The National Aquarium

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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 Department of Housing and Community Development, Robert C. Embry, visited Boston and became entranced with the city’s waterfront New England Aquarium. Returning home to Baltimore, Schaefer was determined to include an aquarium as part of the forthcoming inner harbor development.

In 1976, Baltimoreans voted to fund the aquarium, and ground was broken in 1978. But construction of the aquarium, with its distinctive glass pavilion and concrete turret lit with neon waves, experienced a series of setbacks, and Mayor William Donald Schaefer promised to take a swim in the new aquarium if it didn’t open on July 1, 1981. It didn’t. And on July 15, as promised, the mayor took the plunge. The Sun reported that before of a crowd of around 300 spectators:

“The Honorable William Donald Schaefer, wearing a turnoff the century bathing costume in place of his dignity, clutched a large rubber duck and stepped into the seal pool, disappearing up to the brim of his straw boater.”

The mayor chatted with three seals and reclined on a rock with a woman dressed as a mermaid. Frank A. Gunther, Jr., the chair of the aquarium board, joined him.

The cost of a ticket to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, as it became known when it opened to the public in August 1981, was $4.50—more than twice it was promised to be (and approximately a tenth of what a youth ticket costs over 40 years later).

About that somewhat confusing name. Although Congress granted the aquarium in Baltimore the right to use the title “National Aquarium,” there was already a “National Aquarium” in Washington, D.C.. Located in the basement of the Department of Commerce Building (later known as the Herbert C. Hoover Building) since the 1930s, this aquarium traced its history to the first national aquarium, founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1873. The Woods Hole aquarium moved to Washington in 1878 and remained there until 2013, first under the auspices of the federal government, then under the National Aquarium Society, before the National Aquarium in Baltimore took over the management in 2003. When the federal government decided to renovate the Hoover Building in 2013, 1,700 animals were moved to the National Aquarium in Baltimore (now known as the National Aquarium), and the National Aquarium in DC quietly closed its doors.

Today, the National Aquarium is the largest paid tourist attraction in Maryland; over 50 million people have visited since its opening in 1981. The aquarium is home to 20,000 different animals, including sloths, reptiles, and tropical birds. Its tanks hold over 2.2 million gallons of water. Over the decades, the aquarium’s footprint has expanded to include the Pavilion on Pier 4 (1990) and the Australia: Wild Extremes exhibit (2005). In 2024, the National Aquarium Harbor Wetland Project opened with plantings of over 130 shrubs and 39,000 grasses designed to attract and protect wildlife like diamondback terrapins, jellyfish, oysters, blue crabs, and river otters. This project echoes the National Aquarium’s mission to research and conservation and helps give the public a glimpse into what Baltimore looked like two hundred years ago, as well as what it might look like a few years from now.