Artist Jim Sanborn’s first public sculpture, the Patapsco River Project was created as part of the Baltimore Sculpture Symposium sponsored by the city and administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development during the summer of 1977. Four artists were commissioned to each create gateway pieces for the city. The only other surviving gateway piece from the symposium is the Atlantic Blue Roller Column by Dominick Cea on Russell Street. This early work reveals Sanborn's long-standing interest in Mayan culture, the temples of Guatemala in particular. Abstract and horizontal, the work stands at the far edge of an open field directly fronting the Patapsco River, extending almost 80 feet along the water’s edge. Ten pyramidal shapes are aligned symmetrically, five on either side of an opening that contains a pool and allows a view of the river. In the pool, there is a grate made of aluminum. Light streams through the open space and is reflected on the grate and in the pool. Resting on top of the flattened pyramids made of concrete is one continuous lintel of weathering steel. The lintel carries four more pyramidal shapes, again symmetrically placed, two on each side of the central opening, and again flattened. The Department of Housing and Community Development assisted the artists at every turn, providing honoraria, materials, equipment, and assistants. For Patapsco River Project, Curtis Steel contributed between 12,000 and 15,000 pounds of Mayari-R steel, the city contributed and poured the concrete, and Edward Renneburg & Sons sheared the steel for free. Sanborn estimates that it might have cost him $100,000 to assemble the piece independently. Since 1977, Sanborn's sculpture has been displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His best known commission is an enigmatic cryptographic sculpture, entitled Kryptos, that was unveiled at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia on November 3, 1990. In 1977, the concrete was bright white, the steel was a beautiful velvety brown, and the grass was green and lush. Unfortunately, very little maintenance has taken place since the work was first installed and few people are aware of the work or Sanborn's national reputation. Despite the neglect, the silhouette of the piece was and still is impressive today.
Fort Carroll is a 3.4 acre artificial island and abandoned fort located within the shadow of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The fort was designed by then Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee, and construction was started in 1848 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under Lee’s supervision. The fort was named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. Before it was created, the only military defensive structure between Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay was Fort McHenry. Additionally, a lighthouse (now abandoned) was built to aid navigation into Baltimore’s harbor.
Though never completed and never used as a fort, the architecture is quite amazing, featuring curved granite stairs, brick archways, etc. It originally had 350 cannon ports, a blacksmith shop, carpentry shop, and a caretaker's House. In 1864, it was flooded by torrential rains and declared vulnerable and obsolete. Subsequent uses of the fort included storing mines during the Spanish-American War, holding seamen, and as a pistol range. Most of the steel was salvaged for the war effort and the government abandoned the fort in 1920.
While there have been plans over the past ninety years to redevelop the site, nothing was able to come to fruition and it has fallen into extreme disrepair.
On the morning of September 12, 1814, five thousand British troops landed outside of Baltimore and marched on the city of Baltimore with a plan to capture the city. Major General Robert Ross, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who had burned the White House and the U.S. Capitol just a few weeks before, led the advance. However, within hours Ross was dead after being shot by an American – perhaps Daniel Wells and Henry G. McComas although their claim on the deed is now considered unlikely. Following the Battle of North Point, the British forces realized the strength of the defenses at Hampstead Hill, now located within Patterson Park, and returned to the site of their landing to head south towards New Orleans.
In 1896, the federal government took over the British landing site and completed construction on a coastal artillery fortifications to defend Baltimore from naval attack in 1901. In 1900, Secretary of War Elihu Root named the site Fort Howard after John Eager Howard, a Baltimore native and Revolutonary War veteran who is buried alongside veterans of the War of 1812 at Old St. Paul's Cemetery.
In 1902, five of the six coastal artillery batteries were named for men who witnessed the War of 1812 including Lt. Levi Clagget who died at Fort McHenry, Col. Davis Harris who commanded a regiment of artillery, Brig. Gen. John Stricker who commanded the 3rd brigade Maryland Militia, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson who served as Captain of Volunteer Artillery at Fort McHenry, and, of course, Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner. A sixth battery was named for Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, a U.S. Army doctor who died in Cuba in 1900 while conducting research on yellow fever. Known as the "Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate," Fort Howard was manned by the 21st, 40th, 103rd, and 140th Companies of the Coast Artillery Corps but remained quiet throughout WWI and up until the fort shut down in 1926.
Fort Howard was transferred to the Veterans Administration which built a hospital on the grounds in 1943. Today the coastal batteries are incorporated into Fort Howard Park and, while covered in ivy and masked by bushes, endure as a reminder of the importance of the spot from the War of 1812 and on.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the far eastern edge of Baltimore was marked by Harris Creek, a modest tributary of the Patapsco that spilled into the River near where Boston Street and Lakewood Avenue in Canton today. In an area of Baltimore that was still sparsely settled, Harris Creek did feature one major enterprise—the shipyard of Samuel and Joseph Sterrett. The shipyard included a large blacksmith shop, sheds for boat builders and mast wrights, and a serviceable road back into Fells Point for workers and supplies. The Master Constructor at the shipyard was David Stodder, an experienced shipwright who held seventeen enslaved people, making him one of the largest slaveholders in Baltimore at the time. Among the ships produced at the shipyard was the 600-ton Goliath, owned by Abraham Van Bibber who also co-owned the privateer sloop Baltimore Hero commanded by Thomas Waters during the Revolutionary War. Van Bibber reportedly intended the Goliath for the East India Trade. The most famous ship to sail down Harris Creek was the U.S. Frigate Constellation launched in 1797. (The second USS Constellation, built in 1854, contains portions of this original.) Stodder built the ship according to the design of Naval Constructor Joshua Humphreys. The Constellation was just one of six frigates that Humphreys designed in the 1790s to pursue Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean. While Harris Creek was filled in during the early nineteenth century to make more land for the quickly growing Baltimore City, evidence of Canton's maritime past endured. In 1908, locals uncovered the charred remains of a 130-foot clipper ship that had burned at its pier and had been buried 400 feet inland from the present shoreline. In the 1880s, Harris Creek was turned into a major municipal sewer with an outfall at Boston Street. In 1901, Baltimore constructed a brick arch bridge to carry Boston Street that has remained there through the present.
In 1985, WJZ-TV local news cameras captured the view of the Inner Harbor from above as they documented the quickly changing landscape from the back seat of a helicopter. An aerial vantage point was nearly a necessity to take in the wide range of recently completed development projects and recently announced new building sites. In 1984, developers and city officials had announced twenty projects to build new buildings or reuse existing buildings around Charles Center and the Inner Harbor.
That same year, Charles Center and the Inner Harbor won an "Honor Award" from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) recognizing the conversion of the former industrial landscape into a destination for tourists and locals as "one of the supreme achievements of large-scale urban design and development in U.S. history."
Fort McHenry's history began in 1776 when the citizens of Baltimore Town feared an attack by British ships. An earthen star fort known as Fort Whetstone was quickly constructed. The fort, like Baltimore, was never attacked during our first conflict with England. In 1793, France declared a war on England that became known as the Napoleonic Wars. In 1794, Congress authorized the construction of a series of coastal forts to protect our maritime frontier. Construction began on Fort McHenry in 1798 and, by 1803, the masonry walls we view today were completed. The fort was named for James McHenry, our second Secretary of War. In 1809, the U.S. Army's first light artillery unit was organized here. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England, in part to "preserve Free Trade & Sailor's Rights." In August 1814, British forces marched on Washington, defeated U.S. forces, and burned the Capitol. Then, on September 13-14, the British attacked Fort McHenry. The failure of the bombardment and sight of the American flag inspired Francis Scott Key to compose "The Star-Spangled Banner."
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