Historical Impressions of Baltimore (1849-1981)

   Recently, it was my one year anniversary of being back in Baltimore City as a resident and I decided to provide some updated thoughts about the City, I decided to set out to capture some of the good and the bad impressions from the famous and not-so-famous over Baltimore's earlier years.  Brace yourself for the bad, it ain't too pretty.  Mid-nineteenth Century literary personalities were candid and cold in capturing their thoughts about Baltimore at the time.

North Point Battle (1814) Monument

   Robert Baird (1798-1863), an American clergyman and author, wrote in his book "Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America in 1849" that "unquestionably the town of Baltimore is finely situated, and the ladies of Baltimore are very beautiful." Of the 1814 Battle Monument, he stated it "appeared to me a work too elaborate in its design, wanting in simplicity, and displaying little taste."  He had higher favor upon Baltimore's Washington Monument stating that it "is worthy of the state that reared it, and of the great man whose patriotic services it is designed to commemorate." Oddly enough, he found it necessary to point out "of late years, several instances have occurred of persons throwing themselves from the top of the Washington Monument at Baltimore.  In the majority of instances, these victims of madness or of misery have been females."

   George Rose (1817-1882), who according to Wikisource was a dramatist, novelist, and humorous entertainer of London, and wrote under the name of "Arthur Sketchley" in his book "The Great Country: or Impressions of America" of 1868 provided some stark commentary on Baltimore.  "Baltimore takes its name from Lord Baltimore, and is one of the most uphill cities I ever visited.  A line of the great national anthem, "Yankee Doodle" - I am quoting from memory -- states that "Baltimore is the dandy."  I do not know what the American laureate of that day may have meant by this expression, but am happy to endorse the statement as far as saying that the city is well built and very clean.  In spite of its title the City of Monuments, I did not think much of the public buildings.  The Catholic cathedral struck me as a marvel of ugliness; though it boasts the finest organ in America.  I do not think that, rich though Baltimore be in monuments, they would repay the trouble of visiting them.  As national works, they are doubtless very great but, artistically, the less said about them the better."

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

   A February 1874 article in the Baltimore Sun accounted what English Victorian era author Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote of Baltimore in his second visit to America: They are very handsome women," he says of the Baltimore ladies, "with an Eastern touch to them, and dress brilliantly I have seen so fine an audience. They are bright responsive people." Owing to the times, he further writes "It is remarkable how the ghost of slavery haunts the town..."  Commenting on the contrast and the comparative state of black americans at that point in Baltimore history, "I strongly believe that they (the negroes) will die out of the country fast.  It seems looking at them, so manifestly absurd to suppose it possible that they can even hold their own against a restless, shifty, striving, stronger race."

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)

   By May 1891, a beautifully dressed, white-bearded, 50 year old visitor by the name of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the world famous Russian composer commented that "Baltimore is a pretty, clean town" in his diary during a one day tour of Baltimore and its Peabody Institute.

   At the turn of the 20th Century, the Baltimore Harbor, as in the case of New York City's Hudson riverfront, was lined with commercial property buildings and wharfs, becoming virtually inaccessible to the common citizenry. There was of course, Federal Hill, one of the only vantage points from where all the industrial city could be seen in near full panorama.  The Kent News of Chestertown, Maryland in August 1898 described it this way: "Every visitor to Baltimore is astonished that the foulness of the harbor if that great city is allowed to continue.  Its offensiveness, its unsightliness, its menace to health--all reflect upon the city authorities."

James W. Rouse, City Planner,
(1914-1996)

   The northwest branch of the Patapsco River took some heavy use and abuse over the several hundred years of development.  Thanks to the genius of men like Mr.James W. Rouse, master city planner, Baltimore's "Inner Harbor" emerged from a dark period with a renaissance opening of Harborplace in 1988.

   In 1913, Dr. Werner Hegemann, the German expert on city planning commented on Baltimore during his visit as captured in the Baltimore Sun. He was enthusiastic over Broadway and could not get enough of the view he got of it as he looked south. Over and over again, he would say "Let me get another look at this beautiful street!"  In East Baltimore, the cleaning of the white marble steps in front of the homes by the housewives or the housemaids.  He was surprised and delighted that were so many marble steps in front of even the modest homes in Baltimore.

   A witty English visitor to Baltimore in 1925 commented in The Sun, "If a Baltimore man asks you to dinner and says that his house is the one with the white marble steps in front, you will know that he has not asked you to dinner, for every house has white steps in front of it." Even the "poorer people have wooden steps and are always painting them white."

   The downtown city streets and its slums webbed out toward the city's northwest perimeter. As late as June 1948, Richard Feldman, a Government official from the Union of South Africa was quoted in the Baltimore Sun as describing their condition being quite strikingly worse than conditions in slums of his own country and in English cities like London and Manchester. "Even 'darkest Africa' was never like this.  I have not seen anything anywhere quite so shockingly bad as I saw this morning." On a brighter note, he expressed delight over the housing projects known as McCulloh and Gilmor Homes.

Today, decades after these comments were made in the 1980's regarding Baltimore's architecture, city planners might want to take a step back to note how well Baltimore has developed over the years.

In February 1981, Paul Goldberger, New York Times architecture critic while not seeing an ideal city he did have high praise for Baltimore as noted in The Sun.  "I hadn't been here for a decade, and my impressions of Baltimore are so positive that I'm a little suspicious. The hills are wonderful...I loved Roland Park too-there's a fabulous fabric of city here."  Of the Charles Center buildings, Mr. Goldberger described the Morris Mechanic Theatre as a "wowed-look-at-me-I'm-funny" building. He praised Mount Vernon square for its cruciform plan incorporating "an extraordinary balance."

Historic Charles Street,
Baltimore MD

  In July 1980, a group of six architects from across the world converged on Baltimore to give the following Baltimore Sun captured commentary: "I was impressed with such an enormous investment of energy and people in the Inner Harbor area, but I felt a kind of disproportion," stated Abu Aldenberg of the Netherlands.  Mr. Drazen Juracic of Yugoslavia commented, "The big mistake in the design concept of the Inner Harbor is that it's not linked to Charles Street" which he thought were "extraordinarily beautiful," reflecting Baltimore's rolling topography.  Mr. Fumio Okuyama of Japan found little harmony between old and new architecture in the city and pointed to lack of green spaces downtown.

  As Earl Arnett of the Baltimore Sun once aptly stated "...perspectives on the visual attractions of our city have always been a mixed bag--perhaps because the city is a mixed bag.  Like America itself, Baltimore is a curious mixture of beauty, richness and poverty--still a bit unsure of itself in a new land whose vastness and significance is not yet fully comprehended."

(Sources: Baltimore Sun Newspaper articles)

Knickerbocker Ice Company in Baltimore

    As I am a recent transplant from Manhattan to the Charm City, I thought that for my first blog entry, it was fitting to highlight a little bit of New York that was once a very important business in Baltimore.  As I was sightseeing with a friend from Toronto this holiday season, I was slightly perplexed to encounter a historical photograph of the Inner Harbor containing a historical remembrance of a now bygone company that was uniquely attributed to New York City.

    The Knickerbocker Ice Company, incorporated in 1855 and headquartered in New York City, operated in Manhattan from a pier at West 20th Street on the Hudson River as well as Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore during the period of 1895-1899.  Most of the natural ice during this time was 'harvested' from upstate New York east of Rockland Lake and brought by barge down the Hudson River to New York City where it was further distributed by either boat or train to its Philadelphia location.  This location controlled the natural ice output to southern cities such as Baltimore and Washington.  The years of 1890, 1906, and 1913 were extremely warm and caused equal extremes in price fluctuations and a great deal of public distrust and disgruntlement over the ice trade and access to this valuable commodity.

    In Baltimore, the Knickerbocker Ice Company was located in the Inner Harbor at the foot of Federal Hill (as visualized in the colorized postcard, above, and a black and white photograph circa 1906, right, courtesy of the Detroit Publishing Company). It owned several ice industry railroad tracks along the edge of Baltimore's Inner Harbor which were often leased to other local businesses.

    The Knickerbocker Ice Company (at large) was sold in 1896 and The Sun reported on July 7, 1899 that it was to be merged with the Consolidated Ice Company to form the American Ice Company.  As it turned out, the American Ice Company succeeded in attaining monopoly control of the market and the establishment of "the ice trust." According to a May 1933 Fortune article, "Water Still Freezes," within three years from the time the trust was estabilished, it would be on the brink of bankruptcy but successfully revitalized itself by the early1920s virtually all of its business was in manufactured ice.  By the early years of the twentieth century, refrigeration cooling systems and their "plant ice" replaced natural ice production such that this unique trade commodity became vastly less valued.

    While there are no visible signs of the Knickerbocker Ice Company in Baltimore to this day, it is interesting to note that the American Ice Company of Baltimore ice manufacturing plant (listed in both the National Register of Historic Places and the Maryland Historic Trust) can be found at 330 W23rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland.