Site of Whitman's Eagle Hotel
Site where the business of slavery once took place.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
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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 Light Streets. His two other locations where he acquired and/or sold people were 2 S. Calvert Street and on Harford Avenue between Biddle and Preston Streets. He used his Harford Avenue location as his jail, where he kept the people he purchased.
