East Baltimore Church of God, the second oldest congregation established by Lumbee Indians in the City of Baltimore, was in 1955 known as the “Upper Room” Church because services were held above Gordon Cleaners at the corner of Baltimore and Wolfe streets. Sometime prior to 1961, the church ceased to meet at this location. This property was auctioned in 1963.
The Volcano Bar is easily the most infamous Indian bar of Baltimore’s “reservation” era, but it was in existence long before the clientele was mostly Indian. It first appears in a Sun ad as the “Volcano Restaurant” in 1944. In the 1960s through 1972, the Volcano was owned by Greek wwii veteran, Costas “Gus” Themelis, and his wife, Stella Themelis. It became almost exclusively an Indian bar during this time and had a reputation for erupting every weekend. A July 1978 Baltimore Magazine article deemed The Volcano “the meanest bar of all time,” and claims it was “the only local bar that has ever had a patron shot off his bar stool with a bow and arrow.” Mr. Themelis and his wife sold the bar to the City in 1972. It was since razed and housing occupies its former site.
In 1956, the oldest congregation in Baltimore City founded by Lumbee Indians (presently known as South Broadway Baptist Church) rented the storefront at 1918 E. Fairmount Avenue and adopted the name “Fairmount Avenue Missionary Baptist Church” under the ministry of Rev. Geneva Locklear (Lumbee), and her husband, Smitty (also Lumbee). The church remained at 1918 E. Fairmount until 1967. The entire area bounded by E. Fayette, N. Wolfe, E. Baltimore, and N. Washington streets has since been razed and redeveloped.
Vince’s Bar was owned by Vincent Staico. His wife, Matilda, “Ms. Til,” often ran the bar. Former patrons describe it as a quiet neighborhood bar, where there was seldom, if ever, fighting. Vince’s had pool tables and American Indian community members made frequent use of them. Staico sold the building to the City in 1972.
Baltimoreans celebrated the two young sharpshooters credited with killing British General Robert Ross in the 1850s with this monument, their final resting place.
Daniel Wells and Henry Gough McComas gained fame as the "boy heroes" of the Battle of Baltimore. Though the historical record may offer slim evidence to confirm their role during the battle, Baltimoreans have celebrated the legend of Wells and McComas for over 150 years. The young men, aged nineteen and eighteen, served as privates in Captain Edward Aisquith's Sharpshooters of the 1st Rifle Battalion of the Maryland Militia during the Battle of North Point. Wells, an Annapolis native, and McComas had enlisted in Baltimore, where they both worked as apprentices in the city's leather industry. Their battalion first encountered Ross at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 14, just three weeks before the Battle of Baltimore. Although evidence verifying this claim is scant, Wells and McComas have been credited with firing the shots which killed beloved British commander General Robert Ross. Whether or not it was Wells and McComas or other American sharpshooters, this act certainly dealt a heavy blow to the British in their attempt to capture Baltimore. They could not confirm or deny the story themselves since Wells and McComas were found dead after the Battle—two of the twenty-four Americans killed at North Point. It wasn't until some forty years after the battle that Wells and McComas gained local celebrity status. During the 1850s, two military companies formed the Wells and McComas Monument Association and solicited subscriptions from citizens to erect a monument in their honor. The group had the boys' bodies exhumed from their vault in Baltimore's legendary Green Mount Cemetery. They laid in state at the Maryland Institute building at Market Place, where thousands of Baltimoreans came to pay their respects. The Sun described the ceremonial catafalque, a platform on which the two coffins rested, as having "a marked degree of good taste" draped in black. To commemorate Defenders' Day in 1858, Baltimoreans carried the coffins in a procession to their current grave site in Old Town's Ashland Square. An unnamed Baltimorean composed an original song to mark the occasion: , sung to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. These two local sons were painted in a romantic, dramatic fashion: "'Twas McCOMAS and WELLS - so Fame the fact tells; / This heroic deed their fame evermore swells, / As martyrs of liberty! - And we now raise / A monument high, to continue their praise." In addition to this song, famed playwright Clifton W. Tayleure published a play,, performed at the Holliday Street Theatre. Their remains lay at Ashland Square for fifteen years before the monument was completed. The simple twenty-one-foot tall obelisk, made of Baltimore County marble, cost a total of $3,500. The City Council ultimately provided most of the funding.
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One of the thirty original Anglican parishes in Maryland, St. Paul's parish has been a fixture of Baltimore since the city's incorporation. Many influential citizens attended this church, including George Armistead.
Old St. Paul’s Church is known as the mother church of all Episcopal congregations in Baltimore. As one of the thirty original Anglican parishes that the General Assembly created under the Establishment Act of 1692, St. Paul’s (also known as Patapsco) Parish covered the sparsely populated area between the Middle River and Anne Arundel County from the colony’s northern border to the Chesapeake Bay. In 1702, worshippers began meeting near Colgate Creek—the same Baltimore County peninsula that saw the Battle of North Point in 1814.
The parish relocated to the the newly incorporated Baltimore Town in 1731. Church leaders selected lot 19 on a hill overlooking the harbor where the church still remains today. St. Paul’s is distinguished as the only property that has remained under its original ownership since the founding of Baltimore. By the late eighteenth century, St. Paul’s counted among its members some of the most powerful men in Maryland. St. Paul’s worshippers included Declaration of Independence signer and Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase (whose father Thomas Chase served as the church’s rector in the mid-eighteenth century); Revolutionary War officer and governor, congressman, and slaveholder John Eager Howard; Thomas Johnson, a delegate to the Continental Congress and Maryland’s first governor; and George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore.
By 1814, the congregation had been meeting for over 120 years. Rev. Dr. James Kemp served as rector, a position he had held since November 1812. Nineteenth century local historian John T. Scharf described Kemp as “a man of high literary and scientific culture, and an author of much repute.” The parish began construction on a new neoclassical building, designed by Robert Cary Long, Sr., in May 1814 just a few months before the British attack on the city. Completed in 1817, the new St. Paul’s stood up until 1854 when a fire destroyed the building. Scharf noted that “the steeple was considered the handsomest in the United States.” The congregation rebuilt on the same lot, commissioning Richard Upjohn to design a new church built between 1854 and 1856. The striking structure on North Charles Street has remained a landmark for generations of Baltimoreans.
Beyond fulfilling a spiritual mission in the city, St. Paul’s—like many other churches of the day—has also provided social services. The church established the Benevolent Society for Educating and Supporting Female Children (also known as the Female Charity School) in 1799. The school sought to prepare orphans and underprivileged girls ages eight and above “to be valuable and happy members of society.” Charles Varle’s 1833 book described the society as having thirty “inmates” who were fed, clothed, and educated in a building attached to the church.
For more than 85 years, the large sign atop the Stieff Silver Building has spelled out the name of a company once synonymous with Baltimore. The movement of the Stieff Company from downtown to the bucolic neighborhood of Hampden mirrored the changes that Baltimore and many other cities experienced during the twentieth century. The Kirk-Stieff Company was the oldest silversmith firm in the country when the factory closed its doors in 1999, marking the end of a tradition that had flourished in Baltimore since the early nineteenth century. Entrepreneur Charles Clinton Stieff founded the company in 1892 at 110 W. Fayette Street. After several name changes, the Stieff Company became a major player in the silver manufacturing business. In 1894, Stieff opened a showroom at 17 N. Liberty Street near the Howard Street shopping district, which turned Stieff into a familiar name for generations of Baltimoreans. Watch our Five Minute Histories video on this site! Charles C. Stieff’s son Gideon took over in 1914 around the same time automobiles were changing the pace of city life. A few years later, a trip to Druid Hill Park would forever change the face of Stieff Silver. Gideon and his future wife Claire were enjoying an outing at the park when she pointed out a plot of land that she thought would suit the company’s plans for a new factory. They were looking at the mill village of Hampden, just across the Jones Falls from the park. Although the city annexed this community in 1888, it still remained relatively isolated well into the twentieth century. This sylvan streetcar suburb attracted the Stieffs, who marketed the new building’s “out-of-the-congested district” location with unlimited parking to appeal to shoppers in the mid-twentieth century. The Stieff Company purchased the land from Mount Vernon Mill in 1922 and broke ground on the project in 1924. Production began at the Hampden location in 1925 and was so successful, the company decided to double the size of the factory in 1929. They might have reconsidered the addition had they been able to predict the Great Depression, but the company managed to hang on during the difficult economic times of the 1930s. A degree of stability was established in 1939 when Stieff signed a contract to reproduce silver for Colonial Williamsburg. During World War II, when the federal government took control of the nation’s silver supply, the company made surgical equipment and aluminum ice trays to remain solvent. They began working with pewter in the 1950s, which quickly became the majority of their business. Demand for silver and pewter was high in the postwar period when the company opened a retail store on the 200 block of N. Howard Street and, in 1970, built a large addition to the Hampden factory. They purchased S. Kirk and Son, another Baltimore silversmith firm that had been in the business since 1815, and assumed the name Kirk-Stieff in 1979. The company, like many other industries in Baltimore and across the U.S., faced serious challenges in the 1980s and 1990s. The Howard Street showroom closed in 1981, adding yet another vacant storefront to the once bustling commercial center. The Kirk-Stieff Company ceased operations in January 1999. Local developers Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse bought the building for $1.5 million in 2000. After investing $13.2 million to renovate the interior into office space, several nonprofit groups moved to the Wyman Park Drive location in 2002. Although its occupants have changed, the large electric sign atop the Stieff Silver Building remains an icon for many Baltimoreans.
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The massive bronze sculpture of Orpheus at Fort McHenry represents an early 20th century celebration of the man who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner.
One of the most striking monuments related to the Battle of Baltimore is the nearly forty-foot tall statue of the Greek god Orpheus greeting visitors to Fort McHenry since 1922. Dedicated to Francis Scott Key as well as the Old Defenders, the sculpture takes a more allegorical approach than monuments to others involved in the Battle of Baltimore. The U.S. Congress appropriated $75,000 for a sculpture at this site in 1914 to mark the centennial of the Star-Spangled Banner-though the song did not become the national anthem until 1931. The Fine Arts Commission hosted a national contest to select the design, with Charles Niehaus' twenty-four-foot depiction of the Greek god of music and poetry selected as the most fitting memorial to Key. The bronze statue of a nude Orpheus playing the lyre stands atop a white marble base fifteen feet high. The low relief frieze on the base include a likeness of Key as well as other figures from mythology. World War I delayed the project for a eight years. President Warren G. Harding dedicated the monument on Flag Day in 1922 with a live broadcast from WEAR—the first time a president had been heard on the radio. Congress paid Niehaus $33,121 (above the original appropriation) for Orpheus with the Awkward Foot. Fort McHenry continued to serve as a military installation into the twentieth century. The Fort was briefly used as a city park from 1914 to 1917, when it returned to federal service as General Hospital No. 2 around World War I. When President Harding visited the Fort to dedicate the monument, the buildings had grown increasingly dilapidated. The Baltimore News American described the contrast between the empty fort and the new statue in August 1924:
"Deserted barracks and shacks gradually sink into ruin and weeds flourish where a great American victory of arms was won in the War of 1812. A movement is gaining headway to restore the ancient fort and transform it into a Federal park, worthy of its traditions and sightly to the tourists who come from distant places to visit the spot where a brilliant chapter of American history was written."The movement to restore the fort, with vocal support from locals in Baltimore, successfully reinvigorated the site. President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation in 1925 preserving Fort McHenry as a national park under the War Department--the first national park related to the War of 1812. Baltimoreans and visitors could stroll the grounds, walk along the water, and access this historic site freely once again. The National Park Service assumed stewardship in 1933. Six years later, the fort became the only NPS site with the dual designation of National Monument and Historic Shrine. Park service officials sought to distinguish historic sites of military importance with expansive natural landscapes in the west by using the categories of "National Monument" and "National Park." Outspoken locals pushed for the inclusion of "Historic Shrine" as it described the fort as a place of inspiration (for Key). James Hancock, President of the Society of the War of 1812, explained his position in a 1938 letter to Congressman Stephen Gambrill. The Fort, he argued, was "a distinctly historical place where people can go to review and renew those patriotic impulses that had much to do in making the national character." The defense of Baltimore took place both on land, at North Point, as well as by sea at Fort McHenry. However, interest in the Star-Spangled Banner story in the twentieth century—embodied by Orpheus—came at the expense of North Point. Decades of federal resources have focused public attention to the Battle of Baltimore on Fort McHenry.
Founded in 1880, the Woman's Industrial Exchange helped craftswomen discreetly earn a living and operated at 333 N. Charles Street in various forms. Launched by Mrs. G. Harmon Brown, the Woman's Industrial Exchange was founded "for the purpose of endeavoring by sympathy and practical aid to encourage and help needy women to help themselves by procuring for them and establishing a sales room for the sale of Women's Work." It was the third oldest women's exchange in the country. The building was constructed in 1815 and was used as a boarding house before the Exchange bought it in the late 1880s.
The Exchange underwent extensive renovations in 2004 (incidentally, winning a 91ĘÓƵ historic preservation award for the work). The renovations maintained the original materials (and charm), while modernizing the apartments and commercial kitchen.
In June 2020, the Exchange stoped operating and the Maryland Women's Heritage Center (MWHC) moved into the building. The MWHC is the first comprehensive state-based women’s history center and museum of its kind in the nation. It has adapted the storefront of this landmark building into an exhibit center and small event space. Changing exhibits in the bay window facing North Charles Street feature various women artists and their creations. The center celebrates Maryland women —past and present, famous and not—and adds “HERstory to history to tell our story.”
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The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is a Living Classrooms Foundation campus (and headquarters). It is a national heritage site that celebrates the contributions of African Americans in the development of Baltimore’s maritime industry while preserving one of the city’s oldest existing waterfront industrial buildings. The museum chronicles the saga of Frederick Douglass’ life in Baltimore as an enslaved child and young man. It also highlights the life of Isaac Myers, a free-born African American labor leader and businessman.Â
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (later Douglass) was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in February 1818. When he turned eight years old, his enslaver forced him to work for a family in Baltimore. When Frederick was fifteen, his enslaver sent him back to the Eastern Shore to labor as a fieldhand. Frederick rebelled intensely. He educated other enslaved individuals, physically fought back against a "slave-breaker," and attempted to seize his freedom through a bold, but ultimately unsuccessful plan.
Frustrated, his enslaver returned him to Baltimore. This time, Frederick met a young free Black woman named Anna Murray. Anna Murray used her money to buy him a train ticket, risking her own safety to help him seize his freedom. On September 3, 1838, with the ticket in hand, he boarded a northbound train dressed as a sailor. In less than 24 hours, Frederick arrived in New York City. From there, he became the most important leader of the movement for African-American Civil rRights in the 19th century (read more about Frederick Douglass ).Ěý
Kennard's Wharf at the end of Philpot Street, the very place where Frederick Douglass entered Baltimore as an enslaved child in the 1820s, later became the site of one of the most successful black-owned businesses in Baltimore City, the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. It was founded by Isaac Myers and other Black labor organizers. A caulker by trade, Myers was born free in Baltimore in 1835. The ship-building/maritime industries, and specifically the caulking trade, of Baltimore were historically interracial. By the close of the U.S. Civil War, black workers were systematically pushed out of this type of employment to make room for growing numbers of white workers in the city. This reality led Myers and others to found the Colored Caulkers Trade Union Society.In the early 1860's, the union formed a cooperative company. Pooling their resources, the workers issued stock and quickly raised $10,000 in subscriptions among Black Baltimore residents. On February 12, 1866, they purchased a shipyard and railway, which they named the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. Within months, the cooperative employed 300 black caulkers and received several government contracts. Ultimately it employed a number of white workers as well.Â
The success of Myers’s union in Baltimore encouraged black caulkers in other seaport cities to organize. Myers was elected president of the (Colored) National Labor Union, the first organization of its type in U.S. history. Myers appealed to black workers to join unions and called on white unions to accept them as full members. Myers also organized and became president of the Maryland Colored State Industrial Fair Association, the Colored Business Men’s Association of Baltimore, the Colored Building and Loan Association, and the Aged Ministers Home of the A.M.E. Church. He also authored the Mason’s Digest. Myers was married twice and had several sons, one of whom became a leading political figure in Ohio. Isaac Myers died in Baltimore in 1891.
As African Americans in Baltimore sought to redefine themselves in the 1880s -- politically, geographically, socially -- the city’s black pastorate served as a vital source of leadership. None of this group stood taller or closer to the vanguard the Rev. Dr. Harvey Johnson.
Harvey Johnson was born in Fauquier County, Virginia on August 4, 1843 to Thomas and Harriett Johnson, enslaved persons on a local plantation. When freedom came during the course of the U.S. Civil War (1861 - 1865), the Johnsons, like other freedpeople, migrated to Alexandria, Virginia.
Johnson received his "calling" to preach, and enrolled at Washington, DC's Wayland Theological Seminary in 1868. Four years later he graduated, with honors, and began of brief period of stints working in the rural countryside of Maryland and Virginia under the auspices of the Home Mission Society. During that same year, 1872, Baltimore's Union Baptist Church sought a replacement for its late pastor Rev. William P. Thompson who died unexpectedly at the age of thirty-two. Union Baptist sent for young Rev. Johnson in November 1872. On April 17, 1877, Harvey Johnson married Amelia E. Hall, an Afro-Canadian born in Montreal (1858). Their marriage yielded three children, Harvey, Jr (born?), a daughter, Jessie E. (1878), and a son, Prentiss (1883).
Outside of her responsibility to family, Amelia Johnson made a name for herself in the juvenile and religious literature circles. Beginning in 1887, she began to publish a monthly literary magazine, The Joy, as an outlet for black writers, especially women, and as an inspirational resource for black youth. Filled with short-stories, poetry, and literary items of interest, The Joy was well received and praised. Amelia Johnson also published work in newspapers, both secular and church-affiliated. In fact, during the early 1890s, she penned a regular column, "Children's Corner," in the Baltimore Sower and Reaper. During that same period, Amelia Johnson had a full manuscript published by the American Baptist Publishing Society, one of the largest publishers of the time. According to her son, Harvey Johnson, Jr., Amelia was her husband's, "best friend, and his chief comfort, his guide in all his business matters...I still consider [their] union a perfect one."
In 1885, Reverend Harvey Johnson founded the Mutual United Brotherhood of Liberty of the United States of America (MUBL). The members of the MUBL pledged themselves, "to use all legal means within our power to procure and maintain our rights as citizens of this our common country." In mid-October 1885, the group held a three-day conference on the status of Black civil rights. Frederick Douglass addressed the conference.
Also in 1885, Johnson and the MUBL successfully engineered the admittance of Everett J. Waring to the Maryland Bar, concluding a fight begun by others in the 1870s. With the bar door opened, Johnson, the MUBL, and the small but growing coterie of black lawyers began an attack on inequalities. Black exclusion from jury boxes, the absence of black teachers from the city's public schools, the deteriorated condition of black public schools, and the infamous bastardy codes effecting black women, were the more visible of the fights taken on by the MUBL legal team.
Rev. Dr. Harvey Johnson then became involved in the Niagara Movement, the predecessor of the NAACP. In 1906, Johnson successfully challenged Maryland’s separate car law by filing suit and winning against the B&O Railroad, predating the Freedom Riders by about six decades.
Rev. Dr. Harvey Johnson served Union Baptist Church faithfully for more than fifty years, until his death in January 1923, one year after his wife Amelia. As aptly described in an obituary appearing in the Baltimore Afro American, Johnson's death marked the end of an era in leadership.
Today, the Johnson's former home is covered in formstone but appears to be occupied and in fair to good condition. This property is located within the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District.Â
Union Baptist Church traces its origins to 1852 and a group of fifty-seven worshipers meeting in a small building on Lewis Street. It was the fifth oldest African American congregation in Baltimore and financed entirely by African Americans. The first pastor of the church was the Reverend John Carey. In 1866, the Lewis Street congregation merged with members of Saratoga Street African Baptist Church, forming Union Baptist Church. When Rev. Harvey Johnson arrived in 1872, he found a modest congregation of perhaps 270 members. Harvey Johnson’s dealings with the Maryland Baptist Maryland Baptist Union Association (MBUA) in particular, and with prejudiced white Baptists in general, served as a proving ground for his leadership and vision. He took the skills honed in the battle for equality among all Baptists and transfered those skills as he entered the fight for equaliy among all people. Johnson’s original cause of friction with the MBUA stemmed from its paternalistic approach to black people and black Baptist churches. Not only did black ministers categorically receive less pay than white counterparts, but black churches were slow to realize full and equal political priviledges within the state denomination governing apparati. This problem was more troubling once, thanks in no small part to Johnson himself, black numbers in the state’s Baptist churches began grow. By 1885, Union Baptist's membership surpassed two thousand members for the first time. Rev. Johnson's response to this discrimination was two-fold: economic independence and institutional autonomy. This situation exploded throughout the 1890s as Johnson urged black congregations to free themselves of white purse strings, and to get out of the Union Association altogether. One of Rev. Johnson's most controversal speeches brought this issue to fore. In September 1897, speeking in Boston, Johnson made, "A Plea For Our Work As Colored Baptists, Apart From the Whites." Johnson called for black Baptists to move as a group toward self-determination. The Union Baptist Church’s Gothic design features stained glass windows created by John LeFarge, the renowned artist known as the inventor of the art of using opalescent stained glass.
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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?
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 Brewers Exchange, a gorgeous, three story terra cotta Renaissance Revival building designed by noted local architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who designed the Bromo Seltzer Tower, as well as many other Baltimore buildings) that stands at the corner of Park Avenue and Fayette Streets, was built in 1895 by the ale and beer brewers guild of Baltimore and constructed to serve as a forum for negotiating securities and commodities associated with the local brewing industry.
This handsome building, which features a host of elaborate decorative touches, including two-story half-round Ionic pilasters, cartouches, pediments, window surrounds, and a garland frieze. stands as a monument to the efforts of local Maryland brewers, many of whom were German immigrants who brought brewing techniques and technology with them across the Atlantic and whose hard work established Baltimore as the national center for their trade. Though the exchange only occupied this building for a decade, the still visible "BH" etched in the building's façade serves as a solid reminder of the prominent role brewing had in the economy and culture of Baltimore in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Baltimore’s Locust Point was a rapidly growing neighborhood between the Civil War and 1920. One major factor in the neighborhood’s growth was an immigration pier and depot built in 1867 by the B&O Railroad and the North German Lloyd Shipping Company. Over 1.2 million immigrants landed at the pier between 1868 and 1914, making Baltimore the third largest port of entry in the U.S. at the time (after New York and Boston). B&O extended their railroad tracks up to the pier for the many travellers who purchased a combination ship and rail passage. Most of the earliest immigrants came from Germany but, by the 1890s, a larger number of people came from the Russian and Austrian Empires. Seeing the ever growing number of immigrants, the local German United Evangelical Christ Church decided in 1904 to build a mission house, known as Immigrant House. The mission offered immigrants room and board, clothing, help in finding work, English lessons, and religious ministry. Sailors from the North German Lloyd ships could also stay there when their ships were in port. By 1916, the pastor reported that 3,710 people had stayed at the mission since it opened 12 years earlier. While “The Great Wave of Immigration” from Europe ended in Baltimore with the outbreak of the first World War, Immigrant House remained a boarding home for sailors until the 1930s and truck drivers until the 1950s. Since then, the building has been used for church offices, storage, daycare, and Sunday school. The original boarding rooms on the second and third floors remained unoccupied and unchanged, though in deteriorating condition. Baltimore City designated both the church and Immigrant House as local landmarks in 2006. The Baltimore Immigration Memorial, Inc. (BIM), formerly the Baltimore Immigration Project, was established to preserve and publicize the history of the 1.2 million immigrants who came here. In 2006, this group led the effort to design and install a sculpture garden, Liberty Garden, at the end of Hull Street on the grounds of what is now the property of Under Armour. The immigrants had disembarked at Piers 8 and 9, which were once located nearby. BIM and the Locust Point Community UCC have since worked together for the creation of the Baltimore Immigration Museum on the ground floor of Immigrant House on Beason Street, not far from the Liberty Garden. The museum’s initial exhibit tells the story of global immigration in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the U.S. and Baltimore between 1830 and 1914. The stories of Baltimore’s major immigrant groups are told, as well as the story of anti-immigrant movements of the past. Future projects at the Baltimore Immigration Museum will focus on migration and immigration since 1914, including the history of the migration of African Americans to Baltimore from 1914 to 1970, as well as the “new” immigrants, both Latino and Asian, who have arrived in Baltimore since the liberalization of U.S. immigration laws in 1965.
Tudor Arms Apartments on University Parkway is one of the few cooperative housing apartments in Baltimore. It is composed of two buildings, which sit within the Roland Park Historic District. The first of the two apartment buildings, which is five-stories tall, replaced a popular tavern at the site known as Biddy Rice’s Saloon. After purchasing the site from the Roland Park Company in January 1911, the Wentworth Apartment Company would begin constructing the first building, at a cost of $100,000 at the time. The company’s secretary, J.G. Valiant, would be the building’s renting agent.
Two renowned architects, Clyde Nelson Friz and Edward Hughes Glidden, worked together on the building’s architecture, with brick and stone in the style of Tudor Revival, and terra cotta trimmings. The building opened to residents in 1912 with the name Tudor Hall. This “high-class apartment,” as it was described at the time, had a working elevator (which remains in operation), steam heat, hardwood floors, and other amenities. The nearby concrete bridge over Stony Run had only been built four years earlier, which is still intact. A train, part of the Maryland and Pennsylvania railroad, would run underneath the bridge until January 1958 when it stopped operating there.
Friz and Glidden partnered again for the second building, named Essex Arms, which had the same architectural style as the first building. It opened to residents in 1922. The building’s landlord, Guilford Realty Company, later purchased the building from the Wentworth Apartment Company. The apartments were available to rent on a month-to-month basis. On February 25, 1929, the Baltimore City Council unanimously voted to rename the dirt road to the south of the apartment building from “Tudor Hall Avenue” to “Tudor Arms Avenue.” The name is still used to this day.
In May 1947, three residents, Marie Codd, Nora Quillen, and Ralph Quillen purchased the buildings from the landlord, planning to make Essex Arms and Tudor Hall into a cooperative housing corporation, naming it Tudor Arms Apartments. This came to pass in October 1947.
Some residents challenged this and sued the newly-established cooperative. However, the highest court in Maryland, the Court of Appeals, ruled in favor of the cooperative, and against the tenant challengers, in the case of Tudor Arms Apartments v. Shaffer. The ruling, which reversed a circuit court decision, held that those who bought cooperative apartment units were the owners indefinitely, as long as they exercised “good behavior.” Their decision would later be cited by courts in Maryland, Illinois and Massachusetts in cases involving other housing cooperatives, such as Greenbelt Homes and Village Green Mutual Homes.
Sometime after the founding of the Tudor Arms housing cooperative, likely in either the late 1940s or 1950s, a bridge connecting Essex Arms and Tudor Hall would be constructed, signifying that both buildings were one community. Specific building names would later be dropped. The terms “North Building” and “South Building” would be used in their place. Over the years, Tudor Arms has been the home to many prominent residents. This has included epidemiologist Wade Hampton Frost, historical scholar Kent Roberts Greenfield, sculptor Ephraim Keyser (and his wife Fannie), music educators Grace Harriet Spofford and Elizabeth Coulson, Theo Lippman (father of Baltimore writer Laura Lippman), and former Maryland State Senator Jill P. Carter.
In the late 1960s, the Tudor Arms Board opposed plans by the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks to change neighboring Wyman Park into a recreation space, wanting it to be “natural,” instead. To justify their decision, they cited their support for Johns Hopkins University’s purchase of 31 acres of the park for university development in 1961, which included the creation of San Martin Drive.
In recent years, residents have honored the apartment community’s history with “Tudor Arms Day” in August 2024 and “Tudor Arms Day 2” in April of this year. This included a guided tour to historical spots of note, multiple tri-fold historic display boards, a self-guided scavenger hunt, an unveiling of a painting commissioned by residents of the North Building, and other activities.
The West University Parkway concrete bridge arcs over Stony Run to connect the neighborhoods of Roland Park and Tuscany-Canterbury. Hikers can follow a pedestrian pathway from Wyman Park, and walk under the bridge, which serves as a viaduct since it carries University Parkway in an arc over Stony Run, before entering the Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood. This bridge not only connects these neighborhoods but those living in nearby residential apartments, whether the Carlyle to the Northwest, the historic Tudor Arms Apartments to the Southwest, and various apartment complexes to the Southeast, such as Hopkins House, the Carolina, and University West apartments. The viaduct also ensures easy access to John Hopkins University’s Homewood campus which sits less than a half of a mile southeast of the bridge. Etchings on the bridge's four corners indicate that it was constructed in 1908. Although a map released in 1906 seems to show that the bridge was present, this is referring to a previous steel trestle bridge, which the Olmsted Brothers saw when surveying the land a year before. The new bridge was wide enough to accommodate vehicles, trolleys, and pedestrians at the same time. One early design for the bridge was proposed by city engineer Benjamin T. Fendell. He was influenced by the ideas from the Olmsted Brothers, who recommended improvements to enhance the bridge's "architectural beauty," so that the design did not appear "weak." Ultimately, Wyatt & Nolting Architects, a partnership between architects William G. Nolting and James B.N. Wyatt, known for the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse, and later for the Physics Building on the Homewood campus and the Garrett Building in downtown Baltimore, were chosen to complete the final design. The bridge itself was constructed by the city’s engineering department for a cost of $25,000. At the time of its construction, the Maryland and Pennsylvania (Ma & Pa) railroad had been running alongside Stony Run for four years, through the newly-created Wyman Park. The Olmsted Brothers described the latter, in their comprehensive 1904 report on development of public grounds in greater Baltimore, as a "beautiful piece of sylvan Scenery" and noted its beach trees and topography. The trustees of Johns Hopkins University, including William Wyman (which Wyman Park is named after), had deeded these lands to the city. The Ma & Pa railroad would continue to run under the viaduct until June 1958. University Parkway, which replaced Merryman Lane, a narrow country road, allowed for the construction of many buildings in the area. This included Tudor Hall in 1911, which opened for residents in 1912. It would later become the North Building of a housing cooperative named Tudor Arms. A few years after the bridge's construction, the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University came into existence. There were plans to incorporate the campus into the city grid. Although the campus opened for students in 1914, the full relocation of the university to that location would not be finished until two years later. Spanning almost 87 feet, this concrete arch viaduct is considered one of the most notable, and historic, bridges in the U.S., possibly for its wide span, its design, the fact it has remained intact for over 117 years, or because it connects two neighborhoods together. The bridge, according to a report prepared for the State Highway Administration in October 1995, showed the city's commitment to arch design. This is because the same year the city began construction of two other reinforced concrete bridges, one at Hollins Street, over Gwynns Run, and another at Edmondson Avenue, over Gwynns Falls. The viaduct encouraged additional residential development. The Topographical Survey Commission of Baltimore noted, in a 1912 report to city leaders, that the land required for building University Parkway was deeded without cost to the city by Johns Hopkins University and the Roland Park Company, and praised this land grant to the city for its advantages. The viaduct also helped connect the city's parks. A few years later, the city installed street lamps along the bridge. Some years after that, in 1919, curbs and sidewalks along the bridge were raised and improved. The University Parkway viaduct remains intact to this day, continuing to serve as a vital route used by residents, delivery services, emergency vehicles, and others alike. Â
Canterbury Hall Apartments, also known as Canterbury Hall, sits at 100 W. 39th Street, and is part of the Tuscany-Canterbury Historic District. It was the first apartment building in Tuscany-Canterbury. Its architecture is in the late Tudor Gothic style. George Morris, a well-known real estate developer who sold racially-restricted houses in the 1910s and 1920s, and later was criticized for his anti-Jewish business policies, built the apartment house. Canterbury Hall is not to be confused with a building of the same name in Washington, D.C. Canterbury Hall was first conceived of as “Haddon Hall.” The landwas sold by the University Parkway Company to a developer, the Fireproof Apartment Company, prior to its construction. The outside consists of brick with accents of stucco, and a half-timbered English style with oak beams. With fifteen apartments spread across three stories, each apartment has gas fireplaces, hardwood floors, glass doorknobs, and other amenities like porches. Each apartment is separated by fireproof walls that are eighteen-inches thick. At the time that the apartment house was built, Canterbury Hall only rented to white people. Canterbury Hall was designed by renowned architects, Clyde Nelson Friz and Edward Hughes Glidden, as part of their Glidden & Friz partnership. The apartment building opened in 1912, the same year that Tudor Arms Apartments (under the name of Tudor Hall) opened on University Parkway. Unlike Tudor Arms, Canterbury Hall has no elevator. Over the years, the apartment house became the home of professional chemists, history and English teachers, Goucher College alumni, U.S. military captains (like Henry C. Evans), medical researchers (Paul Galpin Shipley), naval commanders (Frederick J. Bell), engineers, inventors, school commissioners, tutors, and bank executives. Even members of the Glidden family, such as Glidden himself, lived there. It was also a place for cocktail parties, informal luncheons, and weddings. Although there have been renovations and changes over the years, Canterbury Hall remains intact to this day, serving as a residence for some, and a beautiful, grand, and historic landmark for others.
The L. Gordon & Son factory is a sixty-four thousand square foot industrial building on the corner of South Paca Street and West Cross Street, a few blocks from M&T Stadium. It is a three-story building of lightly-ornamented but utilitarian brick, with a Star of David design in the brickwork at the top. In the past century, the factory has housed at least four family businesses and each one has left their mark.
Fr. Bergner & Co. erected the factory on Paca Street, designed by architect J. Edward Sperry, in 1905. Two brothers, Frederick and William Bergner, ran the company for over 25 years manufacturing picture frames, photo albums, and other small luxuries. William died in 1902, leaving behind his parents, three brothers, and wife. It was Frederick who moved the business to the new factory and continued to oversee the company until his death in 1919.
The onset of the Great Depression, however, was a greater challenge than fire. In 1930, the company began leasing out the top floor of the Paca and Cross Street factory. In 1931, the company sold two tracts of land adjoining the Paca and Cross Street factory, one to the city to expand Sterrett Street, the other to the Catholic Church. By 1933, at the trial for a fraud case involving forty-two shares of Bergner & Co. stock, the prosecuting attorney implied that “the company consisted only of an empty warehouse.” In March 1933, Fr. Bergner & Co.’s remaining assets were seized, and in 1934 the court-appointed trustee sold the Paca and Cross Street factory to The Hopkins Place Savings Bank, who had held the mortgage for $47,000.By 1940, L. Gordon & Son was operating out of the Paca & Cross Street factory and they purchased the building in 1942. Paca and Cross Street was at least L. Gordon & Son’s third factory in the fifty years since its founding, but the firm would remain in that building for the next sixty years.
L. Gordon & Son was, as the name suggests, a family-owned business. Louis Gordon started the enterprise in 1891, making paper boxes by hand at his house on Orleans Street. He was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his son Paul was, from the time he was a young man, an active participant in several Jewish and Zionist organizations in Baltimore.
Given his spiritual and political affiliations, it seems likely that Gordon installed the six-pointed star design at the top of the outer wall of the factory around the time they acquired the building. In 1897, the six-pointed star, known as a 'Magen David', was adopted as a symbol by the First Zionist Congress. From that point forward, the star became a symbol of Jewishness in general in the early twentieth century. The crest of Hadassah, the women’s branch of the American Zionist movement and the organization to which Paul Gordon's wife belonged, included the Magen David in their crest design at least as early as 1915.
After Paul's death the company passed to his son, Bertram I. Gordon. In 1951, L. Gordon & Son bought several lots surrounding their factory from Barnett L. Silver, who had spent the last decade buying them up from individual homeowners. Besides buying up half of the block at Paca & Cross Street, Gordon & Son also added a warehouse in 1967 at 2020 Hollins Ferry Road.
In May 1985, Bertram Gordon died of a heart attack. His widow Marjorie Gordon took over the company after his death, and it remained in operation at least through 1991. Marjorie Gordon died in 2009 at the age of eighty. The company sold the factory to Toybox, LLC, in 1997, and it has remained largely empty ever since.
The First Unitarian Church of Baltimore has stood at the corner of Charles and Franklin Streets for over two centuries. Inside the 1818 landmark, visitors can find beautiful Tiffany glass and original furnishings designed by the architect and crafted by noted Baltimore artisans. Beyond the building’s remarkable architecture, the congregation has served as the spiritual home to many local civic leaders, such as Enoch Pratt and George Peabody. Recognizing the significance of the building as the oldest purpose-built Unitarian church in North America, First Unitarian Church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972. The history of the church began in 1817, when Baltimore had sixty thousand inhabitants and Mount Vernon Place was the undeveloped edge of the city. A group of leading citizens met in the home of merchant and city councilman Henry Payson on February 10, 1817, and, according to church histories, committed “to form a religious society and build a church for Christians who are Unitarian and cherish liberal sentiments on the subject of religion.” The original name selected for the church, The First Independent Church of Baltimore, reflected the independence of thought and action that became the hallmark of this group of freethinkers and those who succeeded them through subsequent generations. The church was later renamed First Unitarian in 1912. Designed by Maximilian Godefroy, the French architect of Saint Mary’s Chapel and the Battle Monument, the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore is recognized as the finest American example of French Romantic Classicism. Dedicated on October 29, 1818, the church was a daring modern design when it was constructed. It utilizes the basic shapes of the cube and the sphere with a minimum of detail on the flat planes to emphasize the geometry of the structure. The chancel features a pulpit, designed by Godefroy and executed by William Camp, and two sets of sedilia. One set of two chairs and a loveseat was designed by Godefroy and is original to the church; the other set was designed by Tiffany and added in the 1890s. In the late nineteenth century, the church undertook a major reconstruction of the interior of the sanctuary to improve the acoustics of the space. Joseph Evans Sperry designed a barrel-vaulted ceiling with supporting arches. The reconstruction also added a large Tiffany mosaic, seven Tiffany windows, and a magnificent Henry Niemann organ. The Tiffany mosaic of the Last Supper, designed by Tiffany artist Frederick Wilson, is composed of 64,800 pieces of favrile glass. The Niemann organ and the church’s Enoch Pratt Parish Hall (built in 1879 at 514 N. Charles Street), were both gifts of Enoch Pratt, a member and leader of the church for sixty-five years. The First Unitarian Church of Baltimore is important to Unitarian Universalists throughout the country because of a landmark sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing on May 5, 1819, at the ordination of the church’s first minister, Jared Sparks. The sermon, which defined the essence of Unitarianism in the United States and led to the formation of the denomination in 1825, came to be known as the Baltimore Sermon. Channing emphasized freedom, reason, and tolerance and taught that the way we live is more important than the words and symbols we use to describe our faith, a truth that has inspired a commitment to social justice along with theological diversity. This spirit helped shape the work of the congregation and its members over the decades. In 1874, the congregation organized Baltimore’s first vocational school for teenagers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the First Unitarian Church sponsored an Industrial School for Girls, a Boy’s Guild, and Channing House, a settlement house for South Baltimore. Church members have contributed to the city through public service and philanthropy in many ways up through the present day.
In 1990, Catonsville resident Charlie Kucera discovered an illegal garbage dump at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where the bwTech@UMBC Research and Technology Park is located today. The university cleared away the contents of the dump relatively quickly, but the residents of Catonsville saw the discovery as evidence that UMBC did not care about the environment. This incident worsened the already strained relationship between the residents of Arbutus and Catonsville and the UMBC administration.
The next year, UMBC announced to the public their plans for a research park—the first university research park in the state of Maryland. While some residents were enthusiastic about the possible job opportunities and improvement to the local economy, Charlie Kucera and other residents were unconvinced of the park’s potential. Their opinion of the university had been damaged by their discovery of the dump, on top of which, they were concerned about adding another large scale building in close proximity to their homes and were wary of increased traffic and possible chemical leaks which could harm the environment.
Despite the community’s objections, plans for the research park continued. Residents felt slighted by the university’s unwillingness to incorporate them in the decision making process. These discrepancies led to a series of zoning conflicts between Arbutus, Catonsville, and UMBC administrators lasting for nearly a decade, halting any and all construction. When UMBC finally agreed to scale back the size of the research park in 2000, work began on the bwTech@UMBC Research and Technology Park.
Since the completion of the first buildings in 2002, the research park continues to be a thriving asset to the university. The research park’s two campuses, bwTech@UMBC North and BWTech@UMBC South, are both nationally recognized science and technology business parks that provide a home for over ninety different technological companies and research institutions to this day.
This small building sits squarely inside the area decimated by the Great Baltimore Fire and surprisingly survived. It was built in 1901 for Alex Brown and Sons: the oldest investment banking firm in the United States. Noted architecture firm Parker and Thomas designed the building. The stained-glass dome inside is thought to be the work of Gustave Baumstark.
Alex Brown and sons was founded in 1800 and stayed in independent operation for almost 200 years. In 1997, it was acquired by Bankers Trust and was ultimately integrated into Deutsche Bank.
The Alex Brown and Sons Building owes its survival of the Great Fire to its small size. As sparks and embers flew through the air igniting the much taller buildings all around it, a thermal updraft acted as a sort of fan keeping the flying flames from landing on the building’s roof. The heat of the fire was so intense that it caused the brownstone to crack apart near the front door. The broken stone is still visible, since the Alex Brown and Sons firm choose not to replace the cracked stone as a reminder of what almost happened. The building was renovated in 1996 and reopened as a bank, which it remained until 2016. A restaurant opened on the location in 2019, but had to close in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.
For over sixty years, tall broadcasting towers have stood high above the old homes in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood. The two tallest towers now standing on Television Hill beam out the signals of four television stations and three radio stations across the city and surrounding area. A third smaller tower relays municipal police, fire and rescue personnel communications. Of course, this area wasn’t always called TV Hill. It may be hard to believe but there wasn’t always television. Before test patterns and Saturday morning cartoons, the area was known as Malden Hill. In the summer of 1948, only twenty thousand or so Baltimore families (and only one in ten households in the United States) owned televisions. The first two stations in the city— WMAR-TV and WBAL-TV—offered fuzzy reception at best for most local viewers. By the end of 1948, however, WAAM–TV (Channel 13), owned by Baltimore businessmen and Brothers Ben and Herman Cohen, had started construction on a new station and new transmission tower. The station picked Malden Hill, 334 feet above the surrounding landscape, to give their signal a better chance of reaching Baltimore televisions. With this advantage, the station's new 530-foot tower stood 864 feet above sea level and WAAM–TV had the first television studio in Baltimore designed specifically for this still new technology. On November 1, 1948, the station went on the air and the next day stayed on the air for twenty-three hours straight covering incumbent Democrat Harry S. Truman surprise win over Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election. Flash forward nine years and WAAM-TV had changed both call letters and ownership. In May 1957, the station sold to Westinghouse Broadcasting Company and was renamed WJZ-TV. The competing WBAL-TV’s studios and broadcast tower had already relocated to Malden Hill several years earlier. Still, despite being home to two of Baltimore’s three television stations, only a few folks called it TV Hill until 1958 when a new tower began to rise. TV reception could be a bit tricky in those pre-cable and satellite days of rooftop antennas or set top “rabbit ears.” WJZ and WBAL chose the elevated ground in Woodberry for their transmitter towers as a partial solution, but broadcast engineers knew that even higher towers could improve both reception and station coverage. Though air traffic concerns imposed an upper limti on how high a station could build, both stations had room to grow.
But neither WJZ nor WBAL could afford the expense of a new tower on their own, especially when the stations sought to go as high as the law allowed. The solution was a partnership between the neighboring stations to build one gigantic tower topped with two separate transmitter masts. When Baltimore’s oldest TV station, WMAR, heard of this plan, station managers decided they wanted in. WMAR worried that if viewers could get two stations by pointing their antennas in one direction they wouldn’t bother making adjustments to tune in to WMAR—especially if their broadcast looked worse than the competition coming from the new tower. Baltimore’s three TV stations struck a unique deal to share one gigantic tower, a tower topped with three separate transmitter masts, a first at the time. The stations would all have improved coverage and picture quality at a cost they couldn’t have borne alone. Baltimore area television viewers could take a “set it and forget it” approach to their antennas. Construction began in October of 1958 and continued through the spring. In 1997, Fred Rasmussen recalled on the history of the tower for the Baltimore Sun describing the 500 tons of nickel-chrome alloy steel used to build a structure covered with 2 1/2 tons of paint. The tower was stabilized by guy-wires made from three miles of steel wire rope anchored by 33-foot square concrete slabs buried 16 feet deep. Together the tower base and cable anchors required a remarkable 2,250 tons of concrete. Finally, in a ceremony on August 9, 1959, Governor J. Millard Tawes joined station managers to throw the switch and turn on the broadcast. At the time of its completion, the giant $1.125 million “candelabra tower” on what was then known to everyeone as TV Hill, was the tallest free-standing broadcast tower in the United States. A 270-foot addition in 1964 brought the top to 1315 feet above sea level. Today, however, the tower isn’t even the tallest in the neighborhood. A second tower completed on a nearby hill in 1987 by Cunningham Communications holds that honor, at 1,549 feet above sea level. The newer tower is a single mast structure, and though both hills and the three towers they support are now collectively known as TV Hill, there’s still only one candelabra tower.