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.…

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 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…

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 almost every kitchen in Baltimore, and maybe Maryland, there is a tiny yellow, blue, and red tin of Old Bay seasoning. It is an essential part of local cuisine. Yet, most people are unaware of the spice’s dramatic Jewish history. Old Bay was…

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,…

In 1894, William G. Scarlett founded the William G. Scarlett Seed Company. Born in Baltimore in 1873, George D. Scarlett was a true entrepreneur who chased the American dream. At twenty-one, George Scarlett began working in the seed industry by…

In the twentieth century, Pier 8 in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and then Broadway Pier in Fells Point used to be the launching point for the steamboats of the Wilson Line. The Wilson Line extended from Philadelphia to Wilmington to Baltimore and ran a…

Archibald Hilton Bull founded the A. H. Bull & Co. in 1902. The company originally ran steamship lines from New York to Florida. Eventually A. H. Bull & Co. expanded to include an office in Baltimore. In the early 1900s, when Baltimore’s…

In 1879, Charles T. Bagby and A. D. Rivers founded the Bagby and Rivers Furniture Company, the predecessor to the Bagby Furniture Company. Bagby and Rivers manufactured furniture and in their 1882 furniture catalog, the company advertises mainly…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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),…

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…

USCGC (United States Coast Guard Cutter) TANEY, a National Historic Landmark, is the last surviving warship that was present and fought at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941. Named for former Secretary of the Treasury,…

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…

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…