews took their picture.
In 1936, Sidney Friedman was riding a train to Baltimore and carrying a charcoal grill. Earlier that week, Friedman had dined at Ray's Steak House in Chicago and ate his very first charcoal-grilled steak. He'd never had anything like it. He asked the chefs how they made the steaks and immediately set out to get a grill of his own. When Sidney got back, he fired up the grill and started running the restaurants most iconic advertisement: "Cut your steak with a fork, else tear up the check and walk out."
The Chesapeake Restaurant had its beginnings in a deli established by Sidney's father, Morris Friedman, who immigrated to Baltimore in 1898. In 1913, he opened a gourmet deli under his name, and in 1933, after the end of Prohibition, he remodeled the deli and turned it into the Chesapeake Restaurant. The restaurant was in a prime location, only a couple blocks from Penn Station. It quickly became the go-to place for upscale Maryland seafood.
When Sidney took over and introduced the charcoal-grilled steaks a few years later, the popularity of the Chesapeake Restaurant continued to grow. According to him, the Chesapeake Restaurant was the first restaurant in Baltimore to serve a Caesar salad. In the 1950's, Sidney's younger brother Phillip took over after graduating from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration. In 1961, Phillip bought the Hasslinger's seafood restaurant next door, and the Chesapeake expanded from 29 seats to 300.
The Chesapeake Restaurant became one of the most expensive and exclusive restaurants in the city. It attracted all sorts of Baltimore celebrities, from newscasters to athletes. The massive restaurant featured a number of special lounges, including a room built as a shrine to Babe Ruth packed with memorabilia. The restaurant suffered a devastating fire in 1974 and continued operations until it went bankrupt in 1983. The family managed to purchase the restaurant back later that year, but could only stay afloat for another two years. The restaurant was sold at a foreclosure auction to Robert Sapero, and for the first time in 50 years, was no longer in the Friedman family's name.
Sapero's attempts to reboot the Chesapeake Restaurant failed and the building remained abandoned after 1989. Ultimately, Station North Development Partners LLC bought the building and a new restaurant opened there in 2013. The building is now occupied by the Pen & Quill Restaurant.