In 2014, a new species appeared in the Baltimore Harbor. With 5 feet tall googly eyes, a playful persona, and a steady diet of harbor detritus, Mr. Trash Wheel is cleaning up the harbor one swallow at a time. The brainchild of local inventor…

In the 1660s, David Jones, a Quaker farmer, selected a location for his farm in the relatively new area of Baltimore County (founded in 1659), just north of what was known as Coles Harbor, and along the banks of a river that he called Pacific Brook.…

Among a sea of church steeples that dot East Baltimore, the five domes of St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Church stand apart with their burnished glow. Since 1992, the Cossack Baroque style church, modeled after Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv,…

Of the many repurposed industrial buildings in Baltimore’s urban landscape, perhaps none is as extraordinary as Silo Point. Looming high above the brick rowhomes of Locust Point, Silo Point luxury condominiums began life as a mammoth grain elevator…

A raked mast of a Baltimore Clipper ship stands tall on land in Rash Field on the south end of the Inner Harbor. Accompanied by a block of pink granite inscribed with four names of lost crewmembers, the installation serves as a memorial to the Pride…

The ghostly traces of the words “Baltimore and Ohio Railroad” painted on the brick wall give a clue to the former life of the substantial building that anchors the east end of Fell Street. Designed by architect E. Francis Baldwin in 1897 for the…

The story of Harbor Point is the story of innovation, invention, and reinvention. Harbor Point is the former home of Baltimore Chromium Works (now AlliedSignal), a company built around Isaac Tyson’s discovery of a local source for chromium in the…

For Baltimoreans of a certain generation, it’s hard to imagine the harbor without Harborplace. Bolstered by the enthusiastic support of Mayor William Donald Schaefer, the brainchild of urban pioneer, James Rouse brought millions of visitors to…

The sepia-toned Canton railroad transfer bridge rises out of the harbor near the Canton Waterfront Park like an industrial Arc de Triomphe. It is one of three such structures—remnants of an early chapter in Baltimore’s industrial maritime and…

On March 23, 1868, the S.S. Baltimore arrived in Locust Point, ushering in a wave of future Americans with origins across Europe. Their journeys are remembered in this community through the Baltimore Immigrant Museum and the Baltimore Immigration…

How the National Aquarium came to be in Baltimore is the story of three different aquariums that, over time, became one. Our story begins in the middle. In the 1970s, Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer and his Commissioner of the city…

In 1912, The Baltimore Sun heralded the forthcoming construction of the Broadway commercial and recreation pier. Citing the success of similar piers in New York and Boston, the Sun declared that piers for recreation “furnish a place for mothers and…

Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse takes its name from its original location—the rocky shoals where the mouth of the Patapsco River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The sandy, soft bottom of these shoals necessitated the construction of a screwpile-style…

Docked in the northwest corner of the harbor, the magnificent USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, a National Historic Landmark, and the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy. She was built in 1854, using a small…

Even before it opened, the anticipation around Baltimore’s World Trade Center was unmistakable. “It promises to be the handsomest building built so far in the redevelopment area, a graceful symbol for Baltimore’s renewal and an emblem of the…