All Stories: 492
Stories
Hollins Market
The market was conceived in 1835 after piano makers Joseph Newman and his brother Elias Newman were given permission by the city to erect a market on the 1100 block of Hollins Street. In 1838, winds from a severe storm destroyed the original market,…
Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Company
August Rosenberger got into the broom business by chance in the late 1800s. One of his customers, a farmer who was unable to make ends meet, asked Mr. Rosenberger if he would accept a small shack with one broom machine and one sewing machine in…
Northern Central Railroad Baltimore Freight Shed
Built by the Northern Central Railroad, the former Baltimore Freight Shed is a rare example of composite timber and iron roof construction of the mid nineteenth century.
The roof structure is comprised of a series of tricomposite trusses with…
Hochschild Kohn Warehouse at 520 Park Avenue
In 1942, after taking a powerful loss during the early years of the Great Depression, the Hochschild Kohn & Co. Department Store was finally ready to expand. An anchor for this planned growth was their brand-new warehouse at 520 Park Avenue that…
American Can Company
The oldest building on the Can Company site was constructed by the Norton Tin Can and Plate Company in 1895, and by 1900, the company was the largest can manufacturer in the United States. The founder of the Norton Company became the first president…
A. Hoen & Company Lithography Plant
In 1834, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Weber and their nephew, August Hoen, carried pieces of lithographic machinery, lithographic stones, and ink powders from Coblenz, Germany, to America. Upon arriving in America in 1835, Weber founded the E. Weber and A.…
Second Chance Architectural Salvage
Second Chance was founded in 2001 to develop solutions to sustainable employment and environmental issues. In 2003, a training and employment program was created to address the pressing needs of Baltimore City residents who were facing multiple…
Baltimore Streetcar Museum
Baltimore welcomed public mass transit in 1859 as the city ballooned to 170,000 people and the need for affordable transportation swelled. As transit technology raced ahead from horse drawn carts to steam, cable and eventually electric powered cars,…
Meadow Mill
Baltimore industrialist William E. Hooper built Meadow Mill in 1877 during one of the most prosperous periods for industry in the Jones Falls Valley. Designed by architect Reuben Gladfelter, the structure represents the finest of Baltimore mill…
The Hour Haus
The Hour Haus formerly served as a cornerstone for Baltimore's Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Inside you found rehearsal rooms for musicians, a recording studio, a large stage and a revolving cast of colorful characters. For…
Oak Street Garage
The Oak Street Garage, constructed in 1924 and enlarged in 1927, illustrates the dramatic impact of the automobile. Built and operated by first-generation Italian immigrants, the Oak Street Garage reflects the far-reaching impact of the automobile…
Peabody Heights Brewery
The site of Peabody Heights Brewery, also home to RavenBeer, Public Works Ale, and Full Tilt Brewing, was the site of Oriole Park from 1916 to 1944. Before this, the ballpark was home to the Baltimore Terrapins of the short-lived Federal League and…
Union Mill
Originally known as Druid Mill, Union Mill was built between 1865 and 1872. At the time, it was the largest cotton duck mill in the United States. A unique feature of the mill's construction is the use of locally quarried stone. The other mills…
Baltimore Museum of Industry
In the late 1970s, Mayor William Donald Schaefer proposed the creation of a museum to tell the story of Baltimore industry across two centuries of American history. Even before they the new museum found a building, Baltimore City officials organized…
Jim Rouse Center of the American Visionary Art Museum
Built in the 1930s, the simple brick exterior housed an intricate timber framework to support the whiskey barrels, walls, and roof. After many years of vacancy, the building was given new life as part of the American Visionary Art Museum, which…
Eastern Avenue Sewage Pumping Station
Completed in 1912, the Eastern Avenue Sewage Pumping Station opened as a critical engine of Baltimore’s then brand-new sewer system. City engineers built the station to house enormous steam-driven Corliss pumps capable of pumping up to 27,500,000…
American Brewery Building
The American Brewery Building at 1701 North Gay Street might be the most “Baltimore” of all buildings in the city. It is in the style of High Victorian architecture, as so much of our city was built, and is just plain quirky. Since 1973, the 1887…
International Seamen’s Union Headquarters, Seamen’s Defense Committee and National Maritime Union
At the corner of Broadway and Eastern Avenue, stands a modest three-story brick building with corbeling below a flat roof supported by heavy brackets and full cornice line. Over the course of the twentieth century, this building was home to three of…
Speaker's Corner on Eastern Avenue
In the 1930s, when the managers at Bethlehem Steel remained staunchly opposed to unionization, labor activists at Sparrow’s Point faced real challenges. According to Ellen Pinter, men couldn’t wear union buttons for fear of losing their jobs. During…
Dundalk Town Center
Bethlehem Steel owned and operated Sparrow’s Point as a company town near the expansive mill complex from the 1890s through the early 1970s. In 1916, however, Bethlehem Steel departed from the model of company-owned housing when it commissioned the…
Turner Station
Tucked away in the southeastern corner of Baltimore County, and separated from the rest of Sparrow’s Point by a creek, Turner Station is where many African American workers at Bethlehem Steel and nearby factories lived with their families from the…
United Steel Workers Locals 2609 and 2610
Two aging union halls on Dundalk Avenue help the story of Baltimore’s steel industry. In 1942, steel workers had won their right to unionize and established the United Steel Workers’ of America. When the two-story tan brick building at the corner of…
Pemco International Corporation
Founded in 1911, the Pemco International Corporation site on Eastern Avenue is a reminder of the enduring environmental legacy of Baltimore’s industrial businesses. First known as the Porcelain Enamel Manufacturing Corporation, the company produced…
O'Connor's Liquors and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee
O'Connor's, a package store and restaurant, has been located since the early 1920s in the heart of Greektown at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Oldham Street. In the 1940s, this unassuming, two-story, brick building played a significant role in the…
Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery
Immanuel Lutheran Church purchased a six-acre farm on Grindon Lane near Harford Road in 1874 for the purpose of a cemetery. This area, known as Lauraville, was a sparsely populated community of farming families. The church, which served a mostly…
"The Little House" on Montgomery Street
With thousands of rowhouses in every shape, size, and style across the city, not every house stands out. But, 200 ½ East Montgomery Street has earned a rare distinction as the narrowest rowhouse in Baltimore—measuring less than nine feet wide! This…
East Baltimore Street Delicatessens
The history of delicatessens in East Baltimore is not limited to Lombard Street. In the thoughtfully restored 800 block of East Baltimore Street, Harry Goodman established one of the city’s earliest delicatessens at 825 E. Baltimore Street around…
Flag House Courts and Albemarle Square
Albemarle Square is a new residential development that makes up virtually all the housing in the Jonestown neighborhood today. Albemarle Square opened in 2006 on the footprint of the old Flag House Courts public housing project.
The history…
Old Hamilton Library
The Old Hamilton Branch Library at 3006 Hamilton Avenue is a historic branch library building constructed in 1920 to serve the community of Hamilton in the developing Harford Road corridor of northeast Baltimore. The library remained at this…
Jewish Immigrants on Lombard Street
In the early 1900s, more than 600 people lived in the 70 houses on just a single block of Lombard Street between Lloyd and Central Avenue. For example, two households lived in 1139 E. Lombard Street in 1910. The Bergers consisted of Morris, a…