By Richard F. Messick
Like all inns and taverns of the early 19th century, the Three Tuns Tavern was used as a meeting place for social and business transactions, not unlike coffee shops today. Austin Woolfolk used this location in his early days as a slave trader before…

By Richard F. Messick
Elijah Sinners’s Tammany Hall Hotel was one of the many taverns and hotels in the area where people met to carry on a variety of business transactions. Placing advertisements in local newspapers to arrange business meetings in public houses was a…

By Richard F. Messick
Slave trader James Franklin Purvis, followed the custom of the day, which was to use a hotel or tavern as a business address. One of the locations he used for this purpose was Whitman's Eagle Hotel here on West Pratt Street, between Charles and…

By Richard F. Messick
Built before 1782, the Indian Queen Hotel was one of the first public houses erected in Baltimore. It saw many notable guests in its day, such as Presidents Washington, Adams, Van Buren, and Jackson. Francis Scott Key also spent a night here after…

By Richard F. Messick
The General Wayne Inn was one of the many inns, hotels, and taverns, where enslaved workers were purchased or sold. For instance, the following ad was posted August 4, 1817. “10 or 15 Negroes Wanted. From 10 to 25 years of age, for which, if speedy…

By Francesca Cohen
From the humblest of beginnings, John H. Murphy Sr. rose to become the founder of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, which had an office here at 1336 N Carey St in the 1910’s. Murphy was born enslaved in Baltimore on Christmas Day, 1840. He was…

By Tyler Wilson
The white two-story house at 2702 Elsinore Ave was once the home of Violet Hill Whyte, the first African-American police officer in the Baltimore City Police Force. It was through her service as an officer and a social worker that Whyte became a…

By Aimée Pohl
Amidst the grand old houses, some vacant and in disrepair, and important civil rights historic sites in Historic Marble Hill in West Baltimore sits the Henry Highland Garnet Neighborhood Park. It is a leafy green space, with flowers, trees, giant…

By Francesca Cohen
There are very few people who have made an impact on American popular culture like Tupac Shakur. His music served to inspire a generation of musicians--music that was inevitably shaped by his time in Baltimore. Although Shakur did not grow up in…

By Tyler Wilson
On Beechwood Drive, leading up to the Rawlings Conservatory in Druid Hill Park stands a small historical marker. Erected in 1992, it sits where the main clay tennis courts in Druid Hill Park once stood. It was at these courts that one of the…

By Francesca Cohen
Before the corner of N Charles and W Eager was a CVS, it was a Baltimore institution: Club Hippo. For more than 35 years, Club Hippo was a refuge for Baltimore’s queer community. The dance venue was always a place where, as the club's motto read,…

By Francesca Cohen
Although the famed African American lawyer and civil rights advocate George McMechen is remembered fondly for his service to the community, he is best remembered for living on McCulloh Street. In June 1910, McMechen and his family moved to 1834…

By Tyler Wilson
In the middle of East Lexington Street stands a building that sticks out from the rest. Carved into its brick wall is the face of a horned figure looking out over the street. Today, this building houses Fred W. Frank Bail Bonds, but it was once the…

By Francesca Cohen
The first African American owned company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Parks Sausage Company, was headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Parks Sausage was successful because of its founder, Henry Parks. Parks started the company in…

By Tyler Wilson
Just outside the limits of Baltimore City, on a piece of land jutting out into the Patapsco River, Maryland’s first steel plants were built. In 1887, the Maryland Steel Company purchased an area of agricultural marshland called Sparrows Point. Four…

By Richard F. Messick
This was one of two locations where John N. Denning operated as a slave trader. He was here at 104 N. Exeter Street in the early 1840s. (Street numbers were changed in 1887, making this 264 N. Exeter today.) He later moved in 1849 to a pen at 18 S.…

By Richard F. Messick
Centre Market, aka Marsh Market, was the thriving heart of early Baltimore commerce, primarily due to its proximity to the docks and the cargo arriving regularly. Vendors filled the space along Market Place from Baltimore Street to Pratt Street at…

By Richard F. Messick
Bernard Moore Campbell and his brother Lewis operated a slave pen at this location, 26 Conway Street, from 1844 to 1848. Like most successful traders of enslaved people at the time, the Campbells relied on agents working the region to supply them…

By Richard F. Messick
Barnum’s City Hotel, located where the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse stands today, was a common meeting place for all manner of transactions, such as buying, selling, or trading of products. It was common to see advertisements for the sale or…

By Aimée Pohl
Tiny Bedford Square in Guilford, at the intersection of St. Paul and North Charles streets, hosts a life size bronze bust of Simón Bolivar. Also referred to as the “George Washington of South America,” the Venezuelan-born Bolivar was the military…

By Julian Frost
Two Art Deco columns, flanking the entrance of the 25th Street Safeway parking lot, serve as the only concrete evidence of the central decision-making site during Baltimore’s era of school desegregation. From 1931 to 1987, a complex of two…

By Aimée Pohl
In 1939 sociologist, activist, author, and cofounder of the NAACP, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois, had a house built at 2302 Montebello Terrace in the neighborhood of Morgan Park. Barred from many neighborhoods by Jim Crow laws and…

By Julian Frost
At the Upton Metro Station at Pennsylvania Avenue and Laurens Street, an explosion of color greets transit patrons at the conclusion of their escalator journey. “Baltimore Uproar,” a monumental mosaic by the renowned African-American artist Romare…

By Julian Frost
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…

By Sydney Kempf
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…

By Sydney Kempf
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…

By Sydney Kempf
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…

By Sydney Kempf
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…

By Sydney Kempf
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,…