Baltimore's Own Toy Story - Schwarz and Schwerdtmann

Frederick A.O. Schwarz,
Land Ownership Plot, c1865
(Courtesy: Ancestry.com)

According to land records, just about 1,500 feet to the west of chrome magnate Jesse Tyson's (featured in an earlier CharmCityHistory blog post) Cylborn estate, in a plot of land between the current-day Pimlico and Cold Springs neighborhoods, resided a certain Frederick August Otto Schwarz.  He immigrated from Germany at the age of 20, the youngest of four brothers who also lived in Baltimore.

  Preceding his arrival in America were his three older brothers who

Schwarz Brothers
Baltimore, 1862

were all born in Herford, Westphalia Province in Germany, to a jeweler named Frederick and his wife Frederica Rothe Schwarz - they were Henry, Gustav A., and Richard.  The oldest and first to immigrate was Henry who for a short time owned property in downtown New York but having found it to be too liberal to his taste, by 1858, convinced all the siblings to move to Baltimore.

Schwerdtmann & Co.
Holiday Advertisment, 1869
(Courtesy: Baltimore Sun)

   According to Baltimore City Business Directories, by 1860,  Frederick was a salesman and Henry was partnered with Theodore Schwerdtmann as owners of a toy and fancy goods store named Schwerdtmann & Co. at 7/9 N. Howard Street (next to the old "Howard House," currently occupied by Instant Financials and Wireless One businesses) and a location at the SE corner of Baltimore and Calvert Streets.  By 1863, Henry had moved to Baltimore County and Frederick was living at 157 W. Fayette St. (basically the current location of the Liberty Street Dog Park), both partnered at Scwherdtmann & Co. which was now also at 133 W. Baltimore Street.

   In 1863, Frederick was at 157 W. Fayette, Henry in Baltimore County, both partnered with Theodore Schwerdtmann at Schwerdtmann & Co., 7 and 9 N. Howard St (next to "Howard House")

Schwerdtmann & Schwarz
1870 Christmas Display Ad
(Courtesy: Baltimore Tribune)

and 133 W. Baltimore Street.   In 1865, both Frederick and Henry resided in Baltimore County, Frederick was working at the 327 W. Baltimore Schwerdtmann & Co. location and Henry worked with Theodore Scwhwerdtmann at the 327 and 133 W. Baltimore Street locations.

1870 F.A.O. Schwarz
Newspaper Ad

  The last records of Frederick August Otto (F.A.O.) owning in Baltimore was in 1869, when in addition to his Baltimore County property, he last lived at 66 N. Greene Street, later moving with his growing family to New York City where he established his own importing business, the Schwarz Toy Bazaar at 765 Broadway.  On February 1, 1870, Frederick had formally and legally dissolved his business relationship leaving only Henry in copartnership with Theodore as Schwerdtmann & Schwartz toys, fancy goods and novelties (see Christmas 1870 display ad).

Henry Schwarz's Toys
Christmas 1873 Display Ad
(Courtesy: Baltimore Sun)

   All four Schwarz brothers were fierce business minded men with staunch German ways but what united them was their love of the toy business. By the Christmas season of 1873, Henry Schwarz was now separately owning and operating a 'toys and fancy goods'  store at 211 W. Baltimore joined for a time by his brothers Richard and Gustav.   They each determined to separate urban markets in founding their businesses, Gustav opened a store at 106 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia; Richard on Washington Street, Boston, and of course F.A.O's highly prosperous Toy Bazaar, later to be known as F.A.O Schwarz on Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Polio-ridden Margarete Steiff
and her famous stuffed
Steiff Teddy Bear

   By 1880, Schwerdtmann & Co. had ceased to exist in Baltimore, but Schwarz moved his location to 15 E. Baltimore Street in 1888, a place that would unfortunately be in the direct path of Baltimore's Great Fire in 1904.  According to Baltimore Sun articles, Henry's courteous manners and the high-standard of goods he offered for sale attracted the fashionable and wealthy.  It was in that store where among all the assortment of toys that the stuffed "Teddy Bears" of Margarete Steiff's were remembered most - Henry Schwarz was the first merchant in America to import them from Germany.

  As Gustave became older and ailing in the late 1890s, his son Gustave began as a salesman in the store and then owner upon Henry's death on October 11, 1903.  Four months later, the fire would consume the original store but he reopened the Schwarz toy store at 315 North Charles Street (now Maisy's) where he operated it until it and another store location at 327 North Howard Street until 1922 when he became too ill and Baltimore's own toy story came to a close.

Tyson's Baltimore Chrome Works - Harbor Point's Toxic Past

   Harbor Point has been in the news for the better part of 25 years since the manufacturing plant that processed chrome from chromite ore at this location from 1845 until it was to cease operations under  Allied Chemical in 1989.  Ever since 1999, when Honeywell completed a ten year remediation effort that consisted of a 5-foot multi-acre clay cap, waterside perimeter embankments with a deep vertical hydraulic barrier to reduce flow to the groundwater and Harbor, this peninsula of land has been eyed by developers as another lucrative waterfront location immediately east of Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  Despite a City Council go-ahead this summer, environmental questions remain and rightly so.

Harbor Point site (2013),
Courtesy: Google Maps

   The 27-acres was declared by the United Stated Environmental Protection Agency and Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) as a Super Fund site due to a culmination of 144 years of processing that left the industrial buildings, soil and groundwater contaminated with chromium (including hexavalent chromium - recall, Erin Brockavich fame).  Environmental studies confirmed the chromium was the source of the 'yellow ice' in the harbor in the winter and the MDE entered into a Consent Decree with the final owner to demolish and clean up hazardous contamination which cost a total of $100 million.

Topographic Survey (1898)
Courtesy: JHU Map collection

   The history of this location is quite interesting and it seems that the hazards of chromium production at this location on a small peninsula jutting into the North Branch of the Patapsco River have been not long after it began operation.  Potable water study as conducted by the New York board of health were reported in the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer on June 22, 1872 where many European cities were contrasted with Boston, Chicago and Baltimore for parts of inorganic and organic matter - Baltimore, in general, was on par with that of Chicago.  Chemists then (and to this day) would use potassium permanganate as an antiseptic and in treatment of waste water.  The newspaper reported, without much uproar at the time, the amount needed to "decolorize" samples of water from Swann Lake (now known as Lake Roland) requiring four and one half to 1,000 volumes, surprisingly compared with the pump water in Block Street taking 22 volumes!

U.S. Geologic Survey 1960 Map of
Serpentine Deposits where
Chromite Ore was mined.

  Chromite ore is a black to brownish black mineral generally found in combination with iron (2 parts chromium to 1 part iron) within serpentine rock deposits in very limited locations within the United States - northwest of Baltimore and a little just north of the Pennsylvania-Maryland border.  According to a U.S. Department of the Interior Geologic Bulletin, it was Isaac Tyson, Jr. (1792-1861) from a well-known Maryland family line of Quakers, who first discovered chromite.  He realized its chemical significance, began mining the ore as early as 1808 on his farm in Bare Hills, and later Soldiers Delight (just east of Liberty Reservoir, Owings Mills, MD) in 1827.  He bought up many of the deposit locations which supplied all of the world's chromite until the late 1800s. Most of the chromite was refined and processed in England until 1845 when he built the Baltimore Chrome Works on what is now known as the Harbor Point peninsula site.

Jesse Tyson (1826-1906)
Photo Courtesy: Cylburn
Asoociation Archives

   One of Isaac's two sons that carried on the family business, Jesse Tyson, lived at the family's winter home at 6 East Franklin Street, became President of the Chrome Works, yet was a bachelor millionaire at the age of 65. As noted in The Sun, he became the subject of a great deal of high society gossip when he started dating Edith Johns, daughter of a local Baltimore bar owner.  The disparity in their ages caused a bit of a stir given Edith (one of the famed "Ten Beauties of Baltimore" at the time) was nineteen, but it didn't stop their marriage which occurred at her father's home on January 26, 1888.  Shortly thereafter, he moved into what is now known as the Cylburn Mansion that was recently completed as architected by prominent Baltimore architect George A. Friedrich.

Edith Johns Tyson (1868-1942)
Photo Courtesy: Cylburn
Association Archives

   In the mid 1890's the plant was either known as the Tyson or Baltimore Chrome Works.  It's main manufacturing building was on streets bounded by Block, Point, Dock, and Will Streets, where The Sun reported a boiler explosion in January 1875 and and major fire on October 6, 1895 which started at the carpenter shop on Block and Philpot streets burned for over an hour where several thousand tons of chrome ore were in the yard along with chrome in barrels damaged along with nearby rigger shops and two fishing skiffs.  Oddly enough, another fire caused $10,000 in damage on December 5th of the same year.

Allied Chemical (Chrome Works),
Photo Courtesy: Mark Layton, c1980

   Chrome production here was enormous by the early part of the 20th century, effectively supplying chrome to nearly the entire U.S. and most of the world.  The safety record was questionable with such a rigor of capacity as evidenced by two fires in five years, the first being on August 2, 1900 which caused approximately $60,000 in damage however, the value of this plant was not to be underestimated.

   On August 6, 1902 after extended negotiations with two Glasgow, Scotland companies and one of Philadelphia, PA, ownership transferred from Jesse Tyson to the latter, when the Kalion Chemical Company purchased the plant for $1,000, 000.

   Just after midnight on the morning of January 22, 1906, fire erupted at the Baltimore Chrome Works and resulted in a heavy financial loss amounting to near $200,000 of the plants' $1M worth at that time according to Washington's Evening Star.  The event was reported in newspapers across the United States and, along with Jesse's death that year, signaled the end of a prosperous line of
Baltimore families.

$5M Harbor Point Development Concept
Photo Courtesy: Ayers-Saint-Gross

  Shortly before his death, unable to continue operations, it was sold and formally merged in May 1906 with Henry Bower Chemical Manufacturing, the Kalion Chemical Company and the Ammonia Company, all of Philadelphia.  In 1985, it was acquired by Allied Chemical (later known as Allied Signal, and then Honeywell) and we have come full circle around from a messy and toxic past on this once scenic peninsula - the streets are nearly all wiped from the map, having been replaced by an environmental dome of protection.  Developers  and Baltimore's Mayor and City Council see the future as "a jewel in the crown of development that encircles Baltimore's Inner Harbor."  Just how long the glimmer will last is anyone's guess.

References: U.S. Geologic Bulletin 1082-K, 1960; MD Dept. of the Environment; and articles from the Baltimore Sun, Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, and Washington Evening Star.