Like many old family-owned businesses, Lakein’s Jewelers was started by a newly arrived immigrant, 29-year-old Isadore Lakein, who arrived in the United States from Russia in 1912 with his wife Anna and their son Samuel. A second son, David, was born in 1915. Isadore started his jewelry business the year after arriving in the U.S. when he began selling a variety of goods door-to-door in the Fell's Point neighborhood of Baltimore. Lakein offered customers the option to pay in installments, and would return to collect regular payments. By 1929, he opened a store at 515 S. Broadway. His sons, Samuel and David, joined him in the enterprise. Attention to detail and care for customers is imperative to the success of any small family business and Lakein’s is no exception. In a 2019 interview, present-day owner Warren Lakein shared how a customer had recently stopped in the shop, now located in Hamilton, to pick up a watch he left for repair—three years earlier. Despite the delay, the customer still found the repaired watch waiting and ready for pick up at the counter. The Lakein family applies the same customer-centered approach to the repair of watches of all kinds, whether it is a basic Timex, an expensive Rolex, a rare antique, or a sentimental treasure. The threat of theft is present at all jewelry stores and Lakein’s has seen some losses. One old wrong was made right several years ago, when a plain manila envelope arrived at the store with no return address. The envelope contained a wedding band and an unsigned note reading: “I shoplifted it from your store about forty years ago, and I’m very sorry for that.” The tradition of layaway and door-to-door service stayed with the family for generations. The business grew to include four locations in Baltimore including shops at 3221 Greenmount Avenue, the corner of Erdman Avenue and Belair Road, and at 5400 Harford Road in Hamilton. Isadore retired to Florida and started another location there before his death in 1962. Warren Lakein, a current owner of Lakein’s Jewelers of Hamilton and grandson of the founder, grew up behind the Harford Road store in a small stucco house and recalled making house calls with selections of rings for people who requested something special. Lakein's continues to offer layaway accounts for up to eight months. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local Baltimoreans still shop at Lakein’s to buy special gifts for sweethearts or parents. Payments were made regularly for as little as one dollar per week back in the 1960s and 1970s. For some fortunate shoppers, those friendship and “going steady” rings led to engagement and wedding rings—including some still in use forty or fifty years later. Customers have maintained their loyalty to the store for generations. Some customers own Lakein’s jewelry from forty to eighty years ago that has been handed down by their parents or grandparents. One customer received his grandmother’s engagement and wedding rings, which he later gave to his wife. They were purchased at the original store’s location just a few years after it opened on S. Broadway in 1929. Lakein’s Jewelers is a remarkable reminder of the opportunities Baltimore offered to European immigrants in the early twentieth century. A hard-working door-to-door salesman from Russia could open a store in Fell's Point and grow the business over time to five locations. Regrettably, it also shows the challenges small businesses have faced in recent decades. Most of the stores have closed, including the original Broadway location, which closed in 2005. Fortunately, due to a loyal clientele and dedicated owners, Lakein’s Jewelers of Hamilton is still going strong.
Alexander Fruman emigrated to Baltimore from Eastern Europe in 1917 with few possessions. Among them was a handsaw that helped him start a business building wooden windows and doors in 1919, in a shop at the corner of Stiles Street and S. Central Avenue near the Little Italy neighborhood.
According to family legend, when prohibition began the following year, Alexander sold mauls to the Bureau of Prohibition agents, which were used to break down bootleggers’ doors who were selling illegal alcohol. Sensing an additional business opportunity, Mr. Fruman also offered his services at this time to these same local bootleggers who needed their doors reinforced with steel plating to ward off the Prohibition agents.
As the business grew, Alexander’s son Isadore joined the business and more outdoor storage space was needed. Additional property was soon purchased in Little Italy at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Albemarle Street and another parcel was rented in the rear of Pier 6 on Pratt Street – commonly known today as the site of the Pier 6 Concert Pavilion. In 1960, National Lumber was still growing and moved again to the corner of Elliott Street and S. Linwood Avenue in Canton. This had previously been the location of the P.M. Womble Lumber Co., an industrial supplier of lumber and timbers. In 1969, National Lumber was notified by the City of Baltimore that their property in Canton was in the path of the proposed East-West Expressway, and was likely to be seized through eminent domain, necessitating another move. Even though the expressway was never built, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for National Lumber as it allowed them to move in 1970 to their current six-acre facility at Pulaski Highway and E. Monument Street in East Baltimore (the former home of the Harry C. Weiskittel Co., manufacturers of the Real Host line of gas ranges).
The present-day office on Pulaski Highway features a collection of pictorial memorabilia chronicling the company’s history-–including a horseshoe that some employees speculate came from the company’s first horse, which was purchased from the Baltimore City Fire Department as the city transitioned from horse-drawn to motorized equipment. No one with the fire department at the time thought to inform the horse’s new owners that he might suddenly bolt at the sound of fire engine bells. As luck would have it, the first time the horse was being used for a delivery a fire engine raced by and he took off after them…and left an order of over 40 doors scattered all over E. Baltimore Street!
While the company’s initial focus was in doors and windows, National Lumber has diversified over the years and now proudly offers “Everything for Building.” Their customer base today includes homeowners, contractors, property managers, deck builders, developers, and commercial accounts.
National Lumber’s longevity has been aided by its membership in the Lumbermen’s Merchandising Corporation (LMC), an umbrella organization comprised of over 380 independent lumber and building material dealers from throughout the United States. Established in 1935, LMC is built on a cooperative business model that negotiates buying opportunities for its member firms. Membership is by invitation only and includes a rigorous approval process.
Over the years National Lumber has supplied materials to help build a variety of well-known projects that include scaffolding used in construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, as well as the platform Pope John Paul II used when he stepped off the train for his 1995 visit to Baltimore’s Camden Yards.
National Lumber is now in the hands of the fourth and fifth generations of the Fruman family, Arnold and his sons, Kevin and Neal. While they no longer build windows with sash weights and pulleys, they do offer design consultations and almost anything needed for the building of a home--inside and out. As their slogan says, "Everything for Building."
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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’s play area, a men’s running track, and a small women’s 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’s 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’s 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’ Bastion, a significant War of 1812 landmark. Over the years, the park grew steadily, augmented by four major land acquisitions. The Olmsted Brothers’ 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’s 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 “old beech trees and bold topography” as “the finest single passage of scenery in the whole valley.” 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’s 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’s 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’ 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’s 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’s first public golf course (1916) and Mothers’ Garden (1928), originally dedicated to “The Mothers of Baltimore.” Following decades of abuse, Clifton’s Italianate villa is stabilized and the current tenant, Civic Works, is restoring the interior.
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A.T. Jones & Sons, Inc., costumer for innumerable theatrical performers and party-goers since 1868, succumbed to the effects of the pandemic shutdown.
Imagine a horde of Christmas elves attacking a chorus line of Roman legionaries. Now, if you wish to see this fever-dream in person, take a trip to A.T. Jones & Sons on N. Howard Street. They have a warehouse filled with costumes from any period of history. Alfred Thomas Jones started renting out costumes in 1868. He arrived in Baltimore from North Carolina in the spring of 1861. He was there to collect a $500 prize for a painting he submitted to a contest sponsored by the predecessor of the Maryland Institute College of Art (Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts). He was unable to return to N.C., however, after fighting broke out at the start of the Civil War. So, he settled into a new life as a teacher at the art school that awarded his prize. Jones began buying costumes as a hobby in 1868. He purchased Confederate and Union army uniforms as well as parade and masquerade ball costumes. These costumes served Mr. Jones well as he was able to rent them for masquerade balls, a popular form of high society entertainment in the late 19th century. A costume from one season could be altered and rented the next. Perhaps the largest of the masked balls of the late 19th century was the Oriole Pageant, sponsored by the Order of the Oriole. The first of these pageants was held in 1880 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Baltimore. The following year the society outdid itself with a three-day affair that included a parade through the city (illuminated with electric lights), concerts, a parade of boats in the harbor, and, of course, a masked ball. The B&O Railroad added extra cars to accommodate the crowds attending the festivities. All of these events required costumes, some of which were rented out by Mr. A.T. Jones. The costume rental business included supplying local theatre companies. Many of the famous actors of the 19th century depended on the Jones family. Edwin Booth, the most illustrious of a Maryland family of actors, gave Jones some of his own props and costumes, such as a sword used in Hamlet and pound-of-flesh scales from Merchant of Venice. The most loyal and long lasting customer of A.T. Jones & Sons is the Gridiron Club, a journalistic organization in Washington, D.C., made up primarily of news bureau chiefs. It was founded in 1885 and has been renting costumes annually since 1888 for their white-tie banquet that includes satirical skits directed at politicians and journalists. Some of the costumes for this event have been worn by John Glenn, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and news reporter Bob Schieffer. A.T. Jones began by renting costumes for parades, pageants, and theatrical productions, as well as formal wear to young men who could not afford to purchase them. Through the next century and a half, his descendants and successors have adapted to the times and changing demands. From A.T., the shop went to his son, Walter Jones, Sr., then Walter’s widow, Lena, then their son, Walter “Tubby” Jones, Jr. The shop was eventually purchased by a long-time employee, George Goebel. His son Ehrich joined the business and has expanded the market to include opera and theatre companies throughout the United States. The inventory now includes everything from Aida to Elf the Musical. The one costume that is of great demand every year is for Santa Claus. Ever since the first department store version of the fat, jolly, white-bearded old man made its appearance in the 19th century, there has been a run on large red suits with white trim every December. A.T. Jones is always ready to meet the demand from department stores and charitable organizations for Santa costumes.
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Today the site of Under Armour's world headquarters, five of these buildings used to house Procter & Gamble's Baltimore Plant: Process Building (1929), the Soap Chip Building (1929), the Bar Soap Building (1929), the Warehouse (1929), and the Tide Building (1949). The company selected this Locust Point site to build a soap manufacturing plant because of its proximity to cargo shipping routes and the city’s transportation infrastructure along the Atlantic seaboard.
The plant was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. According to the Registration Report held at the National Archives, “The size of the Procter & Gamble Plant and the timing of its opening in the early years of the Depression made the plant an important local source of employment and economic stability.” The Plant’s architectural construction and importance in industrial history were also factors in its inclusion.
Local development company Struever Bros, Eccles & Rouse transformed the Procter & Gamble campus into the Tide Point office park in 2004. Construction costs for this 15-acre adaptive reuse project totaled $66 million. Under Armour continues the legacy of Baltimore’s once-dominant garment industry, although the actual manufacturing mostly takes place overseas. Founder Kevin Plank began the company, focusing on wickable athletic shirts, from his grandmother’s rowhouse in Washington D.C. in 1996 before moving its headquarters to Baltimore in 1998. As of 2019, the company employed 14,500 staff worldwide and brought in an annual revenue of $5.3 billion.
The architecture represents only one portion of the peninsula’s significance, however. Between 1800 and the outbreak of World War I, nearly two million immigrants first stepped foot on U.S. soil from this location at Locust Point--second only to Ellis Island in New York. Immigration from Europe, and particularly Germany, rose dramatically after the B&O Railroad and the North German Lloyd Company established an agreement in 1867 that brought ship passengers to the immigration pier along the B&O Railroad. The federal government established an immigration station here in 1887, on land belonging to the railroad. The outbreak of World War I ended the heyday of Baltimore as an immigration hub. The Baltimore Immigration Memorial, located on the site of the Locust Point Immigration Depot, interprets this history today. Imagine arriving in Baltimore by steamship in the late 19th century. How might it feel to see landmarks such as Fort McHenry or Federal Hill?
Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as Baltimore’s first nondenominational cemetery for African Americans. The location chosen was Belle Air Avenue (now Belair Road), on a hill long used as a burial ground for free and enslaved servants of local landowners. Laurel quickly became a popular place of burial for people across Black Baltimore’s socioeconomic spectrum, including the graves of 230 Black Civil War veterans, members of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.). After its creation, Laurel Cemetery was known as one of the most beautiful and prominent African American cemeteries in the city.
Serving as the commemorative center for the African American community in the late 1800’s, annual parades and Memorial Day gatherings to honor and decorate the graves of the Black Civil War veterans occurred regularly at Laurel Cemetery, which was also the resting place of many prominent members of Baltimore’s African American population. Historical records show that in 1894, Frederick Douglass traveled to Laurel Cemetery to speak on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument honoring Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, who served as the sixth Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopalian (A.M.E.) church, and was a founder and former president of Wilberforce University.
The decline of Laurel Cemetery started in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1911, the remains of the Civil War veterans were removed and reinterred at Loudon Park National Cemetery to accommodate the expansion of Belair Road. In 1920, Elmley Avenue was created and row houses were built along the newly constructed street on the southern boundary of the Cemetery. In 1930, a portion of the grounds were sold for the construction of a gas station, and the offices of the Laurel Cemetery Company were moved offsite. This highly contested sale drove a wedge between the private owners of the cemetery and the deed holding descendants of the interred.
By the 1930s the site had become overgrown and garbage-strewn, and the owners of the cemetery failed to uphold their duties in maintaining the property. In May of 1948, members of the Belair Edison Improvement Association called for the demolition of Laurel Cemetery, which declared bankruptcy in 1952. Legislation passed in 1957 by Maryland Lawmakers provided the legal justification for the sole shareholder of the now defunct Laurel Cemetery Company to sell the land to the McKamer Realty Company for $100 in 1958.
Although the McKamer Realty Company was founded for the express purpose of purchasing the cemetery by two employees of the Baltimore Law Department, an internal review by the Mayor’s office found no evidence for a conflict of interest and the sale went through, netting thousands of dollars in profits for the owners upon selling the rezoned property. A series of lawsuits seeking justice for the disenfranchised descendants failed to prevail in the courts and thus, after being in existence for 106 years, Laurel Cemetery was leveled. Some the remains of those buried at Laurel were sent to cemeteries in Arbutus in Baltimore County and an estimated 350 remains were reburied at the new Laurel Cemetery in Carroll County. Unfortunately, this new site has also not been maintained.
In February of 1962, the former site of Laurel Cemetery became the new location of Two Guys Department Store. Today it is the site of the Belair-Edison Crossing Shopping Center, and home to several businesses. The Shopping Center is a heavily traveled and highly valued local establishment – most recently sold to a Florida based-business in 2014. However, many current patrons and nearby residents have no knowledge of the site’s former purpose and significance.
The Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation manufactured chemical components for many industrial applications. Quaker merchant Isaac Tyson Jr. established the company that became Allied Chemical in 1828, mining chromium ore and supplying chrome pigment to England which he refined at his Baltimore Chrome Works plant. The operation became Mutual Chemical Company in 1908, merged with Allied in 1954, and became part of Honeywell in 1999. This site, used for dumping the toxic waste produced in chemical manufacturing, is now occupied by a row of houses.
Sites across Baltimore—including this location in Locust Point as well as Harbor Point—were toxic dumping grounds for Allied and its successor company, Honeywell. Chromium, produced here, was used to make stainless steel and certain paints. Tom Pelton of the Baltimore Sun wrote that, “During the city's industrial zenith in the mid-20th century, Allied dumped tons of chrome waste and other pollutants in more than a dozen locations around Baltimore's harbor, both into the Patapsco River and along the shore, according to state records. Chrome waste was often used as landfill under buildings and parking lots.” He pointed out that its “lemon hue lurks under the parking lot of the Baltimore Museum of Industry” nearby.
The term “brownfield” refers to a formerly industrial property that requires environmental remediation for redevelopment efforts—sites tainted by toxic waste. One study by Johns Hopkins University researchers estimated that Baltimore alone has about 1,000 brownfield sites. Environmentalists at local, state, and federal levels have gone to enormous efforts to oversee the cleanup process, to ensure public health at sites such as this one.
Think about the benefits of environmental regulations as you walk through the neighborhood. Although you can’t see it, arsenic and chromium lie beneath our feet in many locations along the harbor. Cleanup efforts remain underway across Baltimore.
The Domino Sugar refinery (and its iconic red neon sign) is one of the last major working industries along Baltimore's inner harbor. Raw sugar arrives at the plant in giant ships and barges, and is unloaded and refined to become white, powdered, and brown sugar, as well as various liquid sugar products. Packaged and distributed via highways and railways, sugar produced in Baltimore travels to kitchens across the nation. This South Baltimore site is the second largest sugar refinery in the U.S.
The 30-acre, 15-building campus was constructed in 1921 and opened for business in 1922. The buildings remain largely unchanged, as they were a “monument of state-of-the-art modern industrial design” (according to its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places) a century ago.
Baltimore was once home to six different sugar refineries, though only Domino remains. This industry boomed between 1865-1873, when Baltimore’s rail system and shipping channels attracted six manufacturers to the area. The industry fell apart in the 1870s when a major importer of sugar and molasses declared bankruptcy.
Domino® Sugar was first produced in New York in 1901 and received a trademark in 1906. American Sugar Refining, Inc. (ASR), a subsidiary of ASR Group International, Inc. (ASR Group), based in Florida, acquired Domino Sugar in 2001. ASR owns the Domino refineries in Locust Point as well as Yonkers, New York, and Chalmette, Louisiana; they also own the leading West Coast brand C&H® Sugar, the Canadian brand Redpath®, the British brands Tate & Lyle® and Lyle’s® and Sidul® in Portugal.
Workers process approximately 6.5 million pounds of raw cane sugar each day, operating round-the-clock over three shifts Monday-Friday and 24/7 from September to January, when demand for sugar is higher. As of January 2020, the plant employed 485 workers and generated 125 related transportation jobs. The sugar processed here ends up at grocery stores as well as in the industrial kitchens of food suppliers.
The red neon “Domino Sugars” sign was installed in 1951. Triangle Signs installed and continues to maintain this South Baltimore landmark, visible from across the harbor. The scale is hard to fathom—a semi-truck could drive through the hole in the “O.” This sign serves not only as a stunning local landmark but also a reminder that Domino Sugar still operates in its original location on the harbor. What types of businesses do you think might operate along Baltimore’s waterfront a century from today?
All that remains of the Chesapeake Paperboard Co. complex today is the water tower. The site is now known as McHenry Row, a 90,000 square foot mixed use development project that contains 250 luxury apartments, offices, and street level shops at the end of Woodall Avenue.
From 1910 until the company's closure in the mid-1990s, Chesapeake Paperboard was the sole recycler of paper waste from Baltimore City's curbside recycling program, processing over 15,000 tons of paper waste annually. The company processed this paper waste into pulp, then into paperboard which it would then export to other manufacturers. Paperboard is the harder, less flexible cousin to regular printer paper. Lightweight and strong, paperboard can most easily be found in consumer product packaging. One of the most recognizable examples of paperboard are breakfast cereal boxes.
The Chesapeake Paperboard Company was acquired in 2005 by Green Bay Packaging and moved operations to Hunt Valley. Today, the Baltimore Division of Green Bay Packaging produces plain brown and color printed cardboard boxes for companies in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. The Baltimore Division is certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Maryland Green Registry.
As with so many changes in technology, there are both pros and cons to recycling modernization. The loss of this local industry impacts job opportunities here in South Baltimore, but an upgraded recycling infrastructure means a cleaner, greener world for all. The give and take of advancing technology, changing consumer tastes and policy and regulation is rarely as simple as it looks at first glance.
The General Electric (GE) Apparatus Service Center did not support private consumers in maintaining their individual household appliances. Rather, this service center maintained large electrical transformers, electrical motors, and turbine engines which helped supply electrical energy to the city and surrounding area. From 1946-1993, these huge pieces of equipment arrived and departed the Service Center by rail.
Maintenance of this kind of equipment required all manner of industrial substances. Beginning in 1988, poor internal regulation of substance disposal caught up with the facility when a soil test confirmed polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—a group of highly toxic carcinogens—in the surrounding soil. For the next 23 years various environmental cleanups have removed PCBs, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chlorinated solvents, petroleum, and various toxic metals from contaminated soil and groundwater.
The original Service Center was demolished between 2002 and 2003. Three underground storage tanks of petroleum substances were removed in 2007, likely remnants from a historic gas station which occupied part of the lot during the 1950s and 1960s. GE Power Systems submitted an official Voluntary Cleanup Program application to the Maryland Department of the Environment in 2003, indicating their intention to eventually sell the land for residential development.
The land was held off the market for just under a decade for environmental cleanup until GE sold it to Solstice Partners in 2012. Solstice Partners, a development company, partnered with The Bozzuto Group and War Horse Cities to build Anthem House, a “healthy-lifestyle, luxury residential community” on the corner of E. Fort Avenue and Lawrence Street. Scott Plank, brother of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, launched War Horse Cities in 2010. The $100 million development, which opened in 2017, includes 292 rental units as well as 20,000 square feet of street-level shops and restaurants.
GE continues to have an impact on Maryland industries. In 2017, the subsidiary GE Healthcare closed a plant in Laurel which manufactured “incubators and warmers for hospital neonatal intensive care units.” GE Aviation owned Middle River Aircraft Systems (MRAS) in Middle River until early 2019 when it was sold to ST Engineering, a Singapore-based aerospace conglomerate. MRAS has pioneered many innovations in airplane engine nacelle and thrust reverse systems.
As buildings are used and reused, remnants of a building’s former life sometimes appear. Those industrial legacies are baked into the character of a place. How do you feel that the transition from industrial to residential has changed the character of Locust Point?
The Hercules Shipbuilding Company, housed in this brick building, was an active player in Baltimore’s maritime industry, building vessels for commercial and leisure use as well as wartime naval construction and repair. Jonathan and Eleanor LaVeck owned the firm. Workers at Hercules specialized in ship repairs, cargo hold renovations, and battening (the tool in the phrase "batten down the hatches").
The building is representative of the industry and how the harbor, as well as a sizable labor force, hastened the growth of the city’s economic development. The Hercules building is a 3.5 story, 20th-century, Colonial Revival brick office building, approximately 7,200 square feet. It is a National Register-eligible structure. The company used this building from 1941, though the BMI has been unable to determine the construction start date. The building remained in use and unchanged until the Baltimore Museum of Industry purchased it in the early 1990s and began restoration and renovation work, including the addition of an elevator tower and fire stair.
One of the tools Hercules workers used for shipbuilding is a drop forge, to shape heavy steel. The Hercules drop forge remains on the Baltimore Museum of Industry’s outdoor campus next to the large outdoor sculpture by David Hess, “Working Point.” Hess created Working Point, comprised of 90 tons of obsolete machinery, in 1997.
Before the Hercules chapter of this site’s history, 1425 Key Highway was home to the Louis Grebb Packing Plant, an oyster and fruit cannery with waterfront access. Owners of the Hercules Co. sold the property in 1975. The Superior Concrete Company operated a cement plant on this site in the late 1980s.
The submerged iron hull of the steamship Governor R.M. McLane is also visible from the waterfront at this location—along with at least six other abandoned vessels. One of two steamboats built by the Philadelphia firm Neafie and Levy in the early 1880s, this flagship of the “Oyster Navy” enforced conservation laws designed to protect the depleted oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay. The General Assembly established Maryland’s Oyster Police Force in 1868 in order to protect one of the state’s precious natural resources—oysters—which had been overharvested and also suffered from disease. Canneries, such as Platt & Company (now home to the Baltimore Museum of Industry, on this site), helped fuel Marylanders’ appetite for oysters from the Bay. Relations between oyster “pirates” or “poachers” and the state officials dedicated to conserving the bivalves sometimes became violent, leading to the “Oyster Wars” of the late 19th century.
The McLane remained an integral part of the Maryland State Oyster Police Force until 1932, before being sold in 1948 and used to tow barges for the next six years. After all is said and done, industry is actually about people—workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, and investors—who invest time, money, and labor into work. Whether building ships or canning oysters, Baltimoreans were hard at work at this site. Imagine what it was like to work here 100 years ago. What has changed? What has remained the same?
The Key Highway Yards along the southern side of the Inner Harbor played a pivotal role in Baltimore’s shipbuilding industry from the 1820s until 1982. Passersby today see almost no traces of this industrial history at the upscale Ritz Carlton and HarborView communities. One of the only remnants of shipbuilding along this stretch of Baltimore’s waterfront lies underneath the 30-story HarborView Towers, completed in 1992: the dry docks used for ship repair were converted to become a parking garage. Boatbuilding brothers William Skinner Jr. and Jeremiah Skinner moved from Dorchester County to Baltimore in the 1820s to establish the Skinner yard at the base of Federal Hill. William later sold his share of the company to his brother and purchased his own shipyard on Cross Street specializing in sailing ships and steamboats. The Skinners contributed greatly to the city’s prominence in American shipbuilding, with William remembered as having built the first Baltimore clipper ship. The for this site describes the Skinner yard as “the largest and most important of the period.” William’s descendants carried on the family business and consolidated other small shipyards, eventually creating a 35-acre complex at Key Highway. Business boomed during the Civil War and continued through the turn of the century. Although World War I brought another wave of activity to these shipbuilding operations, the company went into receivership and Bethlehem Steel Company acquired this yard in 1921. During the Bethlehem era, this was known as the “upper yard.” The “lower yard” referred to the shipyard adjacent to Fort McHenry, which is still in operation today. Workers at Bethlehem’s shipyards at Locust Point as well as Sparrows Point and Fairfield—together the largest ship repair operation in the United States—participated in the. Baltimore shipyards churned out a record-setting number of Liberty and Victory Ships between 1941-1945. The Key Highway yards repaired over 2,500 ships during WWII. Enjoying a stroll along the harbor today, one could almost miss the fact that this place was once a hub of heavy industry, lined with massive equipment and bustling with workers. Although the shipyards are no longer visible at this location, you can experience this chapter of history at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The 1942 Clyde Model 17 DE 90 whirley crane outside the museum, restored and painted bright green in 2019, worked on Pier 3 between the 1940s-1980s. Can you imagine the sense of awe one would have experienced seeing a whole fleet of these massive cranes hard at work along the shipyard?
General Ship Repair maintains the rich shipbuilding tradition so long associated with the South Baltimore neighborhoods of Federal Hill and Locust Point. Charles “Buck” Lynch founded the company in 1924, moved to this location in 1929, lost the company to bankruptcy during the Great Depression and managed to buy it back at auction. Today, the fourth generation of the Lynch family operates the company at one of the last remaining industrial sites along Key Highway. General Ship has repaired a variety of vessels through the years, including schooners, steamships, paddle wheelers, and supertankers. Among the notable vessels that have been worked on recently are the Pride of Baltimore II and Mr. Trash Wheel. Workers perform maintenance work on ships in dry docks at this site in addition to sending crews out to other facilities. As of 2020 the facility, which includes a 17,300 square foot shed and two 1000-ton floating docks, repairs mostly workboats. The company serves as the tug and barge repair facility for the Port of Baltimore. The machine shop on site allows General Ship crews to weld and fabricate steel parts here. Key Highway was once home to a variety of industries including molasses production, oil reprocessing, canning, and locomotive repair. While access to the waterfront remains more limited here than around other parts of the Inner Harbor, residential and mixed-use development has boomed in South Baltimore for the past decade. The Lynch family has considered relocating the business for the past few years, selling the waterfront property to be redeveloped into luxury housing. However, as of October 2020, General Ship Repair remains a bastion of shipbuilding in South Baltimore. What do you predict the Locust Point peninsula will be known for in the 21st century?
The story of Hampden’s name can be traced back to St. Mary’s Community Center. Originally established as St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, the congregation started meeting in Hampden in the 1850s. Under the leadership of Henry Mankin this congregation petitioned the Diocese of Maryland for a new Episcopal church for his neighborhood, which was accepted in 1854. Mankin also named the neighborhood in honor of John Hampden, an English politician. Mankin admired him for the stand he took on taxation of the American colonies. Prior to American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were among those who referenced John Hampden to justify their cause.
The congregation’s original location was at Falls Road and 36th Street. However in 1858 the city needed this location for a reservoir, and along with the surrounding properties, condemned the original location. Today the reservoir is no longer in use and is now part of Roosevelt Park. Without a location to meet the congreation went a year without services. On May 31, 1860 construction began on a new church on Roland Ave.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, St. Mary’s first reverend left to become a chaplain for the Union Army, yet he did not resign his commission. He reported in 1863 that the church was burned down, but not before the carpeting had been stolen. In addtion Union soldiers camped on what is today Union Ave and stole the wooden fence for firewood. While the Federal Government did compensate the parish in a settlement, it was not enough for it to continue its work. The parish nearly closed. It was not until 1872, after the first reverend resigned, that a new rector was elected. A year later the congregation was able to raise the funds to lay a new cornerstone to rebuild the church where the structure stands today.
St. Mary’s operated as a church until 1999. It evolved into the St. Mary’s Community Center in 2002. Today the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory performs in the center’s Great Hall. This company recreates as closely as is possible the staging conditions, spirit, and atmosphere created by Shakespeare’s theatre company during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
Hampden Hall was an important part of Baltimore even before the neighborhood of Hampden was a part of Baltimore. Six years before Hampden was incorporated into Baltimore City, Hampden Hall was constructed as a meeting hall for Civil War veterans in 1882. It was later used as a town hall and a venue for dances and concerts, among other events. Later as Baltimore City moved into the Progressive Age (1890-1920), Hampden Hall also changed with the times.
The Progressive Age is marked, in part, with an increase in commercialization. Baltimore businessman Theodore Cavacos, who owned a pharmacy that operated in Hampden Hall, bought the building in 1913. He expanded the hall by building storefronts along 36th Street. The Cavacos family owned the building until 2004. In 1975, the family worked with artist Bob Hieronimus and the city of Baltimore to create a large mural on the north side of the building that celebrates Hampden and two Medal of Honor winners, Lieutenant Milton Ricketts and Private First Class Carl Sheridan, from the neighborhood.
Lieutenant Ricketts was awarded his Medal of Honor for his service in the Navy in the Pacific Theater of World War II. While serving on the U.S.S. Yorktown in the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8, 1942, a bomb exploded directly beneath Ricketts and mortally wounded him. However, before he died, he was able dampen the fire. This courageous action undoubtedly prevented the rapid spread of the fire to other parts of the ship.
Private First Class Sheridan won his Medal of Honor for his service in an attack on the Frezenberg Castle in Germany on November 26, 1944. With complete disregard for his own safety, he blasted a hole through a heavily-fortified door. Sheridan charged into the gaping entrance and was killed by the enemy fire that met him. The Sheridan-Hood Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3065 in Hampden was founded in 1945 and is named in memory of Carl Sheridan.
In the Progressive Age (1890-1920), movie theaters were a new and popular form of entertainment. They were being built all over Baltimore, and Hampden was no different. In 1908, Marion Pearce and Philip Scheck (who already owned six theatres) opened the Ideal Theatre as a nickelodeon. Small and simple theaters, nickelodeons charged a five-cent, or a nickel, admission fee.
In 1920, Baltimore City Delegate George D. Iverson sponsored legislation to repeal the law that required theaters to be closed on Sunday. However, the owners of the Ideal Theater opposed this legislation because they thought opening on Sunday would hurt their Saturday and Monday receipts. In 1922, Julius Goodman bought the theater for $18,000. In 1960, Schwarber Theaters bought the theater from the Goodman family. The last movie shown at the Ideal was PT 109 starring Cliff Robertson as a young John F. Kennedy, Jr. Released in September 1963, it was shown two months before Kennedy’s assassination.
After the Ideal closed, the building was leased to the Salvation Army. During this time the Stratis family purchased it and rehabbed it. They leased it to Woodward's, an antiques gallery and auction theater, which moved out in March 2014. Currently, the Ideal Theatre is a live music and performing arts venue. Most recently, it hosted the Ministry of Swing, which offered different kinds of dance and movement classes.
For 50 years, the Hampden and Ideal Theaters operated within a few doors of each other in the 900 block of 36th Street in Hampden. Julius Goodman, who ran the Ideal for many years, described the competition: “Well, we were friendly competitors. We split the product right down the middle. We had Metro and Warner Bros. and RKO; they were our basic majors. They had Paramount, Fox, and Columbia. And we had two minors, but they were very, very profitable; one was Republic Pictures who and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and also John Wayne who made one or two pictures a year – I think the Sands of Iwo Jima was a Republic Picture, if I’m not mistaken – and Moongram Pictures with the Bowery Boys. So we split the product.”
The original Hampden Theater emerged in 1911 when Charles A. Hicks bought a tin shop for $1,500 and converted it into a theater. Like the Ideal, the Hampden Theater was a 21-day theater which means it would show movies 21 days after opening downtown. In April 1918 a series of patriotic meetings in support of the Third Liberty Loan (bonds sold to cover the expense of World War I) were held in several Baltimore theaters, including the Hampden. In 1926, architect George Schmidt designed a $70,000 updated theater. It was the only theater in Baltimore to feature a Gottfried Organ. The theater continued operating until 1976 when it was sold to local baker Bernard Breighner, who closed it 1978. Breighner converted the building into a mall and opened it in 1981. The mall has since closed and currently the old theatre is a commercial building that hosts a restaurant and yoga studio.
In 2013, the Baltimore Love Project painted its iconic mural on the front of the Hampden Theater.
In 1879, Charles T. Bagby and A. D. Rivers founded the Bagby and Rivers Furniture Company, the predecessor to the Bagby Furniture Company. Bagby and Rivers manufactured furniture and in their 1882 furniture catalog, the company advertises mainly cabinetry.By the turn of the century, Charles T. Bagby was the sole owner of the company which was rebranded the “Bagby Furniture Company.” Charles T. Bagby ran Bagby Furniture until the 1930s, when he sold the company to his distant cousin William Hugh Bagby.
William Hugh Bagby was a man full of ambition. Before becoming president of the Bagby Furniture Company, William Hugh Bagby had actually worked for the company as a salesman. From the position of salesman, William Hugh Bagby began his own business before buying out the Bagby Furniture Company. Under the management of William Hugh Bagby, the company switched from furniture manufacturing to selling wholesale furniture in the forties. William Hugh Bagby passed away in 1988 and his son William Hugh Bagby Jr. became the company president.William Hugh Bagby Jr ran the company until 1990, when Bagby Furniture permanently closed. The furniture company could not compete with the lower prices manufacturers were offering customers if customers purchased furniture directly from the manufacturer.
After the Bagby Company closed their doors, a variety of development plans came up for the property. In 1993, a Baltimore Sun article stated that the Henrietta Corporation intended to build a luxury apartment complex on the property. In 2017, the Atlas Restaurant Group redeveloped the Bagby property into a collection of four Italian restaurants including Tagliata, Italian Disco, the Elk Room, and Monarque. The Bagby building which used to produce furniture, now serves as entertainment for patrons who want dinner and a show.
Archibald Hilton Bull founded the A. H. Bull & Co. in 1902. The company originally ran steamship lines from New York to Florida. Eventually A. H. Bull & Co. expanded to include an office in Baltimore. In the early 1900s, when Baltimore’s steamship industry was booming, A. H. Bull & Co. faced opposition from competitors. Steamship companies vied for control over the Puerto Rican trade and in 1913 Bull accused his competitors of monopolizing the Puerto Rican steamship routes. According to Bull, his competitors were undercutting his steamship line in order to force the Bull Line out of the Puerto Rican trade.
In the early 1920s, Captain Duke Adams took over management of A. H. Bull’s Baltimore offices which the company then renamed “Adams & Co”. Although the company office name changed, “Adams & Co.” remained under the management of the A. H. Bull Company. The Bull Line continued to grow and purchase other steamship lines such as the insular line in 1914, the Puerto Rico- American steamship company in 1925, and the Baltimore Carolina line in 1929. As a result of the company’s expansion, in 1929 A. H. Bull & Co. moved their Baltimore office to pier 5 in order to accommodate their increased business.
During the 1940s, the Bull Company bought one more steamship line known as the Clyde-Mallory Line before beginning to decline in the 1950s. The company remained a family-owned business until 1953 when the Bull family sold the company to American Coal Shipping. Manuel K. Kulukundis was the final owner of the A. H. Bull Steamship Company and in 1963 A. H. Bull went out of business.
Today the A. H. Bull & Co. steamship line no longer exists, but looking out in the inner harbor one can imagine the fleet of A. H. Bull steamships carrying passengers from as far north as New York to as far south as Puerto Rico.
In the twentieth century, Pier 8 in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and then Broadway Pier in Fells Point used to be the launching point for the steamboats of the Wilson Line. The Wilson Line extended from Philadelphia to Wilmington to Baltimore and ran a line of excursion boats out of Baltimore after WWII. The “Bay Belle,” one of the Baltimore excursion boats, carried passengers on day trips to places such as Betterton Beach.
Although the Wilson Line steamboat company advertised sunny trips to the beach and fun at resorts, this was overshadowed by the company’s practice of segregation. In July of 1944, a group of African American teenagers from Philadelphia were separated from white passengers on the Wilson Line ship the Maybelle. According to an article from the Baltimore Afro American, Wilson Line employees placed a rope across the dance floor to separate white and black passengers, and even went so far as to close their game room to prevent integration. In 1950, the company continued discriminatory practices by refusing to sell tickets to four African American patrons: Helena Haley, Charles Haley, Loncie Malloy, and Prunella Norwood. The four patrons sued the Wilson Line and as a result the company was ordered to end its discriminatory practices by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1951.The shadow of segregation extended from the steamboat line to the beaches. For example Ocean City, one of the most popular beach attractions today, once banned African Americans from enjoying its sunny shores. Elizabeth Carr Smith and Florence Carr Sparrow, two African American sisters, fought back against segregation by founding Carr’s Beach in 1926 and Sparrow’s Beach in 1931. Both sisters inherited pieces of land from their father on the Annapolis coast facing the Chesapeake Bay. Carr’s and Sparrow’s beaches were known for ample entertainment and hosted many famous African American performers such as Billie Holiday, James Brown, and Ray Charles. For many African Americans along the east coast, Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches provided a safe vacation spot.In the face of discrimination, the African American community rallied in order to fight for their civil rights. As a result of the power of the black community, the ICC forced the Wilson Line to adopt integration and beaches desegregated.In 1894, William G. Scarlett founded the William G. Scarlett Seed Company. Born in Baltimore in 1873, George D. Scarlett was a true entrepreneur who chased the American dream. At twenty-one, George Scarlett began working in the seed industry by “importing seeds from various parts of the world and exporting dried apples." Under the management of George Scarlett, the company expanded its inventory; selling grass, grain, and bird seeds. A Baltimore Sun article stated that “his [George Scarlett’s] business mushroomed principally through his own efforts and at one time was the largest east of the Mississippi River." Although the William G. Scarlett Seed Company expanded opening branches in other cities, Baltimore remained the company headquarters.
The Scarlett Seed Company remained in the family as George D. Scarlett passed over the company reins to his sons Raymond G. Scarlett and William G. Scarlett. As eccentric as his father, Raymond Scarlett was not only the company president, but also a badminton champion. An adamant badminton enthusiast, Raymond Scarlett founded the junior national badminton championship tournament. William George Scarlett succeeded his brother Raymond in running the company. Following in the unique footsteps of his father and brother, in addition to managing the family business, William Scarlett joined the Army Counter Intelligence Corps, also known as the CIC, during WWII.After the company vacated the property, in the 1980s, the site was developed into retail space, office space, and condominiums. Today, the Scarlett Seed Company Property is now known as Scarlett Place, paying tribute to the bird-seed businessmen.Edward J. Codd founded the E. J. Codd Company in the 1850s. The E. J. Codd Company focused on industrial machinery and aided Baltimore’s booming shipbuilding industry by assembling boilers, propellers, and engines. At the turn of the century, Baltimore workers went on strike demanding the nine-hour work day. The E. J. Codd strikers proved victorious when in 1899, the company agreed to give workers the nine-hour work day with their former pay. Edward Codd, like other captains of industry in Gilded Age America, was not only a man of business, but a philanthropist. According to a Baltimore Sun article published on Christmas Eve in 1905, Edward Codd gave 460 children of east Baltimore each a nickel on Christmas Eve. In addition to handing out nickels each Christmas Eve, Edward Codd reportedly gave children each a penny every other day of the year. Back in the early twentieth-century, a nickel could buy children a goodly amount of candy and one reporter even reported that children’s “bright red wheelbarrows” filled with “painted candies” dotted the street on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, Edward Codd was well-liked by the children of east Baltimore. After World War II, the Codd family sold the company to Ray Kauffman. Kauffman expanded the company to include “Codd Fabricators and Boiler Co.” and “Baltimore Lead Burning.” Under Kauffman, the E. J. Codd Company served many local Baltimore businesses such as Bethlehem Steel, Allied Chemical, and even the American Visionary Arts Museum located right down the road from the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Today, real estate agents are leasing the once mighty machine shop as office spaces.Formerly located on Boston Street in east Baltimore, Gibbs Preserving Company canned and packaged everything from oysters to jelly to candy to vegetables. The Gibbs Preserving Company exemplified typical working conditions in factories at the turn of the century. Employees worked long hours, doing monotonous tasks, all while earning little pay. and facing safety hazards. In addition, cannery employees worked in hazardous environments. At least two fires broke out at the Gibbs cannery; one fire starting in the labeling room and the other in the jelly department.
A large percentage of cannery employees came from east Baltimore’s Polish community. Populating most of Fells Point, Polish families looked to canneries for work. Polish women and children worked at canneries alongside men in order to earn increased wages. Workers’ wages played a vital role in the debate for the ten-hour work day. Cannery workers in favor of the ten-hour work day argued that canning companies overworked their employees. By contrast, cannery workers against the ten-hour day argued that workers should be allowed to work however many hours it takes to make a liveable wage. Workers against the ten-hour law stated in one Baltimore Sun article, “that restricting the hours of labor would deprive the women of an opportunity to earn a living; that the season was short and must, therefore, yield them the largest possible earnings…”
While Polish cannery workers lived in Fells Point, the Polish community did not remain in east Baltimore for the entire year, but rather moved according to the seasons. At the end of the Baltimore City canning season in August, the Polish community in east Baltimore temporarily relocated to the Maryland countryside in search of employment from corn and tomato canneries. Working conditions in the country varied, but overall were still undesirable. In one particular camp, workers had to make their own kitchens from wooden planks and cloth; in another camp cannery waste covered the floor of the employee’s sleeping quarters. At the end of the countryside canning season, Polish workers returned to east Baltimore to enjoy a meager one week of rest before leaving for the oyster canneries in the south.
Walking along Boston Street, people will run into a small store called “Canton Market.” Acting as both a convenient store and sandwich shop, Canton Market serves up a variety of sandwiches such as their cheese steak sub and their turkey club. Canton Market is not the first locally owned casual dining spot in this location. Before Canton Market, this lot was home to the Blue Top Diner.
Bill Tangires, former owner of the Blue Top Diner, started his career working for his father’s business called “Jim’s Lunch.” Bill Tangires continued to work in the food industry and prepared meals for industrial plants. Afterwards in the mid 1960s, Bill Tangires founded the Blue Top Diner. The Blue Top Diner served diner classics from burgers and vegetable-beef soup, to coffee and chocolate meringue pie. The Blue Top Diner was even recommended in a Baltimore Sun Article alongside the famous Double-T Diner.
The Blue Top Diner served a variety of people until the year it closed, including “factory workers, truck drivers, dock hands, business people” and even then Maryland senator Barbara Ann Mikulski. In the late eighties, Bill Tangires sold the diner property to Alan Katz, a restaurant chain owner. A Baltimore Sun article detailing the closing of the Blue Top Diner stated, “An avid investor, he [Bill Tangires] hopes to become a stock analyst with a discount brokerage house, perhaps with the First National Bank company.” Although Bill Tangires left the restaurant business to pursue finance, the property of the diner still remains a part of the food business today.
At the corner of Saratoga and Liberty Streets, people will find an unassuming parking lot. While this parking lot does not appear interesting at first glance, this lot used to be the center of political life as well as a ritzy tourist attraction. In 1885, Robert Rennert founded the enormous Rennert hotel which boasted six stories and 150 personal rooms. Inside, Rennert filled the hotel with elaborate decoration adding everything from marble and fresco, to the use of Edison’s electricity. The construction of the Rennert Hotel filled Baltimore city officials with hope and pride; through the opening of the hotel, Rennert sought to promote the growth of the city. Even up to the year the hotel closed in 1939, the Rennert continued to serve their staple traditional Maryland dishes such as the essential Maryland crab cake and the Chesapeake Bay diamond-back terrapin. While the Rennert Hotel’s dazzling decor is impressive, it is important to remember the workers which made the hotel operate smoothly. Henry Cummings, the Rennert Hotel’s head chef during the late nineteenth century, helped to upkeep the hotel’s culinary reputation.Henry Cummings was a self-made man. The son of former slaves, Cummings went on to be the head chef at the Rennert and ran a catering business. Mr. Cummings specialized in the cooking and preparation of terrapin. In Mr. Cummings’ obituary published in the Baltimore Afro American in late 1906, Mr. Cummings’ culinary notoriety is highlighted: “He prepared, dressed and shipped terrapins to Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and to different parts of Europe.”
H&S Bakery began first as the vision of Isidore Paterakis, an immigrant from Chios, Greece. In 1943, Isidore Paterakis turned H&S Bakery into a reality by going into business with his son-in-law Harry Tsakalos. What began as a small family-owned bakery morphed into a bread-making powerhouse. H&S Bakery expanded throughout the twentieth century to include Northeast Foods and the Schmidt Baking Company. Following in his father’s entrepreneurial spirit, John Paterakis, struck a deal with the fast food giant McDonald’s in the seventies. Based in Baltimore, Northeast Foods, under the management of H & S bakery, is now a supplier of sandwich buns and English muffins for McDonald’s restaurants on the east coast.
The company remained an active part of the Harbor East community in the nineties. According to one Baltimore Sun article published in 1993, H&S Bakery “produce[d] 370,000 rolls. Every hour.” While continued growth led to H&S Bakeries opening in seven states, the Paterakis family chose to remain in Baltimore. H&S Bakeries continued to work within the food industry and in the nineties, John Paterakis expanded the company to include property development with the formation of H&S Properties Development Corporation. The H & S Property Development Corporation, along with the Bozzuto family, is responsible for the creation of Liberty Harbor East. The Paterakis and Bozzuto families’ combined efforts have resulted in a revitalized Harbor East complete with new, luxurious residential areas and retail stores.Today, the Paterakis family continues to remain an integral part of the east Baltimore community and is the “largest family-owned variety baker in the U.S.” according to H&S Bakery’s website.As you drive up Charles Street through Old Goucher, you might notice some odd details on the facade of the neighborhood Safeway. A carved sentinel eagle keeps watch, and the word “CADILLAC” is etched onto a stone arch over the market’s main entrance.
These curiosities were preserved from what once occupied this site. In the early years of the Great Depression, the Chesapeake Cadillac Company constructed an Art Deco showroom building at 2400 N Charles Street. Art Deco is a design movement popularized in the 1920s, its architecture characterized by elegant, streamlined surfaces and patterns. This uniform style evokes the man-made, and reflects a faith in modern technology and machinery.
The story goes that the showroom’s site was selected by the famous World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Before winning 26 aerial combat duels in Europe and earning a Medal of Honor, Rickenbacker had already established himself in the States as a prodigious racecar driver and automobile designer. When Rickenbacker returned home as a war hero, he had boundless access to entrepreneurial ventures and employment. In the late ‘20s, as a general manager of sales for General Motors’ Cadillac division, Rickenbacker went up in a plane to scout sites that would “tap Baltimore’s affluent neighborhoods.” As he approached the intersection of Charles Street and University Parkway, he said “you want to be as close to this area as possible.”
Chesapeake Cadillac, which counted Frank Robinson, Glenn L. Martin, Dorothy Lamour, and T. Rowe Price among its clients, remained on Charles Street until 1995. This made it one of the last dealerships in Baltimore to haul out to the suburbs of Baltimore County. This exodus of businesses from the city had begun in the mid-20th century, in response to a strong, new customer base of white families who had moved en masse to the suburbs. The company’s plans to move to Cockeysville’s car dealership corridor were in the works before Safeway proposed building there in 1994—it was known that suburban locations were more lucrative. The company exists today in Cockeysville as Frankel & Chesapeake Cadillac.
When Safeway proposed building a store here in 1994, public opinion was split. Advocates for historical preservation, including Donna Beth Joy Shapiro, vice president of 91Ƶ at the time, argued that a supermarket and its parking lot would break up the traditional streetscape, worsen traffic, and waste architecturally significant buildings. Safeway’s arrival “pulled the rug out from under” a local development team’s plans to bring a supermarket to a location just blocks away.
However, most residents welcomed the idea of a Safeway for its convenience and low prices. At the time Old Goucher did not have a full-service supermarket, and weekly shopping trips at the small, family-owned Crown Market were too expensive for most. The Design Advisory Panel, responsible for maintaining a high standard of architecture and urban design in the city, rejected Safeway’s first two design proposals—but Safeway satisfied the Panel after presenting the design incorporating elements from the showroom, and obtained approval to build soon after. Buildings in the way, including the showroom, were demolished, and the store was completed in 1997. A Sun article from 1998 lauded the project as a community asset, adding, “it’s ironic that many activists fought the store, fearing it would bring new problems.”
When Safeway was awarded the building contract, some criticized this piecemeal approach to historical preservation as lazy. The architectural historian Phoebe Stanton argued that “if you want to preserve the building, preserve the building. I don’t approve of this business of breaking dishes up and saving three little chips.” However, decades removed from this heated debate, it is clear that historical preservation—even on the smallest scale—provides us a window to the past.
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