Downtown's West Side
Tour Description
For over two hundred years this neighborhood has been a center of activity to entrepreneurs and merchants of all kinds, suffragists and civil rights protesters, and much more. Start from Lexington Market and explore the rich history of Downtown's west side. Many of these stories were created in partnership with the University of Maryland Baltimore County Department of History, Public History Track.
Locations for Tour
Hutzler's
"If you wanted the good stuff, you went to Hutzler's," said Governor William Donald Schaefer and for generations of Baltimoreans, Hutzler's represented the height of downtown shopping, simply the place to shop. Many Marylanders…
Read's Drug Store
Though the Baltimore Sun heralded the structure at the southeast corner of Howard and Lexington as an Art Deco design icon from the time of its construction in 1934, this building's role as an early and vital witness to a historic, but long…
Five and Dimes on Lexington Street
In contrast to the high-end shopping at Stewart's or Hochschild-Kohn's on Howard Street, West Lexington Street offered goods of all kinds at affordable prices thanks to a row of five-and-tens from Read's Drug Store down to…
A.S. Abell Building
Erected in 1879 as an investment property for Arunah Shepherdson Abell, founder of The Baltimore Sun, the Abell Building was designed by famed Baltimore architect George Frederick—architect for Baltimore's City Hall, Hollins Market, and the Old…
Baltimore Bargain House
One of the largest businesses on the West Side in the early twentieth century the Baltimore Bargain House—a mail-order wholesale business that employed over a thousand people and earned profits in the millions that grew to become the fourth largest…
Stewart's
When Samuel Posner moved his successful dry goods business to the corner of Lexington and Howard, architect Charles E. Cassell's gorgeous and ornate white Renaissance Revival building—complete with roaring lions and majestic wreaths and fluted…
Bromo Seltzer Tower
While few remember the slogan of the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Company—"If you keep late hours for Society's sake Bromo-Seltzer will cure that headache"—the iconic Bromo-Seltzer Tower has been a Baltimore landmark since its construction in 1911. At…
Little Joe's
Long before places like Sports Authority or Dick's Sporting Goods opened their doors, Little Joe's on the northwest corner of Howard and Baltimore was selling everything from camping equipment and fishing gear to bikes and saddles. In…
Charles Fish and Sons
With a gleaming black marble façade reading "Charles Fish and Sons Company" and Victorian brick arches above, the architecture of this building clearly points to a varied history. The surprising story of the building begins before the start…
Hippodrome Theatre
Designed by noted Scottish American theatre architect Thomas Lamb, the Hippodrome Theatre opened in 1914 as one of the first theatres in the United States to operate both as a movie house and a vaudeville performance venue. Local theatre impresarios…
G. Krug & Son Ironworks and Museum
"There is hardly a building in Baltimore that doesn't contain something we made, even if it is only a nail," boasts Theodore Krug, heir to the oldest continuously working iron shop in the country. G. Krug & Son is one of the oldest companies in…
Saint Alphonsus Church
Designed by early Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long in 1845, the St. Alphonsus Church has been called "the German cathedral" for its Southern German neo-Gothic style. The church was originally established with a large German congregation…