Harbor Point
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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 early 1800’s. It is also the current home to Constellation Energy, an energy company that also has roots in 19th century Baltimore.
Baltimore Chromium Works was the brainchild of Isaac Tyson. If you’ve ever painted any walls of your home in red, yellow, or green paint, you have Tyson to thank.
In the early 1800s, Isaac Tyson was a college geology major who came home to Baltimore County on a break from classes when he noticed a rock used to prop open a screen door at a local country store. He recognized it as chromite, a mineral that contains iron and chromium oxides.
Tyson knew that chromium was a key ingredient in paint manufacturing: it is the magic ingredient that allows pigments to stick to paint. During the colonial era, colored paint was expensive and had to be imported from Europe and having green or red walls was a marker of wealth (think of James Madison’s house in Virginia where the walls are a vibrant color known as Miami Green); the interiors of most homes were simply painted white.
Tyson was the first to determine that specific ecosystems correlated to rich chromium veins (Soldiers Delight in western Baltimore County was among local areas Tyson mined for chromium). He set out and walked from Virginia to Vermont buying up farms that had chromium veins, and at one point, controlled 95% of the world’s chromium.
Tyson’s company Baltimore Chromium Works (later Allied Chemical) was headquartered on Harbor Point. The company used this location to refine chromium, a procedure that is dirty and highly toxic. Hexavalent chromium is also a significant carcinogen (it’s the same chemical that Erin Brockovich advocated against). Waste from the refinery was dumped into the harbor, which became significantly polluted.
Harbor Point eventually became a $100 million superfund site. To clean up chromium polluted soil, a giant wall was erected around the site, and an industrial sump pump removed contaminated water 24 hours a day. Post-clean-up, the empty space was used to host Cirque du Soleil and later served as a temporary beach recreation area. Today, the area is dedicated to mixed development, including being home to the headquarters of Constellation Energy, a company whose story goes back two centuries.
Constellation is an energy supplier that provides electricity and natural gas to Baltimore Gas & Electric (BG&E), a local utility that was the first gas utility in the United States. Somewhat improbably, this utility had its origins in an art museum.
In 1816, Rembrandt Peale, son of the famous portraitist Charles Wilson Peale, used gas lighting to illuminate the Peale Museum, his gallery and museum that became the first purpose-built museum in the United States. Gas lighting was not only a novelty; it also allowed Peale to sell tickets in the evening, so people could visit the galleries after sundown. Historical records report that passersby would stand on Holliday Street in front of the Peale Museum marveling at the brightness of the light coming from its windows, which was an unprecedented sight in a world of candles and oil lamps.
Peale was an innovator and an entrepreneur, and by 1917, he had started the Baltimore Gas Company and secured the contract to supply gas streetlights throughout Baltimore, the first city in America, and among the first in the world, to be lit by gas; hence its nickname, “Light City.” Peale manufactured the gas in a shed at the back of the museum. It was supplied to the city in wooden pipes made from hollowed out logs. Two hundred years later, the business Rembrandt Peale founded at his museum continues to provide power to the city.
