Timeline of Baltimore

src: www.healthyteennetwork.org

The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Video Timeline of Baltimore

17th century

• 1608 - Captain John Smith, (c.1580-1631), sails north up Chesapeake Bay from the newly established Virginia colony at Jamestown, settled on the James River the year before, and records in his journal, first descriptions of the area that would become the future site of the city of Baltimore, then a hunting ground for local American Indians. Smith records in his map and journal "a river not inhabited yet navigable", which he names the "Bolus Flu" - Indians who hunt in the region call it the "Patapsco".
• 1624 - Sir George Calvert, (1579-1632), resigns office of the King James I's Secretary of State, and announces himself as converted to Roman Catholicism, and withdraws from public life. He received the title of nobility as Baron Baltimore ("Lord Baltimore") in the Irish peerage for the town of Baltimore, in the western half of County Cork on the southern coast tip of Ireland in the province of Munster. He will be succeeded by descendants of five more "Lord Baltimores" until title is extinguished in 1771 with the death of the sixth and last, Frederick Calvert.
• 1632 - After an unsuccessful attempt to found an English colony in Avalon in Newfoundland (today's eastern Canada), a second Charter to a colony granted further to the south in a more temperate climate by King Charles I of England to Sir George Calvert, (1579-1632), First Lord Baltimore, his father King James I's former Secretary of State. This second grant is named "Maryland" for the King Charles's wife and Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of France, (1609-1669), and is placed along the eastern and western shores of the Chesapeake Bay, north of the earlier 1607 Virginia, above the Potomac River, and south and west of the Delaware River and Bay, with its bordering Swedish (New Sweden) and Dutch colonies from New Netherland, moving south from New Amsterdam (modern New York City) along the Hudson River. These lay in between and south of other extensive English colonies from 1620 in New England, such as Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Boston and Connecticut colonies.
• 1634 - The Ark and The Dove, ships of George's eldest son, the second Lord Baltimore Cecilius Calvert's (1605-1675), colonizing expedition, along with his younger brother Leonard Calvert, (1606-1647), (sent as first provincial governor), land on March 25th (later celebrated as an official state holiday, "Maryland Day") at Blakistone Island, bringing the first European settlers and African slaves to the Province of Maryland,
• 1650 - "Ann Arundell" County "erected" (established) further north along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay near St. Mary's City along the Potomac River. Named for Lady Ann Arundell, [antique spelling different from modern], (1615/1616-1649), wife of Cecilius Calvert.
• 1659 - Baltimore County established in the northeast section of the Province, north of new Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Includes what is now Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Harford and Cecil counties. Officeholder of Sheriff for Baltimore County first designated in legal papers from the General Assembly is mentioned in writing for serving of legal papers.
• 1661 - First court sits for Baltimore County, meeting at Captain Thomas Howell's place in what is now modern Cecil County.
  • Charles Gorsuch, a Quaker, patents 50 acres of land on narrow jagged peninsula which juts out into the Patapsco River, ending in "Whetstone Point". He promises to pay Lord Baltimore 61 pounds sterling per year for the use of the land.
  • David Jones hires Peter Carroll to survey 380 acres along the stream which is later named "Jones Falls" in his honor. He built a house and is known as Baltimore's first settler.
• 1663 - Alexander Mountenay patented land named "Mountenay's Neck" along the Harford Run stream, (where Central Avenue is now paved over in old east Baltimore's Jonestown and which is later sold and resurveyed to William Fell.
  • Land is patented along Curtis Bay and Curtis Creek southwest off the lower Patapsco River estuary to Paul Kinsey naming it "Curtis's Neck".
• 1664 - Capt. Thomas Todd purchases land at North Point, end of the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula (in southeastern Baltimore County), between the Back River and the Patapsco, followed by John Boring, merchant in 1679.
• 1668 - Thomas Cole takes up 550 acres of property named "Cole's Harbor" in future site of northern Baltimore Town and combines it with "Todd's Range" along the "Basin's" (later Inner Harbor) waterfront.
  • "Timber Neck" parcel stretching along future Howard, Paca and Eutaw Streets, patented by John Howard.
• 1673/74 - Cecil County formed from northeastern portion of Baltimore County and temporarily includes future Kent County on upper Eastern Shore.
• 1683 - First mention in records for Baltimore County of a "county seat" with a "port of entry" designated by the General Assembly on the Bush River, later called "Old Baltimore".
• 1692 - "Patapsco Hundred" Parish of the established (official) Church of England established for Baltimore County near Colgate Creek on the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula. Later Parish is named as St. Paul's Church or Parish (of the "Anglican" Church) with small log building erected. One of the authorized "Original Thirty" parishes designated in the Province. Oldest church and congregation in greater Baltimore area and one of the oldest in the state.
• 1693 - Gov. Nicholson orders that a "garrison" or stone blockhouse be built in western reaches of Baltimore County (near modern community of Owings Mills) on what was Capt. Risteau's plantation. Built of stone, twenty by fifty feet, with a fireplace and small embrasures for musketry. The blockhouse is manned by one captain and nine soldiers. Fort Garrison now considered as the oldest colonial fort in Maryland.

Maps Timeline of Baltimore

18th century

1700s-1740s

• 1704 - Provincial law requires that enough trees be cut down to widen the main roads to twenty feet and that roads be marked. Marking system consists of cutting slashes in tree trunks: one vertical slash on a road leading to a church and three horizontal lines, two close together and one a bit higher on roads leading to a county courthouse.
• 1706 - Port of Baltimore established as an authorized for shipping of tobacco and other products by colonial General Assembly of the Province of Maryland for the upper Chesapeake Bay region at the head of the Patapsco River's Northwest Branch, in "The Basin" (now called "Inner Harbor"), west of inlet and small island at the mouth of the "Jones Falls" stream and "Harford Run" (later covered by Central Avenue in the 19th century) further to the east, both of which flow from the north, and a small stream flowing from the west, later called "Uhler's Run". Situated below the jagged cliff heights (later known after 1788 as "Federal Hill") to the south which overlook the protected harbor which has a twelve-foot depth, enough for ocean-going sailing ships, along a narrow peninsula (old South Baltimore) leading to Whetstone Point. Although only a few ships make anchor the first years by Whetstone Point, it never grows into a town as did deeper anchorages further upstream at future Fells Point and Baltimore Town.
• 1711 - Charles Carroll of Annapolis, (1702-1782), sells 31 acres to Jonathan Hanson who erects a mill, probably the first along the Jones Falls in the vicinity of the intersection with later-day Holliday Street.
• 1715 - General Assembly of Maryland authorizes convening of a Court to serve the growing numbers of residents - farmers, merchants, mechanics, shipbuilders in northeastern Maryland which is now called "Baltimore County", since 1659 and sets four sessions per year for the Court on the first Tuesday of March, June, August and November.
• 1723 - Capt. Robert North takes up residence in the County and is one of the original lot owners. He commands the ship "Content " which he carries in freight this year.
• 1726 - Richard Gist lays out future port community for Edward Fellcalled "Fell's Prospect", and surveys three dwellings, several tobacco houses, an orchard and a mill - Jonathan Hanson's. Fell builds a store, and the area eventually came to be called "Fell's Point". Edward Fell's brother William, a carpenter arrives from Lancashire, England in 1730 and purchases 100 acres named "Copus Harbor" at "Long Island Point" (vicinity of modern Lancaster Street, near Philpot Street - east of Jones Falls mouth - today's "Harbor East and new developments at "Harbor Point" in 2013) and builds house and shipyard.
• 1728 - John Cockey (whose brother Thomas purchased property in "Limestone Valley" on the York Road up in central Baltimore County giving his name to the future Cockeysville) purchases land near the Patapsco.
• 1729 - County citizens petition the Colonial Assembly to establish a Town for the ease of exporting tobacco and importing goods from overseas and further expanding the 1706 Port and Harbor. Original site planned and designated was on north shore of the Patapsco's "Middle Branch" (also known as "Ridgeley's Cove") owned by John Moale, a merchant from Devonshire, England who later objected to the site of the new Town, believing that valuable iron ore deposits were located there. So the first commissioners appointed - ("Gentlemen of Consequence": Thomas Tolley, William Hamilton, William Buckner, Dr. George Walker, Richard Gist, Dr. George Buchanan, and William Hammond) instead purchased to the northeast, 60 acres of land of Charles Carroll's "Cole's Harbor/Todd's Range" along the north side of the future "Basin" (Inner Harbor) at the head of the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River from Daniel (1696-1751), and Charles Carroll of Annapolis, (1702-1782) and county surveyor Philip Jones plans to lay out three streets: Calvert, Forest (later called Charles) which ran north to south, and the east-west Long or later called Market (after the 1760s and still later further as East and West Baltimore) Street. "The Town of Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore" was then founded with the sole resident of the area at the time: John Fleming (whose house stood near southeast corner of Forest (future South Charles) and King George (later East Lombard) Streets).
• 1730 - The "Original Survey" taken on January 12, and 60 one-acre lots were laid out by County Surveyor Philip Jones beginning at an oak tree located then at present site of Forest (South Charles) and future Camden Streets. Three streets laid out and confirmed: Calvert, Forest (Charles), and Long (later Market, then Baltimore Street), with smaller streets/alleys: Hanover, German and Water Streets with "Great Eastern Road" running along the northwest edge connecting Philadelphia to the northeast, with Georgetown, Maryland to the southwest and Annapolis to the south (Provincial capital since 1694). Southwestern village boundary along "Uhler's Run" stream - later Uhler's Alley, - southwest of Forest and King George Streets (later South Charles and West Lombard Sts.). Waterfront shoreline with first wharves located along waterfront of the "Basin" (later Inner Harbor) at German and Water Streets (at approximate site of modern Redwood/Water Streets - three blocks further north of modern (2013) shoreline/"Harborplace"). "Steiger's Meadow" (northeast of town) and "Harrison's Marsh" (east of town) were along the west bank of the Jones Falls stream to the east of new Town. Charles Carroll of Annapolis as owner of the property has first choice and chooses Lot #49 at Calvert Street and the Basin, Philip Jones, the surveyor picks Lot #37 on the Basin at the foot of Charles Street. Sixteen men take up lots that first day, many along the waterfront. Process continues over the next few years with some later forfeiting their claim for not building within eighteen months. Ten years later some lots are still held by the town commissioners - so not exactly a boom town right off.
  • St. Paul's Anglican Parish, of the "established" (colony-supported) Church of England, established earlier in 1692 as one of "Original Thirty" parishes in the colonial Province of Maryland, is moved from a rough church structure near Colgate Creek on the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula (near modern Dundalk and Sea Girt Marine Terminals of the Port of Baltimore, which had been site of old Harbor Field and Baltimore Municipal Airport in the 1930s and 40s), between the lower Patapsco and Back Rivers to the southeast of Baltimore County. Later a year after establishment of the new town, the Vestry (congregation council) of St. Paul's Parish purchases Lot #19 at southeast of Forest Street (later North Charles Street) and large lot extends to the east to St. Paul's Lane (later St. Paul Street/Place/"Preston Gardens") overlooking rugged cliffs above Jones Falls loop to the southwest before turning north again, with south lot boundary line extending to New Church Lane (later East Lexington Street - renamed after American Revolution - later vicinity known as North Charles and East Saratoga Streets). Construction of church as first brick building in town begins the following year.
• 1731 - Baltimore Ironworks Company formed by Daniel Dulany the Elder, Benjamin Tasker, Sr., and members of the Carroll family: Dr. Charles Carroll, Charles Carroll, Esq., and Daniel Carroll who establish iron ore pits, furnace works and export through Baltimore and Fells Point.
• 1732 - "Jones's Town", a tract of ten acres of 20 lots along four streets (also later called "Old Town" by the 19th century) laid out by county surveyor Philip Jones for relative David Jones; established along northeast bank of Jones Falls which flows into the Patapsco's Northwest Branch, east of "The Basin".
• 1739 - First brick building completed in town built for church for "Old St. Paul's Anglican Parish" at Forest (Charles) Street and Fish Lane (later East Saratoga Street) on northern edge of town perched on cliffs to the east overlooking St. Paul's Lane (now Street/Place) and the Jones Falls loop using 600,000 bricks newly manufactured in Baltimore by Charles Wells. Building faces future Lexington Street side to the south and Lower Town. Cemetery laid out around church building. New Church Street laid out south of new church building (later renamed Lexington Street after American Revolution).
• 1740 - Methodist itinerant preacher and missionary George Whitefield (1714-1770), preaches here inspired by evangelical "First Great Awakening" religious revival meetings and Church of England ministers John Wesley (1703-1791), and Charles Wesley (1707-1788).
• 1741 - First brick house built in town for Edward Fortrell from Ireland with free-stone corners, two stories high with peaked roof at northwest corner of Calvert Street and Fish Lane (later East Fayette Street). Later site of large sumptuous James Buchanan mansion/townhouse of 1799 - later sold to noted U.S. Senator Reverdy Johnson, (1796-1876), and ransacked in 1835 during infamous Baltimore bank riot, also future site of southeast corner of 1894-1900 Baltimore City/Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse, opposite future Courthouse/Battle Monument Square.
• 1745 - Merger of "Jones's Town" (later also known as "Old Town") and "Baltimore Town" authorized on September 28 by General Assembly of Maryland enlarges the original settlement on the Patapsco River with an important wooden bridge constructed at Bridge Street (later Gay Street) connecting the two, crossing the Jones Falls stream and the adjacent "Harrison's Marsh" (on land of Thomas Harrison) to the south and "Steiger's Meadow" to the northwest by the "Loop" of the Jones Falls flowing from the north to southwest, then turning northeast, then continuing further south to drain into the Patapsco River's "Basin" at the head of its Northwest Branch, separating the two villages. The merged villages are now according to the Assembly's Act to be called "Baltimore Town".
• 1746 - Town Commissioners hire Capt. Robert North to build fence around former Jones's Town area and then follow two years later with a subscription by townspeople to build post and fence around Baltimore Town and keep in repair, prohibiting raising hogs and geese, with three gates - one at west end of Long Street (later known as Market Street, then Baltimore Street), one at the upper part of Bridge Street over the Jones Falls (Gay Street) and a third smaller portal near the north end of Charles Street near old St. Paul's Anglican Church for foot passengers, completed 1750. Unfortunately, the next few winters are severe and scavengers strip pieces for winter firewood and by 1752, fence remnants are sold off.
• 1747 - Act of the Maryland General Assembly on July 11, authorized the addition of 18 acres that lay to the east of the edge of Town and between the west bank of the Jones Falls, including the then named "Harrison's Marsh" of Thomas Harrison, later memorialized by the naming of Harrison Street in the vicinity, which existed until the 1980s, going north-south between Frederick Street and the stream. First of many future annexations and growth of the Town/City's jurisdiction into the surrounding Baltimore County, prompted by the earlier merger with Jones's Town two years before on the eastern bank of The Falls.
  • Town's first attempt to deal with the flimsy wooden structures of the era and constant threat of conflagration was in July, with provisions regarding fire prevention was added to the Act enlarging the town boundaries. Housekeepers were to be subject to a ten shilling fine if they do not "keep a ladder high enough to extend to the top of the roof of such house or if their chimneys blaze out" was another order of the town commissioners and that if a fire does break out, for all to grab a bucket and come running. At night, two men were to lead the way, one carrying a torch and the other blowing a fog horn.
  • Seven ships have called at the growing Port of Baltimore this year, with fifteen arriving the following year (1748), all bound for London.
• 1749 - First recorded fire in Baltimore Town on March 16, at the home of Greenbury Dorsey, at an unrecorded location. Unfortunately, one man, four children and "one colored girl" were burned to death.

1750s-1790s

• 1750 - First German Reformed Church organized. Second oldest Protestant congregation in town. Invites Rev. John Christian Faber to become their pastor in 1756 and begin building a structure just north of Old St. Paul's Anglican Church (Church of England) on Forest (North Charles) Street, with some Evangelical Lutherans from Germany worshipping with them. Congregation later moves to Front Street at East Baltimore Street by Jones Falls east bank, but structure damaged by flood before completion - help to finish building given by ministers of other local churches - Anglican, Presbyterian and Lutheran. Later landmark building surmounted by tall steeple and prominent "town clock". This First German Reformed congregation later relocates in 1928 to York Road (Maryland Route 45) n Rodgers Forge/Stoneleigh/Anneslie (in northern suburbs) and merges with more prosperous daughter church - St. Stephen's, becoming known as First and St. Stephen's in the Evangelical and Reformed Church - later the United Church of Christ national denomination after its 1957 merger.
  • Additional 25 acres of land added to the Town, north and east of the former Jones' Town, east of the Jones Falls.
  • Beginning of a several years-long controversy with the Town Commissioners ordering on February 6, that citizens provide themselves with ladders high enough to reach the tops of their roofs before the next month of March. By the following year when seeing not all residents were sufficiently supplied because of living in rented quarters, the board ordered the clerk to place advertisements applying the requirement to landlords also.
• 1751 - Subscription and lottery attempt fails to build public market house for Baltimore Town. But successful twelve years later by 1763 at northwest corner of Long Street (later Market, then Baltimore Street) and Bridge Street (later Gay Street). Replaced by later Centre ("Marsh") Market in 1782 at Market (East Baltimore) Street and Market Place/Harrison Street by west bank of Jones Falls, and supplemented by other markets in western precincts (Lexington Market) and eastern precincts (Broadway Market in Fells Point) by 1784.
  • Further sanitary regulations promulgated by the town commissioners: "Whereas several persons permit stinking fish, dead creatures or carrion to lie on their Lotts or in the Streets near their doors which are very offensive Nuisances and contrary to Act of Assembly, the Commissioners therefore Order the Clerk to put up advertisements to inform such Persons that they are to remove them ..."
• 1752 - First Census taken of Baltimore Town lists 30 names of settlers, first census of surrounding Baltimore County enumerates free whites - 11,345, white servants and convicts - 1,501, black and mulatto slaves - 4,143, free blacks and mulattos - 204.
  • First historic illustration drawing of the new Town by John Moale (1731-1798, son of man who had objected to original laying out town site on upper Middle Branch/Ridgley's Cove of Patapsco River), showing approximately 25 houses - four of brick, one brick church, two taverns (Payne's and Kaminsky's - on corner of future Grant and Mercer Streets alleys in the block bounded by modern German/Redwood, Light, Water and South Calvert Streets, endures as wooden frame structure with "Dutch" hipped roof, tavern later raised higher on stone foundation which becomes ground/first floor until photographed and razed in 1870), one brewery (Barnetz Brothers), one tobacco inspection warehouse, one wharf, a barber shop and an insurance office. The country-like view, with its few buildings and rolling hills and forests of topography was taken looking north from the overlook on rugged cliffside heights (later named Federal Hill after 1788), to the south of "The Basin" (later called the "Inner Harbor").
  • School first organized by Mr. James Gardner at South and Second (later Water) Streets along harbor shoreline.
• 1753 - Influential citizens John Stevenson, Richard Chase, John Moale, William and Nicholas Rogers, John Ridgely, Nicholas Ruxton Gay, William Lux (son of Darby Lux I) and Brian Philpot manage lottery to raise money for building additional public wharf.
• 1754 - Mount Clare Mansion begins construction on "Georgia Plantation" estate, north of Gwynns Falls stream, Middle Branch ("Ridgeley's Cove") of Patapsco River and southwest of growing town along the Georgetown Road (later called Columbia Road, then as Washington Boulevard, also future U.S. Route 1 running from Maine to Florida by the 1920s). Near future city neighborhood of Pigtown (and Washington Village), restored and gentrified community of "Ridgely's Delight" and in future Carroll Park which is purchased by City along with house and restored as historic site in XXXX. Mansion construction of Georgian architectural style built to about 1760 by John Henry Carroll, brother of Charles Carroll (barrister) (1723-1783), and cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), who is most famous as an American patriot as later delegate to Second Continental Congress, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, and honorary layer of "First Stone" for the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828.
• 1755 - After occasionally worshipping with Reformed Protestant Germans in Baltimore Town, Lutherans from Germany establish separate Evangelical Lutheran congregation and begin meeting in various homes of members. Later moves in 1758/1762? to Bridge Street (later known as North Gay Street) west of Jones Falls, near future East Saratoga Street with small brick church constructed with bell tower. Later moves one block south on Bridge Street down to corner with New Church Street (later after Revolution known as East Lexington Street) and becomes known as "Zion Church of the City of Baltimore" or also as Old Zion Lutheran Church. After fire damage, building rebuilt without front bell tower in Georgian/Federal style in 1807-08, designed and built by parish members George Rohrback and Johann Mekenheimer.
• German Reformed congregation invites Rev. John Christian Faber to become pastor and begin building structure just north of first church in town - Old St. Paul's Anglican Church on Forest (Charles) Street, some Evangelical Lutherans participate in worship with Reformed friends.
• 1757 - Smallpox epidemic in colonial capital city of Annapolis to the south, drives General Assembly legislature to meet for sessions in Baltimore.
• 1759 - Arrival of French Canadian refugees beginning around 1755, expelled by British officials from Acadia (Nova Scotia province in New France (in future Canada) after the British victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City in the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War (in Europe). The new immigrants settle around South Forest (Charles), and west of King George's (Lombard) Streets, near old "Uhler's Run" (stream), southwest of the Town and west of "The Basin" harbor (modern Inner Harbor). The area becomes known in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century as "Frenchtown". Additional influx of pioneer frontier colonial settlers from Appalachian Mountains of western Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, driven or forced back east by attacks from Indians and French military.
• 1761 - After occasionally joining German Lutherans and Reformed (Protestants) in services established earlier, Presbyterians (Scottish) and Reformed English Protestants (many "Scots-Irish" from Great Britain and Ireland) began worshiping in local houses around "The Basin" harbor. They constructed a log church two years later for their congregation at East Lane (later East Fayette) and Bridge (later North Gay) Streets, which was followed in 1765, by a more substantial brick church several blocks west at the northwest corner of East Fayette and North (later renamed Guilford Avenue) Streets. First minister called for this First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore is the Rev. Dr. Patrick Allison (1740-1802), a most influential man, both in his church and denomination and in the educational, cultural and civic affairs of the town for forty years. Rev. Allison is also instrumental in organizing the regional Presbytery of Baltimore, later in 1786, and a larger national General Assembly of Presbyterians, along with participating in joint endeavors with the later Roman Catholic bishop and Anglican priest, with forming several schools, attempting establishment of a college, various lectures and literary societies and the organization of a subscription/membership community library for the educated elite.
• 1763 - Fells Point established further east along the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River, west of small peninsula near the inlet formed by "Harford Run", a stream channeled between two parallel lanes of old Canal Street, and later under modern, paved-over Central Avenue as it reaches the main Patapsco River's Northwest Branch. The new waterfront port town, east of Baltimore Town and quickly becomes a major shipbuilding area with its deeper channel and pier berths, extending along eastern northern shore of Patapsco to confluence with "Harris Creek" (now under the modern-day industrial and residential community of Canton), site of later 18th Century shipbuilding yards including David Stoddart's where the U.S.F. Constellation is built, first ship of the "Original Six Frigates" of the newly re-organized U.S. Navy in 1797.
  • "The Mechanical Company" organized as first volunteer fire fighting company in town and a "Baltimore Fire Engine and Wharf Lottery" is proposed on July 16 to be held to provide additional funds to complete the construction of the new market house, buy two engines and purchase leather buckets with the winning drawing held on Dec. 26th. Six years later, a new revolutionary invention, a hand fire engine is discovered on board a Dutch ship anchored in the harbor, which the Company buys for 99 pounds sterling (=$264) and named it "The Dutchman", enabling Baltimoreans to boast that they had a fire engine ten years before Boston and thirty years before Paris. Mechanical Company of volunteer firemen, later forms a local militia unit and develops into a social and political club which endures 250 years later. The Mechanical Fire Company is followed for the next several decades by several other fire-fighting companies to approximately 17 by unification in 1858.
  • First public market house for the town of two stories height erected with 3,000 English pounds raised by lottery. Town Commissioners William Lyon, Nicholas Gay, John Moale, and Archibald Buchanan lease land on July 16 from Thomas Harrison at eight pounds per year at northwest corner of Long Street, (soon to be renamed - Market Street - later renamed again as East Baltimore Street) at intersection with Bridge (later North Gay) Street on the eastern edge of Harrison's Marsh by the western bank of the Jones Falls, (later known as the "Centre Market" or occasionally as "Marsh Market" - named for the nearby swamp to the south and west along the west bank of the Falls owned by Harrison). Market built with second floor for entertainment, cultural and educational events and indoor mass public assemblies. Lottery stages to build market house, buy two fire engines and a parcel of leather buckets and enlarge the public wharf. The scheme is to sell 3,000 tickets at 20 shillings each, with "winners" of 1,062 tickets to draw prizes amounting to 2,480 pounds, leaving a net gain for the public improvements of 510 pounds. Near-by Harrison Street, later to the south as "Market Place" and its central horse fountain were later sites of subsequent market houses in 1851 and 1907 lasting to 1984. Centre Market House is also the location on the second and third floors of the 1851 landmark structure for the "Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts" until the "Great Baltimore Fire" of 1904, then M.I.'s College of Art and Design rebuilt 1907 on top floors in the northern market building of three parallel structures until the early 1980s when razed for Baltimore "Metro" subway "Shot Tower/Market Place" station. Currently the "Port Discovery" children's museum in the old "Fish Market", middle market building of three reconstructed.
• 1765 - British Parliament's passage of the "Stamp Act" led to protests against the first direct tax levied on the American colonies by Great Britain and provoked mass assemblies and growing unrest throughout the Thirteen Colonies and at the public center of the Town at the Baltimore County/Town Courthouse in the Square on Calvert Street, between New Church Street (East Lexington) and Fish Lane (later East Fayette Street), overlooking the cliff to the Jones Falls loop.
  • Another 35 acres of territory annexed to Baltimore Town, now west of "The Basin" (now Inner Harbor) and southwest and south of Town.
• 1767 - Campaign waged in the colonial General Assembly of the Province of Maryland by merchants and residents of emerging main town in Baltimore County for Baltimore Town to become the new county seat. 109 years after establishment of a large tract of northeastern Maryland as Baltimore County (1659), an Act passed the middle of the following year on June 25 moving seat and courthouse, with appointed/elected judges, sheriff and deputies, bailiff, jail, alms house along with a town crier from "Old Joppa" at the mouth of the Great Gunpowder River. New courthouse & adjacent buildings built in the port town in a square the following year (1768) at north end of North Calvert Street and between Fish Lane (later East Fayette) and New Church Street (East Lexington) on town's northern fence about 100 feet above waterfront (about 30 to 40 feet above modern pavement level) near cliff overlooking southwestward loop of Jones Fall. Whipping post, pillory and stocks also erected in Square (later Battle Monument Square after 1815-1822, with erection of new second courthouse to the westward side and replaced by new soldiers monument for War of 1812 and new 1801 jail further out along east bank of Jones Falls, north of present East Madison Street). Controversy and political battles continue throughout County between northern and southern regions, between Baltimore Town with old county seat at Joppa, Maryland residents result.
• 1768 - Baltimore County/Town Courthouse construction began in square along Calvert Street between Fish Lane (later East Fayette Street) and New Church Lane (later East Lexington Street) of Colonial style architecture with red brick and white wood cupola surmounted by weather vane (first of three courthouses near same site) on northern edge of town overlooking cliffs of southwestward loop of Jones Falls to the east at a cost of 900 pounds sterling raised by townfolk.
• 1769 - Evangelical Lutherans at Old Zion Lutheran Church at North Gay and East Lexington Streets, begin German language instruction in school.
• 1770 - Large substantial Henry Fite House built of brick with three and half stories at southwest corner of South Sharp (to the north was future North Liberty Street - after the Revolution) and Market (later West Baltimore) Streets on western edge of Town. Later used tavern and hotel by German immigrant son Jacob Fite, and daughter Elizabeth Fite Rehnienke. Used as temporary National Capitol as Second Continental Congress meets there December 1776 to February 1777, after Philadelphia is occupied by the British, known then as "Congress Hall" (or later as "Old Congress Hall" - endures until Great Baltimore Fire of 1904).
  • Roman Catholics bolstered by influx of French Acadians from Nova Scotia (present eastern Canada) following expulsions by British Royal military authorities and some (Irishmen) celebrate Mass by the Rev. John Ashton at converted chapel in room of old Edward Fortrell's first brick home (who had returned to Ireland) at Calvert Street and Fish Lane (later East Fayette Street). Lot purchased on northwest corner from Charles Carroll of North Charles and West Saratoga Streets for St. Peter's Congregation, with red-brick building completed finally in 1783 with adjoining rectory and small cemetery across street from Old St. Paul's Anglican Church.
• 1771 - Organization of German Reformed congregation (later known as Otterbein Church at South Sharp and West Conway Streets) by Rev. Dr. Philip Otterbein (1726-1813).
• 1773 - The Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser, first printed newspaper in town begins approximately weekly publication August 20, at Market Street (later East Baltimore Street) near South Lane under publisher/editor/printer William Goddard, (1740-1817), and sister Mary Katherine Goddard, (1738-1816), who also serves as Postmaster (mistress) of Baltimore under the colonial system founded by Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia. This is the oldest ancestor of a string of later merged newspapers which after reorganization in 1799 eventually became by 1936 under newspaper syndicate mogul William Randolph Hearst, became the Baltimore News-Post published (Monday-Saturday) and continuation of the Baltimore American (published on Sunday only), and then combined by publisher son William Randolph Hearst, Jr. as The News American in 1964. Closed in 1986 by the Hearst Company making the City a "one-newspaper town" with the continued publication of The Sun, since 1837.
  • Baltimore Town (which had already absorbed nearby village across Jones Falls, of Jones Town a few years earlier) now merges with Fells Point of 80 acres to form combined town government and council.
  • General Assembly of Maryland establishes first Alms House and adjoining Work House for Baltimore County and Town's poor, indigent and disabled on land purchased from William Lux for 350 pounds northwest of town in square bounded by Howard, Eutaw, Biddle and Garden Streets with trustees appointed: Charles Ridgely, William Lux, John Moale, William Smith, Samuel Purviance of the Town, and Andrew Buchanan and Harry Dorsey Gough from the County. Alms House later relocated east of the city and becomes the ancestor of the later Bayview Asylum, then evolves into a general municipal medical facility renamed the Baltimore City Hospitals by the 1920s. Set up by city to semi-independent status with temporary name of Francis Scott Key Medical Center then transferred to the Johns Hopkins Hospital medical system - now the modern Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center on Eastern Avenue, (Md. Route 150), east of the city.
  • General Assembly of Maryland also authorizes the taking up of a public subscription or later a public lottery to establish a common public market house to be located and built in Baltimore Town, the county seat of Baltimore County for commerce and trading.
  • Baptist members in town erect first permanent meeting house with a dwelling for pastor, school house and establish cemetery at North Front and East Fayette Streets alongside east bank of Jones Falls (future site of Phoenix Shot Tower constructed later in 1828 off President Street Boulevard). This congregation of First Baptist Church of Baltimore Town later moves to 4200 Liberty Heights Avenue in Dorchester-Gwynn Oak-Forest Park area, of northwest Baltimore.
  • Jewish settlers arrive as permanent residents with Benjamin Levy, shopkeeper with wife Rachel, and son Robert Morris Levy - named for good friend, wealthiest American and future Revolutionary War government financier.
  • Estimated population of town is 6,000 compared with Philadelphia - 40,000 and New York - 25,000.
• 1774 - Baltimore and Maryland send representatives to First Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia and Annapolis Convention (1774-1776)
  • Demonstrations, mass meetings at the County Courthouse Square on Calvert Street (future site of Battle Monument for War of 1812 victory, 1815-22) and anti-tax and anti-British speeches along with organization of a local Committee of Correspondence to ferment colonists' rights.
• 1775 - Maryland revolutionary leaders began to govern colony through "Provincial Convention" which sends delegates to the Second Continental Congress also in Philadelphia.
  • Baltimore Town listed as having 564 houses, 5,934 inhabitants.
  • Warships constructed on waterfront of Baltimore Town and Fells Point completed in November for Continental Navy and new commodore Esek Hopkins (1718-1802), squadron, Wasp and Hornet, with captains' mate (second-in-command) young, Joshua Barney (1759-1818), of Maryland, a later U.S. Navy hero and legend, who hoists the "Grand Union Flag" aboard as naval symbol for the new "United Colonies" of America.
• 1776 - Maryland sends last Royal Governor Sir Robert Eden under Lord Baltimore's proprietary government of Henry Harford, (illegitimate son of Frederick Calvert, 6th and last Lord Baltimore) packing to England from Annapolis.
  • Publishing of text on July 10 in local Baltimore newspaper of new Declaration of Independence, adopted by Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia the week before, July 4, affirming independence resolution passed on July 2.
  • Reading aloud by a speaker or "town crier" in public at the Baltimore County/Town Courthouse in Courthouse Square at the northern edge of the Town on North Calvert Street, between New Church Street (now East Lexington) and Fish Lane (now East Fayette Street), (also in the next century to become Battle Monument Square) on July 23, of the text and words of the official, newly approved "Declaration of Independence", passed two weeks before by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia at the "Old Pennsylvania State House" (soon later to be known famously as "Independence Hall"), with the resolution declaring independence on July 2 and the Declaration itself on July 4, (later to be known and celebrated as "Independence Day"). Baltimorean Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), lone Roman Catholic and wealthiest man then in America, is one of three delegates from Maryland and later becomes last surviving signer by the 1820s. Text of document later printed as broadside and in local newspapers by town postmistress, publisher (Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser) and printer, Mary Katharine Goddard, (1738-1816).
  • "Declaration and Charter of Rights and form of government for the state of Maryland" - title of new constitution for independent State drawn up by convention in Annapolis and adopted November 3, 1776.
  • In December - Second Continental Congress moves south to Baltimore and begins meeting in large landmark local tavern/hotel; formerly Henry Fite House - later named "Congress Hall" at southwest corner of Liberty Street/South Sharp Street (later Hopkins Place) and West Baltimore Street (then Market Street) - (later site in 1962 of Baltimore Civic Center/First Mariner Arena/Royal Farms Arena), after Continental Army's evacuation from new capital at Philadelphia upon British occupation after battles in Pennsylvania at Brandywine and Germantown. British fleet from New York feints going past at Baltimore and sails up Chesapeake Bay going northeast to land at Head of Elk in Cecil County. Baltimore Town serves as "temporary American capital" until two months later in February 1777. "Old Congress Hall" later becomes residence and office for New England merchant and financier, George Peabody,(1795-1869), after he arrives in City in 1816 to spend twenty years here beginning mercantile business, going on to New York City and London, to become one of the richest men in the world at that time, endowing several Baltimore and Massachusetts institutions with his fortune. "Fite House"/"Congress Hall" lasts until destroyed in Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904.
• 1777 - Town postmistress, newspaper publisher and local printer Mary Katharine Goddard, (1738-1816), who has succeeded to posts after travels of brother editor/publisher/printer William Goddard, (1740-1817), publishes at her office at 250 Market Street (now East Baltimore Street) near South Street in January for the first time, a broadside poster of the full text of the Declaration of Independence with not only just text of the reasons for declaring independence as in previous editions and newspaper articles by others, but also for first time, lists all the names of the signers/delegates representing the thirteen now independent states of the independence resolution passed July 2 by the Congress. Declaration edited and approved July 4, with all the signatures attached from the signing the previous August 1776, now thereby putting each delegate with his name attached into personal peril from the British Army and royal authorities of King George III. Copies of this document two centuries later becomes rare collector's items.
• 1780 - Meeting of Anglican clergy and lay representatives in Chestertown, Maryland on the Eastern Shore to establish a Diocese of Maryland composed of clergy and parishes of the Church of England in the newly free and independent State. Later establishment nine years later of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America in 1789, independent from the Mother Church. Later "Episcopalians" remains part of a growing Anglican Communion as the British Empire continued to spread worldwide in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Later American revision of the traditional Book of Common Prayer for church services, worship and liturgies.
• 1781 - Several American Continental Army and French regiments under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette (a French nobleman and officer who volunteers his services to General George Washington) passes through the town in April heading south to Virginia to reinforce the Southern forces under Gen. Nathaniel Greene facing British Army Gen. Lord Cornwallis coming up from the Carolinas. A banquet and a dancing ball is held in honor of the young general and his officers and a request is made of the ladies of Baltimore to sew and repair additional uniforms, clothing and supplies for the American troops. In the next few days the former ballroom is transformed into a clothing factory and the outfitting of the soldiers is commenced by the daughters and wives of the city, supervised by Mrs. David Poe, mother of future poet and literary figure Edgar Allan Poe. The youthful Marquis sends a letter of thanks and additionally stops in November on his way back north after the successful surrender of the "Redcoats" at the Siege and Battle of Yorktown. Later additional allied armies aid the Patriot cause with Royal French troops under Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the Comte de Rochambeau, with additional allied German regiments to the French king, Louis XVI and Gen. George Washington's Continental Army make three camps for several weeks in September surrounding the town on their quick march south from north along Hudson River outside New York City and Newport, Rhode Island, to lay siege to Gen. Lord Cornwallis's British Army at Yorktown, Virginia the next month, leading to his surrender. Three camps of the thousands of Patriot and allied soldiers surround the town, one - located southwest of "The Basin" (Inner Harbor area) at the future Camden Yards sports stadiums site, two - north in "Howard's Woods" of Maryland Line Continental troops commander - Col. John Eager Howard's estate "Belvidere", and three - east along the stream Harford Run (now paved over by Central Avenue) near Jonestown (later also known as "Old Town"). Troops returned north early the following year, after the successful conclusion and surrender of[Cornwallis in October.
• 1782 - Supplementing the first "Centre Market" on Harrison Street/Market Place at East Baltimore Street west of Jones Falls, a "Western Precincts Market" (later known as "Lexington Market") becomes active, along with former Hanover Market (at Hanover and Camden Streets) in old "Frenchtown" (now South Baltimore) in 1784, and the Fells Point Market in 1785, also known then as Eastern Precincts Market - later becomes Broadway Market in Fells Point, sited at the foot of Broadway along waterfront as an outdoor or tented marketplace during the 18th century. By 1803, group of wood sheds and outside stalls along West Lexington Street are constructed, from North Eutaw to Paca Streets, then further west from North Paca Street to North Greene Street. Later 19th century extensions with a fish market go further west to Pearl Street and with tents and open stalls along Lexington Street to the east to North Liberty/Sharp Streets, through the later retail/department store shopping district. Second, third and fourth of a series of city markets erected in various quarters of the city, growing to eleven by the early 1900s. Composed of two-story brick assembly halls (often elaborately built with clock towers or steeples) on second floor with market spaces beneath and wooden sheds, stalls and tents at the rear and sides which are open on alternating "Market Days". Disastrous 1949 fire destroys center wooden section of Market between Paca and Greene Streets which are temporarily replaced by Quonset hut and two new square larger Market structures with a parking garage attached dedicated in 1952. In 1974, section of West Lexington Street, east of The Market between North Eutaw Street to North Liberty/Sharp Street-Hopkins Place barred from vehicular traffic and converted to pedestrian-only Lexington Mall until the early 2010s.
• 1783 -
  • Confederation Congress meeting temporarily at the Maryland State House in Annapolis ratifies the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War as Great Britain recognizes American independence. General George Washington passes through city with military escort and parade, ceremonies, and banquets at the old Fountain Inn (famous hotel at St. Paul-Light Street, between Market (later East Baltimore) Street and German (later Redwood) Street). After his overnight stop, the commander-in-chief's procession moves on south to surrender his commission of authority and command of the Continental Army back to the Congress in session. Ceremony held in the Old Senate Chamber of the State House, the temporary National Capitol, and returns home next day to Mount Vernon, on the Potomac River, southeast of Alexandria, Virginia.
  • Committee of Health, set up in later part of the year, under appointment by Baltimore Town commissioners. With its continuous operation ever since, descending into a modern Baltimore City Department of Health, makes it the oldest permanent municipal body in America (and possibly the World), devoted to public health.
• 1784 - Christmas Conference (Methodism) meets at Lovely Lane Chapel/Meeting House (site now located in small alley), north off German Street (later East Redwood), east of South Calvert Street, to organize future Methodist Episcopal Church in America; later merged [1968] into The United Methodist Church and ordination of first minister and bishop Francis Asbury (1745-1816). Congregation later renamed Light Street Methodist Episcopal Church when moved two blocks west to nearby new location (on Light Street by Wine Alley and German/Redwood Street), then later known as First Methodist Episcopal Church. Moved again further north to St. Paul and 23rd Streets in Peabody Heights/Charles Village in 1884, (as "Centennial monument to Methodism in America") in elaborate gray stone Romanesque Revival styled building with tall landmark tower designed by famous New York architect Stanford White where congregation later resumed use of name of Lovely Lane Church in the later 20th century and established historic Methodist Museum.
  • Calvert Street extended further north beyond limits of town to "Howard's Woods" and "Belvedere" estate of Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), commander of famous "Maryland Line" regiment of Continental Army troops in Revolutionary War. First Baltimore Town and County Court House raised 20 feet high on stone arches by contractor Leonard Harbaugh to save building and permit passage of street to the north beneath through Courthouse Square (known as "Courthouse on Stilts").
  • Second brick building completed after four years of building (cornerstone laid April 25, 1780) in front of former 1739 structure for Old St. Paul's Parish and dedicated May 30, 1784 on Whitsuntide/Pentecost. Previous church in rear torn down in November 1786, except for wooden bell steeple which is erected in middle of surrounding cemetery.
  • Night Watch and appointment of constables for daytime patrols authorized to town commissioners. Beginnings of future Baltimore City Police Department. Watchmen and constable patrols later reorganized in 1857, under a Police Marshal after riots, voting frauds and increased corruption under "Know-Nothings" political movement, (appointment of George Proctor Kane during Civil War-era) and brought under state control with appointment by Governor of Maryland in 1860. Union Army places city under martial law and arrests Marshal and members of new Police Board for disloyalty, later confined in Fort McHenry and Fort Warren in Boston in 1861 and runs police force to 1865. Police commissioner as department head appointments begun in 1920, authority transferred to Mayor of Baltimore in the 1980s.
  • William Murphy, local bookseller, established a small circulating library among interested customers and town citizens.
  • A survey is made among town citizens as to the work of the town commissioners and services needed with people's needs of government. Citizens begin to discuss and write in local newspaper about the need for a charter and incorporation of town or to become a city and what that would entail, require and cost.
  • Brigadier General Mordecai Gist arrives from Annapolis and the Southern Theatre of the War with remnants of the "Maryland Line", about 300 men, on July 27, followed in September by Major General Nathaniel Greene, commander of southern army, Continental Army, accompanied by Major Hyrne, arrived in the town from Charleston, South Carolina.
  • First convention meets of the local newly organized Diocese of Maryland, formed in Chestertown, Maryland. Adopts a new constitution recognizing the separation of church and state, with no special status for members of the Anglican faith in the Church of England in the state.
• 1785 - First German Reformed Church builds building at Market (later East Baltimore) and Front Streets, by Jones Falls with contributions from membership.
  • Construction of church for German Reformed congregation from 1771 (later known as Otterbein United Methodist Church) at South Sharp and West Conway Streets. (oldest church building still in use in city). Led by Philip William Otterbein (1726-1813), later forms Church of the United Brethren in Christ.
• 1786 - Presbytery of Baltimore organized, led by Rev. Dr. Patrick Allison (1740-1802), of First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, then located at North Street (now Guilford Avenue) and East Fayette Street (recently renamed after Marquis de Lafayette following American Revolution).
• 1787 - 1,955 dwellings in town.
• 1788 - Assemblies, debates, newspaper articles and elections commence around issue of whether Maryland should ratify new United States Constitution drawn up in Philadelphia by convention meeting during the summer. Baltimoreans celebrate adoption of new government by having parade of various town officials, units and tradesmen processing to the rugged cliff-side heights south of the town and harbor for a festival picnic that Fall. Site thereafter always known as "Federal Hill".
• 1789 - Ceremonial procession of newly elected first President of the United States George Washington escorted through city in mid-April by local militia regiments, officials and bands on his way north from home at Mount Vernon, near Alexandria, Virginia to New York City's Federal Hall for his first inauguration April 30. Elaborate banquet and toasts held at the famous Fountain Inn, most important local hotel at northeast corner of Light/St. Paul and German (now Redwood) Streets.
  • Ordination of first Roman Catholic bishop in America, Father John Carroll and erection of first see (diocese) in the Nation at Baltimore, encompassing all of the U.S.A. He returns to city the next year for installation and establishment of the first Catholic cathedral ("pro-cathedral") at St. Peter's Congregation (established 1770) at northwestern side of North Charles and West Saratoga Streets (across the street from Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church, oldest Anglican/Episcopal parish in Maryland).
  • Formation of an independent Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., separated from the Church of England, (the "Mother Church"); Diocese of Maryland organized nine years before in Chestertown, Maryland elects and ordains its first bishop for the "Episcopalians" in America is Thomas John Claggett (1743-1816), who is consecrated at Trinity Church in 1792 for the new Diocese. The American Church remains an important part of the growing worldwide Anglican Communion which follows the later expansion of the British Empire during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Adoption of its own American revision of the Book of Common Prayer for church services of liturgies and Christian worship.
  • Baltimore Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery founded.
• 1790 - Population of the town: 13,503 people in the First official census of the new United States Federal Government, now to be taken every decade.
• 1791 - St. Mary's Seminary established in former tavern on Hookstown Road (northwestern road heading out of city - now Pennsylvania Avenue) by the first American Bishop John Carroll.
  • Construction of large brick Georgian/Federal-style Rectory completed after two years for minister, Dr. William West of Old St. Paul's Parish (since 1779) at West Saratoga Street at north end of newly named Liberty Street-extension of South Sharp Street, who dies before completion. Occupied by next minister, Rev. Joseph J.G. Bend after Dr. West dies. Known as the "Parsonage on the Hill", it becomes the oldest continuously residential home occupied in the city to the early 1990s. Replaces earlier wood-frame St. Paul's parsonage at Forest (later North Charles) and New Church (later Lexington) Streets - site of Fidelity Building, one block south.
• 1793 - Additional French refugees from Caribbean island colony of Santo Domingo (modern Haiti) arrive in port following rebellion by local Negro slaves under Toussaint L'Overture and settle in local "Frenchtown" community (southwest of Charles and Lombard Streets, west of the "Basin"), joining earlier Acadians (French Canadian) from Nova Scotia and British persecution in the mid-1750s.
• 1794 - James Calhoun becomes mayor of Baltimore Town (to 1804). Maryland's first fire insurance company, the Baltimore Equitable Society (later on southeast corner of East Fayette and North Paca Streets) founded and remains in business up to the 2000s. Fire insurance Policy No. 1, issued April 10, 1794 to Humphrey Pierce, for 3-story brick building/dwelling on East Baltimore, between South and Calvert Streets. Cast-iron fire mark device issued with policy on June 25, 1794, to Edward Walsh, placed on building at 1635 Shakespeare Street, Fells Point.
  • "The Retreat", also known as "The Hospital for Strangers and Mariners" or the "Hospital for Seamen and Strangers" or the "Retreat for Strangers and Mariners" established along future Broadway, east of the City, on a six and 3/4 acres plot of land purchased by the State from Capt. Jeremiah Yellott at a cost of 800 pounds sterling. Later develops in three years into the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, later becomes Spring Grove State Hospital in 1872 when moved to Catonsville in southwest Baltimore County. Considered the second oldest continuously operating psychiatric hospital in the U.S.A. (second only to the Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia).
• 1795 - Holliday Street Theater opens on Holliday Street between East Fayette and Lexington (then Orange Alley) Streets, designed by architect Robert Cary Long, Sr. (father of more famous son/architect Robert Cary Long, Jr.) and becomes most important playhouse in the city.
• 1796 -
• After several failed attempts through the Maryland General Assembly, Baltimore Town is now to become the "City of Baltimore" (under name of "Mayor and City Council of Baltimore") incorporated with approximate population of 20,000 and begins functioning the next year. James Calhoun continues as under previous town government as first mayor of the City (to 1804).
• Library Company of Baltimore founded and opens on October 22 at home of Mr. Williams on Lemon Street, later incorporated by the State Legislature on January 20, 1797. Located at Old Assembly-Rooms building (landmark Georgian/Federal two-story structure with front pediment and large rooms on first level for social levees, dancing and receptions/dinners/banquets for the up-and-coming "social set"), designed by Col. Nicholas Rogers (of "Druid Hill" estate) with later architect Robert Cary Long, Sr. as builder, along with James Donaldson and Hessington & Lander. Constructed next door to future famous Holliday Street playhouse at northeast corner of Holliday and East Fayette Streets, built 1798 .
• 1797 - Incorporation of old Baltimore Town completed into new entity "Mayor and City Council of Baltimore" (City of Baltimore) begins functioning with elections held as James Calhoun continues as now first Mayor (to 1804) with new city offices established by 1800 at 90 Baltimore Street (formerly Market Street). Election wards laid out. Some of the City officials of the time were: 8 superintendents of pumps, 7 measurers of lumber, 4 wood corders, 2 hay weighers, 3 commissioners of the watch and lighting, 2 inspectors of flour, 1 inspector of salt provisions.
  • Launching of first warship on September 9 of "Original Six Frigates" for new re-organized United States Navy is the U.S.F. Constellation, built on Harris Creek, tributary into Northwest Branch of Patapsco River, near modern neighborhood Canton by David Stoddard in his navy and ship yard. Second of the original six to hit water (previously U.S.S. United States in Philadelphia), designed by the revolutionary, precedent-setting shipbuilder/architect Joshua Humphreys, (1751-1838), with 36 guns. Later known as the Yankee Clipper, the U.S.F. Constellation, under the command of its first captain, Thomas Truxton, is soon joined by others from other East Coast ports: USS Constitution (Boston), United States (1797), Congress (1799), President (1800), Chesapeake (1799) (or sometimes as Independence) in the later 1790s. The new American Naval ships soon establish a formidable reputation for speed and armament when the "quasi-naval war" breaks out with the new French Republic late in the decade and later conflicts with the pirate Muslim sultanates of North Africa, nicknamed the "Barbary Coast" in the early 1800s.
  • Capt. David Porter, Sr., establishes a signal-house on Federal Hill on a wooden tower to signal notices of any in-coming ships passing the point at Bodkin Creek (Rock Point) or North Point. Later replaced after Civil War and the earthworks of the Union Army's Fort Federal Hill by another more well-built, architecturally pleasing wooden-frame tower until damaged by storm and razed in the 1880s when hill was landscaped and became a city park. Rugged, jagged heights overlooking downtown business district "Basin" on southern side in future Federal Hill community in South Baltimore.
  • Maryland Academy of Science and Literature founded as an amateur scientific society of curious and intellectual gentlemen of the Town. Sometimes operates small museum and astronomical observatory and meets infrequently for discussions, debates and lectures. Later re-organizes several times and continues throughout the 19th and 20th into 21st centuries with modern structure as the Maryland Science Center on southwestern shore waterfront of Inner Harbor in 1976.
• 1798 -
  • Reconstruction begins of old American Revolutionary War fortifications at Fort Whetstone at end of southern peninsula between Basin (modern Inner Harbor) and Northwest Branch of Patapsco River on its north side to Middle and Ferry (now Southern) Branches on its south side. Star-shaped Fort McHenry, renamed for James McHenry, third Secretary of War under Presidents George Washington and John Adams.
  • With support of town's doctors, state legislature expands three-year old "Retreat for Seamen and Strangers" (also with other various names) and founds in 1797 and appropriates $8,000 with later adding another $3,000 for construction of a "Public Hospital of Baltimore" or "City Hospital" for the "sick and lunatics", Baltimore City Council committee chooses 6 - 3/4 acres site (later expanded to 13 acres including an adjacent 8 acre farm) at southwest corner of Broadway (then also known as Market Street) to the west, facing East Monument Street to the north, Jefferson Street (later Orleans Street) to the south, and Wolfe Street to the east, opening the Baltimore General Dispensary, also known as Maryland Hospital and Maryland Hospital for the Insane at Baltimore. Extensive two-winged structure built east and west with central section surmounted by cupola of Georgian/Federal-style architecture of brick and wood trim. Treats physical and mental conditions of residents including 234 War of 1812 soldiers from Battle of Baltimore in 1814, but later focuses on mental health patients by the 1830s. Later taken over in 1852 by the State of Maryland after impassioned plea by national reformer Dorothea Dix, (1802-1887), and purchases 136 acres property near Catonsville, Maryland, southwest of the city and selects architect and begins construction following year although delays caused by funding shortfalls and suspended during Civil War. Eventually moving in 1872 with 112 patients and is renamed Spring Grove State Hospital. Former East Baltimore site later purchased in 1870 by financier/philanthropist Johns Hopkins, (1795-1873), three years before his death (whose cash purchase allowed hospital to make its later move to Baltimore County) as the location for his new Johns Hopkins Hospital, building a completely new and then modern complex of buildings on the long-time hospital site, opening in 1889.
• 1799 - Organization of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland (state medical society - known as "Med Chi") by 101 physicians in the State at Annapolis in January. Later becomes a state affiliate of the national body, the American Medical Association when it is founded in 1847.
  • City Council outlaws any further buildings of wood to be constructed in the newly organized city to lessen increasing chances of fire and spreading from vulnerable structures.
  • Influential city financier and leader William Buchanan builds luxurious townhouse on the northeast corner of North Calvert Street and East Fayette Street across from the first Baltimore County/City Courthouse in the Courthouse Square, later faces future Battle Monument site, constructed 1815-1822. Mansion later owned by United States Senator, Reverdy Johnson (1796-1876), and ransacked during riots of Baltimore bank riot of 1835. Razed in 1896 for future third city courthouse building which fills entire block.
  • Another wealthy merchant, Continental Army and state militia military officer plus leading political leader Samuel Smith, (1752-1829), builds unusually designed (first floor pavilion-style oval porch bulges out front) country estate named "Montebello" in northeastern rural outskirts (near current site of 33rd Street Boulevard and The Alameda - Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood) which becomes one of the landmark mansions of Baltimore. Later wooden-frame Victorian-style mansion built nearby to northwest in the 1870s by Civil War-era president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, John Work Garrett (1820-1884), also using same name of "Montebello", (later public waterworks system's Lake Montebello laid out nearby). Smith's distinctive but deteriorating home razed in 1907 and Garrett's for future northern neighborhoods of Ednor Gardens-Lakeside and Original Northwood in the 1930s and 40s.
  • The sloop-of-war U.S.S. Maryland launched June 3 from Price's Shipyard at Fells Point for the newly reorganized United States Navy. New warship carries an armament of 20 guns, subscribed to and built on behalf of the merchants of Baltimore and presented to the U.S. Government. Following three weeks later on June 20 by the sloop-of-war U.S.S. Chesapeake (later renamed U.S.S. Patapsco and sold after hostilities ended in 1801 by Jefferson administration) from De Rochbroom's Shipyard, also in Fells Point. In addition a committee of leading merchants/citizens of Robert Gilmor, George Sears, Robert Oliver, William Patterson, David Stewart, Jeremiah Yellott, Mark Pringle, Archibald Campbell and Thomas Coale is formed to make an appeal to local citizens by to raise monies by subscription to reinforce and finish the old American Revolutionary War fortification Fort Whetstone at the Whetstone Point of the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River, (soon to be renamed Fort McHenry in honor of Baltimorean, James McHenry, U.S. Secretary of War under Presidents Washington and Adams) during the current naval Quasi-War with the revolutionary French Republic. The French Navy heavy frigate Isurgente recently captured by the new U.S. Navy frigate U.S.S. Constellation, recently built in Baltimore in 1796-97 under first Capt. Thomas Truxton is brought to the City to be refitted out as an American warship, but is unfortunately lost at sea the following winter under Capt. Patrick Fletcher.

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19th century

1800s-1840s

• 1800 - Population of the new City on the "Basin" of the Patapsco's Northwest Branch at the beginning of the 19th Century: 26,504 people (according to the Second Decennial United States Census of 1800).
  • Dr. John B. Davidge, educated in Europe, recently settled here commences a course of lectures at his residence on the principles and practices of Midwifery, later on practical surgery and demonstrative anatomy with about a dozen students. Later he has erected an "anatomical hall" near the southeast corner of Liberty and West Saratoga Streets and is joined by Dr. James Cooke in anatomy and surgery along with Dr. John Shaw in chemistry. Ignorant neighbors form mob and destroy the structure, whereupon the doctors continue their teachings at the Baltimore County/City Almshouse. Seven years later (1807), they form a medical college which begins the third attempt to establish a University of Maryland and have the first building built in 1812 at the northeast corner of West Lombard and South Greene Streets, today's historic Davidge Hall.
• 1803 -
  • Fort McHenry building reconstruction completed at end of peninsula to Whetstone Point between Northwest Branch and Middle or Ferry Branches of Patapsco River after four years of construction replacing earlier fortifications of old Fort Whetstone with earthen embankments from Revolutionary War-era. Named for James McHenry (1753-1816), of Maryland, third Secretary of War (1796-1800) under Presidents George Washington (administration: 1789-1797) and John Adams, (administration: 1797-1801). Later attacked by British forces during War of 1812 in September 1814 during Battle of Baltimore, then used as prison for Southern sympathizers during Civil War, finally as major military hospital with several temporary wooden structures surrounding old brick fort during World War I. Transferred by U.S. War Department to City for use as a public park in 1914, during "Star Spangled Banner" Centennial Celebration, but interrupted by military hospital service, 1917-1919. Buildings razed and limited restoration attempted until transferred to new National Park Service of U.S. Department of the Interior as a national historic site. Nearby residential and industrial community develops on the peninsula named Locust Point.
  • Dispensary founded and incorporated for providing primitive medical and drug need for indigent citizens of the burgeoning town.
  • Secession of parishioners from First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore (founded 1761) at East Fayette and North (now Guilford Avenue) Streets after death of long-time minister, Rev. Patrick Allison in 1802. Conflict spills over into national politics over calling of a new pastor between Dr. James Inglis (supporter of Hamilton's Federalists), versus Dr. John Glendy, (follower of Jefferson's "Republicans" - future Democrats). Dispute leads to eventual formation of later Second Presbyterian Church with Glendy as minister with new congregation promising to build new structure which is located later at East Baltimore and Lloyd Streets in Jonestown/Old Town of East Baltimore, just east of Jones Falls.
  • Christmas Eve marriage of local influential merchant, financier and civic leader William Patterson's beautiful socialite teen-age daughter Elizabeth ("Betsy") Patterson Bonaparte, (1785-1879), to visiting Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte, (1784-1860), younger brother of First Consul and future French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, solemnized by local Roman Catholic Bishop John Carroll, (1735-1815), of the Diocese of Baltimore, first bishop and diocese in the nation. The Emperor Napoleon later causes for the marriage to be annulled and results in an "international incident" and romantic saga lasting decades.
• 1805 - Fourth Baltimore County Courthouse and second Baltimore County/City Courthouse began construction on southwest corner of North Calvert Street and East Lexington Street across from old Courthouse Square where old colonial era "Courthouse on Stilts" with cupola stood from 1769 to 1771, when county seat was moved from old Joppa, 1769. Here was where the Declaration of Independence was read to local populace, July 26, 1776 and site of many mass meetings of Baltimore Town's population during crisis events. Old structure said to be "in a state of ruinous decay, and the public records therein deposited considerably endangered". Designed by local builder and woodworker George Milleman of Georgian-Federal styles architecture. Additional construction work done by William Steuart with stonework and Col. James Mosher with bricklaying. Initial outlaid cost of $50,000 and later another $3,000 per year during building, finally additional $20,000 for completion and for construction of neighboring watch-house, project finally completed 1809, with records moved and new court in session. This second Courthouse struck by disastrous fire in 1835 and rebuilt, lasted until razed 1894 when replaced by present third City Courthouse, completed 1900 (renamed 1985 for civil rights activist Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr.).
• 1806 - St. Mary's Seminary relocates from old tavern on Hookstown Road (modern Pennsylvania Avenue) since 1791 to North Paca Street, by St. Mary's and Orchard Streets (in later Seton Hill neighborhood/historic district, in northwestern edge of downtown, off Druid Hill Avenue and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard). Adds secular influential institution for men - St. Mary's College in 1805, incorporated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baltimore which served as a prominent collegiate institution of secular higher learning in the first half of the 19th Century for some of Baltimore's talented youth and soon-to-be leading men, sponsored by the Sulpicians religious order until closed in 1852 and soon replaced in the Diocese by Loyola College and Loyola High School, run by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus).
  • Cornerstone laid in July for new Cathedral for Roman Catholic Diocese of Baltimore, located on hill north of smaller city in "Howard's Woods" on the "Belvidere" estate of Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), former commander of the famed "Maryland Line" regiment in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Ceremonies conducted by first Roman Catholic Bishop in America, John Carroll (1735-1815), (located on future "Cathedral Hill" on Cathedral Street, between West Mulberry and West Franklin Streets in future Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood). Designed by famous British-American architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), in Greek Revival style architecture. Construction will continue for fifteen years until dedication twenty years later, although still partially un-completed with the cupolas with distinctive Eastern Orthodox style minarets added later in 1836, and the columned front portico in the 1870s (under the supervision of architect's grandson - noted lawyer, artist, literary figure and civic leader John H. B. Latrobe).
• 1807 -
  • University of Maryland founded in downtown Baltimore along with future College of Medicine of Maryland as the oldest public and fifth oldest medical school in the United States. Later construction in 1812-13 of domed structure resembling the ancient Pantheon in Rome, with a Greek Revival designed front portico now known as "Davidge Hall" (named for first professor and dean, Dr. John Beale Davidge in 1959, after a later structure bearing his name was razed) at the northeast corner of West Lombard and South Greene Streets. Oldest continuously used building for medical education in the Northern Hemisphere. Later additional graduate schools of Law, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Social Work are gradually added / acquired to the University which eventually expands to a statewide, multi-campus system, two hundred years later.
  • Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts established by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), and father Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), at northwest corner of East Baltimore Street and North Calvert Street. Replaces earlier museum and gallery of 1812-1813 on Holliday near East Lexington Streets. Later run by famous circus promoter P. T. Barnum.
  • Baltimore Circulating Library in business.
  • Centre Street is laid out running from North Howard Street in the west to the Jones Falls in the east with a bridge built across the Falls. Dividing point between East and West Centre Streets is established at North Charles Street. To the north is "Howard's Woods", the estate grounds and mansion of "Belvidere" of Col. John Eager Howard, (1752-1827).
• 1808 - Roman Catholic Diocese of Baltimore elevated by Pope Pius VII (1742-1823, served 1800-1823), to status of an archdiocese with creation of additional dioceses of (Bardstown in Bardstown, Kentucky for the West, later the "see" was moved in 1841 to the larger nearby river port town of Louisville, Kentucky as the Diocese of Louisville for the Western U.S.) on the Ohio River and appointments of additional bishops for dioceses across America: Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, with Baltimore's Bishop John Carroll, now also elevated to archbishop, serving as a supervisor of other areas in the "premier see". Carroll serves as first Archbishop of Baltimore, later establishing the first synods and convocations of priests and bishops for the Church until his death in 1815.
  • Dedication of St. Mary's Seminary Chapel designed by J. Maxmilian M. Godefroy on North Paca Street with additional Seminary (founded 1791 on Pennsylvania Avenue site) and first set of L-shaped Seminary and College buildings in Georgian-Federal style architecture surrounding in quadrangle, oldest Roman Catholic seminary in U.S.A. Seminary buildings replaced in the 1870s by second set of structures in Victorian architecture, later razed 1975 and replaced by present St. Mary's Park in future Seton Hill community.
  • First fatality among Night Watchmen, City's small policing force organized since 1784. N.W. George Workner of the Middle District killed on March 15, after mass escape by nine inmates from the new Baltimore City Jail (built seven years earlier on East Madison Street, above east bank of the Jones Falls). Men had used pewter eating utensils to fashion keys to unlock cells and somewhere also secured use of a knife to aid in their attempt. All nine had committed violent crimes and had been sentenced "to the roads" (chain gang - doing road reconstruction work) during their imprisonment. Workner stabbed with small three-inch blade and dies the next day. First officially recorded death among rolls of future Baltimore City Police Department (reorganized and established in 1857/1859 under State control of Governor of Maryland). All of the convicts were later recaptured and four were sentenced to hang for the additional crime five weeks later.
• 1809 - Joseph Robinson's Circulating Library established in business.
  • Completion of new second Baltimore County/City Courthouse at southwest corner of North Calvert Street and East Lexington Street after four years construction project begun 1805. Razing of old "Courthouse on Stilts" in middle of old Courthouse Square (sometimes briefly called "Washington Square" then). Later site is designated and initial laying of cornerstone July 4, 1815 for future Washington Monument here until later decision that summer of being too tall for limited area of location. Then designated as site for shorter Battle Monument commemorating fallen in Battle of Baltimore from 1814, with construction from 1815 to 1827.
• 1810 -
  • Population counted by the Third United States Census of 1810: 46,535 people in Baltimore, making it the third largest city in America under figures from the U.S. Census.
  • Alex. Brown & Sons formed by Alexander Brown in 1800, incorporated firm and joined by sons William, George, John and James. Becomes world-famous financial investment firm and later located by 1901 at southwest corner of East Baltimore and North Calvert Streets, which their small, elaborate building notably survived Great Baltimore Fire in downtown in February 1904. Later addition to the west of similarly styled buildings by 1907. Old headquarters historically restored in the early 1980s by Chevy Chase Bank (later absorbed by Capital One Bank) of Bethesda, Maryland. Venerable Brown financial firm absorbed by Bankers Trust firm in 1997, and later BT Alex. Brown taken over by German giant Deutsche Bank banking conglomerate in 1999 and relocates to Commerce Place tower of 1991 at East Baltimore Street, between South and Commerce Streets in the 2000s. Later influential descendent member of the family is George William Brown (1812-1890), lawyer, civic reformer leader and Mayor of Baltimore during the early Civil War in 1860-1861 and involved in the infamous Pratt Street Riots of 1861. A noted attorney, he was also a founder of the Library Company of the Baltimore Bar, located on the second floor of the second Baltimore City and County Courthouse in 1840 and advocated for a free public library in 1859, twenty-three years before Enoch Pratt, (1808-1896), endowed and organized his Free Library gift to the City (1882-1886).
• 1811 - First issue of what becomes the well-known national newspaper Niles Weekly Register published by Hezekiah Niles (1777-1839), - (previous editor of Baltimore Evening Post and Mercantile Daily Advertiser, from 1805 to 1811), on Saturday, September 7. Niles publishes illustrated paper from Baltimore for 25 years until September 1836, until passed to his son William Ogden Niles who continues paper in expanded form and revamped format from the City for one year until he moves printing office in September 1837, to Washington, D.C., under new title, Niles National Register. Father and founder Hezekiah dies in Wilmington, Delaware in April 1839, aged 63. Paper's publication offices moved back to Baltimore in May 1839, and continues from there under his widow, Sallay Ann Niles sells to Jeremiah Hughes, former editor of an Annapolis paper who continues the Register until ceasing publication in February 1848.
  • Maryland Penitentiary constructed and opened in November east of Jones Falls and previous Baltimore City Jail opened a decade earlier (1801, later renamed in the 1990s as the Baltimore City Detention Center) on future East Madison Street, west off Greenmount Avenue (old York Road/Turnpike) and on the east bank of the Jones Falls. The Maryland Pen later becomes the second oldest correctional facility in America, next to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Prison rebuilt and expanded from 1894 to 1897, finally completed in 1899, with two massive gray stone Gothic Revival style wings (the notorious "South Wing" facing Greenmount Avenue - site of several riots, and the "West Wing" along East Eager Street) with a large landmark central administrative section under its landmark pyramid capstone roof. Houses "death row" and execution chambers for the death penalty. Later becomes "flagship" institution of Maryland state correctional system with several statewide locations (Jessup, Hagerstown, Princess Anne, and Cumberland) and old "Maryland Pen" renamed in the 1990s as Metropolitan Transition Center.
  • St. Paul's Lane (now East Saratoga Street) extended to the east from North Charles Street down past the cliffs to the Jones Falls area, past the Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church to the then site of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
• 1812 - Construction of domed revolutionary-designed lecture hall and classroom building for new University of Maryland Medical College, later known as "Davidge Hall" (named for Dr. John Beale Davidge), at northeast corner of West Lombard at South Greene Streets, designed by Robert Cary Long, Jr. (1810-1849). Landmark with front portico has name of school painted on wall behind massive white front Doric columns, remains a city landmark into the 21st century.
  • Riot and attack by pro-war sympathizers in old Republican Party against Federalist-leaning editors, led by Alexander Contee Hanson (1786-1819) of the anti-war Federalist Party newspaper The Federal Republican offices two days after a sharply divided U.S. Congress declares war against Great Britain in the War of 1812, on June 22 at South Gay and Second (later Water) Streets tearing down and leveling building and throwing presses, type and paper into streets. Hanson takes refuge in home of partner Jacob Wagner on South Charles Street (between Pratt and Lombard Streets) and issues another editorial condemning the city watch (police), the town and the mayor and comparing to French Revolution radicalism on July 27. Later on July 29, and one month (June 18) after the war declaration, Maryland State Militia with cannon under Major John Barney brother of famed naval Commander Joshua Barney (1759-1818), and General John Stricker; (1758-1825), (later of North Point battle fame), along with Mayor Edward Johnson (1767-1829) prevail upon editors and escorts endangered newspapermen after day-long attacks and riots in the streets around the Federalists' house to new 11-year-old Baltimore City Jail on east side of Jones Falls (near modern East Madison Street and The Fallsway), for protection. Later that night, another mob attacks and drags out the prisoners, assisted by a man named "Mumma", who opens the back gates, and literally tries to tear them to shreds, kills a former Revolutionary War general, James Lignan, maims and injures former Washington aide General Henry ("Light Horse Harry") Lee, (father of late U.S. Army officer and Confederate General Robert E. Lee) and injures many others. Tragic incident brands Baltimore, the then hated nickname of "Mob Town". Local reaction is so severe that "Federalists" win National Congressional elections that Fall, electing Hanson to Congress. Considered to be the first incident in America of martyrs for "Freedom of the Press" (with a listing on a memorial to press freedom at the "Newseum" in Rosslyn, Virginia in 1995, across the Potomac River from Washington, sponsored by the Gannett newspaper syndicate/chain, later relocated to prominent Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington).
  • Baltimore and Fells Point become great center and base for outfitting "privateers" on anything American that could float and hold some artillery to raid British maritime commerce. With their Royal Navy so busy defending the British Isles, colonies and trade plus military communication routes from Napoleon Bonaparte. Captains like Thomas Boyle commanding the "Chasseur" (later becomes famous with the slogan of the "Pride of Baltimore" and namesake for future late 20th Century two replica ships built as "good will ambassadors") and the "Comet" and with Joshua Barney, (1759-1818), captaining the "Rossie", earning for the city another nickname as "the nest of pirates". New types of ships are developed such as the sleek "Baltimore clipper", which are fast and can dart into shallow coastal waters for protection.

Regular U.S. Navy warships like some of the "Original Six" frigates of 1797, such as the U.S.F. Constitution (of Boston) and U.S.F. Constellation from Baltimore have several stunning victories but later get bottled up in American harbor by later British blockade of east coast, later stifling Baltimore commerce. Most War action in first year is on the Great Lakes and Canadian borders.

• 1813 - Holliday Street Theatre (also known then as the "New Theatre" or "Baltimore Theatre") of original wooden construction from 1794 to 1795, rebuilt in stone and brick with Greek Revival motifs by Robert Cary Long, Sr. and opened on May 10 with first performance. Owned by joint stock company with Col. James Mosher and cost $50,000. Located on east side of Holliday Street between East Lexington and East Fayette Streets next to earlier Long project, the famous old "Assembly-Rooms" (also of Greek Revival style) for social levees, dances and receptions of the moderately wealthy and comfortable social set, built in the late 1790s.
  • British Royal Navy and Army under command of hated Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn (1772-1853), raid towns and villages up and down shores of Chesapeake Bay from their base on Virginia's Tangier Island making the Bay a "British Lake". Attack and burn Havre de Grace in northeast Harford County. Chesapeake Bay Flotilla of Commodore Joshua Barney (1759-1818), of barges and small boats defy British sea power, but are chased up the Patuxent River and scuttled the following year at Pig Point.
  • Committee of three important military visitors: Maj. Gen. Samuel Smith (1752-1839), Maj. George Armistead,(1780-1818), Brig. Gen. John Stricker (1758-1825), and her brother-in-law, Commodore Joshua Barney (1759-1818), call upon Mrs. Mary Young Pickersgill (1776-1857), at her Federal-style corner townhouse at East Pratt Street (formerly 44 Queen Street) at Albemarle Street, east of the Jones Falls in Jonestown/Old Town to request she make a huge American flag of 30 by 42 feet in size with fifteen red and white stripes and fifteen stars of wool bunting and a smaller-size 17 by 25 feet "storm flag" of similar design. Major Armistead explained in a letter/report to his superiors his need to have an ensign that the British would have no trouble seeing it from any distance. Mrs. Pickersgill, a well-known local maker of flags, banners and pennants was the daughter of Mrs. Rebecca Flowers Young of Philadelphia who made the original "Grand Union Flag" of thirteen red and white stripes with a British "Union Jack" in the canton/upper field to Gen. George Washington (1732-1799), when he took command "in the name of the Continental Congress" which he raised over his Continental Army troops at his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts in June 1775, when surrounding the British in Boston after the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. She accepts the contract and recruits her whole household including her daughter Caroline, two nieces and a free Black woman servant in the project. After beginning the sewing in her front room, she finished up the assembly of the massive banner by assembling the pieces on her hands and knees on the wooden floor of the neighboring malt house/warehouse of the Peters/Brown/Johnson/Claggett's Brewery (then owned by Baltimore Mayor Edward Johnson (1767-1829)) down the street on South Front Street's southeast corner by East Fayette Street (modern "Brewers' Park", archeological project developed in the early 1990s by the Baltimore City Life Museums). She delivers the completed flags on August 19, 1813 (a full year before the British attack) to the commanders at Fort McHenry and keeps her receipt dated Oct. 27, 1813 for all history of $405.90 for the big flag and $168.54 for the smaller storm flag, a ceremony which has been revived and reenacted in the 1990s.
• 1814 - In total maritime command of the Chesapeake Bay for the last year, the British Royal Navy fleet sails up the Patuxent River, landing at Benedict to attack and burn the fourteen-year-old National Capital's public buildings at Washington City, including the 21-year-old Capitol, still under construction since 1792 with two wings for the Senate and House of Representatives connected by a wooden-roofed walkway in between and also housing the Supreme Court and the new book collections of the Library of Congress - the largest then existing in America, the "Executive Mansion"/"President's House", with surrounding four small Federal-styled office buildings containing Departments of War, State, Treasury and Navy, and the Navy Yard on the Anacostia River/Eastern Branch of the Potomac, Post Office but spare the U.S. Patent Office and its collections of scientific exhibits and models. This was in retaliation for the earlier American burning of York, the capital of Upper Canada of British North America, the year before, during the War of 1812. After routing American militia at the Battle of Bladensburg, northeast of the District of Columbia in Prince George's County in August, known later derisively as the "Bladensburg Races" with fourth President James Madison (1751-1836), and Secretary of State James Monroe (1758-1831), (and shortly new Secretary of War and later fifth President) looking on at the crushing defeat under command of Gen. William H. Winder (1775-1824), of the newly organized local Fifth Military District. Baltimorean Commodore Joshua Barney's seamen and regular Navy artillery hold fast and he is captured by the British commanders Ross and Cockburn, paroled and released in recognition of his bravery. Another British fleet sails up the Potomac River, past defending Fort Washington which was south below the National Capital, which was blown up by its commander then retreated. Royal Navy detachment under Capt. Gordon lands at colonial-era port at Alexandria (formerly in Virginia, but then part of the District of Columbia) and exacts a ransom from the town officials after seeing that their Army compatriots had already evacuated Washington just to the northwest after Ross, Cockburn and Cochrane were putting it to the torch two days before. The fleet moves back downriver harassed by shallow water and sniping American military units onshore.
  • September 12-14, - Battle of Baltimore with British fleet attack under Admirals, Sir Alexander Cochrane (1758-1832) and Sir George Cockburn (1772-1853), with Gen. Robert Ross (1766-1814), landing and marching up the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula to the Battle of North Point, halting at fortifications with artillery at Loudenschlager's Hill (later Hampstead Hill/Patterson Park) and bombardment of Fort McHenry, under command of regular U.S. Army Major George Armistead (1780-1818). The defense of Fort McHenry in the battle inspired Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), to compose the poem "Defence of Fort McHenry" which later became the lyrics for "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States of America.

Later observed as "Defenders' Day" on September 12 as a state, county and city official holiday. Ross is killed in a skirmish before the main North Point battle by militiamen Henry or Daniel? Wells and Richard or Henry McComas of "Aisquith's Sharpshooters" according to legend and command was assumed by Col. Arthur Brooke (1772-1843). Under command of Brig. Gen. John Stricker (1758-1825), the several Maryland Militia regiments march east out of town to hold the Redcoats for several hours in a severe back-and-forth exchange of rifle and cannon fire on the battlefield on the narrow neck of the peninsula known as "Patapsco Neck" or "Godly Wood" between Back River's Bread and Cheese Creek to the north and Bear Creek to the Patapsco River to the south, when the left northern flank finally collapses, Stricker withdraws his men back to the city in good order and the protective heavier fortifications after having considerably bloodied the stunned enemy who expected another rout. British Army stays on the battlefield for the night tending their wounded in a local Methodist Meeting House along Old North Point Road and evacuating some by barge at night down the creeks to the fleet moored out in Old Roads Bay off North Point and slowly advances the next morning to a mile within sight of the heights east of town (occupying Col. John Sterett's home of "Surrey" [still standing near modern Erdman Avenue and Pulaski Highway, U.S. Route 40] and leaving a courteous note for the Colonel for his "hospitality" of dinner and accommodations) on "Loudenschlager's Hill" (later "Hampstead Hill" in modern-day Patterson Park) where approx. 20,000 drafted and volunteer citizens along with armed militia, regular U.S. Army and troops from Pennsylvania have fortified dug-in entrenchments, under overall command of Maj. Gen. Samuel Smith (1752-1839) of Maryland Militia, who planned for months that British would eventually come that very same way. Forces skirmish against each other for a day, moving and flanking back and forth moving north against Pennington's Mill and south towards the shore near Fells Point and the range of McHenry's artillery. Col. Brooke after war council among his officers decides to await further bombardment by fleet of fort and then move in to burn the "nest of pirates"!. Bombardment takes place over two days, September 13-14th, and "Redcoats" eventually give up the attack, after their flanking attack by barges at night in a driving rain storm up the Ferry to Middle Branches, hugging the southern opposite shore (future Brooklyn, Curtis Bay and Fairfield) to the west of the Fort. British barges are fired upon and turned back by alert sentries and guns at outlying Forts Covington and Babcock, supported in the rear on the heights above by the "Six-Gun Battery" at Camp Look-Out; present-day Riverside Park (off Fort and Riverside Avenues). Bombardment ends after rain and thunder storms of the night, with sight of enormous 30 by 42 foot huge banner made a year earlier by Mary Pickersgill (1776-1857) of Jonestown unfurled by Americans at first light with booming of the morning gun announcing the time and salute as British fleet weighs anchors and sets sail to the surprised eyes of lawyer Key and his companions, John Skinner (1788-1851), U.S. prisoner-of-war exchange agent and Dr. William Beanes (1749-1828), on the truce ship "Minden" anchored downriver by North Point.

• • Peale Museum constructed 1813, opened by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), in 1814 on Holliday Street (300 block) between East Saratoga and Lexington Streets. First building in the Americas designed specifically as a museum structure. Later site of first gas lighting of interior rooms in America in June 1816. Peale places a variety of exhibits here, including the remnants of a pre-historic mastodon excavated by his father Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), along with various lectures and performances during the next sixteen years until museum is reorganized and relocated to northwest corner of East Baltimore and North Calvert Streets. Holliday Street structure later became old Baltimore City Hall 1830 to 1875, the first Negro/Afro-American public school, and several other uses and then renovated and restored in 1931 under Great Depression-era Mayor Howard W. Jackson (1877-1960), as "The Municipal Museum of the City of Baltimore" (with long-time curator and expert in city history after World War II, Wilbur Harvey Hunter), with a variety of exhibits, programs, lectures, tours and activities in local heritage along with growing extensive collections of photographs, documents and memorabilia pertaining to Baltimore City. Added in the late 1980s as flagship exhibition center of municipal history to newly organized public/private, multi-campus "Baltimore City Life Museums" system of assembled historic sites, houses and museums with the Phoenix Shot Tower, Carroll Mansion, (the city townhouse of Charles Carroll of Carrollton), other neighboring historic houses of the 1840s-era, "Brewers' Park", an excavated archeological site of former brewery where Mary Pickersgill assembled the "Star Spangled Banner" flag; the H. L. Mencken House by Union Square in West Baltimore, the Edgar Allan Poe House on Amity Street, the Old Town Friends' Meeting House on Aisquith Street, and finally opening with great pageantry and fanfare during Baltimore City's Biccentennial in 1997, a new exhibition gallery of four-stories using the old reconstructed historic cast-iron façade of the old Fava Fruit Company (long in storage for 28 years since its razing), facing President Street Boulevard, north of the Carroll Mansion, with a series of shows on the City's history and life which was a highpoint of the 1996-97 Municipal Bicentennial. The historical museums system and new gallery closed unfortunately after a year of lower-than-expected attendance figures and a financial crisis brought on by the failure of the incumbent Mayor and city government to extend a five-year term of annual subsidies for one more year to cover the new gallery.
• 1815 -
  • Battle Monument cornerstone laid on first anniversary of the battle (the first "Defenders' Day" commemorated) and construction continues to September 12, 1822 when "Lady Baltimore" statue is raised to the summit of the column. Situated in previous Courthouse Square at North Calvert Street between East Lexington and Fayette Streets with site of second courthouse for Baltimore City/County of 1805-1809, having been moved to the northwest side. Monument designed by French emigre architect J. Maximilian M. Godefroy of an Egyptian-style tomb surmounted by a Roman-style group of rods, bound together by straps (known as "fasces") with names engraved of the casualties of the common soldiers (first to be memorialized in a war monument in America) that fell in the North Point battle and Ft. McHenry bombardment, the year before. Four griffins at corners of the base. "Lady Baltimore" robed figure, holding a laurel wreath aloft in one hand and a boat tiller in the other, symbolizing the city maritime heritage. Monument was surrounded by an iron fence with raised cannons at four corners. First monument to commemorate the common soldier in America. Quickly becomes local landmark and continues to be the major assembly point of the citizens of the city in times of unrest, peril or controversy, surrounded by expensive Georgian/Federal-style townhouses at the time (later replaced in the 19th and 20th Centuries by hotels and mansions and later by judicial buildings) and portrayed thereafter on City Seal (and later municipal flag and logos of city departments/agencies) and becomes symbol of Baltimore as "The Monumental City" as declared in local speech in 1827 by sixth President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), along with other subsequent landmark structures such as the taller Washington Monument.
  • Corner stone for new Washington Monument (Baltimore) laid with great ceremonies on Independence Day, July 4, 1815 in old Courthouse Square at North Calvert Street between East Lexington and Fayette Streets, after the new second City/County Courthouse had been moved to the northwest corner of the Square several years before. After further discussions during the summer and because of awareness of a campaign also to raise a monument to commemorate the dead from the recent battles which delivered the city from the invading British the previous Fall (the "Battle Monument"), and concern by neighbors of the expensive Georgian/Federal-style townhouses which had now closely surrounded the proposed small site where the old Courthouse formerly stood, with the planned height of architect Robert Mills column to commemorate the first president with fears it was too tall and close to nearby residences in case it should topple, caused the new Washington Monument for Baltimore to be relocated to an area of "Howard's Woods" further north and at the edge of the city's then development on land of his estate "Belvedere" donated by influential citizen Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), and later to be surrounded with four rectangular landscaped park squares to be known by the 1830s as Mount Vernon Place and Washington Place at the circle at North Charles Street with East and West Monument Streets.
• 1816 - Baltimore Exchange (also known as the "Merchants Exchange"), constructed 1816-20. Planned as an 'H'-shaped Greco-Roman structure with a low dome and a second-floor catwalk promenade around an interior atrium, then the largest building in America. Designed by architect Benjamin H. B. Latrobe assisted by J. Maximilian M. Godefroy fronting on South Gay Street, with its South Wing along East Lombard Street and its North Wing on Second (now Water) Street, but temporarily completed only as a 'T'. A Western Wing added later for an 5-story "Exchange Hotel" (later torn down in 1871 when a one-story annex was added to the Post Office section, giving it its completed planned 'H' shape). (Houses wings for Federal customs house, U.S. (Federal District and Circuit) Courts, Post Office, and a branch of the famous Bank of the United States (extended historical battle in the 1820s-30s between the Federalist/Conservative administrations and national financial interests that established "BofUS" under Washington/Hamilton administrations and seventh President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) to kill it), with early offices and held a temporary city hall for Baltimore City, and offices for local private shipping companies, brokers, attorneys/lawyers, candlers and various maritime businesses). Even the Maryland Institute held classes here briefly during the late 1830s and 1840s before constructing their landmark 1851 building over Centre Market ("Marsh Market") by the Jones Falls, two blocks east. Massive rotunda was later site of President Abraham Lincoln lying-in-state during one day after procession through city during traveling to Springfield, Illinois for burial in April 1865. Razed by 1901-02 and replaced in 1903-07 by present Beaux Arts-style, marble and granite U.S. Customs House. During construction, the foundations were weakened by the passing firestorm of the Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904, before it ended just to the east at the Jones Falls. Work resumed and the foundations were strengthened as the project proceeded.
  • First demonstration of interior gas lighting by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) in a room at his "Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts" on Holliday Street, between East Saratoga and Lexington Streets on June 13. With other far-sighted businessmen, later founds the Gas Light Company of Baltimore (later known as the Consolidated Gas, Electric Light and Power Company of Baltimore City, then later renamed Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, recently merged/"taken-over" with Exelon Corporation of Chicago (merger of former Unicom, previously Consolidated Edison electric utility of Chicago, (founded 1907)); and PECO, formerly the Philadelphia Electric Company in Pennsylvania, (established 1881, formed in 2012) on June 17, 1816 as first chemical industry concern or utility company in the nation.
  • Asbury College founded by Methodists, named for Rev. Francis Asbury (1745-1816), well-known and traveled church missionary in the Middle Atlantic area who was the first to be ordained a Methodist bishop in America at the famous "Christmas Conference" in December 1784 at Lovely Lane Chapel, off German and Light Streets and began organizing a Methodist Episcopal Church in America, which led to the modern United Methodist Church. Established about 20 years after earlier Cokesbury College established by Methodists around Light Street and East Baltimore Street, but burned in large block-size fire in 1798? Asbury College later licensed by State of Maryland in 1818 with Samuel K. Jennings as president. Active to c. 1832 but closed shortly after that.
• 1817 - Establishment and construction of "First Independent Church of Baltimore" begins, later to be known as the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Unitarian and Universalist) at northwest corner of West Franklin Street and North Charles Street, which is now the oldest continually occupied church of Unitarians in America. Designed by French émigré architect J. Maximilian M. Godefroy with distinctive "cube surmounted by dome" architecture and domed rotunda ceiling interior. Godefroy had also earlier designed the Battle Monument several blocks away on North Calvert Street between East Lexington and Fayette Streets, which began construction on ""Defenders' Day" in September 1815 and wasn't completed until 1822. Two years later, on May 5, 1819, this new Baltimore church is the site of a famous sermon or homily known as the "Baltimore Sermon" by noted minister William Ellery Channing from Federal Street Church in Boston at the ordination of the first minister Jared Sparks (who also became famous and successful in his own right decades later) which enunciates various principles which are later considered essential to Unitarianism and influential in forming and organizing the church and later denomination and are observed and remembered on their anniversary to this day.
  • Construction after war hostilities have ceased of small memorial stone obelisk monument along old Long Log Lane, later old North Point Road several miles north of the "Redcoats" landing site at North Point in southeastern Baltimore County in memory of their comrade, soldier Aquila Randall of the "Mechanical Volunteers" regiment under command of Benjamin C. Howard, formed from first town volunteer fire fighting company. First war memorial to a common soldier. Also traditionally killed at this site along with the British Army commander, Gen. Robert Ross by ""Wells and McComas" (Daniel Wells and Henry McComas)", in early skirmish, leading to the Battle of North Point, of September 12, 1814 (Defenders' Day).
  • Death of the second Archbishop of Baltimore on June 18, the Very Rev. Leonard Neale, S.J., (1746-1817), who had served since 1815 and the death of the first bishop/archbishop, John Carroll. Bishop Neale was succeeded by Father Ambrose Marechal (1764-1828), as third archbishop who serves Baltimore's Catholics, 1817 to 1828.
• 1818 - Authorized by act of General Assembly of Maryland in 1816, City has first general wide annexation (After 1729 foundation of Baltimore Town and mergers with Jones's Town (1745) and Fell's Point (1773), previous annexations during the 1780s and 1990s were piece-meal of groups of smaller plots of dozens of acres, before municipal incorporation and reorganization into Baltimore City in 1796/1797) of now thirteen square miles of land from surrounding Baltimore County on four sides with about 12,000 residents added (known then as "Precincters"). New City boundaries go north to Boundary Avenue (now North Avenue), southwest to Gwynns Falls stream and also south to the Middle and/or Ferry Branches of the upper Patapsco River's Western Branch, (including old Federal Hill area and old South Baltimore on peninsula leading to Whetstone Point and Ft. McHenry), however no expansion yet approved by industrialists, merchants and residents to the east on waterfront land still controlled for commercial, industrial and residential development, by the new Canton Company. These later communities/port facilities south of 1827 Patterson Park along Patapsco River's Northwest Branch shore for Canton develop separately at first by the mid-19th century by the newly formed Canton Company by the son of immigrant ship's Capt. John O'Donnell, with the community of Highlandtown further northeast in the late 1800s and early 1900s as separate towns in Baltimore County, continuing to resist the two major annexation attempts by Baltimore City in 1816 and 1888 and not added to the municipality until 1919.
  • Early example of powered steamboat United States launched on Independence Day, July 4, in the Patapsco River of Baltimore Harbor.
• 1819 -
  • Independent Order of Odd Fellows founded in America, established in Baltimore in 1831, later builds hall of English Tudor Revival style on North Gay Street by East Lexington Street (1831?), replaced in 1891-1892 at northwest corner of West Saratoga and Cathedral Streets with a "red brick pile", which was later renovated as offices in the 1980s and condos/apartments in 2013. Monument earlier erected 1860s in median strip of Broadway by East Fayette Street in memory of Odd Fellows founder.
  • Influential "Baltimore Sermon" preached by Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing noted minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston on May 5, at ordination of first minister Jared Sparks (later becomes famous minister and educator himself) for two-year-old "First Independent Church of Baltimore" founded 1817 (later becomes "First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Unitarian and Universalist)" after 1935 merger). Located in landmark structure designed by French émigré architect J. Maximilian M. Godefroy (who also designed the Battle Monument for the War of 1812) of cube and dome design at West Franklin and North Charles Streets, oldest continually occupied church of Unitarians. Channing's sermon influences many others and eventually leads to formation of new denomination in 1824 of Unitarian Church which later merges with Universalists in 1961. An inordinate number of influential citizens and leaders have become members and have had great influences on social, religious and political thought in America, all out of proportion to their smaller numbers.
  • Independent Volunteer Fire Company (organized 1799 as Federal Fire Company) has fire house constructed in Old Town/Jonestown section at North Gay, and Ensor Streets (later also facing Orleans Street at east end of later Orleans Street Viaduct, constructed 1930, built from parallel West Franklin and Mulberry Streets in Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood at St. Paul Street, spanning over Jones Falls and several north-south railroad tracks of the Northern Central Railroad, Western Maryland Railway and the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad to the west of firehouse). An additional campanile 103 foot landmark tower of Italianate style designed by locals William Reasin and Wetherald added in 1853-1854, with observation deck and large display clock faces (designed by Robert Hollaway, local watchmaker and engineer in the Independent Company). Fire equipment at the Independent Company first included a gallery engine, two suction engines, two hose carriages and several hundred feet of hose. After dissolution of volunteer companies (and confederation system of old Baltimore United Fire Department of 1835) in 1858 and beginning of paid professional current Baltimore City Fire Department, building is assigned to Engine Number 6 and later becomes the oldest fire house in the city. Replaced in the mid-1970s by nearby Old Town (Chief Thomas Burke) Fire Station at Greenmount Avenue and old No. 6 building becomes site for the "Box 414 Association", an auxiliary B.C.F.D. firefighter support organization and for a small Baltimore City Fire Museum in 1974, (supplementing separate local fire history institution, the Fire Museum of Maryland in Timonium, Maryland just north off York Road in suburban Baltimore County).
• 1821 - The Genius of Universal Emancipation, the nation's first exclusively anti-slavery newspaper published in Baltimore by famous abolitionist Benjamin Lundy.
• 1820 - Completion in June after five years of monumental "Merchants' Exchange" building on South Gay Street between Water, (old) Second, South Frederick and East Lombard Streets and later "Exchange Place" which opens for business. Designed in an 'H'-shape with various wings for several Federal offices: U.S. Post Office, Custom House, Sub-Treasury, and U.S. District and Circuit Courts of Appeal, along with wing for local maritime, shipping and merchants offices and businesses, another wing for local municipal offices and briefly some educational institutions temporarily, with later "Exchange Hotel" attached. Largest structure of its time in America with large central rotunda and low dome and interior atriums designed by famous architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), on the block bounded by South Gay, Frederick, Water and East Lombard Streets, under construction since 1815. Landmark building symbolic of Baltimore's commercial importance endures until around 1903 when razed and replaced by current marble Beaux Arts/Classical styled of U.S. Custom House, the foundations of which endure passing Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904.
• 1821 -
  • Maryland Academy of Science and Literature incorporated by Maryland General Assembly, founded in 1797 as an amateur scientific society. Small museum established later on South Charles Street. Participating members then included: Gilmor, Howard, H---?, Maulsby, Ellicott, Poultney, Pattison, Fisher, Donaldson, Tyson, Pennington, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), John H. B. Latrobe (son of architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) Occasional meetings and exhibitions during forty years after 1821. Later reorganized/re-incorporated under name of "Maryland Academy of Sciences" in 1897 and then located at northeast corner of West Franklin and Cathedral Street (old Greek Revival styled mansion built for George Hoffman, previously hall for Baltimore's male social elite, exclusive Southern/Confederate-sympathizing "Maryland Club", organized 1857. Later site for old Central YMCA Building in 1907-1909). Maryland Academy of Sciences (MAS) then moves to 2700 block of North Charles Street in old Homewood Hospital building, then temporarily occupied third floor of the Central "Main Branch" (built 1931-33) of the Enoch Pratt Free Library across the street at 400 Cathedral Street (between West Franklin and Mulberry Streets) from end of World War II to the early 1960s. MAS then returned to the "observatory" building (formerly housed Archdiocesan Cathedral School) on 7-9 West Mulberry Street, now renovated (between North Charles and Cathedral Streets - by Little/or North Sharp Street alley - next to John H.B. Latrobe's home at Number 11) in 1965. Under the leadership of Herbert A. Wagner, President of local utility, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, finally relocated with an expanded museum to the newly laid-out "Inner Harbor" area on the southwest shore at Light Street and Key Highway in June 1976 to a new exhibit structure now known as the Maryland Science Center and grew greatly afterwards in audience visitorship, exhibitions and several building expansions.
  • Basilica, under construction since cornerstone laying in 1806, consecrated May 31 by third Archbishop of Baltimore Ambrose Marechal as first Roman Catholic cathedral built in America, on new "Cathedral Hill", in former "Howard's Woods"/"Belvedere" estate of Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), at Cathedral Street between West Franklin and Mulberry Streets designed by famous architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820). The New Baltimore Cathedral replaced earlier St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral (former first Catholic parish church in Baltimore area) and rectory with surrounding cemetery on West Saratoga and North Charles Streets from 1770, made Cathedral in 1790, (later razed 1842).
• 1822 - Adelphi Theatre opens.
• 1824 -
  • First building of "The Athenaeum" constructed at southwest corner of St. Paul and East Lexington Streets, with cornerstone laying in August. Founded as a social/civic/cultural/educational hall and later serves as site for classes/lectures/exhibitions of the newly founded (1826) "Maryland Institute For The Promotion Of The Mechanic Arts" two years later until burned by a panicked mob by the closing of the local early Bank of Maryland in the infamous Baltimore bank riot of 1835. Later relocated and rebuilt a block north in October 1847, with a second building to the northwest corner of East Saratoga and Saint Paul Street - now facing "Preston Gardens"/Saint Paul Place (terraced park constructed in 1920s along St. Paul Street on five square blocks running north to south from East Centre down to East Lexington Streets to the northside of the 1896-1900 Baltimore City Circuit Courthouses [later renamed for national civil rights leader Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr.). Structure later housing the new Maryland Historical Society, (founded 1844), and subscription libraries of the Library Company of Baltimore, (founded 1797) and also the Mercantile Library, (founded 1839) until collections were combined in 1856. Later after MdHS relocated in 1919 to former Enoch Pratt mansion at Park Avenue and West Monument Street, the old second "Athenaeum" building served as first offices of the state Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, with responsibility for registering new "horseless carriages" and licensing new drivers in 1918. Distinctive landmark historical structure unfortunately razed after eighty years and replaced in the 1930s by first public parking garage in downtown, and replaced later in the 1950s by a modernistic blue/gray, glass/aluminum facade skyscraper built for the Commercial Credit Company.
  • The former "youthful" and energetic French nobleman and officer, who came across the Ocean to offer his military services to the Patriot cause in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and aide to General George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, returns to America forty-one years after the end of the War to tour various old battlefields and sites, stop at several major American towns and cities, and visit with the few old comrades left living. After accepting an invitation to visit from Baltimore authorities in August, he is picked up in old Frenchtown in Kent County at the northern head of the Chesapeake Bay in October by the new 1818 steamboat United States commanded by a Capt. Tripp and bearing the City's welcoming committee to escort the old French officer and later American Revolutionary army General from Delaware and greeted on behalf of the Governor of Maryland, Samuel Stevens, Jr., (served 1822-1826), and steams down the Bay to elaborate ceremonies and saluting ships and boats in the harbor at Fort McHenry, and joined by U.S. Secretary of State (and future sixth President), John Quincy Adams, along with heroes of the Revolution: Col. John Eager Howard, and of the War of 1812: Gen. Samuel Smith, and Gen. John Stricker. Elder statesmen such as Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington Custis of Mount Vernon, Virginia, adopted grandson of the old commanding General and First President, retired officers and members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and many other civic dignitaries to review the state and local militia and Regular U.S. Army troops drawn up in formation at the old now historic Fort, and exchange of speeches and addresses of welcome and remembrance, followed by a banquet beneath the canvas tents outdoors. A parade followed through the city's streets in an open carriage beneath several decorated historical arches to the great rotunda of the domed Merchants' Exchange Building at South Gay and East Lombard Streets, one of the largest structures in America, where additional ceremonies and speeches were made recalling the uniforms, clothes and 500 pairs of pantaloons, the former ladies of the town, led by old Mrs. David Poe made for his then ragged army, then the old veteran is escorted to his lodgings at the famous old colonial-era hostelry Fountain Inn, at the southeast corner of East Baltimore and St. Paul Street-Light Street, where outside he reviews the various troops and units of military organizations. That evening there were general "illuminations" and fireworks, and attended a grand ball at the famous Holliday Street Theatre. The following day he received privately many visitors again at the Exchange building, then greatly impressed, left the city heading for the national capital at Washington with a military escort.
  • Establishment of St. James African Protestant Episcopal Church in the city, third oldest African-American (then called "Negro"/"Colored") Protestant Episcopal Church, (now Episcopal Church, U.S.A.) congregation in the United States, and oldest south of the Mason-Dixon line. Parish is a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and later relocates to old west Baltimore's Lafayette Square neighborhood on Lafayette, Arlington and Carrollton Avenues.
• 1825 - Barnum's City Hotel constructed in Italianate architecture (with western rear addition several decades later) at southwest corner of North Calvert and East Fayette Streets across from Battle Monument Square. Known for its excellent cuisine, famous visitors and elegant hospitality. Purported planning site of infamous "Baltimore Plot" by Southern sympathizers to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln on his way to his Washington inauguration in February 1861, when changing trains in Baltimore. Lasts to 1889 when replaced by the Equitable Building, built 1891-1894, considered city's first "skyscraper".
  • Maryland General Assembly incorporates the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company to the amount of $500,000 dollars in capital, to construct a waterway from Georgetown along the north shore of the Potomac River to Cumberland, Maryland of Allegheny County in the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. This follows the earlier vision of General and first President George Washington's "Potowmack Company" canal enterprise from the 1780s. Construction begins three years later in competition with Baltimore City interests represented by the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, organized February 1827, which follows, both breaking ground on same day of Independence Day, July 4, 1828. Canal completed in 1850 but never achieves economic prosperity or transportation impact to the country such as the new nationwide rail system but still endures into the early 20th Century and is now a nature and recreation preserve as a national park, with its hiking and biking trail.
• 1826 - Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts founded. Initially located at first Athenaeum, holding classes, lectures, exhibitions at the civic, literary and social hall built at St. Paul Street and East Lexington Street, which was burned by a mob during 1835 Baltimore bank riot. Institute temporarily moves classes and lectures to be held at the Merchants Exchange on South Gay at German and East Lombard Streets for the next decade. Landmark building later constructed in 1851 on East Baltimore Street at Market Place/Harrison Street, west bank of the Jones Falls with two towers/cupolas at each end, the larger northern one holding a clock and containing an assembly hall/classrooms on the second floor above brick arches housing second public markethouse for Baltimore, now known as Centre Market (also known as "Marsh Market" for the colonial-era "Harrison's Marsh" on this site) which later burned in Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. College of Art later relocated by 1906 with "Main Building" to Mount Royal Avenue in Mount Vernon, Baltimore-Belvedere neighborhood and a reconstructed "College of Design" on the second floor in one of a revamped series of three market buildings along Jones Falls after the Fire, which endured until the early 1980s, with construction of the Shot Tower/Market Place Station for the "Metro"/subway and the terminus end ramp for the Jones Falls Expressway (Interstate 83) connecting with the President Street Boulevard.
  • Male members of the Jewish faith legally allowed to hold public office in Maryland for the first time with passage of the long-time controversial "Jew Bill" by General Assembly of Maryland. The "Jew Bill" altered Maryland's Test Act to allow members of the Jewish faith to swear to a belief in the doctrine of reward and punishment rather than the generally required declaration of belief in Christianity.
  • Maryland General Assembly changes form of local government in Baltimore County as the first of Maryland's counties from the old colonial-era system of a "Levy Court" with 11 justices of the peace (of which four were from the City), to supervise local affairs such as preparing budgets, imposing property tax assessments and appointing a few local officials, with the establishment of a three-member Board of County Commissioners. Commissioner-system and board endures until passage of a "home rule" charter in 1956, with the creation of a county executive and elected county council in 1957.
  • Mayor John Montgomery reports to the Baltimore City Council of 10,000 houses now located in Baltimore City of which: 101 are of four stories or higher, 1,608 are three stories, 7,183 - two stories, and 1,524 are one story high.
• 1827 -
  • Washington Medical College, second such institution in the state for medical education and the training of doctors, (first private), established on "Washington Hill" on Broadway (also known then as Market Street) at East Fayette Street in East Baltimore where later famed writer, poet and author Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), died October 1849, two blocks south of future Maryland Hospital site (later moved in 1873 to Catonsville in southwestern Baltimore County later renamed as Spring Grove State Hospital), later designated by will/bequest of Johns Hopkins, (1795-1873) to be used for establishment of his Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889. Later became known as Church Home and Hospital with Episcopal Church sponsorship. Absorbed by Johns Hopkins Hospital further north on Broadway in the 1990s. Another similarly named Washington medical institution, later located on northwest corner of North Calvert and East Saratoga Streets, next to the famed "City Springs" (central park block and water well with domed pavilion and first memorial sculpture/monument to Lt. Col. George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry during British bombardment in 1814, which was later removed after neglect and damage to Federal Hill Park in the 1880s and reconstructed), was sponsored by the Washington University in Pennsylvania (later known as Washington and Jefferson College). 1880's merger of this Washington University and the College of Physicians and Surgeons absorbed by nearby health dispensary established by WMC doctors in 1872 and was later directed and operated by the Roman Catholic order of nuns/sisters, Sisters of Mercy invited from Pittsburgh, since 1874 as the "Baltimore City Hospital" (not to be confused with other institution of similar name for former colonial-era Baltimore City and County Almshouse and Work House, later located at Calverton, 1819-1866, then moved to eastern outskirts of town and renamed "Bay View Asylum", overlooking Eastern Avenue (later also Maryland Route 150) which by 1925 becomes a municipal general hospital complex known as "Baltimore City Hospitals" [with plural 'S' as a municipal institution]. Later taken over by and renamed "Johns Hopkins at Bay View Medical Center" campus). Name of old B.C.H. on North Calvert and East Saratoga Streets changed earlier in 1909 to Mercy Hospital, and again in the 1980s to Mercy Medical Center.
  • Franklin Lyceum active.
  • Evan Thomas, brother of Philip E. Thomas explains to meeting of prominent Baltimore businessmen and civic activists at "Belvidere" estate of famous old Revolutionary War Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), of the old "Maryland Line" about new British "railroad" system he recently observed during trip to the United Kingdom and how it could possibly compete with the new Erie Canal in New York State and the proposed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal along the Potomac River, from Georgetown and Washington, D.C. to western Maryland's Cumberland with access to the passes through the eastern Appalachian Mountains to the Mid-West and Ohio River states for maintaining Baltimore's trade advantages. Gentlemen resolve to form a company and seek additional support.
  • Maryland General Assembly establishes and incorporates a new British system of transportation (second oldest chartered railway to that time - earlier short line in Massachusetts with "Quincy-Granite Railway Company" on March 4, 1825, later extinct) on February 27 with the formation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, with the State holding 10,000 shares ($1 million), and the City having 5,000 shares ($500,000), of a total capitalization of $3,000,000 of which during the 12 days of open books for shares eventually amounted to $4,178,000 of the capital stock. With temporary commissioners serving: Isaac McKim, Thomas Ellicott, Joseph W. Patterson, John McKim, Jr., William Stewart, Talbot Jones, Roswell L. Colt, George Brown and Evan Thomas who are authorized to accept subscriptions of $1,500,000 (by end of 1828, subscriptions in amount of $4,000,000 had been received). A Board of Directors of the City's leading financial powers and citizens are organized on April 28, 1827, consisting of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, William Patterson, Robert Oliver, Alexander Brown, Isaac McKim, William Lorman, George Hoffman, Philip E. Thomas, John B. Morris, Thomas Ellicott, Talbot Jones and William Stewart; with Thomas as first President of Railroad Company and Brown as Treasurer.
  • Impressive funeral ceremonies held with procession for the death of Baltimore's most important and influential citizens, Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), former commander of the "Maryland Line" regiment of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, who led and fought in many battles both in the Northern and the Southern Theatres of the War and who donated much of the land in northern Baltimore Town for various civic improvements and public buildings from his "Belvidere" estate. His mansion was located in the intersection of future North Calvert and East Chase Streets and endured until razed in the early 1870s. Much of his estate was used to lay out the grid of streets for the tomey Victorian-era neighborhood of Mount Vernon-Belvedere and further northwest into the Mount Royal area to the bend of the Jones Falls, in which his children and descendants were later responsible for developing. He notably is the namesake for the unusual number of three Baltimore streets. His name also endures in the luxurious landmark Beaux Arts-style Hotel Belvedere of 1903 on East Chase Streets off North Charles Street with its famous John Eager Howard dining room with its wood paneling and historical wall murals and in an equestrian bronze statue on granite pedestal above the Washington Monument at the north end of Washington Place, facing north up North Charles Street, and a modernistic metal sculpture in a small "pocket park" at the northwest corner of North Howard and West Centre Streets, opposite the Chesapeake Commons condo/apartment building, renovated in 1980 (formerly the old Baltimore City College built 1895, until 1928, later used by several other schools such as Western High School).
• 1828 - "First Stone" laid on July 4, ("Independence Day"), for beginning of construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line (first constructed in America) laid by large assembly gathering including Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence to initially run to Ellicott's Mills (now Ellicott City) and later extended to Harpers Ferry and Wheeling, Virginia by 1853 and eventually to Ohio by the Civil War. At the same time, ground is broken further southwest in Georgetown in the District of Columbia for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal by sixth President John Quincy Adams, along the north shore of the Potomac River.
  • Phoenix Shot Tower constructed of brick at North Front and East Fayette Streets by the Jones Falls eastern shore in Jonestown/Old Town, used for dropping pellets of hot boiling lead into water vats at the ground level for manufacture of shot ammunition for muskets and rifles. Tallest structure at the time built in the city, along with two others, now razed. Also previous site of first meeting house for Baptists met and constructed in 1770 (later First Baptist Church of Baltimore on Liberty Heights Avenue). Tower image later used in center of new illustration of Baltimore skyline on front-page masthead vignette for daily newspaper The News American after 1964 merger of previous daily papers Baltimore News-Post and on Sunday - The Baltimore American until closed by Hearst Corporation (founded by California and New York magnate William Randolph Hearst) in 1986 after 113 years of publication.
  • Oblate Sisters of Providence founded.
• 1829 -
  • As authorized by Act of the Maryland General Assembly three years previously, Baltimore City opens its first public schools, under the supervision of a newly organized and appointed Board of School Commissioners, two for boys and two for girls (grammar or elementary level) on each side of the town. Whites only attend with only approximately three percent of eligible children eventually in attendance in the first years. Additional primary schools for upper grades added shortly with a high school for boys founded by a decade later (The High School, then the Male High School, later renamed the Central High School of Baltimore, now The Baltimore City College) in 1866, and two Western and Eastern female secondary schools in 1844.
  • Mount Clare Station for the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad replacing the first downtown Pratt Street terminal/station at the southeast corner with South Charles Street, is built further to the west on West Pratt Street off Arlington, Schroeder and Poppleton Streets in future neighborhoods of Mount Clare, Poppleton, Union Square. Over the decades it becomes the center of the railroad's mechanical shops with an extensive group of sheds, warehouses and shops including a massive 22-sided roundhouse by the 1880s. Mount Clare's passenger station and offices are later supplemented and replaced in 1857 by the construction of the Camden Street Station (with two wings later added in 1866) at West Camden Street between South Howard, South Eutaw and South Sharp Streets with extensive marshaling yards further southwest towards the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River. Camden later became the headquarters offices of the B. & O. (especially during the Civil War era) until construction of a large downtown Central Office Building in the 1880s at the northwest corner of East Baltimore at North Calvert Streets which endured until destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. Mount Clare Station and the Roundhouse is later site of the first "B. & O. Transportation Museum", established 1954 as a public service by the Railroad.
  • Construction completed for the new George Washington Monument with cornerstone laid earlier on July 4, 1815, in the old Courthouse Square downtown at North Calvert, between East Lexington and Fayette Streets, but was judged to be too tall for that smaller square with the townhouses surrounding it, (later replaced by cornerstone laying instead on first anniversary of battle, Defenders' Day, September 12, 1815 for erection of shorter, smaller Battle Monument commemorating defenders against British attack on Baltimore at Battle of North Point and bombardment of Fort McHenry in recently concluded War of 1812). Simplified and "clean-cut" marble column by revised drawings and plans for Washington Monument site was later moved to hill-top location, 100 feet above sea-level, north of town and construction continues there in "Howard's Woods" estate near "Belvidere" mansion of Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), Revolutionary War commander of local "Maryland Line" troops of the Continental Army, (at intersection of East Chase Street and North Calvert Street). Designed by noted new American architect Robert Mills (1781-1855), who also later designs landmark row of Greek Revival style matching townhouses called "Waterloo Row" on west side of North Calvert Street, two blocks east. Neighborhood surrounding Monument later becomes referred to as Mount Vernon-Belvedere begins development by Howard's descendants and family beginning 1831, (several years after Monument's completion by 1829), surrounding four simple park squares of grass and trees, surrounded by iron fence, laid out named "Mount Vernon Place" (along East and West Monument Street) and "Washington Place" (along North Charles Street) of distinctive residential Greek Revival and Georgian or Federal comparable styles of townhouses, later augmented with landmark churches and cultural institutions.
  • Circus building constructed.
• 1830 - Baltimore and Ohio Railroad begins operating with horse-car line on tracks laid initially to Ellicott's Mills (later Ellicott City). Famous race run between "Tom Thomb" steam engine locomotive and horse car designed by inventor and industrialist Peter Cooper. Construction also begins on initial fieldstone and slabs for viaducts and bridges along main route beginning with Carrollton across the Gwynns Falls stream (runs through western Baltimore to the Middle Branch/Ridgley's Cove of the Patapsco River), Thomas Viaduct's curving arches across upper western branch of Patapsco River and further north with Patterson Viaduct at Ilchester and Oliver Viaduct across Patapsco again at Ellicott Mills.
  • Construction of residence of Archbishop of Baltimore at eastern end of cathedral facing North Charles Street, using similar granite blocks as the cathedral and stucco.
  • Establishment of St. Charles College, a pre-seminary on lands donated by Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), from the extensive landed estate in western Anne Arundel County, (now Howard County) near Carroll mansion Doughoregan Manor. Construction begins the following year and proceeds slowly with first structure completed by 1848. Later after fire, college is moved to area between future Arbutus and Catonsville in southwest Baltimore County, facing Wilkens Avenue, Frederick Road and Maiden Choice Lane.
• 1831 - In September, the Anti-Masonic Party, a recent splinter group has the first national political convention to nominate an American president, meeting at the first civic structure known as "The Athenaeum" at St. Paul and Lexington Streets. They choose Baltimore lawyer William Wirt for the office of chief executive in the Election of 1832 on the issue of the Masons' secrecy and that seventh President Andrew Jackson is a Mason. Another anti-Jackson political party - the National Republicans (the party of former sixth President John Quincy Adams) also meet in the same building later in December and choose Henry Clay of Kentucky to oppose Jackson's reelection. Finally, the following May 1832, the newly renamed Democrats (old Jeffersonian "Republicans") meet at the old First Universalist Church (later occupied after the 1860s by black Roman Catholic congregation until razed in the 1930s) at North Calvert and East Pleasant Streets to give the city a "clean sweep" of all the first nominating conventions putting forward the name of Martin van Buren of New York for Vice President to join Jackson for another term, replacing former South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun who had become estranged from "Old Hickory" and the influence of northern Democrats.
  • Maryland General Assembly appropriates funds to establish a House of Refuge for Baltimore City for criminal, vagrant or abandoned and neglected children, but because of political controversies between "Whigs" and "Democrats", city does not build and open facility until eighteen years later, 1849. Later becomes known as Maryland Training School for Boys, and later renamed as XXXX. Relocated to XXX.
  • Baltimore Association of Firemen organized by several of the various independent volunteer fire-fighting companies, since establishment of the first company "Mechanical" in 1763. Later forms loose private confederation of companies to organize fire-fighting work in 1834 known as "Baltimore City United Fire Department", with seven representatives from each private independent company plus one representative serving as a standing committee. This quasi-public organization serves for organizing city fire prevention and fighting until organization of a fully paid, full-time professional force of firemen housed in municipal numbered firehouses, establishing today's modern Baltimore City Fire Department in 1858, (just a year after reorganization of the city police force from 1784).
• 1832 -
  • Cholera epidemic rages in the city and causes widespread evacuations of well-to-do and those with transportation.
  • 1832 Democratic National Convention held in May at "The Athenaeum" (the first) at St. Paul and East Lexington Streets (west of City/County Courthouse-later burned in Baltimore bank riot of 1835) and later at "Warfield's Church" (old First Universalist Church? at North Calvert and East Pleasant Streets) in Baltimore. U.S. Secretary of State Martin Van Buren of New York nominated as Vice President along with Seventh President Andrew Jackson to succeed/replace incumbent John C. Calhoun of South Carolina who had a falling out with Jackson over nullification crisis.
• 1833 -
  • U.S. Supreme Court decides Barron v. Baltimore Federalism-related lawsuit.
  • Three discerning gentlemen meet at the home of John H. B. Latrobe (distinguished civic leader, intellectual, author and son of famed architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) at 11 West Mulberry (between North Charles and Cathedral Streets) in the back parlor around table, fortified with "some old wine and some good cigars" with noted author and political leader John Pendleton Kennedy and James H. Miller poring over manuscript submissions in a literary contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter for best prose tale. A story entitled "MS Found in a Bottle", is a curious and haunting tale of annihilation and attracts them all. The $50 prize is awarded to the story's struggling, unknown, penniless author Edgar Allan Poe, who had come to Baltimore in the Spring of 1831, after dismissal from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with no money, no trade and no reputation. The four years he spends in Baltimore are a period of intense creativity. His major effort during those years were 16 tales he writes for the Folio Club, an imaginary literary society, one of these is "MS Found In A Bottle". The prize for this story, the public recognition that it brought and the lifelong friendship between Poe and his literary patron Kennedy helped direct Poe on his brilliant career. While here, he lived briefly at a small rowhouse on Amity Street (now a city historic house museum) off West Lombard Street in inner West Baltimore. He left Baltimore in 1835 to become editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. He returned in October 1849, supposedly passing through the city during an upheaval and tumult of a political election time, where under mysterious circumstances, he was found unconscious outside a tavern on East Lombard Street in Jonestown/Old Town and died several days later at the old Washington University Hospital (now Church Home and Hospital on Broadway at East Fayette Street) and was later buried at the old Western Burying Grounds of the First Presbyterian Church's cemetery on North Greene and West Fayette Streets by the intervention of a relative, Neilson Poe in an undistinguished plot in the far southeastern corner of the yard. Later by 1852, the cemetery was surmounted by the brick and stone arches supporting the new above structure of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, later part of the University of Maryland Law School campus after the dissolution of the congregation in the 1970s. Poe's plot was exhumed and relocated to the more prominent northwestern corner by the entrance gate with a new substantial monument and bronze medallion provided for by fund-raising by professors/teachers and students of the Baltimore City high schools and several literary-minded citizens after 1865, which was dedicated in 1875.
• 1834 - Two new municipal markets are ordered established by the Jacksonian-dominated City Council and permission is granted by the State Legislature to levy special direct taxes to defray their cost.
• 1835 -
  • 1835 Democratic National Convention convened in city in May at the Georgian/Federal style of architecture in landmark church of the First Presbyterian Church with its twin spires on the northwest corner of East Fayette and North (later Guilford Avenue) Streets. They nominate incumbent Vice President Martin Van Buren of New York as the new President to succeed Seventh President Andrew Jackson after the 1836 presidential election, with Col. Richard M. Johnson as Vice President.
  • Bank riot. Several homes and businesses ransacked including home of influential U.S. Senator, Reverdy Johnson at Battle Monument Square (northwest corner of North Calvert Street and East Fayette Street) and several other prominent businessmen and stockholders in the tottering Bank of Maryland scandal. Also burns the landmark civic, literary and social activities center "The Athenaeum" (the first) at southwest corner of St. Paul and East Lexington Streets, which also housed at the time, the nine-year-old Maryland Institute
  • Baltimore County/City Courthouse of 1805-1809, (fourth for County and second in Baltimore City, then serving also as county seat), burned and ruined in disastrous fire at southwest corner of North Calvert Street and East Lexington Street, across from the 1815-1827 Battle Monument. Rebuilt on same site, at cost of along with $80,000 of twenty-year, 5% bonds sold to finance addition of "fire-proof" masonry Records Office, both designed by local noted architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., west of the rebuilt courthouse at southeast corner of St. Paul and East Lexington. Records masonry building designed of then unusual Egyptian Revival architecture with great front iron doors (or some say a "Mayan temple"), has cornerstone laid June 28, 1836, by Solomon Etting, president of commissioners, Mayor Samuel Smith and the long-serving Chief Justice of the United States, in the person of Roger B. Taney, formerly of Frederick, Baltimore, and now Washington, D.C.. Completed by 1839.
  • Thomas Viaduct of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad completed with its curving 22 arches across the upper Western Branch of the Patapsco River (near present-day Patapsco Valley State Park), longest such structure in the world, still used into the 21st century for heavier freight and passenger trains on a constant daily basis. Obelisk monument of white marble erected at trackside with engravings of Railroad Company officers and construction leaders at eastern end of bridge before 'Y' intersection marking "Main Line" which went further west towards Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the Potomac River, Appalachian Mountains and Ohio and the "Washington Branch" going 30 miles further southwest to the National Capital of Washington, D.C. Later also site of old Victorian style Viaduct Hotel as resort and tourist site during the mid-19th century, a mile south of Relay or Relay Junction also with small hotel and boarding house there. Site occupied immediately in April-May, 1861 to hold Washington with Maryland and Baltimore in the Union by Massachusetts state militia Gen. Benjamin F. Butler after the notorious "Pratt Street Riots" - April 19, 1861 and later fortified during Civil War by Bouquet's and Cook's Battery of Union Army troops with artillery on surrounding heights.
• 1836 - Baptists organize the Maryland Baptist Union Association (future Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware) with six original congregations represented, including the First Baptist Church of Baltimore, founded 1773. Later joins with national conservative-leaning (but white/Caucasian-dominated) Southern Baptist Convention.
  • Pastor Henry Scheib of Old Zion Lutheran Church opens bi-lingual German/English school at the church on North Gay and East Lexington Streets which becomes very influential in the following decades, especially among the growing German-American community.
  • Surviving soldiers stationed at Fort McHenry during British attack in 1814 convene a meeting on September 13, the day after the local city, county and state holiday of Defenders' Day (traditional said to be at a tavern adjacent to the fort) under the leadership of William Steuart and Sheppard Leakin vowing never to disband and to meet every year at the Fort, forming a corps and Society in which they would assume the rank of service each held during the battle. Later an organization for the veterans of the Battle of North Point known as "The Surviving Defenders of Baltimore in the Late War" (also sometimes known as "The Surviving Defenders of Baltimore in 1814") formed in 1841, incorporated the following year as "The Association of the Defenders of Baltimore in 1814", for annual reunions near September 12-13-14th, including parades, commemorative ceremonies, dinners, church services and business meetings. With advent of rail travel, "Old Defenders" make excursions to other East Coast cities, and national patriotic events such as presidential inaugurations and burials. By 1857, sons and descendants along with daughters of veterans organize. By 1893-1894, a General Society of the War of 1812 is organized nationwide with Marylanders and Baltimoreans forming a chapter.
• 1837 -
  • The Sun newspaper begins daily publication by A. S. Abell (1806-1888), with William Swain and others from Philadelphia, where they had earlier started the Philadelphia Public Ledger with a policy of reporting news fairly without an association or bearing on a political party or certain view. Also sold at a much cheaper price of one penny whereas others are being sold at around six cents. Continues publishing for next 177 years, later under the name of A.S. Abell and Company.
  • Washington Hall opens.
  • Orchard Street Church built off St. Mary's Street in northwest section of old City (modern Seton Hill historic district, near present-day Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard). First congregation for Negroes/Afro-Americans in city, later becomes part of the United Methodist Church. When congregation closes, building restored and renovated for local branch of National Urban League, a national Civil Rights Movement organization.
• 1838 -
  • Future abolitionist, author/editor, orator, Federal official and escaped slave Frederick Douglass (1808-1895), escapes to freedom, September 3, disguised as a foreign seamen, hopping aboard on a Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad train a mile east of temporary depot at President Street and Canton Avenue (later Fleet Street) along Canton tracks, north of the Harbor and east of Fells Point where he had formerly worked as a slave being a ships caulker. Travels to New York City to home of noted abolitionist David Ruggles, later meeting future wife Anne Murray, a free black woman, who had smuggled identification documents and relevant papers for him to carry.
  • Hollins Market is established for citizens in the growing west and southwest areas of the city between West Pratt and West Baltimore Streets, and Hollins Street. Named for local Hollins land-owning family. Constructed of two stories of brick in Italianate style with a small cupola (later removed) and an assembly hall/auditorium and smaller class or meeting rooms upstairs on second level with brick arches below on ground level for market and proprietor's stalls. Additional wooden shed with open sides extends to the east for one city block. Nearby is laid out small park of Union Square and surrounding old West Baltimore neighborhoods of Poppleton and Mount Clare (with neighboring B. & O. Railroad foundries at Mount Clare Shops named for historic Mount Clare Mansion now in Carroll Park). City's markethouses system grows to total eleven by mid-20th Century - 1950. By the 21st Century, Hollins is one of six surviving municipal markethouses operated by the city's office of the Comptroller, and the oldest surviving structure with its two floors and upper assembly hall and rooms (others damaged by fire at various times and rebuilt in more modern styles).
• 1839 -
  • "The High School" for young men authorized by City Council in March, opens in October (later renamed The Male High School of Baltimore, then the Central High School of Baltimore, finally in 1866 to The Baltimore City College) authorized by City Council of Baltimore in March, opens in October in rowhouse on Courtland Street (now Saint Paul Place/Preston Gardens) at East Saratoga Streets.
  • Mercantile Library Association established. Later joins with older Library Company of Baltimore and Maryland Historical Society at second Athenaeum building at northwest corner of St. Paul Street and East Saratoga Street, until library collections are merged in the late 1850s. Society occupied Athenaeum until 1919 when it moves to the old Enoch Pratt (1808-1896), Mansion at southwest corner of West Monument Street and Park Avenue after the death of Pratt's widow.
  • Green Mount Cemetery dedicated and opened July 13, as a new style of landscaped park-like terrain for the later interment of Baltimore's "notables". Developed from late estate of Robert Oliver, local prominent citizen and merchant, under authorization and incorporation by Maryland General Assembly in March 1838, by local proprietors William Gwynn, Robert Morgan Gibbes, Fielding Lucas, jr., John S. Skinner, John S. Lafitte, Samuel D. Walker and John H. B. Latrobe (son of famous architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe). Laid out behind surrounding fieldstone wall along southeastern area of later Greenmount Avenue (leading to Old York Road) and Boundary (later East North) Avenue. Cemetery designed by local architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. with turreted gatehouse constructed one to two years later, followed by Gothic Revival hill-top chapel, fifteen years later. Surrounding community in East Baltimore covered with straight gridlines of streets with uniform 2 or 3-story rowhouses acquires name of Oliver.
  • City Council under the influence of the "Whigs" abolishes the office of "Consulting Physician" and stipulates that one of the three commissioners of health appointed annually must be a physician and assume the duties of consulting physician.
  • New Municipal Record Office of Baltimore completed, built of distinctive Egyptian Revival architecture in masonry, brick and iron with the then current standards of "fire-proof" construction, along Saint Paul Street at southeast corner with East Fayette Street, just to the west of second Baltimore City and County Courthouse of 1805, reconstructed after 1835 fire.
  • Impressive elaborate funeral ceremonies and processions held for "The Defender of Baltimore", Maj. General Samuel Smith (1752-1839), with notables such as several mayors of Baltimore, governors of Maryland, and Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, along with thousands of citizens following in his funeral cortege. General Smith was also noted for his defense of Fort Mifflin in the Delaware River, below Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution, and assuming command of the defenses of the city as head of the Maryland State Militia after the American rout at the Battle of Bladensburg and the Burning of Washington under Gen. William Winder, the month before in August 1814. He foresaw the obvious possibilities of a British invasion and the possible routes they would have to take and planned fortifications, traps and assigned units of troops and artillery to various points (anticipating the landings and Battle of North Point), finally drafting thousands of black and white, rich and poor citizens of Baltimore to digging trenches and placing over a hundred artillery pieces along "Hampstead Hill" (also known then as "Loudenschlager's Hill" in present-day Patterson Park) along the eastern edge of the town. He also supervised regular U.S. Army troops under Maj. George Armistead, commander at Fort McHenry and naval Commodore John Rodgers (formerly of Perryville, Maryland) and Oliver Hazard Perry, late of his victory at Lake Erie with various detachments of seamen and naval artillery.
  • City Records Office built.
• 1840 -
  • Madison Lyceum active.
  • The Democratic Party reconvenes again in "The Monumental City" along with the new Whig Party. The "Whigs" assemble at the Universalist Church at Calvert and Pleasant Streets and choose Henry Clay to be their standard-bearer. Democrats return to meet at the Music Hall to nominate eighth President Martin van Buren for a second term. The Canton Race Track, outside the east side of the city, is rented by the "Whigs", offering generous libations of "hard cider" to invite Baltimore citizens to hear Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and other famed orator politicians of the era praise their candidate: William Henry Harrison of Indiana (former general, territorial and state governor and "Indian fighter") with their famed slogan of "Tippicanoe and Tyler Too!" now joined with John Tyler of Virginia as Vice President. Both went on to win the election of 1844, the following November, but the aged Harrison (ninth president) died in April 1841, several weeks after giving the longest inaugural address in American history and Tyler now succeeds him as tenth president.
  • Establishment of the Library Company of the Baltimore Bar by sixty-three lawyers (one third of the city's bar at the time) at meeting called in March by promoted by noted attorney and future Mayor George William Brown (1820-1890), scion of famous banking firm after inspiration from several other northeastern cities. Located at first in several cramped rooms on second floor of second Baltimore City and County Courthouse at southwestern corner of North Calvert and East Lexington Streets, opposite Battle Monument Square. One of America's earliest private subscription libraries and legal/historical collections, and led by many noted attorneys and judges of Baltimore and Maryland. After construction of third City Courthouse (later renamed Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. City Courthouse in 1985) in 1895-1900, on entire block of previous courthouse, Bar Library relocated to 6th and 5th Floors at west end overlooking St. Paul Street/Place and Preston Gardens (of the 1920s) with impressive barrel-vaulted reading room, with many oil paintings of significant figures in the history of the city's legal and judicial profession among luxurious Victorian-style appointments.
• 1844 -
  • Maryland Historical Society incorporated as one of the first historical heritage societies in America, led by many leading civic and intellectual citizens of the town. Later locates at the second landmark "Athenaeum" building (which had replaced earlier first Athenaeum one block south at St. Paul and East Lexington Street burned by mobs during 1835 Baltimore bank riot) on the northwest corner of Saint Paul Street at East Saratoga Street, until 1919, when the MdHS moves to the former Enoch Pratt's 1847 town mansion at West Monument Street and Park Avenue, where it presently now occupies the entire square block of adjacent older and newly constructed buildings. The Athenaeum was designed by noted architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., just downhill from Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Shared one of three floors with the old "Library Company of Baltimore" (founded 1796-1797) and "Mercantile Library Association" (founded later in 1839) - which had been located in 1798 Old "Assembly-Rooms", a landmark social, dancing and civic hall at northeast corner of East Fayette and Holliday Streets- which also later served as "The Male High School"/later Central High School of Baltimore since 1843.
  • Western High School and Eastern High School open for young women in opposite sides of the city. The previous all-boys "High School", founded 1839, is eventually renamed "The Male High School" and eventually "Central High School of Baltimore".
  • 1844 Democratic National Convention assembles at the first old English Tudor/Gothic Revival style of the Odd Fellows Hall on east side of North Gay Street (between East Fayette and East Lexington Streets) by Old Zion Lutheran Church and become deadlocked between candidates John Tyler of Virginia who is in favor of annexing the new Republic of Texas to the Union and XXXX
  • 1844 Whig National Convention is also held in Baltimore at the old First Universalist Church (sometimes called "Warfield's Church") at North Calvert and East Pleasant Streets, choosing Henry Clay of Kentucky as their standard-bearer.
  • Baltimore-Washington telegraph line constructed under supervision of inventor Samuel Morse. First telegraph message sent asking "What Hath God Wrought?!" by wires between the old original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station on southeast corner of East Pratt and South Charles Streets along the B. & O. Railroad line of their Main Branch to "Relay Junction" then switching to along the "Washington Branch", southeast to the National Capital to the receiving station set up at the U.S. Capitol. Later The Sun of Baltimore becomes the first newspaper to extensively use telegraphed dispatches from the distant battles in the far southwest of the Mexican-American War of 1846-47.
• 1845 - Newton University established in 200 block of north side along East Lexington Street between North Calvert and North (later Guilford Avenue) Streets for African-Americans and coordinated with later Douglass Institute of 1865 on near-by East Saratoga Street in post-Civil War and Reconstruction era.
  • Calvert Hall College, a boys Roman Catholic high school founded by religious order of Christian School Brothers on West Saratoga Street near Liberty Street. Later relocates a block north from 1890 to 1960, across from old Baltimore Cathedral/Basilica of the Assumption at southwest corner, Cathedral and West Mulberry Streets (present site of Archdiocesan office building/"Catholic Center" from 1963), then moves to LaSalle Road in suburban Towson, north of the city. Long-time athletic and academic rival of later Jesuits' school at Loyola High School, founded 1852, then four blocks northeast on North Calvert at East Madison Streets.
  • Lloyd Street Synagogue building in Greek Revival style designed by famed local architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. for the new Baltimore Hebrew Congregation at Lloyd and Watson Streets (between East Baltimore and Lombard Streets), in Jonestown/Old Town neighborhood of inner East Baltimore. First synagogue in the city and oldest remaining now in America in this area which is becoming heavily Jewish population beginning in the 1830s. (Later 1985 site for the Jewish Museum of Maryland).
• 1846 - Recently founded local newspaper The Sun sets technological advancement with use of Samuel F.B. Morse's new telegraph machine and wire lines to carry dispatches and news from events of the distant Mexican-American War. Baltimore regiments participate in the campaigns and their actions quickly reported back to city's citizens and relatives. Later statue of military commander and memorial to soldiers and officers erected at Mount Royal Avenue and West Lanvale Street in 1903 by new Main Building of Maryland Institute College of Art and later moved in the 1930s to entrance gates to Druid Hill Park at West North Avenue and Mount Royal Avenues (William H. Watson Memorial Statue).
• 1847 - The Sun of Baltimore becomes the first newspaper in the Spring of 1847, to telegraph news of the fall of Vera Cruz on the east Gulf coast of Mexico to President James K. Polk at the "Executive Mansion" (later White House) in Washington, D.C.. Nation surprised at the speed of the news and the capabilities with the potential impact of the new telegraph for the spread of information, news over great distances.
  • Second "Athenaeum" building constructed at northwest corner of St. Paul Street (later also St. Paul Place) at East Saratoga Street, with cornerstone laid in August. Replaces earlier first "Athenaeum" structure at southwest corner of St. Paul and East Lexington Streets, one block further south, which was burned by a mob in the Baltimore bank riot of 1835. Later holds spaces for the newly organized Maryland Historical Society (1844), the Library Company of Baltimore (founded 1796-1797) - which used to be located at old "Assembly Rooms" [of Baltimore Dancing Assembly] at northeast corner of Holliday and East Fayette Streets, (later occupied by the Central High School of Baltimore, [today's Baltimore City College]), and the Mercantile Library Association, (founded 1839).
• 1848 -
  • Construction begins on new island fortress of 3.4 acres in the lower Patapsco River named "Fort Carroll" under supervision of Capt. (later Colonel) Robert E. Lee of the United States Army, Corps of Engineers. With brick walls 10 feet thick and forty feet high, the three planned levels (with many courses (rows) of millions of bricks and masonry) are planned to have embrasures set for 350 naval cannons. Part of the new "second tier" of seacoast defensive fortification systems after the experiences of the War of 1812 and Fort McHenry of the "first tier" system from the Revolutionary War period and afterwards. Similar to the more later famous Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, which began the Civil War in April 1861. Additional concrete fortifications emplaced on eastern bastions in the mid-1890s for newer "Endicott" displacing rifled artillery for Spanish-American War-era, matching similar larger forts/batteries at opposing points along the lower Patapsco River and harbor entrance of Fort Howard (North Point)and Fort Armistead (at Hawkins Point). Occupied as an increasingly obsolete military site from World War I until World War II, the ruins still exist today, with occasional eccentric plans occasionally proposed for civilian use of the island fort.
  • Howard Athenaeum and Gallery of Arts opens.
  • Olympic Theatre opens.
  • Concordia Club founded.
  • 1848 Democratic National Convention held in city to nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
• 1849 -
  • Baltimore Female College established and opens following year on Saint Paul Street near East Saratoga Street and later moves by about 1873 to northwest corner of Park Avenue/Place near Wilson Street for about a decade in new northwestern neighborhood of Bolton Hill, under leadership of noted Classical and Latin/Greek scholar, President/Professor Nathan C. Brooks. B.F.C., sponsored and supported by congregations and ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church had additional wings constructed to its rear by 1858 when located in large Greek Revival style townhouse/mansion. Later the College moved to a third site at Park Avenue and McMechen Street where it held classes until closing in 1890. Prof. Brooks had also been the former first principal in 1839 to 1849 of first public secondary school in Maryland (and thought to be later, third oldest public high school in America) - "The High School", then on neighboring Courtland Street, later renamed the Male High School after 1844, then Central High School of Baltimore in 1850, then The Baltimore City College after 1866. Sponsored by Methodist Episcopal churches in the city, this small but influential school for young ladies is the first to grant collegiate degrees to women in Maryland, it predates the later Women's College of Baltimore (later renamed as "Goucher College") founded in 1885, also for young women (by Rev. John F. Goucher, pastor and members of the First Methodist Episcopal Church (previously Lovely Lane Methodist Chapel/Meeting House and later returned to original colonial name of Lovely Lane United Methodist Church), a block north at St. Paul and 23rd Streets in Charles Village).
  • Organizing of first organization for teachers and (high school) professors in the Baltimore City Public Schools as the "Public School Teachers Association, Inc. of Baltimore". Later evolves into first teachers union for city school faculties and joins national group, the National Education Association (NEA), later organizing of Maryland State Teachers Association.
  • Establishment of the House of Refuge on hill north of and overlooking the Frederick Road (National Road), west of Gwynns Falls in southwestern Baltimore City, building completed and opened December 5, 1855, (later location after 1971 of Southwestern High School). Attended by children, ages four to seventeen, with a new progressive philosophy to reform and not punish. Duties assigned such as shoemaking, chair caning and sewing. Built of substantial stone and surrounded by a sixteen-foot wall, it however was not prison-like in appearance according to historical accounts. Authorized by Maryland General Assembly eighteen years earlier in 1831, and funds appropriated, but city administration of the time does not aid the project, because of controversy between then political parties about government's social roles - ("Whigs" versus "Democrats"). Established under newer national social consciousness movement for children convicted of criminal offenses, those committed as vagrants or street beggars, those whose parents asked for their admission for incorrigible habits or vicious conduct, and those whose parents did not provide for them. Institution later becomes known as the Maryland Training School for Boys, and later as XXX and relocates to XXX.
  • First American Prizefight Championship organized and fought February 7 between James Ambrose, known as "Yankee" Sullivan (1811-1856), and Tom "Young America" Hyer (1819-1864), on a cold wind-swept bluff overlooking the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay at Still Pond Heights on the northwest corner of Poole's Island, offshore from the mouth of the Gunpowder River, northeast of the city between Baltimore County and Harford County. Arrangements were made to have the fight outside the jurisdiction of the State and City of New York, although there were police patrols. Several Maryland government and political figures attended to watch the match for a prize of $10,000. Hyer won and was given the title of "Champion of America" in this very early display of the future sport of boxing and pugilism.

1850s-1890s

• 1850 -
  • President Street Station built during previous year at President and Fleet (previously Canton Avenue) Streets for the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (P.W. & B.) placed in operation in February, under supervision of chief engineer Isaac Ridgway Trimble, (1802-1888), (later Confederate States Army general, noted at 1863's Battle of Gettysburg in "Pickett's Charge"), replacing earlier primitive P.W. & B. depot. Oldest surviving big-city train station in America also with unique "Howe Truss" roof-support system architecture. Site of "First Bloodshed" of Civil War in Pratt Street Riot on Friday, April 19, 1861, with attacks by mobs of southern sympathizers against passing 6th Massachusetts Volunteer State Militia regiment and escorting "Washington Brigade" of Pennsylvania state militia from Philadelphia.
  • By authority of a resolution of the Baltimore City Council, approved by the Mayor, John Hanson Thomas Jerome, the Male High School (earlier founded 1839, the third oldest public high school in America), is officially renamed the Central High School of Baltimore, (today's Baltimore City College since 1866), to which it had been referred to already for several years such as in the annual reports of the Board of School Commissioners for the Baltimore City Public Schools. Also, the School Commissioners are empowered to confer on the graduates of their highest educational institution, "testimonials" in engrossed certificates, "signed by the President of the Board, the Mayor of the City, with the seal of the City attached, by the Board Committee on the Central High School, and by the Principal/President and teachers of said school".
  • Greek Revival styled mansion/townhouse for Thomas family designed by local architects John Rudolph Niernsee and James Crawford Neilson. Constructed at southwest corner of North Charles Street (south Washington Place) and West Monument Street (West Mount Vernon Place), on the circle opposite the Washington Monument, completed by 1852. Noted home of Thomas, then Jenck families for a century and three-quarters, lastly by Gladding family of former Chevrolet auto dealership in the early 1960s. Considered for possible use as official "Mayor's Residence" but later becomes known as "Hackerman House" (donated by philanthropist Willard Hackerman) and annex for gallery of Asian Art in the early 1980s for adjacent Walters Art Gallery (later renamed Walters Art Museum), further south along Washington Place/North Charles Street.
  • Cornerstone laid by Governor of Maryland, Phillip F. Thomas, (1810-1890), on October 21 for an obelisk monument to be erected at East Monument and North Gay Streets in what was then known as Ashland Square of Jonestown/Old Town neighborhood in east Baltimore. Here the two young volunteer soldiers Daniel Wells, age 18 and Henry G. McComas, age 19 are to be reburied underneath with honors. A parade of militia and various civic societies was led. Wells and McComas of Aisquith's Sharpshooters are traditionally credited with the sharpshooting death of Maj. Gen. Robert Ross in command before the Battle of North Point, southeast of the City on the Patapsco Neck, near Bread and Cheese Creek on Defenders' Day, September 12, 1814 during the Battle of Baltimore with the British attack in the War of 1812. An eloquent prayer was given by Rev. Henry Slicer and an oration by Col. B.U. Campbell occurred at length.
• 1851 -
  • According to the new provisions adopted by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention for the writing of a second Maryland Constitution (of 1851), approved by the voters, Baltimore City, which has been the county seat of Baltimore County since 1767-1768, becomes an independent city (with the same status as the other 23 counties of Maryland) with additional, more proportional representation in the General Assembly of Maryland and more abilities of "home rule". City is separated from surrounding Baltimore County on its east, west and north sides, with Anne Arundel County remaining to its south, across the Western (upper Patapsco) to the Middle and Ferry Branches of the Patapsco River. Remaining county voters elect by several referendums to move its new county seat north to Towsontown in 1854, and constructs new limestone blocks County Courthouse of Greek Revival style with front portico and cupola facing east on Washington Avenue, between Chesapeake and Pennsylvania Avenues, and Baltimore Avenue to the west.
  • "New Assembly-Rooms" dancing, social and reception hall constructed and opens at South Hanover and West Lombard Streets by old Baltimore Dancing Assembly group to replace earlier 1797-98 famed "Old Assembly-Rooms" structure which had been at northeast corner of Holliday and Fayette Streets - (now Central High School of Baltimore since 1843 to fire of 1873).
  • Baltimore Wecker German-language newspaper begins publication for the German Baltimoreans.
  • New "Centre Market" building constructed on Market Place (formerly Harrison Street - named for Thomas Harrison of 18th-century "Harrison's Marsh", nicknamed "Marsh Market"), on west shore of Jones Falls between East Baltimore and Water Streets with 25-year-old school - "Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts" (original name) is located on upper second/third floors set above brick/stone arches and piers above the stalls of the market house. Two tall clock towers constructed at each end, with the larger one facing the Plaza on the south side towards the harbor. Large auditorium/assembly hall with classrooms, lecture halls and offices upstairs makes structure the center of education in the city. Site of many large assemblies, mass meetings and conventions in coming years, plus several large presidential nominating conventions in the next decade along with a famous speech in April 1864 by President Abraham Lincoln. (Endures until Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904).
  • First annual commencement exercises held November 27 for ten male graduates of the newly renamed Central High School of Baltimore, (founded 1839 as "The High School", then "Male High School" after 1844, since 1866, today's Baltimore City College) at the old Front Street Theatre, east of the Jones Falls, between East Fayette and High Streets, in the Jonestown/Old Town section. Two graduates receiving the highest honors and eight being granted qualified certificates. First high school diplomas ever granted in Baltimore and Maryland.
  • Construction of second "Athenaeum" hall at northwest corner of St. Paul Street and East Saratoga Streets of three floors of Greek Revival style for $40,000 by Robert Cary Long, Jr., as a gift from the citizens of Baltimore to the Maryland Historical Society, founded seven years before (1844). Building replaces previous "Athenaeum", two blocks south at St. Paul and East Lexington, burned in Baltimore bank riot of 1835. Other floors later to be used by subscription libraries of the old Library Company of Baltimore, founded 1796-97 and the Mercantile Library Association, (of 1839), which combine their collections here by 1856. MdHS resides here until 1919 when it moves several blocks northwest to the former Enoch Pratt townhouse/mansion on West Monument Street and Park Avenue in 1919. Numerous meetings, lectures, visits and ceremonies held here in the next three-quarters of a century. By the 1920s, building is used by the new bureaucracy for cars, the state Commissioner of Motor Vehicles (founded 1910) offices, then unfortunately razed briefly for a first parking garage in the city, quickly later replaced on site by a mid-1950s glass skyscraper for Commercial Credit Company. Site later opened up by razing of neighboring facing 1820s-era Greek Revival styled townhouses for the City's first "urban renewal project" pushed by Mayor James H. Preston, (1860-1938, served 1911-1919) of five square blocks along St. Paul Street and later St. Paul Place and the old parallel Courtland Streets from East Centre to East Lexington for the terraced "Preston Gardens", with classical Greco- Roman carved stone railings and staircases, flower beds, spouting fountains, sidewalk ways and large shade trees. Underlying issue was that early 19th century residential area had become crowded with Afro-American institutions, churches, schools and business/legal offices and city administration worried about so-called "blight" spreading west and northwest into adjacent Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood up "Cathedral Hill".
  • Cornerstone for House of Refuge for wayward youths in southwest outskirts of city on old Frederick Road (National Road) at Gwynns Falls on Oct. 27th with Governor of Maryland - Enoch Lowe, (1820-1892, served 1851-1854), and Marylander Chief Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney, (1777-1864, served 1838-1864), with the Mayor and City Council attending. Chartered earlier in February 1831 and documents revised 1859. Site is later occupied in 1971 by Southwestern High School, opened 1971.
  • Fussell's ice cream factory begins operating.
• 1852 -
  • St. Mary's College, secular academic institution (associated with the earlier seminary) established by the Sulpicians religious order in 1805 closes the College, located on North Paca Street by St. Mary's Lane, adjacent to the St. Mary's Seminary, established 1791, and the landmark Chapel, which had graduated many hundreds of young men with secular educations during the first half of the 19th Century and was one of the most prosperous educational institutions in the City. Sulpicians decide to concentrate on graduate-level preparing young men for the priesthood.
  • Loyola College and Loyola High School established by the Jesuits, (also known as the Society of Jesus) in several townhouses in the 100 block Holliday Street by East Lexington (then named Orange Alley) and between East Fayette Streets. Just north of famed Holliday Street Theatre (of 1794 and 1812), Prof Kapp's School (where famous reporter/editor/author/columnist H.L. Mencken, (1880-1956), attended in the early 1890s) and the Central High School of Baltimore, (future Baltimore City College) at old former "Assembly Rooms" social and cultural hall. New Loyola Jesuits schools in houses across street from future Baltimore City Hall (soon to be built, 1867-1875). Both College and High School later in 1855 move several blocks north next to St. Ignatius Church on North Calvert between East Monument and East Madison Streets in Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood, completed by 1857. Later in 1923, the College moves to suburban campus in northern city at North Charles Street at West Cold Spring Lane next to Evergreen House of Garrett family of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad fame and the High School moves in 1934 to its present "Blakefield" campus, west of Towson in suburban Baltimore County.
  • Apollo Hall opens.
  • 1852 Democratic National Convention and 1852 Whig National Convention both met in the city to nominate candidates for president and vice president. Democrats choose Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), of New Hampshire, a "dark horse" unexpected candidate for the Presidency with Senator William R. King (1786-1853), of Alabama as Vice President. Whigs put forth former Maj. Gen. and General-in-Chief of the United States Army, Winfield Scott (1786-1866), of New Jersey, and William A. Graham (1804-1875), of North Carolina as his running mate. Pierce is elected 14th President in the Fall elections.
• 1853 - Baltimore City Police Department established. Succeeds earlier protective system from Baltimore Town of constables and night watchmen established since 1784. Later placed under authority of Governor of Maryland after Know-Nothing Riot of 1856 and political scandals of "Know-Nothing" movement of the American Party in 1859-60, who has the power to appoint the police marshal (later chief or [after 1920] commissioner of police to the 1980s). Similar political movement inspired by City Reform League for "good government" that also eliminated various squabbling volunteer fire companies dating back to the 1760s and formed professionalized municipal government agency, as the Baltimore City Fire Department in 1859.
• 1854 - Fire destroys Greek Revival styled third church (designed in 1812-1817 by Robert Cary Long, Jr., [1810-1849]), of Old St. Paul's Church (Episcopal), oldest parish in Baltimore area, at northeast corner of North Charles and East Saratoga Streets. Replaced two years later by Italian Renaissance Revival architecture fourth structure, designed by Richard Upjohn (1802-1878), of New York City. A six-story bell tower was planned, but never constructed. By the mid-20th century, the famous "Mother Church of Baltimore" is surrounded by tall skyscrapers and a busy business district, followed in 1950s-60s by redevelopment Charles Center with its Charles Plaza across the street to the west.
• 1856 -
  • "Know-Nothings" Riot of the "American Party" with anti-immigrant extremists and political/historical ignorance groups manage to fool voting citizens and take power with some offices in city and state government.
  • 1856 Whig National Convention held in Baltimore again at the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts hall above Centre ("Marsh") Market on East Baltimore Street at Market Place (formerly Harrison Street) to Water Street, by west side of Jones Falls, to nominate its slate of candidates for President and Vice President. Last major campaign effort of the Whigs for national offices. Chosen were former 13th President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874), of New York and for the second spot on the ticket, Andrew Donelson (1799-1871), of Tennessee. Democrat James Buchanan (1791-1868), former U.S. Secretary of State is elected as 15th President in the Fall elections, also over former Col. John C. Frémont (1813-1890), ("The Great Pathfinder"), first candidate of the newly organized Republican Party.
  • Construction of "Light Street Bridge" from "Ferry Bar" point in old South Baltimore, southern end of Light Street across the Middle and Ferry Branches of Patapsco River to the old Acton's Amusement Park and "Cromwell's Marsh" (future Fairfield, Masonville and East Brooklyn/Wagner's Point communities) and to newly established town of Brooklyn from three years before in northern Anne Arundel County. Replaced old ferry operated since colonial times forming connection to southbound road to state capital at Annapolis. Sometimes known as "Long Bridge" or "Brooklyn Bridge", has length of 4,750 feet of wooden trestle on piles and has expensively high toll charged by local County land-owning families Crisp and Cromwell which stifles future residential and commercial development of northern county towns Brooklyn and Curtis Bay for first twenty-five years until city/state purchase in 1878. Light Street Bridge which also later carries electric streetcar line across, endures until 1914-1917 when replaced by current "Hanover Street Bridge", of concrete arches with draw span built across narrows further to the west which opens January 1917, (later renamed Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge in the 1990s).
• 1857 -
  • World-famous financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869), formerly of Baltimore (1815-1835), later of New York City, then London, England, suggests bequest to local civic and literary leaders to found a Peabody Institute, with various cultural programs of art and sculpture collection, lecture series, reference library, musical school and scholarship prizes to public school graduates. Construction of building begins at southeast corner of North Charles Street (south Washington Place) and East Monument Street (East Mount Vernon Place) opposite the Washington Monument. Mostly completed by 1861, but is delayed by the Civil War until dedication and opening the year after peace. Today the nation's second-oldest music conservatory with landmark Library and presently a division since 1977 of the later 1876 bequest from friend Johns Hopkins of The Johns Hopkins University.
  • New Maryland Club for socially elite men organized and incorporated the following year. Located first at old George Hoffman mansion of Greek Revival styled architecture at northeast corner of Cathedral and West Franklin Streets, opposite the old Baltimore Cathedral. Later in 1890s moves several blocks north in Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood to present stone Romanesque Revival designed clubhouse at North Charles and East Eager Streets. Later becomes center hotbed of Southern sympathizers in early days of Civil War strife and riots in the city, threatened to bombard building from Fort Federal Hill if a Rebel flag flies by occupying Union Army and Massachusetts state militia Gen. Benjamin F. Butler.
• 1858 -
  • Inventor, railroad and shipbuilding industrialist Ross Winans, (1796-1877), builds and launches revolutionary-styled steam-powered "cigar boat" at Ferry Bar, southern point at Middle or Ferry Branch of Patapsco River, by old Light Street Bridge (also known as "Long Bridge" or "Brooklyn Bridge") of 1856, mile-long wooden trestle on log pilings to newly established Brooklyn town (1853) in northern Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on shores of former "Cromwell's Marsh". Wealthy and talented Winans builds several piers and wharves east of the bar/point area along the Patapsco River, later known as "Winans Cove", at northern end of long-time ferry service since colonial days and experiments iron and steel-fabricated ships and boats, off-shore and west from nearby remnants of War of 1812 earthen embankments of Fort Covington, (and smaller Battery Babcock to the east) still extant from September 1814 Battle of Baltimore. Site later becomes by the late 1890s, "Port Covington", waterfront terminal for old Western Maryland Railway, near south shores of "Whetstone Point" peninsula. Old Revolutionary War "Fort Whetstone" from 1775-1776, at eastern end, and later adjacent renamed "Locust Point" residential neighborhood and future Port of Baltimore facilities/terminals on northern and southern shores. Additional foundries and shipyards in Cove, developed for Southern rebels'-sympathizing Winans, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, arrested by Union Army forces from on train from Frederick city April-May 1861 sessions (briefly held in Fort McHenry) to forestall his later possible assistance to Confederate military forces with development of vaunted "steam gun" (early high-powered "machine gun" or "Gatling"-style gun in 1861) and similarly wealthy and talented son's Thomas Dekoven Winans future Russian railroad-building projects and industrial enterprises.
  • Holding of the eighth annual commencement ceremonies for the Central High School of Baltimore, (founded 1839, third oldest public high school in America, then at northeast corner of Holliday and East Fayette Streets in old "Assembly Rooms" dancing hall of 1796) for 23 graduates at the upstairs auditorium of the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, above Centre ("Marsh") Market at East Baltimore Street and Harrison Street/Market Place, east of the Jones Falls (landmark recently completed 1851). First time awarding of seven "Peabody Prizes" by bequest from the founder of the new Peabody Institute the previous year, now under construction across from the Washington Monument, internationally known financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869). Prizes awarded by William E. Mayhew, Esq., first President of the Board of Trustees, with engrossed certificates, gold or bronze engraved medals along with cash awards of three of $100 and four of $50 to each honored graduate. Additional prizes also awarded to the top graduates of the two female public high schools (founded 1844), Eastern High School and Western High School. Peabody Prizes will be awarded annually for the next 130 years, with substantial public and media attention, then later replaced after controversy by Peabody and Johns Hopkins University trustees (P.I. merges with J.H.U. in 1977) with scholarship programs for all top-ranked graduates of Baltimore City public high schools.
  • First steam fire engine (horse-drawn) "Alpha" arrives in the city, purchased by newly organizing Baltimore City Fire Department, May 18.
• 1859 -
  • City Fire Department formed as municipal government agency with paid, professionally trained firemen. Replaces the old 1835 "Baltimore City United Fire Department", a confederation system of about 17 independent private volunteer firefighting companies in various districts and neighborhoods, dating back to 1763. Engine House Number 6 facing North Gay and Orleans Street with landmark tall Italianate-styled bell tower is last volunteer company building built in the 1850s and annexed into new city firehouse system. Later becomes oldest B.C.F.D. firehouse and in 1974, Baltimore City Fire Museum.
  • First line established of horse-drawn street rail cars for faster and more reliable city transportation begins to replace older horse-drawn omnibuses (street wagons). Helps in growing additional rowhouse neighborhoods and first development of "suburbs" further out near city limits. Later first usage in America of electrification powered systems of streetcars by Baltimore in 1885 extends throughout city by the mid-1890s.
• 1860 -
  • 1860 Constitutional Union Convention, 1860 Democratic National Convention, Two political party presidential nominating conventions held in "Border City" after break-up of regular convention of Democrats at Charleston, in South Carolina session under threat of secession and civil war. Both U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and John Bell of Tennessee each nominated for Chief Executive in very controversial 1860 Presidential Election.
  • Estimated that 90 percent of city's black population on the eve of the Civil War was free.
  • Druid Hill Park opened on northwest outskirts of town on former Nicholas Rogers "Druid Hill" colonial estate on western heights above upper Jones Falls.
  • Reformers of local Democratic Party reassert political control in state and city with support of new City Reform League with election of George William Brown as Mayor from "Know-Nothings" of American Party and recent political and election turmoil and riots. State assumes control of city police force with Governor of Maryland having appointive power of police marshal with George P. Kane newly chosen.
  • Population: 212,418.
• 1861 -
  • Unarmed Militia Units from Pottsville and Schyulkill County of the Pennsylvania volunteer state militia travel by the Northern Central Railroad (NCRR) from the northeastern part of the Keystone State to the state capital Harrisburg continuing south to Maryland's "Mason-Dixon line" and arrive in Baltimore on Thursday, April 18 at the NCRR's Bolton Station and Calvert Street Station (situated between Bath and East Centre Streets - now site of offices/printing plant of The Baltimore Sun since 1950) on way to answer newly elected 16th President Abraham Lincoln's call to the states for 75,000 volunteers and declares a state of insurrection to subdue Southern rebellion, after the firing on Fort Sumter several days before on April 14 in Charleston harbor, in seceding South Carolina by new elements of an organizing Confederate States Army. Joined by two artillery regiments of Regular Army soldiers coming from the West heading for Fort McHenry, the Pennsylvania militiamen march down Howard Street to Camden Street Station to board the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to get to Washington. Because they are unarmed (rifles unloaded) they are jeered, hassled and some assaulted with physical and verbal attacks by Southern sympathizers and the commanding officer's free black servant Nicholas Biddle is injured, although no one is killed or wounded. Later upon arriving in the National Capital, greeted by the President and camping in the halls of the U.S. Capitol, these units are later known as "The First Defenders". Baltimore mobs' appetite for violence however is only whetted for more the next infamous day, "Friday, the Nineteenth of April".
  • "Pratt Street Riot" on Friday, April 19 erupts when the Union's Sixth Massachusetts Regiment of volunteer state militia (from mostly mill towns of Lawrence and Lowell) and "Washington Brigade" of Philadelphia of Pennsylvania state militia, is attacked by mobs of Southern sympathizers when making the required transfer on their railroad journeys from Philadelphia to Washington, attempt to transfer horse-drawn railroad cars along East Pratt and President Streets waterfront from the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad's President Street Station to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Camden Street Station. Four soldiers killed and many wounded along with many uncounted Baltimoreans. New Police Marshal George P. Kane and recently elected Reformer Mayor George William Brown with escorts of city police with pistols try to hold back rioters. Later city officials send militia units north and east of the city to burn railroad bridges to forestall any future transfer passages and in meeting with Governor Thomas Hicks in Annapolis and President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. request no further military passages through city. Washington is isolated from the North by cut telegraph lines for several weeks.
  • A month later, on May 14, Massachusetts volunteer state militia and now Union General Benjamin F. Butler sends regiments from Relay Junction southwest of city on B. & O. Railroad (where the Main Line to the West at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry on the Potomac River and further to Ohio River divides from the Washington Branch to national capital) in night expedition during rainstorm to occupy city and fortify Federal Hill, overlooking downtown harbor "Basin" and declaring martial law the following day. Baltimore is occupied by Union Army troops manning surrounding earthen-bermed forts quickly constructed for the duration of the war to 1865. Additional Federal troops reinforce Fort McHenry and numerous members of the State Legislature, Mayor, (George William Brown), City Council and Police Marshal (George P. Kane), and other Board of Police Commissioners are arrested and confined, such as industrialist Ross Winans and politician John Merryman. Provost Marshal for city appointed with local military officer Col. John Kenly and commands city police officers.
• 1863 -
  • Invasion fears threaten Baltimore authorities in June as Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia passes Baltimore on the west going through Frederick, city placed under stricter martial law, additional militia called out, warships stationed in the harbor, and barricades erected in west-side streets. Later battle fought north at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, largest battle of the War and ever fought in North America.
  • Construction began on stone Italianate style of architecture mansion "Cylburn" with material quarried from Bare Hills, in Baltimore County. Designing architect George A. Frederick (later plans for Baltimore City Hall in 1867-1875) on property located on Greenspring Avenue, west of Jones Falls hills, north of Druid Hill Park built for Elisha Tyson, industrialist, financier and Quaker abolitionist and civic activist with project continuing to 1888. Purchased by City in 1942 and estate developed into botanical gardens and arboretum as city park, named "Cylburn Wildflower Preserve and Garden Center", with Horticulture Division of Bureau of Parks and Maryland Ornithological Society headquarters, nature museum, mounted bird collections and Fessenden herbarium. House and estate placed on National Register of Historic Places.
  • Newly organized "Union Club" sets up on northeast corner of East Franklin and North Charles Street (opposite First Independent Church of Baltimore - later First Unitarian Church (Unitarian and Universalist)), in former Greek Revival styled with stone portico/steps and columns of former William Howard (son of Col. John Eager Howard) mansion. One block east of opposing Southern-sympathizing Maryland Club at former Hoffman mansion at Cathedral and West Franklin. Later mansion becomes headquarters for "Athenaeum Club" and temporary site in the early 1870s for new Maryland State Normal School, founded 1866 (later after several name and location changes to Towson University).
• 1864 -
  • New Maryland state Constitutional Convention summoned and meets drawing up replacement document for previous charter of 1851 which is enacted ending slavery in Baltimore and throughout the state along with providing for additional political, educational and social reforms for the new free black population, which is later quite unpopular with the former white dominant Democratic Party power structure.
  • St. Francis Xavier Church dedicated for Black/Afro-American Roman Catholics at North Calvert and East Pleasant Streets (to 1932).
  • President Abraham Lincoln travels by B. & O. Railroad to now peaceful Baltimore to speak at the hall of the 1851 landmark Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts above Centre ("Marsh") Market along Market Place/Harrison Street at East Baltimore Street, by the west bank of Jones Falls to speak to the "Sanitary Fair' sponsored by the local unit of the U.S. Sanitary Commission there being held to raise funds for orphans, widows and wounded soldiers of the Union Army on April 18. Gives a famous speech entitled the "Baltimore Address" or "Liberty Speech". Stays overnight in friend's brownstone mansion on Cathedral Street and West Mount Vernon Place, a block west of the Washington Monument.
  • 1864 Republican National Convention temporarily known as the National Union Party, held in city nominates Abraham Lincoln for a second term as president and adding former Democrat but loyalist of Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), former U.S. Senator and War Governor of Tennessee as Vice President to replace previous incumbent Hannibal Hamlin during Lincoln's first term.
• 1865 - Concordia Opera House opens.
  • Funeral train for 16th President Abraham Lincoln assassinated April 14 stops in city and procession held for body to ly-in-state at Merchants' Exchange rotunda at South Gay and East Lombard Streets for several hours, cortege followed by thousands. Train continues on cross-country trip across the North to cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.
  • Formation of Baltimore Association for the Moral and Intellectual Improvement of Colored People by the Rev. John F. W. Ware of the First Independent Church of Baltimore (later First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Unitarian and Universalist)) and many freed slaves and freedman, setting up over 200 schools.
  • Establishment by Afro-American Baltimoreans of the Douglass Institute in honor of former resident and escaped slave, Frederick Douglass near old Newton University founded 1840s, on south side of 200 block, East Lexington Street, between North Calvert, Davis Street alley, and North Streets (now Guilford Avenue). Later becomes forerunner for establishment by 1883 of the first "Colored High School and Training School", which by 1925 is renamed Frederick Douglass High School.
• 1866 - New Peabody Institute building dedicated with philanthropist millionaire donor George Peabody (1795-1869), (formerly of Massachusetts, briefly Washington, and 20 years in Baltimore, now of New York City and London, in England) standing on front steps acknowledging the acclaim of thousands of Baltimore City Public Schools pupils gathered during elaborate dedication ceremonies held in front of building at the Washington Monument completed several years before in 1861 but delayed opening by the Civil War, and nine years after the original donation of $800,000. Constructed of white marble, the first section of one-third of building, (west wing) of Institute building located on southeast corner of North Charles Street and East Monument Street, which is also South Washington Place at East Mount Vernon Place, across from the landmark Washington Monument. Designed by famous architect Edmund G. Lind of Classical and early Beaux Arts style architecture, consists of music hall/auditorium, art gallery and small library space. Later second section, two-thirds of building, (east wing), with space for elaborate tiered atrium for future George Peabody Library, and more facilities, completed 12 years later by the same architect, matched perfectly.
  • Authorized by Maryland General Assembly in an act of 1865, providing for a uniform public school system to be established in each of Maryland's 23 counties, along with a state department of education with a superintendent, and a teachers' training institute. The Maryland State Normal School opens January 15, under Professor and Principal McFadden Alexander Newell in temporary quarters in the old Red Men's Hall on North Paca Street, with first graduation ceremony that June. New school soon moves to northeast corner of North Charles Street and East Franklin Street in former Greek Revival 1820s era mansion of William Howard, son of Col. John Eager Howard (1752-1827), which by the Civil War became the Union Club, later the Athenaeum Club. Later construction in 1875 of designated landmark building at northwest corner of Carrollton and Lafayette Avenues with tall corner clock tower, occupied February 1876. Later relocates by 1915 to west side of York Road with construction of buildings for administration (later Stephens Hall) and dormitories/dining hall (Newell Hall) in county seat of Towson in suburban Baltimore County, becoming the Maryland State Teachers College at Towson, then Towson State College, finally Towson University, second largest college/university in the state.ref name=brit1910 />
• 1867 -
  • Concordia Hall is founded.
  • Centenary Biblical Institute founded by then "Negro" or "Colored" (now African American) Baptists churches, later renamed as Morgan College, in honor of a former president, then absorbed in 1939 by the state becoming Morgan State College, finally by the 1990s as Morgan State University.
• 1870 -

African-Americans vote in Baltimore for the first time since 1810 with passage of Fifteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution. Mass meeting held at Battle Monument Square at North Calvert, between East Lexington and Fayette Streets to celebrate

• • "Maryland Law Record" weekly newspaper founded to report on legal, real estate and business matters. Office is located at 75 West Fayette Street [old street numbering system], J. L. Hanna - editor. Later becomes "The Daily Record" in 1888 to the 21st century, owned by the Warfield Family.
  • Population: 267,354.
  • Pimlico Race Course opens outside northwest Baltimore.
• 1871 - Ford's Grand Opera-House opens on West Fayette Street between North Howard and Eutaw Streets, (owned by John T. Ford who also owned infamous (Ford's Theatre) playhouse in Washington, later becomes leading politician in city and member of parks board), Ford's Opera House plays major productions from Broadway when owned in later years by Morris A. Mechanic, (who later has new modernistic theatre in Charles Center downtown redevelopment from 1958 to the early 1970s), and lasts until 1964, replaced by the 2010s by "Centerpoint" apartment/condo/commercial building at Howard and Fayette Streets.
• 1872 -
  • 1872 Democratic National Convention held at the new year-old Ford's Opera House (owned/operated by the same John T. Ford of the infamous Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. where 16th President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865) on West Fayette Street (between North Howard and Eutaw Street) and nominates New York Tribune newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, (1811-1872), as the choice of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States. Greeley is also later nominated on the ticket for the Progressive Republican faction of the dominant Republican Party, which has held the chief executive office since 1869 and majority control of the Congress since 1861, the beginning of the recent Civil War. Greeley loses the election to incumbent 18th President Ulysses S. Grant, (1822-1885), for his second term and the Democratic/Progressive Republican candidate dies several weeks afterwards in November.
  • Mount Auburn Cemetery established for Negro/Black/Afro-American citizens in southwest area of city off Old Annapolis Road (Maryland Route 648), and Waterview Avenue, near future Westport neighborhood, and later routing alongside its eastern boundary of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, (Interstate 295), constructed as a park-like boulevard between the two cities during the early 1950s.
  • Baltimore's first major league baseball franchise, the "Lord Baltimores" plays at baseball grounds of Newington Park.
  • St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic church is established in Baltimore as a parish church for Czech immigrants to Baltimore.
• 1873 -
  • Leadenhall Street Baptist Church built, by "Negro/Colored" Baptists in old south Baltimore, (later African Americans).
  • Mother Mary Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger and 5 other sisters arrive in city from Germany and establish religious women's teaching order School Sisters of Notre Dame. Co-Foundress of Notre Dame Preparatory School and Collegiate Institute for younger girls of elementary or high school ages. Also have four other schools in Baltimore, three of which are downtown. 33 acres of land purchased in 1871 along North Charles Street above East Cold Spring Lane, including "Montrose" House, and next to and north of one of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad president John Work Garrett's country estates, Greek Revival-styled Evergreen House, later passed to son and grandson to 1942, (now owned by The Johns Hopkins University). Collegiate Institute Later raised to level of full college (renamed College of Notre Dame of Maryland) in 1895 as first Roman Catholic college for women in America granting degrees. Raised by state legislature General Assembly of Maryland in the 2000s to university-level.
  • "Clay Street Fire", off Liberty/Cathedral and West Saratoga Streets, second largest downtown conflagration in the city's history (next to later Great Baltimore Fire of 1904) destroys five square city blocks along West Saratoga Street between North Liberty and North Howard Streets, including first building of the Central Presbyterian Church with its tall bell tower at Liberty and West Saratoga Streets and the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church, further west on Saratoga Street.
  • Fire destroys Old "Assembly-Rooms" in November, (just across street from newly built Baltimore City Hall) at northeast corner of Holliday and East Fayette Streets. "Assembly-Rooms" current site of The Baltimore City College since the 1840s (formerly Central High School of Baltimore, before then Male High School, then "The High School" of 1839). Famous Georgian-Federal style architecture structure of Baltimore Dancing Assembly for social, civic and literary activities, also balls and dinners/banquets from the 1790s to the 1830s. Designed by noted local builder/architect Robert Cary Long, Sr. and Col. Nicholas Rogers. Neighboring famous Holliday Street Theatre also burns on block between East Fayette and Lexington Streets, built 1794, rebuilt in 1812. After fire, theatre will be rebuilt and continues performances until razing in 1917 for future War Memorial Plaza and City Hall Plaza between City Hall and the 1925 War Memorial Building on South Gay Street to the east. City College moves to temporary quarters and two years later (1875) occupies first new building built for its use with English Tudor Revival style at southwest corner of North Howard and West Centre Streets. Academy of Music built later next door to the south along with Auditorium Theatre, and around corner on Franklin Street is Kernan's, later Congress Hotel and Maryland Theatre constructed.
  • Johns Hopkins (1795-1873), noted merchant, financier, banker and stockholder of several companies, railroads and steamship lines, dies at his West Saratoga Street townhouse by North Liberty Street (next to old St. Paul's Church Rectory). Later his will is probated to find that he endows a university, hospital and a medical school, leaving his several estates of "Clifton".
  • New underground railroad tunnels dug through and around northwestern, northern and northeastern Baltimore City for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad to eliminate pulling train cars through bottle-neck of downtown streets between surrounding line stations by horse since 1829. Also completion of a new Union Station above and along the bending curve of the north bank of the Jones Falls, between North Charles Street and St. Paul Street, to be used by several lines serving the city: Baltimore and Potomac, Northern Central and Pennsylvania Railroads. Landscaped gardens surround new station and the Jones Falls stream. Replaced later by 1911 with more imposing and larger Union Station - soon renamed Pennsylvania Station of granite and marble Beaux Arts/Classical architecture.
• 1875 -
  • New City Hall completed construction since October 1867 cornerstone-laying on city block facing Holliday Street between East Fayette and Lexington Streets (also overtop old Orange Alley) dedicated with great fanfare, pride and civic enthusiasm, replacing old City Hall building which was used 1830-1875 (which had been Rembrandt Peale's "Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts", 1813-1830, and later Municipal Museum of City of Baltimore, 1931, one block further north on Holliday).
  • Academy of Music opens on North Howard Street between West Franklin and Centre Streets on January 5, declared to be one of the finest playhouse and music hall in the nation. Also will serve in coming decades as auditorium for the new Johns Hopkins University which will be located just north a block. Built just south and next to George A. Frederick's new building of English Tudor Revival style for the male high school Baltimore City College at North Howard and West Centre Streets.
  • Free Summer Excursion Society incorporated.
• 1876 -
  • Johns Hopkins University founded with opening ceremonies on September 12, at the new Academy of Music at North Howard between West Franklin and Centre Streets with address by new president Daniel Coit Gilman (1847-1908), (formerly President of the University of California at Berkeley) and guest speaker Thomas Huxley. Directed by will from merchant/philanthropist Johns Hopkins(1795-1873). First "campus" of university established by trustees two blocks north at intersection with Little Ross Street instead of at Hopkins' summer country estate "Clifton" in northeast Baltimore.
  • The Baltimore City Zoo, (later renamed Maryland Zoo in Baltimore in the 1990s) opens in Druid Hill Park, sixteen years after establishment of Park, and is third (or fourth) oldest of its type, after New York City's Central Park Zoo and the Philadelphia Zoo.
  • New glass conservatory for shrubs, plants and trees constructed at Patterson Park, in East Baltimore lasts until 1948, similar to later 1888 structure at Druid Hill Park.
• 1877 - Railroad Strike: Massive disruptive riots spread throughout the Northeast in July begin in Martinsburg, West Virginia, hit violently in Pittsburgh and later center at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's headquarters and main terminal at the Camden Street Station. Later appeals by B. & O. officials result in the Governor of Maryland calling out the state militia's newly reorganized National Guard Fifth and Sixth Regiments which assembled and marched from their armories with the 5th coming south on North Howard Street and the 6th coming west from North Front and East Fayette Streets, (east of the Jones Falls), marching along Baltimore Street to force a violent suppression of the disaffected protesting railroad workers about their drastic pay cuts and austerity measures resulting from the economic recession that year. Other disturbances continue nationwide resulting in action by newly elected Republican 19th President Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893).
• 1878 - George Peabody Library with multi-level cast-iron balconies and book stacks (a "Cathedral of Books") with overhead skylight, opens as eastward extension of original 1866 Peabody Institute building opposite the Washington Monument on East Monument Street (East Mount Vernon Place), designed by original architect Edmund G. Lind.
  • State of Maryland purchases old "Light Street Bridge" (also known as "Long Bridge" or "Brooklyn Bridge"), a one-mile long wooden trestle built in 1856, from builders of Cromwell and Crisp families from South Baltimore's "Ferry Bar" (or "Ferry Point") across Middle and Ferry Branches to Western Branch of upper Patapsco River to new residential community of Brooklyn and near-by industrial town of Curtis Bay in northern Anne Arundel County and lifts tolls which had restricted traffic, sparking new land boom and spurt of growth in new northern suburban area of the southern county of Anne Arundel, drawing it now into the burgeoning new "metropolitan area".
• 1879 - First inter-club lacrosse game played in Baltimore.
• 1880 -
  • Woman's Industrial Exchange founded, house and store/restaurant later located on North Charles and East Hamilton Streets (alley).
  • Celebration of 150th anniversary of foundation of Baltimore Town in 1729/1730 with parades, processional arches, decorated buildings with hanging re-white-blue and black-yellow/orange hangings of bunting and various events, (the other Baltimore anniversary that is also celebrated is that of incorporation of old Baltimore Town as a City in 1796-1797, with a City Charter being issued then by action of the General Assembly of Maryland). Various changes in the structure and operation of the local municipal government, increased autonomy, increased legislature representation and increased powers of autonomy/"home rule" occurs in following decades especially with second municipal charter which takes place eighteen years later (1898).
  • The Grand Lodge ?.S.P.S. of Baltimore is founded to help Czech and Slovak immigrants to Baltimore integrate into American society.
  • Population: 332,313.
• 1881 - Faultless Pajama Company begins in business.
  • Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company's new "Central Building" headquarters with massive mansard roof completed on northwest corner facing North Calvert and East Baltimore Streets, to replace old central offices which had been since the late 1850s on second floor above Camden Street Station of 1857-1865. Last major project of famous B. & O. President John Work Garrett, who dies 1884. Heavily damaged in Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904, and later razed, replaced by future site of old Emerson Hotel (owner of "Bromo Seltzer" in the 20th century), then site of east end of modern skyscraper facing East Baltimore Street constructed by and briefly owned by Savings Bank of Baltimore before merger later into SunTrust.
  • Civil Service Reform Association established to lobby for "good government" and an end to local political patronage appointments in the City, especially after assassination of 20th President James Garfield in Washington railroad station in July. Precursor to later (1885) Reform League of Baltimore City and Municipal Art Society in 1899 during Progressive Era political movement.
• 1882 -
  • Local wholesale hardware and building supplies merchant, financier and businessman, Enoch Pratt, (1808-1896) proposes to establish a public free library system in a letter sent to the Mayor and City Council with central building and initially four (later two more the following year) branches in four quarters of the city with circulating books, along with an endowment of $1,058,000, if the City will promise to continue to support and provide for it. Unbeknownst to Baltimoreans, construction of "Old Central" Library is already underway since Fall 1881, with razing of several townhouses and excavations. Opening later in January 1886, after four years construction facing West Mulberry Street at Cathedral Street with the four branches following in a few months and a fifth branch a year later.
  • New Local merchant Jacob Epstein, then 17-year-old Lithuanian immigrant opens Baltimore Bargain House, small re-sale store, later develops into multi-level inexpensive department store with mail order, wholesale services and clothing manufacturing on West Fayette Street, between Liberty and North Howard Streets, until suffering a disastrous fire. Later reorganized into Epstein's Department Stores with several branches on major streets of commercial business districts in outer city neighborhoods at economy, lower inexpensive shoppers, last until the late 1980s, such as Light Street in Federal Hill (Old South Baltimore), and Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown.
  • Baltimore County Fire Department organized with coordinating earlier volunteer companies in several towns and villages surrounding City in what is called the "Belt District" to forestall increasing proposals for Baltimore City to annex county territory, first since 1816. First department station located in county seat of Towson at northwest tri-angular corner of York Road and Dulaney Valley Road with two-story brick structure with bell cupola. Additional stations/companies organized elsewhere but are eventually later absorbed by City in 1888 (along with police precinct stations and several public schools) with second of three major annexations.
• 1883 -
  • Baltimore Manual Training School founded and located in former lower school building on the east side of Courtland Street (now Saint Paul Place) in the area of the current terraced "Preston Gardens", which replaced it by the razing of five north-to-south city blocks in the 1920s, between East Centre Street in the north to East Lexington Street to the south, by the City Circuit Courthouse of 1896-1900 as the city's first large "urban renewal" project. This is the later site of Mercy Hospital. Coincidentally, this was across the street and fifty years later from the founding location of rival high school Baltimore City College (then "The High School") in 1839, in a rented townhouse on the same street. B.M.T.S. later becomes Baltimore's premier public high school for engineering, mathematics and technology. Renamed in 1893 as "the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute" with an all-male student body (co-educates with girls in 1974), and remains here on Courtland Street at East Saratoga Street until moved in 1912 to East North Avenue and North Calvert Street at the former mansion of the Maryland School for the Blind (which then moves out to Overlea in northeastern Baltimore County). Poly moves again in 1967 to Falls Road and Cold Spring Lane in shared campus with all-girls Western High School.
  • Also the start later of one of the longest public high school athletic rivalries in America with City College beginning in sports with football in 1889. Up to this time, along with the two female high schools - Eastern and Western (founded 1844), and also the recently re-organized and established "Colored High School", were the only public high schools in the state.
  • Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School) founded on East Saratoga Street, between North Charles and St. Paul Streets, near the former location of the private Douglass Institute of 1865, influenced by nearby Newton University of 1845, on the 200 block of East Lexington Street (between North Calvert and North Streets - later Guilford Avenue).
  • Baltimore Young Women's Christian Association founded. First building located at West Saratoga and North Charles Streets (site of former St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral).
• 1884 -
  • Light Street Methodist Episcopal Church (organizing site of Methodism in America and first ordination a century before), moves from downtown between German (later Redwood) and East Baltimore Streets to new northern suburb of "Peabody Heights" at St. Paul Street and 23rd Street (now Charles Village). Uses name of "First Methodist Episcopal Church". Later changes name from "First Methodist Episcopal Church" back to the original historic name Lovely Lane M.E. Church from its original site.
  • The Bohemian National Cemetery is established by members of Baltimore's Czech community as a burial ground for Protestant and irreligious Czech-Americans.
• 1885 -
  • Future Goucher College established as Women's College of Baltimore on Saint Paul Street in Peabody Heights neighborhood - later Charles Village led by Rev. John Goucher of historic Lovely Lane Methodist Church with some classes taught by Hopkins faculty (successor to older Baltimore Female College - also with Methodist sponsorship).
  • Reform League of Baltimore City founded to spearhead efforts to improve city and fight old-time local Democratic Party municipal "political machine" with civic leaders Judge John C. Rose, and local/national Republican Party leader Charles Bonaparte, grandson of Prince Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte by his ill-fated 1801 marriage with Elizabeth ("Betsy") Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, younger brother of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Continues and expands on programs and campaigns by earlier Civil Service Reform Association of 1881.
  • Bryn Mawr School opens under leadership of M. Carey Thomas (1857-1935), and Mary Elizabeth Garrett (1857-1915), daughter of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad president John Work Garrett, and social, educational activist in her own right. First building at 193 Eutaw Street, several days before namesake Bryn Mawr College opens in Pennsylvania which Thomas and Garrett were also associated. By 1890, School moves into one of the most well-appointed schools constructed then at Cathedral and West Preston Streets (later site of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s).
  • Amateur Photographic Society of Baltimore founded.
• 1886 - Opening ceremonies held at Academy of Music grand luxurious theatre auditorium on North Howard Street with many notables, honored guests and citizens/patrons in attendance for the new Central Building and four neighborhood branches (fifth added later) of Enoch Pratt's new Enoch Pratt Free Library, a few blocks southeast at West Mulberry near Cathedral Streets, which began construction five years early in Fall 1881. Different type of library than the earlier bequest of the George Peabody Library of 1857/1878, Pratt is a circulating public library system, first in America.
• 1887 -
  • New city map laid out with grids of streets, avenues, boulevards and alleys designated with a regular systematic logical numbering system done, causing several addresses and locations of real estate to change their house numbers/addresses before AND after 1887. Numbering counting outwards from center of city at intersection of Charles Street with North and South labels divided by Baltimore Street which is also divided into east and west by Charles Street, along with parallel downtown city streets.
  • Pennsylvania Steel Company of Philadelphia having recently acquired a new source of iron ore in the Spanish colony island of Cuba in 1882, seeks a tidewater-based steel manufacturing plant site for shorter transport distances to supplement its older mill in Steelton, Pennsylvania on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg and also closer for shipments of coal and coke from western Pennsylvania mines. Acquires several farms from five local land-owners at a cost of $57,900 with thousands of acres of land on the end of the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula at Sparrows Point and nearby North Point to the east in southeastern Baltimore County and begins building a waterfront-access steel mill. President Luther S. Bent leads the project along with Samuel Morse Felton, also of the Company and the President of the associated Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and J. Edgar Thomson, president of the Northern Central Railroad, a part of the Pennsylvania Railroad with the chief engineer on site Frederick Wood who lays out the steel mill and brother Rufus Wood, who lays out the adjoining workers and supervisors' town of Sparrows Point, Maryland, with street grids for houses, stores, shops, churches and other necessaries.
• 1888 - Second Major Annexation of land from surrounding Baltimore County, known as "The Belt", adds 23 square miles and 38,000 new residents. Referendum is divided into three sections: West, North and East, two of which approve but the Eastern side with the towns of Canton and Higlandtown with their heavy industrial businesses vote against the bill and are not taken into the City until the next Third Major Annexation of 1918-1919.
  • "The Daily Record" legal, real estate and business affairs newspaper reorganized and founded.
• 1889 - Johns Hopkins Hospital opened on Broadway in East Baltimore, former site of old Maryland Hospital, as instructed by will of Johns Hopkins (1795-1873), thirteen years after University opens on city campus along North Howard Street near West Centre Street.
  • New United States Post Office and Federal Courthouse built on Battle Monument Square's east side at North Calvert Street between East Lexington and Fayette Streets of Italian Renaissance architecture with eight small towers and one large clock tower opposite old 1805/09 [second] Baltimore City Courthouse (at Calvert and Lexington). Replaced earlier 1862-65 U.S. Courthouse at northwest corner of East Fayette and North (later Guilford Avenue) Streets (which lasted until 1907 when razed for construction of eastern addition to 1889 Courthouse).
  • Pennsylvania Steel Company of Philadelphia completes construction of its new waterfront access steel mill on several thousand acres of land from five local landowners with several old farms on the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula at Sparrows Point and begins producing steel.
• 1890 -
  • City's population: 434,439 people, according to the Eleventh Decennial United States Census of 1890.
  • Riverview Park opens as one of the first "streetcar parks" established by a street railway company, (taken over after April 1899 consolidation and merger by the United Railways and Electric Company at the end of various lines at scenic or waterside locations for amusements, picnicking and exercise, bringing in additional revenues to the streetcar company as its electrified lines spread throughout the town replacing the earlier horse-cars and omnibuses.
  • In March 1890, Scottish-born steel industrialist and future philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, (1835-1919), of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who led Carnegie Steel Company and later is the founder of U.S. Steel Corporation, (then largest business in the world), stops in Baltimore for a few days visit after attending a Pan-American Conference in Washington, to visit Mr. Enoch Pratt, (1808-1896), founder of his Enoch Pratt Free Library four years earlier. Carnegie stays at Pratt's townhouse mansion at southwest corner of Park Avenue and West Monument Street (future Maryland Historical Society buildings and later block-size campus) and tours the old Central Pratt Library of 1882-86 on Mulberry Street and meets first Chief Librarian, Dr. Lewis Henry Steiner, other staff librarians, staff workers and patrons of common citizens. Carnegie is inspired to promote and provide millions of dollars over the next few decades to build "Carnegie Libraries" throughout America at the invitation of cities, towns and counties which promise to continue their regular support. Carnegie later always says "Pratt was my pioneer" and forty years later (and thirty after Pratt's death) in 1905, Carnegie's larger bequest returns the favor to Baltimore and builds a number of additional Pratt Library neighborhood branches in newly annexed and developed areas of the City, greatly expands the EPFL system into by the late 1920s to near 30 branches.
  • The Sudbrook Company purchases 204 acres from widow Sarah Nicholas Cary, (1832-193?), of deceased husband James Howard McHenry, (1820-1888), their country estate of 846 acres with Sudbrook Cottage near Pikesville of northwest Baltimore County, (placed on National Register of Historic Places in 1973). Grandson of former famous first United States Secretary of War, James McHenry, (under Presidents George Washington and John Adams, and namesake of Fort McHenry), he had earlier purchased the estate from Alexander Riddle for $2,531.25. Famed nationally known landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., (1822-1903) commissioned to design the area as a planned summer resort called Sudbrook Park. First of several planned suburban communities such as others later planned in north Baltimore City of Roland Park the next year, and Homeland, Guilford, and Original Northwood in following decades by the Olmsted sons in same architectural landscaping company.
• 1891 - Union Park baseball field (also occasionally called "Oriole Park") at Huntingdon Avenue (later renamed 25th Street) and Greenmount Avenue, in eastern Peabody Heights (now renamed Charles Village) and south of Waverly and Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhoods in the northeast city, opens for the reorganized franchise Baltimore Orioles (ancestors of modern-day Baltimore Orioles in the American League since 1954) who now are playing in the National League, formed 1876 of newly organized professional major league baseball.
  • Pennsylvania Steel Company of Philadelphia organizes this year a subsidiary of "Maryland Steel Company of Baltimore County" to operate its new two-year-old steel mill at its waterfront site, purchased earlier in 1887 at the end of the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula in southeastern Baltimore County at Sparrows Point, southeast of later planned developed 1890's suburb of Dundalk.
  • Chinese-style pagoda with colorful painted/decorated scheme with balconies constructed on the western side of Patterson Park, on the former "Loudenschlager's Hill", now "Hampstead Hill", near the remains of the former earthen fortifications and trenches from "Rodger's Bastion", to defend the city during the Battle of Baltimore of the War of 1812 from September 1814.
• 1892 - Baltimore Afro-American newspaper begins publication. Founded by several citizens (including John Murphy, who later that year, buys the paper), for "Colored/Negro" Afro-American citizens.
  • Construction begins of new massive building project to dig third major railroad tunnel project under the city with the mile-long railroad tunnel north and south beneath Howard Street of downtown from Camden Street Station to the new Mount Royal Station, further north at Mount Royal Avenue at Cathedral Street/Maryland Avenue for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Supplements the "Baltimore Belt Line" tunnel dug in 1872-1873 for the old Baltimore and Potomac Railroad around northwestern Baltimore City, with construction several blocks away of old Union Station between North Charles Street and St. Paul Street above Mount Royal Avenue and curving bend of Jones Falls stream. Additional tunnel dug under northeastern city outskirts in 1874-75 to connect with northeastern railroad line of Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. Eliminates old practice since 1829 of hauling locomotives and train cars through downtown surface streets by horse connecting between various rail lines stations for passengers to complete their through travel.
• 1893 - Johns Hopkins Medical School opens accepting male and female students upon receiving Mary Elizabeth Garrett (1857-1915), (only daughter of Civil War-era President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, John Work Garrett) bequest requiring equal-sex admission opportunities as a co-educational medical college. The school of medicine joins the earlier institutions of the University of 1876, and the Hospital in 1889, established under the will of the late Johns Hopkins (1795-1873).
  • Opening of new "Central Building", for the Young Women's Christian Association (YMCA) at the northeast corner of Park Avenue and West Franklin Street, in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood.
• 1894 - Lyric Opera House opens on Mount Royal Avenue by Cathedral Street and Maryland Avenue. Later becomes home for Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, founded 1916, and the Baltimore Civic Opera Company. Auditorium constructed with exquisite acoustics and lauded by musicians. However funds run short and no appropriate front façade or lobby is completed until the 1970s with a modernistic plain brown brick front. Later in the 2010s, a bequest from Art and Patricia Model, owners of the NFL pro football team, the Baltimore Ravens, who moved the former Cleveland Browns team here in 1994, provides for a renovation/reconstruction and renaming hall as "Art and Patricia Model Performing Arts Center at the Lyric".
  • "Maryland Intercollegiate Football Association" organized for local colleges/universities in the central Maryland area now playing developing sport and game of American football. Schools such as the Maryland Agricultural College in College Park, (later University of Maryland at College Park), graduate professional schools at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University, old Baltimore Medical College, United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and also including one high-ranked high school, The Baltimore City College, ("City"), a quarter-century before establishment of state's first high school athletic league, the Maryland Scholastic Association. Higher education schools in the region also later play the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, ("Poly"), founded 1883, the City's vocational-technical-engineering secondary school.
• 1895 - Clifton Park opens on the late magnate and philanthropist Johns Hopkins', (1795-1873) country estate of "Clifton" off of Harford Road near the northeast villages of Homestead, Friendship and east of Waverly. It was envisioned by Hopkins before his death as the location of his future great university, but his appointed trustees board, after his passing for financial reasons, decided to temporarily locate the "campus" on the downtown environs of North Howard, Little Ross (later West Centre Street) and West Monument Streets in 1876, on the suggestion of first new president Daniel Coit Gilman, [1831-1908], (formerly of the University of California at Berkeley), citing the neighboring premier municipal secondary school, the Baltimore City College as a "prep school" and the literary resources of the 1866/1878 "cathedral of books" of the George Peabody Library of the Peabody Institute by the Washington Monument. Many years later, by 1910, Hopkins moves and begins construction of a new campus to the north at the old Charles Carroll, Jr./Charles Carroll of Homewood's 1800 estate of "Homewood" along North Charles Street. Built in the early 19th century by Henry Thompson who commanded a local militia unit in the War of 1812 defense of the City, "Clifton" Mansion becomes future headquarters for a time of the Baltimore City Bureau of Parks and is surrounded by a well-known public golf course and Lake Clifton, a supplementary reservoir for public water supply system.
• 1896 -
  • Electric Park opens as another "streetcar park" at the terminus of the line of an electric streetcar line which later merges in April 1899 into the United Railways and Electric Company) in the northwest area of the city near Belvedere Avenue and Reisterstown Road.
  • Colored Young Women's Christian Association founded.
• 1897 - Baltimore celebrates 100th Anniversary Centennial of incorporation as a city in 1796/1797.
  • Inspired by Children's Aid Society of New York by Charles Boring Lace, founded 1853, which began some work in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park in the 1860s with the establishment of playgrounds and organized recreation, Miss Mary B. Steuart organizes Children's Playground Association with Eliza Ridgely and Eleanor Freeland, with first playground in that Park, later incorporated by 1908. Later assisted by many volunteers and staff with her sister Frances Steuart, Mary Claire O'Brien, and Miss Helen H. Carey. Later merges in 1922 with the Public Athletic League (formed 1907 by financier, civic leader and 1896 Modern Olympic athlete Robert Garrett (1875-1961)) and becomes the Playground Athletic League (PAL) which conducts recreational and athletic activities and programs in the City until absorbed by a newly organized Department of Recreation and Parks with Garrett as head/commissioner in 1939-1940 appointed by Mayor Howard W. Jackson. By 1958, there are 63 "Reks" (recreation centers) in Baltimore with about 200 workers.
• 1898 - New Building for Sharp Street Methodist Episcopal Church, (now Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church and Community House) built. One of the leading "Negro/Colored" Methodist and Protestant churches in the city.
  • First children's playground constructed in the city by newly organized Children's Playground Association at Carroll Park in southwest city, off Washington Boulevard under encouragement of Parks Commissioner Charles Torsch.
• 1899
  • Reorganization of various electric streetcar companies and lines into the United Railways and Electric Company in April. Later new unified electric streetcar company recruits in 1902 as president John Mifflin Hood, (1843-1906), formerly of the Western Maryland Railway, who was then undertaking development of the WMRY construction and development of waterfront piers and terminals at Port Covington on the Middle Branch of the harbor. Later construction begins by U.R.& E.C. of new massive brick structure of boilers, and mechanical equipment with coal-fired furnaces with four smoke stacks power plant on Pier 4 along the East Pratt Street waterfront by "The Basin" of the Patapsco River (in today's Inner Harbor).
  • Municipal Art Society founded by members of earlier influential Reform League of Baltimore City (1885) as part of continuing effort to beautify the city and continuing a program of public improvements under the influences of the Progressive Era. Society contracts in 1904 for landmark study of city and metropolitan areas for parks, recreation areas along with boulevards and landscaping by noted Frederick Law Olmsted and his son's firm of New York City which guides parks and recreation planning for the next century.

src: freshestradio.com

20th century

1900s-1940s

• 1900 -
  • Population: 508,957 people residing in the City (within old limits of 1888) and 97,755 in the surrounding Baltimore County in the Twelfth Decennial United States Census of 1900.
  • Third City Courthouse construction completed on entire block of North Calvert Street, East Lexington Street, St. Paul Street, and East Fayette Street, on the western side of the Battle Monument Square and dedicated. Later renamed in 1985 after national civil rights leader, Baltimorean Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. (1911-1984), Washington office director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
  • Baltimore Morning Herald newspaper begins publication on northwest corner, St. Paul and East Fayette Streets with reporter H. L. Mencken and later editor. Building destroyed in Great Downtown Fire of four years later and closes. Mencken goes to "The Sun" where he later becomes legendary as editor, (on the later established afternoon paper, "The Evening Sun", which had a different format - more graphics and more local orientation in 1910), plus columnist, and as an author continuing his published volumes on linguistic history of the American language and usage, memoirs of growing up and working with city life in Baltimore.

• 1901 - Continental Trust Company Building, (now One South Calvert Building at 201 East Baltimore Street), skyscraper of new style "fire-proof" masonry, exterior panels hung on a steel framework designed by famed Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912), of the "Chicago School" of skyscraper architecture constructed at southeast corner of North Calvert and East Baltimore Streets, becoming city's tallest skyscraper for a time. "Burned like a torch" during later 1904 Great Fire of its interior furnishings and walls, but following post-fire examination, Burnham found exterior walls and steel framework still sound and so the building was restored in following years.

• 1903 - City's largest and most luxurious hostelry Hotel Belvedere opens
  • Around the corner and a few blocks away, the Hotel Kernan, built by James Kernan (1838-1912), opened in this same year, later known several decades later as the Congress Hotel. Facing West Franklin Street, between North Paca and west of North Howard Streets of Beaux Arts architecture Classical style. In the basement, was a "rathskeller" where the town's first "jazz band" music was led by a John Ridgley. Later it became known as the "marble bar" and continued as a cutting edge musical venue into the 1980s. Attached on the west side was the similarly elaborate Beaux Arts/Classical styled Maryland Theater, where many Hollywood stars appeared, which was later razed.
  • United Railways and Electric Company completes constructing Power Plant in several phases after four years with coal ore furnaces and four large roof-top smoke-stacks on newly built Pier 4 (one of reconstruction of seven modern steel municipal cargo piers facing East Pratt Street after Great Fire devastation) providing power for electric streetcar system in the city under leadership of President John Mifflin Hood (1843-1906), (late president of the Western Maryland Railway and responsible also for envisioning and planning future construction of its Port Covington harbor facilities then underway on the Patapsco River's Middle Branch). Massive Power Plant later converted in the 1960s for regular electric power distribution for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company when the streetcar system by the U.R.E.C.'s successor public utility firm, the Baltimore Transit Company of 1935, is phased out beginning in the late 1940s and finally ended by 1963. Gutted and renovated in the mid-1980s as an indoor Victorian-style amusement park by entertainment firm "Six Flags Over America", and again by David Cordish Company in the 1990s during the re-development project of the "Inner Harbor" and "Harbor East" waterfront areas beginning in 1970.
  • Memorial completed to the Baltimorean hero in the Mexican-American War battle at Monterrey in 1846, Lt. Col. William H. Watson (1808/1815?-1846), commander of the "Baltimore Brigade" and the "District of Columbia Volunteers" who traveled to the Gulf of Mexico coastal port of Vera Cruz, Mexico with commanding Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866). With a bronze statue and stone pedestal dedicated, the Watson Monument was located first at the square in Mount Royal Avenue and West Lanvale Street (across from the future site of the Maryland Institute College of Art's new Main Building of three years later [1906]). Col. Watson's statue was moved later in the early 1930s in anticipation for possible extension of North Howard Street several blocks further north to Mount Royal Terrace at the West North Avenue entrance driveway to Druid Hill Park, unfortunately now adjacent to an entrance ramp for the Jones Falls Expressway, (Interstate 83), built in the early 1960s.

• 1904 - Great Fire erupts early Sunday, February 7 to Monday, February 8, burning most of the downtown business district from South Howard Street in the west to Jones Falls in the east, continuing north to Fayette Street and Battle Monument Square in the north and to the waterfront piers along East Pratt Street facing "The Basin" (Inner Harbor) in the south. Third worst conflagration to hit an American city in history after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the 1906 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, followed by other weather disasters of Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and Hurricane Katrina at New Orleans in 2005. Additional help sent in from Baltimore County and nearby towns along with by railroad from nearby cities of Washington, Philadelphia and at the last New York City. Recent "fire-proof" modern skyscrapers built in the last decade had interiors "burn like a torch", but most were able to be rebuilt on steel frameworks and masonry exteriors. Streets widened and some reconfigured along with new underground utilities with added electrical conduits eliminating overhead lines on poles under authority of a newly appointed "Burnt District Commission". Generally only half of the number of previous downtown structures rebuilt with newer buildings taller and larger, along with new modern steel municipal piers, (numbers 1 to 6), constructed along Pratt Street waterfront. Maryland National Guard soldiers stationed downtown for next several weeks. Because of week-end, records/books for years afterwards recorded no lives lost although recent research in a local newspaper that had been overlooked, uncovered that an unidentified black man's body was found in the Jones Falls a week later. XXX buildings destroyed with XX millions of dollars lost and only XX covered by insurance. Reconstruction continues for next several years.

• 1906 - Maryland Institute, after having its longtime landmark 1851 building built over the old Centre Market ("Marsh Market") burned in the Great 1904 Fire, relocates most of its academic activities to a new "Main Building" in the northwest of the mid-town Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal neighborhood at Mount Royal Avenue and West Lanvale Street, south of landmark Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church on property donated by parishioner Michael Jenkins (of family of banking/railroad magnate Thomas Courtney Jenkins). Lt. Col. William F. Watson statue - Mexican War Memorial dedicated earlier in 1903 is located in the square across the street (moved later in the early 1930s, several blocks north to Mount Royal Terrace at West North Avenue entrance to Druid Hill Park). City of Baltimore later donates two floors above the northern structure of the three new parallel market buildings constructed on the east side facing Jones Falls at the old Market Place (Harrison Street) site for continuing its mechanical, drawing and technical courses, supervised by the new Centre Market Commission, headed by Gen. Felix Agnus, publisher of the Baltimore American. New Centre Market buildings used until the 1980s, with wholesale fish, produce and dry goods distributed below on ground levels. Two of the three buildings (northern and southern) later razed for expressway extension for southern terminus of Jones Falls Expressway, (Interstate 83) and construction of underground ("Metro") subway system. Classes and studios of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) consolidated further northwest to an extensive multi-building campus adjoining original 1906 "Main Building" along Mount Royal Avenue during the 1980s to 2010s. Fish Market (central market building) replaced with "Port Discovery" children's museum and adjacent parking garage.
  • Homewood Field laid out and constructed for athletic contests at northern end of new campus for Johns Hopkins University (JHU) at southwest corner of University Parkway and North Charles Street. JHU is moving from its older downtown campus from 1876 along North Howard Street, between West Centre, Little Ross and West Monument Streets, in southwest area of Mount Vernon-Belvedere mid-town neighborhood. First academic buildings constructed were Gilman Hall and Shriver Hall, occupied in 1914-1915, with distinctive Georgian-Federal style architecture of red brick and white colonial wood trim with cupolas and steeples on a park-like campus between Charles Street and University Parkway, east of Wyman Park. Besides "Blue Jays" collegiate athletic contests here, some public and private high school games played here such as between City College and Polytechnic Institute for their long-time football rivalry since 1889, which began

at Clifton Park, also Calvert Hall College versus Loyola High School, and others in the local Maryland Scholastic Association.

• 1907 -
  • City Department of Legislative Reference established, with offices and reference library/files in Baltimore City Hall.
  • Reconstruction continues of "Centre Market" area on Market Place (former old Harrison Street and colonial site of "Harrison's Marsh") in east downtown after devastation from Great Fire with three adjacent (east-west axis) wholesale market buildings for produce, fish, dry-goods and some retail with space for Maryland Institute's College of Art and Design on upper two floors of northern building under leadership of new Centre Market Commission, headed by chairman, Gen. Felix Agnus, owner/publisher of the Baltimore American evening daily newspaper with marble horse-drinking fountain in middle of square donated by animal-lover, Gen. A. E. Booth. Razing of several buildings and further re-development later in the mid-1980s by "Six Flags Over America" as entertainment/restaurant/taverns complex named "The Brokerage" at northern end of plaza, and then again in the mid-1990s by the David Cordish Company renamed as "Power Plant Live!" (for old streetcar electrical generating plant of 1900-1903 one block south on Pratt Street).
  • Cornerstone laid for new Central Building of Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) at northeast corner of East Franklin and Cathedral Streets in Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood and "Cathedral Hill" (founded in Baltimore in 1852 and previously located in triangular Victorian styled structure at northwest corner of West Saratoga and North Charles Street, built 1872-1873). New YMCA at former site of George Hoffman's Greek Revival mansion built in the 1820s (one of first constructed on Col. John Eager Howard's

estate of "Belvidere" or "Howard's Woods", with later development by his sons and heirs, the mansion itself survives until the 1870s at the present intersection of North Calvert and East Chase Streets) and later used from 1857 to 1894 for the Southern-sympathizing Maryland Club for male elites (which was threatened by Union Army-occupying Gen. Benjamin F. Butler to shoot any visible Rebel flags off the roof from the newly fortified Fort Federal Hill in May 1861). Across street to the west was the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church and north of old Baltimore Cathedral designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1806-1826). Also cross-corner from future expansion site in 1931-1933 of central/main branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Cathedral Street from first Central Library building of 1882-1886, further south on corner with West Mulberry Street. Opening in 1909, new Central YMCA functions with many social and athletic activities for nearly 70 years with its indoor pool, gymnasium, athletic rooms, dormitories, kitchen/cafeterias, and classrooms. Later a separate "Colored YMCA" opens in northwestern inner city area of Upton on Druid Hill Avenue. One block west on Franklin Street at Park Avenue was also central headquarters of companion agency Young Women's Christian Association, (YWCA). Later in 1984, YMCA of Central Maryland reorganized facilities and closed the Central Headquarters which were later converted into the Mount Vernon Hotel and Café.

• • New building completed for the all-girls, academic-business oriented Eastern High School at the southeast corner of Broadway and East North Avenue in the northeast corner of the city. Unfortunately, one of the last major high schools built right up to the street and sidewalk with no adjoining campus for other activities. Later Eastern moves to another new building in 1938 at 33rd Street boulevard and Loch Raven Boulevard in the former Venable Park (which stirs up political controversy by citizens and nearby residents). Saving municipal budget monies during the Great Depression, new E.H.S. matched the architecture and construction diagrams of the sister school Western High at Gwynns Falls Parkway off Reisterstown Road/Park Heights Avenue from 1927 in northwest Baltimore.
  • New headquarters building of Classical/Beaux Arts architecture built on the southwest corner of South Charles and East Baltimore Streets, an intersection which becomes known for the next half-century as "Sun Square", and the central geographic point of the city, for the rebuilt offices and printing plant completed this year after the Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904, devastated the previous "Sun Iron Building" of 1851 (at East Baltimore and South Streets) for the twice-daily newspaper The Sun and The Evening Sun (also known colloquially as The Sunpapers). Sun's building lasts until the mid-1960s and replaced in the "Charles Center" downtown redevelopment project of 1958-1970 by the also later landmark Morris A. Mechanic Theatre of poured-concrete Brutalist Modernist style adjoining new Hopkins Plaza in middle of block.
  • Across the street on the southeast corner of East Baltimore and South Charles is the new Greco-Roman styled "Temple of Thrift" of white marble with massive columns, steps and porticoes is built for the old Savings Bank of Baltimore (SSB), founded 1818, with a different structure and mission compared to the city's other large financial institutions. The SSB is oriented towards small customers of savers and depositers. The Bank lasts until the 1990s bank merger and out-of-town take-over mania, building a newer skyscraper two blocks further east at North Calvert and East Baltimore Streets' iconic northwest corner, renames itself, dropping the term "Savings" and is shortly taken over by "SunTrust". Its old landmark offices become central to a charity organization.

• 1908 - Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway ("inter-urban" electric rail cars) begins operating on a triangular route through Anne Arundel County from the state capital to "The Monumental City" and then to Washington, D.C.. Line opens February 7, 1908 from its Baltimore station on Liberty Street (between West Lexington and West Fayette Streets) to Washington's 15th and 'H' Streets, N.E. and then to Annapolis. In 1921, City terminal is relocated to southwest corner of South Howard and West Lombard Streets (later site of today's Holiday Inn hotel). Sold at auction in 1935, later owners form Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad Company operating commuter diesel buses up to the early 1970s from the state capital to Brooklyn in South Baltimore.

• 1909 -
  • Art Gallery building constructed by financier and philanthropist Henry Walters (1848-1931), built and opened at northwest corner of North Charles and East Centre Streets, facing the south square of Washington Place, to house and exhibit his personal extensive collection of art amassed by him over decades along with previous acquisitions of his father, William Thompson Walters (1820-1894). Structure built across the back alley from their brownstone mansion facing north towards West Mount Vernon Place in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood, and facing the Washington Monument to the north and east. Occasionally for the next two decades, the gallery since its original 1909 construction is opened for viewing by the Baltimore public. After Walters' 1931 death, the Gallery with its collection of paintings, statuary, tapestries, jewels, and thousands of items, one of America's greatest collections, is willed to the City of Baltimore and a museum established, along with the neighboring family mansion and an endowment. An additional modernistic annex is constructed to the west along West Centre Street to Park Avenue at rear in 1974, and later addition of the former Thomas-Jencks-Gladding Mansion to the north, facing the Monument at its southwest corner, to house Asian art in 1982, with the new name of "Hackerman House", named for donor Willard Hackerman.
  • The Telegraf is founded as a newspaper for the Czech community of Baltimore.

• 1910 - Population: 558,485.

• 1911 - Pennsylvania Station (Baltimore) (first known as "Union Station" until 1928) constructed of elaborate imposing Beaux Arts/Classical style architecture with beautiful marble interior atrium surmounted by a stained glass skylight and rookwood green wall tiles built for the use of several passenger rail lines including the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Western Maryland Railway and later the B. & O. (besides their nearby Mount Royal Station, a few blocks southwest). Replaced earlier Victorian styled Union Station from 1873, second terminal rebuilt 1881, on same site also used by the several railroads after the construction then of the connecting underground Baltimore and Potomac Railroad tunnels under, through and around northern, northwestern and northeastern Baltimore City (known as the "Belt Line"), so as not to have steam, smoke-blowing locomotives pulling through downtown streets (later shortly replaced by electric then diesel locomotives) or the system since the 1830s of horse-drawn railcars between stations. Connected with the B. & O.'s Howard Street Tunnel of 1890-1895, going north and south under downtown. Sited between North Charles Street and Calvert Street, north of Mount Royal Avenue and the community of Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal, along curving bend of north bank of the Jones Falls. Later used also by other regional and national passenger rail lines until major bankruptcies with reorganization of national railroads in 1970 with Amtrak passenger system. Cleaned, refurbished and restored in the early 1980s. Neighborhood north of the station along North Avenue, which had been generally known as "Mid-Town", given neighborhood name of "Penn-North-Charles", and later renamed in the 2010s as "Station North" with creation of supporting "community benefits district" zone organization.
  • Two office building tower skyscrapers with distinctive clocks are constructed SBD finished this year on the east and west sided of downtown. The Tower Building for the Maryland Casualty Company on East Baltimore and Guilford Avenue in the east and the Bromo Seltzer Tower for the Emerson Drug Company on the west side at the northeast corner of West Lombard and South Paca Streets. Emerson's building is surmounted by a huge electric bulb lighted revolving blue steel replica of the headache remedy bottle revolving on top, at the inspiration of magnate Capt. Isaac Emerson.

• 1912 -
  • Arch Social Club and Urban League branch established.
  • 1912 Democratic National Convention meets in Baltimore for first national political party convention since 1860 at new Fifth Regiment Armory on North Howard Street (along future renamed "29th Division Street" for famous "Blue-Gray Division" of Maryland/Virginia soldiers, that attacked Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944). Democrats nominates Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), incumbent Governor of New Jersey, (and also former President of Princeton University and graduate of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University) for President, running against incumbent Republican 27th President William Howard Taft (1857-1930), and former Republican 26th President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), running on a third-party ticket of the newly organized Progressive Party platform. Wilson is joined by his Vice Presidential nominee Thomas R. Marshall (1854-1925), of Indiana and was elected as 28th President, (serving 1913-1921), over Taft and Roosevelt.
  • Construction begins on additional buildings of ("Aldersaal" [parish house/social hall], bell tower, parsonage, and enclosed gardens) at Old Zion Lutheran Church, downtown across from City Hall along East Lexington Street west from North Gay Street (facing later 1920s War Memorial Building and City Hall Plaza to commemorate all war dead).
  • City's public math-science and technical school, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute relocates from old building on east side of Courtland Street near East Saratoga Street (future redeveloped St. Paul Place/Street and "Preston Gardens" constructed in 1920s - older building later used by new Baltimore City Department of Public Welfare and razed by 1963 for westward expansion for Mercy Hospital from Calvert Street) to the former campus and mansion from 1866 of the Maryland School for the Blind at East North Avenue and North Calvert Street. "Old Poly" has two additional wings are added to the east and west in the Beaux Arts/Classical style of architecture. Additional central wing replaces old M.S.B. mansion by 1931 with additional auditorium/gymnasium wing further east. Blind School relocates 1911-1913 to park-like campus in Overlea section of northeast Baltimore County. Polytechnic resides here for five and a half decades before joining all-girls Western High School in joint campus in north Baltimore at West Cold Spring Lane and Falls Road in 1967. Renamed later as Calvert Educational Center, structure hold variety of educational uses until major gutting, renovation and remodeling as central headquarters for the Baltimore City Public Schools in the 1980s, as "Alice G. Pinderhughes Administrative Building" for former superintendent, replacing previous 1930s-era offices at 25th Street, between Charles and St. Paul Streets.

• 1913 -
  • New routing and construction of the Francis Scott Key Highway (known as "Key Highway" for short) from Light Street at "The Basin" (today's Inner Harbor) to the east along north and east sides of Federal Hill and continued along northern shore of Whetstone Point peninsula on south bank of Northwest Branch of Patapsco River to Baltimore Harbor. The highway with narrow median strip constructed of concrete surface with occasional older cobblestone sections with railroad tracks imbedded for pier access, continues southeast towards Locust Point port terminals and adjacent residential community and passes under overhead bridge for Fort Avenue, curves back to the west and extends west to South Hanover Street, completely surrounding the old South Baltimore rowhouse residential communities. Serving as a by-pass for industrial and port facilities truck traffic in the future automotive age along with directing anticipated historical tourism traffic towards historic Fort McHenry at end of peninsula, recently leased to the City from the U.S. War Department of the now decommissioned antique and obsolete military reservation, which establishes a city park in the following year, as part of the National Star Spangled Banner Centennial Celebration.
  • Major public works construction project of building new "Fallsway" highway over former stream of Jones Falls which is directed beneath in two concrete conduit tunnels from Mount Royal Avenue and Pennsylvania Station to the north flowing south to Fayette Street where once again flows between two stone canal walls further south to Patapsco River Northwest Branch.

• 1914 -
  • Baltimore Museum of Art founded and opens at old mansion of Mary Elizabeth Garrett (1854-1915), only daughter of B. & O. Railroad Civil War-era president, John Work Garrett (1820-1884), (later replaced by apartment house, which later becomes Peabody Court Hotel - operated by Wyndom hotel chain) at southwest corner of Cathedral and West Monument Streets, facing West Mount Vernon Place (where her parents' brownstone mansion, the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion also faces) and the Washington Monument further east. B.M.A. later moves to Art Museum Drive off North Charles Street, near Wyman Park, south of the new Homewood campus of The Johns Hopkins University in simplified Greek-Roman Revival/Classical-style structure by famous American architect John Russell Pope (1874-1937).
  • Hippodrome Theatre built on Eutaw Street between West Fayette and Redwood Streets and shows early silent movies and burlesque live shows, later after 1927 with "talkies" sound movies. Closed, run-down and abandoned after the 1970s with several other major downtown movie palaces. Restored, renovated and re-opened in the 2010s as new performing arts center replacing earlier Morris A. Mechanic Theatre (at southwest corner of South Charles Street and West Baltimore Street, part of Charles Center downtown re-development project of the 1950s and 60s), with live theatre and Broadway theatre shows. Theatre renovation combined with two neighboring bank buildings completing larger new theatre complex on entire block.
  • Baltimore Orioles recruit schoolboy prodigy George Herman Ruth ("Babe") from St. Mary's Industrial School on Wilkens and Caton Avenues in southwest (now site since 1966 of Cardinal Gibbons High School) and trains him to hit and pitch for the International League Birds. Later owner/manager Jack Dunn, Sr. (1872-1928), under financial pressure from the competition of the new "third league" with the Federal League, with its Baltimore Terrapins, playing across the street in their new steel-beamed modern stadium of Terrapin Park on the northwest corner of Greenmount Avenue and 29th Street in the northeast city neighborhood of Waverly just across from the old wooden American League Park/Oriole Park of 1901 on the southwest corner. Dunn is forced to sell his best product - "Dunn's Babe" to the Boston Red Sox at their new Fenway Park in the American League. Five years later, after using him mostly as a pitcher, they in turn trade him to the newly renamed team of the New York Yankees (since 1913, formerly the "New York Highlanders") which had (before 1903) been the old Baltimore Orioles charter franchise when the American League began in 1901. The Yankees at that time had not established a very successful record until the arrival of young "Babe Ruth" from Baltimore.
  • "Star Spangled Banner Centennial Celebration" observed in Baltimore for the 100th Anniversary of the War of 1812 (1812-1815), campaign with the Battle of Baltimore and Battle of North Point during September 12-14, 1914. Parades, decorated buildings, dedications of new commemorative monuments and statues, along with publication of commemorative book. Fort McHenry on Whetstone Point, adjacent to the nearby rowhouse neighborhood of Locust Point turned over to be leased by the City of Baltimore's newly organized Department of Recreation and Parks for use as a public park by the U.S. War Department. Later taken back by the Federal Government in three years with the advent of U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917, for immediate and emergency use as United States Army General Hospital Number Two when a large complex of temporary wooden structures/barracks, concrete/brick medical and surgical facilities and additional army post buildings are erected surrounding the historic "star fort" and used until war ends in 1919, then later returned to the City again as a park when post-war medical operations conclude and hospital buildings and driveways are razed by 1923. Later becomes national monument in 1925, with dedication of "Orpheus" musical and poetic Greek god monument by 28th President Warren G. Harding, with additional status as national shrine in 1939, administered by new National Park Service established 1916 in the U.S. Department of the Interior.

• 1915 - Municipal anthem, "Baltimore, Our Baltimore", written by poet Folger McKinsey, columnist for "The Sun", known as the "Bentztown Bard" from Frederick, Maryland, with music by Mrs. Emma Hemberger, (wife of Theodor)a foremost musical composer in the city, having won first place in a contest during the year 1915, with entries to be presented by December 1, sponsored by Mayor James H. Preston with a prize of $250 in gold, one for the best original poem and another for the best musical setting. Judges for the contest were Harold Randolph - Director of the Peabody Institute-Conservatory of Music, Henrietta Baker Low - former Supervisor of Music for the Baltimore City Public Schools, and John Itzel - composer and orchestra conductor. During a concert of various musical pieces, both instrumental and vocal presented, the winning song of four verses was later announced and performed for the first time with a small group of orchestral pieces, a concert choir "The United Singers" assisted by 300 local high school girls at the Lyric Opera House on Mount Royal Avenue, at Cathedral Street, before an audience of notables, "Washington's Birthday", February 22, 1916. Required for a long time afterwards to be taught in all city schools and to be at least familiar to conductors and leaders of any city musical groups, orchestras or bands and sung at any ceremony, dedication, parades or official program, on city, state and national holidays events, including regular concerts by the Municipal Park Band with its summertime extravaganzas and other events sponsored by the City Department of Recreation and Parks (which included a Bureau of Music - unusual for most major U.S. cities). It however, suffered later periods of neglect. By the 1960s, longtime comptroller and gadfly Hyman A. Pressman and former Mayor and Governor of Maryland, William Donald Schaefer, called for it frequently, leading to a renaissance of familiarity in later decades. Occasionally it joined the singing of the state's controversial but interesting anthem, "Maryland, My Maryland", by James Ryder Randall, from a tumultuous Civil War era in 1861.
  • Maryland State Normal School, founded 1866, first located briefly at Red Man's Hall on North Paca Street, then former William Howard Greek Revival mansion, later by 1863 becomes Union/Athenaeum Club at northeast corner of North Charles and East Franklin Streets, then relocated by the 1870s to West Baltimore at Lafayette Square, at Layfayette and Carollton Avenues moves to new campus in county seat of suburban Baltimore County, south of Towson on west side of York Road (Maryland Route 45). General Assembly of Maryland passes a $600,000 bond issue in April 1912, making the teachers' school the largest building initiative in the state. Administration Building first constructed (later renamed Stephens Hall), along with Newell Hall student dormitory, in English Jacobethan style architecture and nearby power plant. Neighboring mansion "Glen Esk" used for president's residence. New campus opens after two-year construction in September 1915. Additional similarly styled structures facing east towards York Road built with Richardson Hall and a few others, for a temporarily unified appearance. Additional teachers colleges opened later in other sections of Maryland. In later years, "normal," school is renamed several times, as Maryland State Teachers College at Towson in 1935, then Towson State College by 1963, later Towson State University and finally Towson University. Second largest college/university in the state by the 2010s.

• 1916
  • Baltimore Symphony Orchestra formed. Performs first at Lyric Opera House and Theatre on Mount Royal Avenue at Cathedral Street with its auditorium of great acoustics, built on Mount Royal Avenue at Cathedral Street in 1894.
  • Baltimore Black Sox baseball team formed and plays in the Negro Leagues, in addition to the local white minor league baseball team, Baltimore Orioles of the International League. Others later are the Baltimore Elite Giants, playing at old Westport Stadium in southwest section of city.

• 1917
  • Fort Holabird (initially named Camp Holabird) established along southeast city waterfront for World War I effort, joined by Camp Meade further south near Annapolis Junction in Anne Arundel County. Famous military "general purpose" vehicle (nicknamed later as the "jeep"), tested on dirt tracks during 1941-1942 at Holabird. Meade later becomes center of post-war electronic intelligence gathering in the National Security Agency, headquartered here.
  • Lithuanian Hall opens in East Baltimore.
  • Holliday Street Theatre built in 1794 of lumber, then reconstructed 1812 in Greek Revival architecture of stone and brick; re-built 1873-1874 after fire, then torn down with entire block between Holliday, East Fayette, North Gay and East Lexington Streets across from Baltimore City Hall (of 1867-1875) to begin preparations for construction of City Hall Plaza and War Memorial Plaza and later War Memorial Building in the mid-1920s to the east end along South Gay Street.
  • Hanover Street Bridge designed and supervised construction by noted city/state bridge engineer John E. Greiner (later led construction and bridge firm) completed in January with passage of special electric streetcar "Maryland" from United Railways after three-year project across the Middle Branch/Ferry Branch of the Patapsco River and Baltimore Harbor. Connecting old South Baltimore/Whetstone Point peninsula from Ferry Bar/Point across to northern Anne Arundel County at Brooklyn with causeway for extended South Hanover Street (and later parallel Potee Street) on an earthen berm around the western shore of the branch and also across Western Branch flowing east from Elkridge/Ellicott City of the upper Patapsco. New concrete-arched bridge replaced old Light Street Bridge, long wooden trestle built 1856, (also known as "Long Bridge" or "Brooklyn Bridge") to Brooklyn and further to industrial area of Curtis Bay across the river. Bridge connects further south to Baltimore-Annapolis Road (later Gov. Ritchie Highway after 1936). Modern connection highlights benefits of future city annexation of southern suburban areas in Anne Arundel two years later.
  • Early organization during World War I-era of musical opera lovers formed and named Baltimore Opera Society by conductor David S. Melamet with Barron Berthald of New York as stage manager. An outgrowth of his Melamet Opera Class. Continued on through the 1920s putting on productions at the Lyric Opera House (1894) on Mount Royal Avenue with casts composed of Baltimoreans with an occasional New York guest from the "Met". After his death, the local company was continued by Eugene Martinet (founder of Martinet School of Opera in 1927) who reorganized, directed and conducted. Later succeeded by several other companies and then in 1950 with the Baltimore Civic Opera Company, organized and inspired by local famous opera singer Rosa Ponselle who later retired in northern Baltimore County.

• 1918
  • 1918 influenza epidemic.
  • Last casualty of World War I on the Western Front in northwestern France is a Baltimorean, Private Henry Gunther of the 313th Regiment, "Baltimore's Own" at Ville-devant-Chaumont, area of Lorraine on "Armistice" at the "eleventh hour, of eleventh day and eleventh month". His unit had only been in combat for two months and had just been told of the end of the war just fifteen minutes earlier because of a foul-up with the couriers. Pvt. Gunther was shot by burst of machine gun fire from Germans' 31st Prussian Army, when he ran at their lines, one minute before the 11 a.m. Cease-Fire, November 11, 1918. Was a former supply sergeant who had recently been demoted for violating mail censorship rules by writing in a letter home that conditions on the line were intolerable and suggested he not enlist. Was depressed and seemed to try to want to redeem himself. Gunther was from recent German immigrants in East Baltimore's Highlandtown, not wanting to attack former countrymen of his, a former bank teller and clerk at the National Bank of Baltimore with a fiance and had been drafted in September 1917, not volunteering immediately when war was declared in April 1917. Later U.S. Army restored his sergeant's rank and awarded him the "Distinguished Service Cross" and a unit citation. Later a local Post #1858 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars was named for him, the last American killed in "the war to end all wars".

• 1919
  • William F. Broening (1870-1953), a Republican, elected mayor and serves to 1923. Unusual interlude of city political power for the Republican Party in the predominantly Democratic-voting city. After his mayoralty, Broening Highway, is named for him where later a large General Motors auto/truck assembly plant is constructed facing the highway in southeast Baltimore and a small waterfront Broening Park named for him and established southeast of the now landmark concrete-arched Hanover Street Bridge of 1914-1917 (later renamed Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge in the 1990s) across the Middle and Ferry Branches of the main Patapsco River and Baltimore Harbor. Parallel causeways carrying South Hanover and Potee Streets (and Maryland Route 2) lead south to Brooklyn and Curtis Bay industrial and residential communities. Baltimore and Maryland Yacht Clubs and several sculling/rowing teams build their clubhouses here along southwestern shores and hold river races. Later parkland expanded along Western (or Ferry Branch) leading from upper Patapsco with narrowing width with filling-in nearby marshes for Cherry Hill/Reedbird Park, south of the Cherry Hill neighborhood into larger shoreline "Middle Branch Park" beginning in the 1980s.
  • Druid Hill Avenue YMCA opens.
  • Organization of the Maryland Scholastic Association for high school student athletic competition between Baltimore City public high schools and metropolitan area private and religious (generally Roman Catholic) secondary schools with 13 charter member schools, which initially met in the old "Barn" structure at The Johns Hopkins University's new "Homewood" campus (on North Charles Street, between later Art Museum Drive and University Parkway, east of Wyman Park Dell). In attendance at the league's formation are: Baltimore City College, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, (both municipal high schools), Boys' Latin School of Maryland, Calvert Hall College, (high school), Donaldson School (since extinct), Friends School of Baltimore, The Gilman School of Maryland, Loyola High School, Marston School (since extinct), McDonogh School, Mount St. Joseph College (high school), Park School of Baltimore, and the Severn School in Anne Arundel County. Called together by inspiration of Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, athletic coach and later noted principal of Baltimore City College (BCC), who had earlier organized a student athletic council for scheduling and officiating, along with Russell Murphy, later of Johns Hopkins University's (JHU) Athletic Department-football program with the "Blue Jays". Dr. J.M.T. Finney elected first President of the new M.S.A. and followed by Prof. Murphy of JHU in 1921. Other long-time leaders are Adelay G. Hausmann of Gilman, Otto K. Schmied of BCC, and Herb Armstrong (BCC), Charles Gamper of Edmondson High School, and later William ("Sugar") Cain of Dunbar (after MSA racially integrates). MSA is one of the first statewide high school athletic associations to voluntarily racially integrate in March 1956, adding Paul Laurence Dunbar Community High School (established as a new junior high school in the 1920s), Carver Vocational-Technical High School, and later Frederick Douglass High School (founded 1883 as the "Colored High School and Training School"). By the 1970s, MSA (which its winning teams in central Maryland generally meant a "state championship") membership had considerably expanded to include additional outlying city public and suburban private schools. In 1993, Dr. Walter Amprey, new superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools (who had graduated and begun his teaching career in the City but later moved to the surrounding county to become a principal, then administrator and asst. superintendent), forced the City's high schools to withdraw from the league and join the newer Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSA) which included the rest of the 23 counties of the state and had grown since its establishment in the 1950s with the growth of suburban and rural public secondary schools and the new additional co-ed and girls athletic programs. The shrunken MSA, once vaunted for its unique public-private competitions for almost 75 years, rare in the nation, was forced to re-organize as the "twin private leagues" of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association for boys and the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland for girls sports.
  • Public Library Association formed in Annapolis, later develops into county-wide system for Anne Arundel County. City of Annapolis allows space in historic Reynolds Tavern on Church Circle by 1936. Additional library association forms in northern county in Glen Burnie by 1923 and opens in front room of Masonic Temple.

• 1920 - Citizens National Bank skyscraper tower erected at southwest corner of Light Street (additional postal address at 7 East Redwood [previously long-time name of German Street before World War I] Streets), succeeding Bromo-Seltzer Tower and Maryland Casualty Company's Tower Building (both with large landmark clocks on the east and west sides of downtown business district) as the city's tallest building until 1929 and construction of Baltimore Trust's "Art Deco"style tower one block north. Later becomes headquarters of prominent First National Bank of Maryland (one of the largest financial institutions in the state), until flurry of bank mergers and out-of-town take-overs in the 2000s. Old Citizens National has the most beautiful, elaborate banking room/lobby in the city. Now occupied by the Municipal Employees Credit Union of Baltimore City (MECU).
  • First of annual football game played November 12 of traditional rivalry between Roman Catholic high schools - Calvert Hall College (Christian Brothers) and Loyola High School (Jesuits (Society of Jesus)) in the public-private high school sports league Maryland Scholastic Association founded the previous year. Calvert Hall-Loyola joins other long-time local rivalries such as City-Poly, McDonogh-Gilman, Mt. St. Joseph's-Patterson Park, and Forest Park-Southern, and colleges such as Hopkins-Maryland (College Park) and Hopkins-Navy. Beginning in the 1920s with large crowds of spectators at local athletic fields/stadiums and local media coverage for sports fans in a city at a time previous to the organization of nationwide professional sports teams and leagues.
  • Population: 733,826.

• 1922 -
  • WCAO and WFBR radio begin broadcasting.
  • Municipal Stadium (or also known as Baltimore Stadium or Venable Stadium) built.
  • Royal Theatre opens on Pennsylvania Avenue in northwestern inner city neighborhood of Upton. Becomes center for Negro/Black/African-American entertainment, concerts and performances and focal point of that cultural district in the 1920s to the 1960s.
  • Fire Department builds new headquarters building of red brick/stone trim Georgian/Federal style (facing new War Memorial Plaza and War Memorial building on South Gay Street to the east and City Hall on Holliday Street at west end) along East Lexington Street on south side of Old Zion Lutheran Church of 1807-08 and 1912-13 additions.

• 1923 - Howard W. Jackson becomes mayor succeeding William F. Broening until 1927.
  • Glen Burnie Library Association formed in northern Anne Arundel County, two years after opening of Annapolis Library, with Mrs. Samuel Boone as president. Front room of recently built Masonic Temple offered and opened in December on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. Beginnings of future Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Public Library system, in suburban areas south of Baltimore. By following year, Maryland Public Library Commission gives aid to various institutions established.

• 1924
  • WCBM radio begins broadcasting.
  • Construction begins on new boys high school of Baltimore City College

• 1925
  • University of Baltimore founded as private independent school, with Law School and later business school, around urban streets-grid campus by Mount Royal and Cathedral Street/Maryland Avenues in northwest of Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal mid-town community. Later purchased by state and merges in the 1970s with University System of Maryland, greatly expanding its campus to additional urban center.
  • WBAL radio begins broadcasting.

• 1927 -
  • City Bureau of Archives established.
  • William F. Broening (Republican) elected to separate second term as mayor succeeding Jackson, in office until 1931.
  • New building and expansive park-like campus for Western High School for girls built

• 1928 -
  • New public high school building for boys for the Baltimore City College opened April 10
  • Conowingo Dam completed crossing on the lower Susquehanna River above the Head of Elk at northern end of Chesapeake Bay.

• 1929 - Baltimore Trust Company tower under construction for five years completed at 10 Light Street between East Baltimore and Redwood (previously German) Streets.
  • Baltimore has 200th Bicentennial Celebration this year of founding and laying out of original town in 1729/1730 with various events, parades and publication of anniversary historical commemorative book. Other major anniversary celebrations observed in 1880 for 150th year of town's founding and later Centennial observations in 1896-1897 for Centennial of incorporation as a city, and later in 1997 for similar Biccentennial anniversary.
  • Glenn L. Martin establishes aircraft production company (Glenn L. Martin Company), east of the City at Middle River, east of Essex, in southeastern Baltimore County.

• 1930 -
  • Baltimore Colored Symphony Orchestra organized.
  • Baltimore Black Sox, Negro League baseball team plays in first baseball game of African-Americans held at old Yankee Stadium (built 1923), in The Bronx, northern city borough in New York City, home of the American League's New York Yankees.
  • Population: 804,874.

• 1931 -
  • Death of philanthropist Henry Walters, (1848-1931), leaving the famous international art collection amassed by he and his father William T. Walters, (1820-1894), and the 1905-1909 Gallery building he had built at northwest corner of North Charles Street and West Centre Street, and an endowment, along with his mansion home across the side alley to the north on West Mount Vernon Place to the citizens of the City of Baltimore. Later known as the Walters Art Gallery and opened to the public permanently in 1934.
  • Municipal Office Building of simple "Art Deco" limestone construction on 300 block Holliday Street, between East Saratoga and Lexington Streets, north of the 1867-75 Baltimore City Hall. Later renamed in the 1980s for nationally famous and noted city engineer, Abel Wolman, (1892-1989), who designed most of the urban public drinking water and sewage treatment systems at Back River and Patapsco treatment plants for the city in the early 20th century.
  • First ordinance of a city zoning code passed by the Baltimore City Council upon earlier enabling act passed by the General Assembly of Maryland in 1927, for certain larger cities and towns in the state. Zoning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals set up and begins first attempts at controlling growth, construction, demolitions and maintenance of city public and private properties.
  • Replacement with concrete-arched bridge with steel draw-span constructed across Cabin Branch and Curtis Creek connecting Pennington Avenue, (Maryland Route 173), from the north in the City from Brooklyn and Curtis Bay to Hawkins Point Road leading to Hawkins Point with site of old Fort Armistead and Fort Smallwood Roads in Anne Arundel County and nearby Arundel Cove (on lower Curtis Creek to Furnace Branch and Marley Creek (Maryland)) and the U.S. Coast Guard shipyard at Curtis Bay, (established 1899), leading to the Fort Smallwood Park (Armistead and Smallwood are City parklands since the 1920s with former Spanish-American War-era batteries/military installation from the mid-1890s) at Rock Point, at mouth of Patapsco River. Nearby waterfront resort development/village Rivera Beach of post-World War II development and Pasadena further west along Gov. Ritchie Highway, along with many other villages along the western Chesapeake Bay county shoreline and inlets of Stony Creek, Bodkin Creek, Magothy River, and Severn River south to Annapolis, county seat and state capital. Curtis Creek Bridge of 1931 replaced again with higher span in 1977 for Pennington Avenue-Hawkins Point Road-Fort Smallwood Roads with additional high concrete bridges for extension of Baltimore Beltway (Interstate 695) leading to new Francis Scott Key Bridge connecting the city-circling Beltway over outer Baltimore Harbor/Patapsco River to southeast Baltimore County and Sollers Point with nearby Sparrows Point and North Point on "Patapsco Neck" peninsula with nearby large suburb of Dundalk.

• 1932 -
  • Another edifice for the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse completed construction on the east side of Battle Monument Square, between East Lexington and Fayette Streets of simplified/modernistic Beaux Arts/Classical Revival style architecture. Replaced previous elaborate Italian Renaissance Revival designed old U.S. Courthouse/Post Office of 1889, which had survived Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, noted with large clock tower and smaller towers arrayed around mansard roof (and also site of earlier 1862-65 U. S. Courthouse to the east side of the block at northwest corner of East Fayette and North Streets (later Guilford Avenue), former site earlier from the 1790s of then landmark twin-steepled First Presbyterian Church visited by 15th President James Buchanan). Construction expedited under severe unemployment situation in the City of deepening Great Depression under administration of 31st President Herbert Hoover.

• 1933 - Devastating hurricane storm lasting almost a week in August, does substantial damage to Baltimore and Washington's budding summer resort of the small town of Ocean City, in Worcester County, driving a "storm surge" through the long sandy barrier island and cutting an inlet/passageway of fifty feet wide and 8 feet deep through between Assateague Island to the south and now Sinepuxent Island to the north of the town. Later decades sees this natural event affecting the growth and residential/commercial development plus increasing the recreational attractions for swimming, fishing and boating with close access between the back bay and oceanfront. Additional number of Baltimoreans visit the ocean now with improved transportation across the Eastern Shore and leads to a decline of Chesapeake Bay beaches, resorts and towns. Later Assateague Island across the channel to the south towards Virginia's Chincoteague Island is preserved as a national seashore and an additional Maryland state park in its primitive natural state.

• 1934 - Walters Art Gallery with collections amassed by financiers/philanthropists William Walters, (1820-1894) and his son Henry Walters, (1848-1931), who built an "Italian Palazzo" design during 1905-1909, and opened in 1909 to occasional public visits. Now their later donation and endowment under will of recently deceased Henry Walters in 1931, opens as an institution under the City of Baltimore, in the gallery museum located on the northwest corner of North Charles and West Centre Streets, facing south Washington Place around the Washington Monument, and also donates to the new City museum, their mansion, across the side alley to the southern rear which faced north on West Mount Vernon Place/West Monument Street. A substantial 1974 addition of modernistic architecture was later added to the western side along West Centre Street to Park Avenue. In the 1980s, an additional townhouse/mansion (the former Jencks-Thomas-Gladding Mansion) to the north of the Gallery, facing the Monument at the southwest corner of North Charles and West Mount Vernon Place (West Monument Street), was added for the new Asian Art collection and renamed "Hackerman House" for later city construction builder and philanthropist Willard Hackerman.

• 1935 - United Railways and Electric Company, unified streetcar operator since the 1899 merger of streetcar lines and builder and the construction on Pier 4 on East Pratt Street of the Power Plant, completed 1903, enters bankruptcy and business reorganization proceedings. Reemerges and renamed as the Baltimore Transit Company (BTC), emphasizing increasing use of diesel motor busses and beginning repaving city streets to eliminate streetcar tracks and overhead power lines. BTC company stock owned by National City Lines, a later conglomerate with ownership by General Motors Corporation, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Standard Oil Company of California, and Phillips Petroleum with hidden agenda to gradually eliminate urban rail street transport and substitute gasoline-powered buses (which introduction and usage increases rapidly after great strain and "wear-and-tear" of heavy usage, with fuel rationing during World War II home-front defense efforts) eventually to end streetcar rail network by 1963 (Number 8 line from Towson to Catonsville) in Baltimore.

• 1938 - New structure for Eastern High School (EHS), all-girls traditional academic-business curriculum school. Located at 33rd Street boulevard at Loch Raven Boulevard in former Venable Park (stirs up political controversy) in northeast section of town next to decade-old City College's "Castle on the Hill", all-male high school. Same plans used a decade earlier for twin sister's new Western High, builds similar 'H'-shaped, three stories of English Tudor/Gothic Revival architecture of red brick and limestone trim in a 30-acre park-like campus. Later civic sports project for new Memorial Stadium rebuilt in 1950-1954 for major league baseball's team of the new Baltimore Orioles and pro football's team of the Baltimore Colts across street on previous site of old Municipal Stadium from 1922, built for high school/college football. EHS resides here until sad closure and half-way unsuccessful merger with new Lake Clifton High School several miles away in 1984, destroying 140 years of an all-female tradition in secondary education, leaving only Western High to continue at new 1967 campus shared with Polytechnic Institute at West Cold Spring Lane and Falls Road.

• 1939 -
  • Construction and opening of "Art Deco" styled, the Senator Theatre in Govans on York Road commercial district in northern outskirts at intersection with Belvedere Avenue (and south of newer parallel 1960s by-pass, Northern Parkway). By late 1970s becomes one of the last neighborhood movie theatres in the city with large main auditorium, but continues to show and premiere new films. Becomes iconic and landmark due to its architecture and "last of its kind", plus establishment in the early 1980s of front sidewalk gallery under marque of pavement blocks with names and logos of movies with hands or feet of starring actors and actresses (similar to famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, motion picture-making district in Los Angeles). Similar architecture of larger even more elaborate Art Deco features at old Ambassador Theatre on Liberty Heights Avenue near Howard Park neighborhood in northwest area which later has an interior-gutting fire and later becomes a fundamentalist Protestant church. Old Senator celebrates anniversary of opening every year with showing of feature films from the 1939-era and also charging ticket prices of the era (25 cents). After working 30 years for long-planned renovation project, two additional smaller adjacent auditoriums added using similar tan brick exteriors in 2013 for more financial flexibility and restoration of interior under new owners from the Charles Theatre, located on North Charles Street below North Avenue, in newly designated Station North neighborhood in Mid-Town.
  • Formation of a Baltimore County Library Association, Inc. (BCLA) to coordinate various small community libraries in County towns/suburbs circling around Baltimore City (like a "horseshoe") established by various women's clubs and civic associations in last two decades. New BCLA also to lobby Baltimore County's Board of County Commissioners (then small local governing structure) for an official county public library and constructions of buildings similar to the expansive Enoch Pratt Free Library system in the City, which county residents had also been using and taking advantage of since its earlier establishment in 1882-1886, with a new central library rebuilt downtown in 1931-1933 with many neighborhood branches, later constructions near city-county border. Political and civic pressure builds until post-World War II period in 1948 with establishment of Baltimore County Public Library system with existing branches and many additional improvements in later decades to almost equalize ancestor/neighbor Enoch Pratt.

• 1940 - Entire mill village with factory, houses, stores and school situated on upper Patapsco River's Western Branch between Baltimore County and Carroll County, founded as Elysville and then known as Alberton for several decades, sold at auction in November to C.R. Daniels Company which reopens industry and renames town as Daniels. Operations and town endure until disastrous flood and storm damage from Tropical Storm Agnes in June 1972 which does incredibly heavy damage to Patapsco River Valley, adjacent Baltimore and Ohio Railroad main western line and throughout state and Mid-Atlantic region. Daniels town is later razed with most of residential and commercial structures with only small industrial and recycling business in vicinity afterwards.

• 1941 -
  • Liberty ship S.S. Patrick Henry is the first of 2,700 such ships (one-sixth of the total built by America) launched September 27 from newly outfitted Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards in Fairfield area of South Baltimore on Middle Branch of Patapsco River of Baltimore Harbor

• 1944 - June 6, "D-Day" invasion of Normandy in German-occupied France of western Europe during World War II landed at Omaha Beach (one of six landing areas - "beaches") under authority of commanding General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Led by old "Blue and Gray Division" of 29th Division, formed for the First World War, made up of soldiers, Regular Army and National Guard troops, from Maryland, Virginia, Delaware states in the Middle Atlantic. Headquarters at Baltimore's Fifth Regiment Armory on North Howard Street where a military museum endures into the 2010s of actions and also training base at Fort George G. Meade in northern Anne Arundel County.

• 1945 - Lt. Jacob Beser, (1921-1992), a Baltimorean and graduate of noted local magnet high school Baltimore City College, is the only American Army Air Corps officer to accompany both crews on the two atomic bombing missions at the end of the Second World War to Hiroshima in Japan

• 1947 - WMAR-TV (television) begins broadcasting.

• 1948
  • Baltimore County Public Library system established.
  • WBAL-TV (television) begins broadcasting.

• 1949 - Edgar Allan Poe House on Amity Street property purchased by the city and opens and operates small historical museum, which later after its organization in 1964, comes under the sponsorship of the city's new Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation.

1950s-1990s

• 1950 -
  • Population of city at the highest level in its history of 959,000 at the half-century mark of the 20th Century according to the Seventeenth Decennial United States Census of 1950. Additional figures added here now for growing Baltimore metropolitan area of six suburban counties now making a mark as a large urban area including Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, Carroll County, Howard County, Harford County and Frederick County in central and northern Maryland.
  • A new multi-use sports stadium in memory of the casualties and losses of military service-members during the recent World War II and renamed "Memorial Stadium" begins a major reconstruction project on 33rd Street Boulevard, northeast of Waverly neighborhood, (and adjacent future Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood) over the old football-bowl of Municipal Stadium, constructed from 1922 (also sometimes known as the "Baltimore Stadium" or "Venable Stadium"). Constructed in a few months under the pushing of former Mayor Howard W. Jackson in seven months, controversially in the former Venable Park, the old stadium with a horse-shoe shape now with the open end facing north towards 36th Street the surrounding parking lots and the rowhouse community of Ednor Gardens-Lakeside. The new renovated stadium, constructed with a large prominent front brick façade with huge aluminum "Art Deco" styled lettering with words of dedication to the soldiers of the recent World War II inscribed facing 33rd Street (unlike old Municipal's open end with a Greco-Roman columnade on the contrasting southside facing 33rd Street). Later construction of an upper deck with small mezzanine level in-between begins in a rush-job project during later winter of 1953 and spring 1954, when the transfer and movement of the former St. Louis Browns team of major league baseball to the Chesapeake Bay region is later finally approved by the owners in the American League during a meeting in the Commodore Hotel in New York City, during September 1953, with business leader Clarence Miles who led a local investment group, the City Soliciter, and Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro, Jr., (1903-1987), [served 1947-1959], after an earlier disappointing "no" vote during the American League spring meeting in Miami because of owners distaste for controversial maverick Browns' recent owner Bill Veeck still holding an ownership stake in Baltimore. When the Baltimore ownership group agrees later to buy out Veeck's majority stock, the A.L. owners approve the purchase and move of the half-century old St. Louis franchise. The relocated team is immediately renamed the Baltimore Orioles in honor of the local favorite ball team name in the City since the 1880s.
  • New pro football team and franchise awarded to the city in the major National Football League, which had been founded earlier in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (and renamed N.F.L. in 1922). Returns the name of the Baltimore Colts (continuing the name of the previous Colts team in the newly founded competing All-America Football Conference (AAFC) (1946-1949)), which had a Colts team from the Conference's second season (replacing the old Miami Seahawks), 1947 to 1949 when the Conference merged with the old NFL and three AAFC teams entered the newly merged NFL, including the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns and the Colts. New Colts play in the League briefly for one year of 1950 before financial reasons and ownership collapses. Pro football team Colts of the AAFC with later famous quarterback Y. A. Tittle, (who later plays for New York Giants) plays at old big-bowled Municipal Stadium on 33rd Street as reconstruction project begins 1950 to rebuild old facility adding an upper deck into later Memorial Stadium (completed March 1954).
  • Baltimore Civic Opera Company which had earlier put on productions during the 1930s despite the financial decline and massive widespread unemployment during the "Great Depression" at the luxurious Maryland and Auditorium Theatres (now closed Mayfair Theatre for movies, both bracketing corner alongside the Congress Hotel [formerly Kernan's] at West Franklin and North Howard Streets) along with the nearby 1894 Lyric Opera House facing Mount Royal Avenue, was reorganized after temporarily closing following earlier 1947 death of director Eugene Martinet, (Peabody Institute grad and founder of Martinet Opera School in 1927) who had carried on the Company from its earlier 1917 establishment during World War I-era. That company continued into the 1920s under conductor David S. Melamet, (known for leading German "Sangerfest" cultural musical festivals), founded the Baltimore Opera Society. This new version of the Baltimore Civic Opera Company (B.C.O.C.) continuing with some similar leaders and members, reorganized in 1931 with first production of The Mikado performed in October 1932 under Eugene Martinet. Third version of B.C.O.C. re-organized November 1948, (with some small productions apparently put on before 1950), incorporated 1950, with support of Mary M. Martinet, former conductor's widow continuing as director, son Leigh Martinet as music director, and Grant U. Stiner - business manager, with now the lasting powerful influence of former famous 1930s Metropolitan Opera Company of New York's opera singer Rosa Ponselle. She had retired to an exclusive wealthy estate "Villa Pace" in the Greenspring Valley of northern rural Baltimore County, later serving as artistic director of the Company for several decades. A city of musicales, dramatic live plays and productions since the first theatre constructed here in the 1780s with later 19th Century productions in around the downtown business district of various opera and musicale plays organized under famous local civic leader and famous theater owner John T. Ford, Sr. (of infamous Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. where 16th President Abraham Lincoln was shot in April 1865), and was later owner/manager/producer of several playhouses in Baltimore, including the landmark 1871 Ford's Grand Opera House long-running on West Fayette Street - between Howard and Eutaw Streets, endured to 1964. Also in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was owner of several local theaters, builder and impresserio, James L. Kernan, builder of the apex of hospitality and hostelery with an art gallery and live theater entertainment by construction of his landmark Kernan's Hotel, in 1903 (later renamed Congress Hotel after Kernan's death in 1912), along with adjacent/connected Maryland Theatre and around the corner, the elaborate façaded Auditorium Theatre (now closed/decrepit Mayfair Theatre for motion pictures facing Howard Street) on northwest corner of North Howard and West Franklin Streets, his "triple million dollar enterprises". Martinet and Ponselle along with other well-connected backers reorganized a third Baltimore Civic Opera ("Civic" name dropped from title in 1970) begins 1950 season with Giuseppi Verdi's Aida production at the auditorium at the old Maryland Casualty Company's "Rotunda" office building on West 40th Street and Keswick Road, (between Roland Park and Hampden neighborhoods in the northern residential section of town), the next year moves briefly to the largest city public high school auditorium at the old Baltimore Polytechnic Institute on East North Avenue and North Calvert Streets, then returns 1952 to largest seating capacity at the old Lyric. Many productions of expense and large casts of over a hundred members in the previous half-century at the landmark Lyric Opera House (built 1894) on Mount Royal Avenue. Here the Opera Company observed its 50th Silver Anniversary in 2000, but unfortunately, was later hit by unusually devastating financial troubles during the "Great Recession" of 2008 and the B.O.C. is closed in bankruptcy, joining earlier the Maryland Ballet or Baltimore Ballet as part of the city's cultural history.
  • New larger international airport laid out and constructed by the City of Baltimore in northern Anne Arundel County at site of small village of "Friendship", (southwest of Glen Burnie, south of Linthicum) giving the air terminal its new name: "Friendship International Airport", (later renamed in the early 1970s as "Baltimore-Washington International Airport" (BWI) when taken over by the larger resources of the State of Maryland's new Department of Transportation). Dedicated by city and state officials joined by 33rd President Harry S. Truman, replaces old previous Logan Field from the 1920s, and nearby Harbor Field in the early 1940s and adjacent larger Baltimore Municipal Airport in the late 1940s, along north shore of Patapsco River, near old Colgate Creek (paved over and partially filled-in), now present site of two shipping terminal facilities: Dundalk Marine Terminal and the later adjacent Sea Girt Marine Terminal for the Port of Baltimore. Airport has large tan brick terminal building with iconic popular observation platform on the roof of one of the wings/concourses used by many curious Maryland citizens "watching the planes". Ties city into world air travel and commerce for next half-century and sees tremendous growth with compete re-building and expansion of facilities, joining regional airports of Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport for national capital.
  • New headquarters banking building constructed for Baltimore Federal Savings and Loan Association, largest S. & L. in the region in a distinctive Georgian architecture-styled building at southwest corner of East Fayette Street and St. Paul Street, a block north of junction with Light Street. Nicknamed "Colonial Corner" of red brick and white trim with cupola, structure stands out amidst early 20th Century (post-1904 Great Baltimore Fire) downtown office buildings, banks and commercial structures.
• 1952 -
  • First Negro (now Black/African American) male students integrate the Baltimore City Public Schools system, entering the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in the fall of 1952, after long consideration by moderate and progressive members of the city's Board of School Commissioners. Polytechnic is a "magnet", specialized mathematics, science, engineering and technology public high school, and the case is made not to try and duplicate a similar institution just for Negro students. Predates by two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in "Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" and other cases, by May 1954.
  • Negotiations concluded in October between group of Baltimore businessmen led by Clarence Miles with baseball team owner Bill Veeck to bring the American League baseball franchise of the old St. Louis Browns to Baltimore for the following 1954-1955 season, marking the return to major league baseball after fifty-one years.
• 1953 -
  • B&O Transportation Museum, under the sponsorship of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company opens at the former Mount Clare Station and Shops, along West Pratt Street with the old 1884 Roundhouse and workshops in the Poppleton/Union Square/Mount Clare section of southwest Baltimore. Later renamed as the "B&O Railroad Museum" and established as a private agency to preserve the legacy of the old famous Baltimore and Ohio Railroad under the original sponsorship of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, later CSX Transportation.
  • Third incarnation of a pro football franchise and team with a new Baltimore Colts awarded to the city in the National Football League (NFL) from the former franchise Dallas Texans from one unsuccessful year in the "Lone Star State". Ownership given to local Carroll Rosenbloom and team has several losing but building seasons until Coach Weeb Eubank until 1958 and 1959 with then winning NFL championships in iconic games versus the New York Giants aided by famous players such as quarterback John Unitas. Team plays in the finally reconstructed and completed Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street near Waverly in northeast Baltimore, and builds practice facility in northwest Baltimore County near Owings Mills.
• 1954 -
  • St. Louis Browns baseball team in the American League completes business deal previous November 1953 and relocates to Baltimore and is renamed the new Baltimore Orioles, returning the city to the ranks of major league baseball, since 1903. Old Baltimore Orioles team of the minor-league International League here since 1903-1911, 1916-1953, relocates to Havana, in Cuba. Entire city in delirium with Opening Day parade in April through downtown with new/old team members and ceremonies with Vice President Richard M. Nixon throwing out the first ball in first game versus Chicago White Sox.
  • Cylburn Wildflower Preserve and Garden Center formed to preserve and advance the gardens around the former "Cylburn" mansion of stone Victorian-style architecture and home of industrialist and Quaker stalwart Elisha Tyson on Greenspring Avenue, north of Druid Hill Park, later renamed "Cylburn Arboretum".
  • Final and full Desegregation of the Baltimore City Public School System, put into practice with Fall opening of public schools by moderate and progressive members of the city's Board of School Commissioners in September, after previous May 1954's U.S. Supreme Court unanimous decision. Process goes peacefully through most of the city with exception of demonstrations and crowds of resisters outside Southern High School in Federal Hill/Old South Baltimore, and old Patterson Park High School (on Ellwood Street) in southeastern part of town.
  • Baltimore-Washington Parkway opens between two major cities in central Maryland.
• 1955 - Growing national civil rights protests across The South and the nation comes to Baltimore with demonstration led by the local affiliate Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), at largest of local chain-store merchant Read's Drug Store (known by the 1970s as "Rite-Aid"), with their iconic lunch counters at downtown store's location at southeastern corner of North Howard and West Lexington Streets, amidst many large department stores and movie theatre district.
• 1956 - Admittance of the Frederick Douglass High School (formerly "Colored" High School and Training School before 1925, when founded in 1883), the Paul Laurence Dunbar Community High School, and the Carver Vocational-Technical High School, from the formerly racially segregated Baltimore City Public Schools system (since the 1860s to the May 1954 "Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" decision by the United States Supreme Court) into the Maryland Scholastic Association (MSA) which had been founded in 1919 (by Dr. Phillip H. Edwards - athletic coach and later noted Principal of the Baltimore City College in the 1930s and 1940s along with some other coaches and principals) for central Maryland area private/parochial/independent secondary schools and the high schools of Baltimore City (only a few high schools then existed in other suburban counties such as Baltimore, Harford, Carroll, Howard and Frederick Counties and the distance/expense with streetcars, inter-urban electric commuter trains or highway buses then used for weekly competitions was prohibitive). The MSA was one of the first public-private high school athletic leagues in the country and its championships long constituted a "state championship". The later Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSA) was not established until the latter 1950s as a burst of high schools opened in surrounding Baltimore County with beginning athletic programs for boys only, and spread to a statewide system which competed with the older senior league until the early 1990s, when a new Baltimore City superintendent of schools, Walter Amprey, who graduated and began his teaching career in the city, spent most of his supervising/administrative career in the suburbs system, forced the withdrawal of the city schools (especially including athletic, all-male powerhouses City, Poly, and the co-ed neighborhood schools: Douglass, Dunbar, (previously "colored schools") Forest Park, Patterson, Southern, Edmondson, Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern, Lake Clifton, Walbrook, plus co-ed vocational-technical institutions at Merganthaler and Carver and all-girls Western High School and Eastern High School) became part of the now larger "state league" with its wider membership and reach now into all 23 counties of Maryland with play-offs scheduled annually at the University of Maryland at College Park. The MSA re-orgMSAzed as two private school leagues with one for boys and another for girls sports. Although losing its exemplary private-public athletic partnership and competition, rare in the U.S.A., Baltimore is also one of the first school systems in the nation to peacefully integrate its high school athletic programs and led to a great advance in racial harmony in the City in the next two decades unlike some Southern and border states which endured hostility and protests into the 1980s.
• 1957 -
  • Rapidly growing outer suburbs in Harford County in the northeast Baltimore metro area establishes a junior college (later called community college), with the opening in September of the Harford Junior College with 116 students on the campus of the Bel Air High School in the county seat of Bel Air. Growth to 354 students four years later and later relocating several miles east in 1964 to Churchville on Thomas Run Road to a large tract for a park-like campus with construction of several academic and ancillary buildings. Name changed to Harford Community College in 1971.
  • Extinguishing on August 14 of last gas streetlight in the city which was the first in America to have gas lighting outside in 1817. Modernization process began earlier in decade with replacement with mercury vapor lights. Old lamps sent to Cape May, New Jersey and Disneyland in California.
• 1960 - In January, employees of the Social Security Administration, first established in 1935 under the "Social Security Act" of programs of the "New Deal" administration of 32nd President Franklin D. Roosevelt, begin moving from their three-decades-old headquarters at the Candler Building on Market Place and East Pratt Street, across from the waterfront "Basin" (later the famed "Inner Harbor") of the Baltimore Harbor. New suburban campus of several modern office buildings is constructed in the Woodlawn area (formerly known as Powhatan) of western Baltimore County, just off the route of the under-construction "Baltimore Beltway" (Interstate 695). Central access route through the area is designated Security Boulevard. Social Security becomes one of the major employers of the county and metro region. Old Candler Building had been the regional headquarters of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Atlanta, Georgia, of which Asa Griggs Candler, (1851-1929), whom the building was named for, was the prime mover, founder and industrialist. Candler Building still exists and renovated by the 2010s.
• 1962 - Jones Falls Expressway (Interstate 83) opened.
• 1963 -
  • Center Stage (theater) opens on East North Avenue, (in future renamed Station North community by the 2010s), in converted commercial buildings between townhouses between North Charles and St. Paul Streets. Second major theatre in downtown/mid-town city besides the new 1967 Morris A. Mechanic Theatre at Charles Center on southwest corner of Charles and Baltimore.
  • Last running of electric streetcars in Baltimore on 14 August when #8 car to Catonsville turns into Irvington car barn of Baltimore Transit Company in southwestern city at 6:30 am. Groups of streetcar and railroad enthusiasts/historians ride special car taking photos, recording sounds and interviewing conductors with surrounding news media. By early 1990s urban rail transit returns in modernized fashion known as "light rail", with a metro area central line from Glen Burnie to Hunt Valley, using larger more complex cars, on streets and separate tracks.
• 1964 -
  • The News American newspaper reorganized and merged begins publication, by owners Hearst Corporation of previous Monday-Saturday daily Baltimore News-Post and old Sunday weekly of Baltimore American whose antecedents go back to first daily newspaper published in the city in 1773 by William Goddard.
  • New Holiday Inn chain/syndicate of hotels/motels constructed at the southwest corner of South Howard and West Lombard Streets, opposite Baltimore Civic Center/1st Mariner Arena. It is the first structure to have a permanent revolving, roof-top restaurant in America, with views of Inner Harbor and downtown business district, plus new Charles Center to the northeast.
• 1965 - First major suspension in city's history of all daily newspapers publications in city against the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore News-American" during Spring - March - June, with striking reporters and editors later publishing their own "strike papers" - "Baltimore Banner" and "Baltimore Herald" temporarily.
• 1966 - Baltimore Orioles win their first American League championship and go on to win the first four games of the World Series against the National League and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• 1967 - First major job action with several weeks long labor strike against Baltimore City Public Schools near end of school year, in Spring 1967. Teachers arrested outside schools on picket lines, with formation of rival "Baltimore Teachers Union" of more radical American Federation of Teachers and the older, 120 years old, "Public School Teachers Association", (associated with old-line National Education Association).
• 1968
  • Baltimore riot of 1968
  • Baltimore American Indian Center is established.
• 1970 - Milton B. Allen elected as State's Attorney for Baltimore City and becomes the first African American elected to a citywide office.
• 1971 - William Donald Schaefer becomes mayor.
• 1973 - Sister city relationship established with Gbarnga, Liberia.
• 1974 - Baltimore municipal strike of 1974
• 1976 - Maryland Science Center opens at Baltimore's inner harbor. 11 Tall ships visit inner harbor as part of America's Bicentennial Celebration.
• 1977 - Barbara Mikulski becomes U.S. representative for Maryland's 3rd congressional district.
• 1978 - Black Classic Press in business.
• 1979
  • Baltimore Convention Center opens.
  • Baltimore School for the Arts founded.
  • Celebration of 250th Anniversary of founding of Baltimore Town in 1729/1730.
• 1980
  • Harborplace opens, under leadership of James Rouse.
  • Baltimore Area Convention & Visitors Association formed, later known as "Visit Baltimore".
  • Population: 787,000 people (approximate) in figures from Twentieth Decennial United States Census of 1980.
• 1981
  • National Aquarium in Baltimore opens on former Pier 3 on East Pratt Street facing Inner Harbor. Museum has 5,600 animals to exhibit which grows to about 17,000 by25 years later. Famous incident with Mayor William Donald Schaefer swimming in outside dolphin pool if the museum was not opened by a certain original "construction complete" deadline. Media and photographers cluster about for great iconic scene as Schaefer comes out with rubber duckie wearing old 19th Century style bathing suit and straw-boater hat.
  • Baltimore Museum of Industry opens off Key Highway of north side of old South Baltimore/Locust Point/Whetstone Point peninsula on shoreline of North West Branch of Patapsco River and Baltimore Harbor.
• 1982
  • Masjid Al-Rahmah (mosque) built (approximate date).
  • Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall opens off Cathedral Street and Maryland Avenue in northwest corner of Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal mid-town neighborhood. New home for Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
• 1983 -
  • Baltimore Metro Subway begins operating.
  • Great Blacks in Wax Museum established.
  • Baltimore Business Journal established as a weekly tabloid in March.
• 1986 - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People headquarters relocates to Baltimore.
• 1987
  • January: Clarence H. ("Du") Burns, President of the Baltimore City Council, becomes the first African American mayor of Baltimore City, succeeding William Donald Schaefer when he is inaugurated Governor of Maryland in December. In November, Kurt Schmoke defeats burns and becomes first African American elected as mayor of Baltimore.
  • Kweisi Mfume becomes U.S. representative for Maryland's 7th congressional district.
• 1989 - Contemporary Museum Baltimore founded.
• 1990
  • Muslim Community Cultural Center established.
  • Population: 736,014.
• 1992
  • Baltimore Light Rail modern streetcar system begins operating.
  • Oriole Park at Camden Yards baseball stadium southwest of Inner Harbor off Russell Street (leading to Baltimore-Washington Parkway), South Howard Street and Camden Streets opens after 2 year construction project.
• 1993 - Baltimore Cable Access Corporation begins broadcasting.
• 1995 - Fells Point Creative Alliance, a coalition of artists and supporters, established by volunteers in Fells Point as a hybrid gallery, performance spaces, artists studios and guild. First located temporarily in a neighborhood rowhouse, later moves to an old Loyal Order of Moose lodge building/hall in Highlandtown, then to old trolley car barn on Thames Street facing waterfront and old Recreation/City/Broadway Pier. Temporarily at old "Pep Boys" auto parts store in Highlandtown again, finally begins $4.5 million campaign for converting old Patterson Theatre on Eastern Avenue, at East Avenue, which will cost $3.6 million. Helped by grants obtained from government art and humanities programs through state senator Perry Sfikas and U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, in addition to continued private fund-raising with matching grants. Old Patterson movie theatre built 1910 as silent movies gallery and dance hall, razed 1929 and replaced by current building, closes for regular second-run flics in 1995. New Creative Alliance space opens May 16, 2003, with 2 art galleries, 2 performing spaces, 200 seat theatre, classrooms, media lab, living/work studios, offices, sidewalk café, becomes revitalizer to Highlandtown commercial/business district.
• 1996
  • City website online (approximate date).
  • Elijah Cummings becomes U.S. representative for Maryland's 7th congressional district.
  • Cleveland Browns professional football team from the old All-America Football Conference of 1946-1949, and the National Football League move their team by long-time owner Art Modell and are renamed the Baltimore Ravens, playing their first two seasons at old Colts Palace, the Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street. Later moves into new field off Russell Street and Baltimore-Washington Parkway near Camden Yards, at "P.S.I.-Net Stadium".
• 1998 - Ravens Stadium opens with name of company of "P.S.I.-Net".

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21st century

2000s

• 2000 -
  • National Katy? Memorial is cast and constructed of bronze on stone base in newly re-developed Harbor East area, (southeast of Inner Harbor) at the foot of President Street boulevard in International Circle to commemorate Polish Army officers murdered en masse by Soviet Russians under dictator Joseph Stalin after invading eastern part of country following original invasion of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler from the west, beginning World War II in September 1939. Bodies buried in the forest in mass graves found 1941 by Germans, (after their further invasion of the Soviet Union following later), who had been blamebeenassacre caused by attempt of Soviets to decimate effective anti-Communist leaders and intelligentsia for future post-war occupation. Statue artwork and memorial plaques sponsored by local Baltimore community of Polish-Americans.
• 2001 - January 28, 2001, Baltimore Ravens, the transferred franchise from former Cleveland Browns in 1994 with owner Art Modell win first championship for 2000 season (Super Bowl XXXV) in the National Football League, at new M&T Bank Stadium ("Ravens Stadium"). First pro football trophy since old Baltimore Colts in 1958, 1959, 1968, 1970 (Super Bowl III).
• 2002 -
  • The Portal (community center) opens.
  • The Wire fictional cable television program series set in Baltimore about city police fighting local drug dealers with monitored, recorded phone conversations begins national broadcast on HBO (Home Box Office).
• 2005 - Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture opens on northeast corner of President Street boulevard and East Pratt Street, just west of the historic Star Spangled Banner Flag House of Mary Pickersgill, in Jonestown/"Old Town" community, north of Little Italy, east of Inner Harbor. Benefitted from use of state and city funds plus bequest from estate of noted local black industrialist, financier and philanthropist, Reginald F. Lewis (1942-1993).
• 2006 - The Baltimore Examiner begins publication as a group of independent tabloid newspapers beginning with a Washington Examiner begun by the new proprietors Philip Anschutz of Clarity Media Group of the San Francisco Examiner which they bought earlier from the Hearst Corporation, (flagship paper founded by late magnate William Randolph Hearst), which in turn had purchased the more economically viable competing paper San Francisco Chronicle. Examiner paper continues publication and provides alternative and more politically conservative editorial views in the city for about two years and recruits many new reporters/columnists/editors from old Baltimore Sun of media chain syndicate Chicago Tribune Company. Has offices on East Pratt Street facing Inner Harbor with name of paper emblazoned on top of office building.
• 2007
  • Sheila Dixon becomes city's first African-American woman and first female mayor.
  • Gun offender registration ordinance enacted.
• 2008 - Hilton Baltimore, a designated "convention hotel" built across Camden Street (and between South Howard and Paca Streets) from Camden Street Station (of old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad), now the Sports Legends Museum, and adjacent to Oriole Park at Camden Yards baseball stadium and sports complex to the south and the Baltimore Convention Center to the north.
• 2009 -
  • Sheila Dixon trial for corruption and misusing retail gift cards donated for charitable cases for her personal use. She is convicted and is later removed from office as mayor.
  • "Great Recession of 2009" causes major unemployment in Baltimore and caused economic problems for various arts and cultural organizations and eventual bankruptcy for the local long-time Baltimore Opera Company.

2010s

• 2010 -
  • Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, (born 1970), who had been Vice President, then President of Baltimore City Council (and the youngest when first elected as Council-member) becomes Mayor.
  • 2010 Baltimore beating
  • Population: 620,961, recorded for the total residents in the City from the United States Decennial Census of 2010; metro 2,710,489.
• 2011 -
  • "Occupy Baltimore" campaign begins, setting up downtown demonstrations and squatter camps at various locations protesting for employment, against large financial institutions and lack of economic equality in America.
  • Officer James Fowler ticket incident
  • Lyric Opera Baltimore further endowed with large bequest from Art and wife Patricia Modell, owners of pro football team Baltimore Ravens since move from Ohio with Cleveland Browns in 1994 to renovate and expand old 1894 Lyric Theatre on Mount Royal Avenue in northern part of Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal mid-town neighborhood. Renamed as "Art and Patricia Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric Opera House"
• 2012 -
  • 2012 St. Patrick's Day beating
  • The National Slavic Museum is established.
• 2013 - Release of BaltimoreCode.org, an online interface to city law.
• 2015 - Twenty-five year old Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr. dies in police custody from injuries sustained to his spinal cord, resulting in the suspension of six Baltimore police officers. As a result of public outcry following the event, Maryland governor Larry Hogan declares a state of emergency and deploys the National Guard to keep the peace. A curfew is established to curb violence among protesters, which is enforced until May 3.

src: baltimorelink.com

See also

• History of Baltimore
• List of mayors of Baltimore
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Baltimore, Maryland
• List of museums in Baltimore
• Timeline of Maryland

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References

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Bibliography

Published in 18th-19th century

to 1859

• Jedidiah Morse (1797), "Baltimore", American Gazetteer, Boston: S. Hall, and Thomas & Andrews 
• William Fry (1812), Fry's Baltimore directory, for the year 1812, Baltimore: Printed by B.W. Sower, & Co. for the publisher 
• C. Keenan (1822), The Baltimore directory for 1822 & '23, Baltimore: Printed by R.J. Matchett 
• David Brewster, ed. (1830). "Baltimore". Edinburgh Encyclopædia. Edinburgh: William Blackwood. 
• "Baltimore, Md.", American Advertising Directory, for Manufacturers and Dealers in American Goods, New York: Jocelyn, Darling & Co., 1831, OCLC 1018684 
• Charles Varle (1833), A complete view of Baltimore, Baltimore: S. Young 
• Henry Schenck Tanner (1837), "Map of Baltimore", The American Traveller (3rd ed.), Philadelphia: The author 
• Henry Schenck Tanner (1841), "Baltimore", A geographical, historical and statistical view of the central or middle United States, Philadelphia: H. Tanner, Jr., OCLC 1525712 
• Baltimore City Directory, for 1858-59, Baltimore: John W. Woods, 1858 - via Open Library 

1860-1899

• Woods's Baltimore City Directory. Baltimore: John W. Woods. 
  • 1867-68, 1868-69
  • 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879
  • 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886
• John Leander Bishop (1868). "Statistics of the Principal Manufacturing Cities ... with Descriptions of Remarkable Manufactories: Baltimore". History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Edward Young & Co. 
• J. Thomas Scharf (1874), The chronicles of Baltimore: being a complete history of "Baltimore town" and Baltimore city from the earliest period to the present time, Baltimore: Turnbull Bros., OCLC 11971847 
• "Baltimore", Appleton's Illustrated Hand-Book of American Cities, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1876 
• 1730-1880: Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Settlement of Baltimore Town, Printed by order of the Mayor and City Council, 1881 
• J. Thomas Scharf (1881), History of Baltimore city and county, from the earliest period to the present day: including biographical sketches of their representative men, Philadelphia: L.H. Everts 
• Baltimore City Guide and Street Directory. Guide Publishing Co. 1890 - via HathiTrust. 
• Carroll D. Wright (1894), Slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia, Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office 
• Baltimore City Directory. R.L. Polk & Co. 1899 - via HathiTrust. 

Published in 20th century

• Robert C. Brooks (1901), "Baltimore", Bibliography of Municipal Problems and City Conditions, Municipal Affairs, 5 (2nd ed.), New York: Reform Club, OCLC 1855351 
• "Baltimore", Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), New York, 1910, OCLC 14782424 - via Internet Archive 
• Baltimore City Directory. R.L. Polk & Co. 1913 - via HathiTrust. 
  • 1914, 1917
  • 1922, 1923
• Edward Hungerford (1913), "Monumental City", The Personality of American Cities, New York: McBride, Nast & Company 
• Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin and Albert Bushnell Hart, ed. (1914). "Baltimore". Cyclopedia of American Government. 1. D. Appleton and Company. 
• Federal Writers' Project (1940). "Baltimore". Maryland: a Guide to the Old Line State. American Guide Series. NY: Oxford University Press. 
• Robert I. Vexler (1975), Howard B. Furer, ed., Baltimore: a Chronological & Documentary History, 1632-1970, American Cities Chronology Series, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, ISBN 0-379-00602-2 
• "Baltimore: The Hidden City", National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D.C., 147, 1975 
• Cox, Richard J. (1979). "The Plight of American Municipal Archives: Baltimore, 1729-1979" (PDF). The American Archivist. 42, no. 3. pp. 281-292. 
• Gary L. Browne. Baltimore in the Nation, 1789-1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
• Ory Mazar Nergal, ed. (1980), "Baltimore", Encyclopedia of American Cities, New York: E.P. Dutton, OL 4120668M 
• Sherry H. Olson. Baltimore: The Building of an American City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
• Joseph Lawrence Yeatman (Fall 1985). "Literary Culture and the Role of Libraries in Democratic America: Baltimore, 1815-1840". Journal of Library History. 20. 
• George Thomas Kurian (1994), "Baltimore", World Encyclopedia of Cities, 1: North America, Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO  (fulltext via Open Library)
• Christopher Phillips. Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790-1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997
• Christopher Phillips (2000). "Baltimore". In Paul Finkelman. Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century. Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0684805006. 

Published in 21st century

• Oren M. Levin-Waldman (2004). The Political Economy of the Living Wage: A Study of Four Cities. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-7656-3705-5.  (Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans)
• David Goldfield, ed. (2007). "Baltimore, Maryland". Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Sage. ISBN 978-1-4522-6553-7. 
• "Explaining Baltimore's Complicated Relationship With Its Sister Cities". Atlantic Cities. April 21, 2014. 

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External links

• Works related to Baltimore, various dates (via Digital Public Library of America)
• Items related to Baltimore, Maryland, various dates (via Europeana)

Source of the article : Wikipedia