Timeline of Baltimore in the 19th century

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

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.
History of Maryland
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19th century
Map of Baltimore, 1867

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).[1]
  • 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.[2]
    • Dispensary founded and incorporated for providing primitive medical and drug need for indigent citizens of the burgeoning town.[3]
    • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
    • 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.[4]
    • Baltimore Circulating Library in business.[5]
    • 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 the United States. 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).
  • 1809 – Joseph Robinson's Circulating Library established in business.[5]
    • 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.[1]
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • 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.

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.
  • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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.[6]
    • 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.
  • 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.[7]
    • 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.
    • 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 Fort 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.
  • 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.[3]
    • Baltimore Cathedral, under construction since cornerstone laying in 1806, dedicated May 31 by third Archbishop of Baltimore Ambrose Marechal as first 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 Baltimore Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary would not be completed until the 1860s. It 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.[8]
  • 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.[9]
    • 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".
  • 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). 1880s 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.[7]
    • 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.[10]
  • 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.[3]
  • 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 –
  • 1833 –
    • U.S. Supreme Court decides Barron v. Baltimore Federalism-related lawsuit.[11]
    • 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 –
  • 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 the British attack in 1814 convene a meeting on September 13, the day after the local city, county and state holiday of Defenders' Day (traditionally 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. It was also sold at a much cheaper price of one penny whereas others were being sold at around six cents. It would continue to be published for next 177 years, later under the name of A.S. Abell and Company.[12]
    • Washington Hall opens.[8]
    • 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.[13]
    • 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.[14]
  • 1840 –
    • Madison Lyceum active.[7]
    • 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.[15]
  • 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 –
  • 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).[15]
    • 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 east of "The Basin" (later named Inner Harbor) of the harbor during previous year at southeast corner of President and Fleet (previously Canton Avenue) Streets for the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (P.W. & B.) and 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 connecting with older Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line further west on other side of Basin at their first early station at East Pratt and South Charles Streets. The new P.W. & B. terminal is now the "oldest surviving big-city train station in America" also constructed with unique "Howe truss" roof-support system architecture. Later site in eleven years, of "First Bloodshed of Civil War" in the infamous Pratt Street Riots 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 on their way to the Camden Street Station of the B. & O. to head further south to bolster federal defenses at the national capital of Washington, D.C. following the secession of Virginia.
    • 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. In 1980s known as the "Thomas-Jencks-Gladding Mansion" it was first the noted home of Thomas, then Jencks families for a 175 years, and 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 to the Walters Art Gallery) at the urging of longtime Mayor William Donald Schaefer and used as 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 cross-intersection of East Monument and North Gay Streets in what was then known as Ashland Square in the 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 civic, political and religious leaders, followed by militia and various civic societies including the remaining "Old Defenders" from the 1812 War was led. Young privates Wells and McComas of Aisquith's Sharpshooters are traditionally credited with the sharpshooting death of Maj. Gen. Robert Ross in command of the invading British Army before the Battle of North Point skirmish with Maryland militia under Brig.Gen. John Stricker, southeast of the City on the Patapsco Neck peninsula, near Bread and Cheese Creek (now observed annually by city/county/state as Defenders' Day), September 12, 1814, 36 years earlier. The Battle of Baltimore with the British land and sea attack in the War of 1812 on the city is one of the most important events in city/state history. At the "Wells-McComas Monument" ceremonies are concluded with 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).[8]
    • 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.[16]
  • 1852 –
  • 1853 – Baltimore City Police Department established. Succeeds earlier protective system from colonial era Baltimore Town of constables and night watchmen established since 1784. Later placed under authority of Governor of Maryland after "Know-Nothing" Party election riots of 1856 and political scandals of "Know-Nothing" movement of the American Party in 1859–60. Authority taken from the Mayor and City Council with the State's governor who now has the power to appoint the police marshal (later chief or [after 1920] commissioner of police to the 1980s). Similar political movement later in the decade inspired by City Reform League for "good government" that also eliminated various squabbling volunteer fire companies dating back to the 1760s and formed a professionalized municipal government agency with paid firemen, 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 the 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 in municipal elections.
    • 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 / Ferry Branch 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 - 1853) in northern Anne Arundel County. Replaced old ferry operated since colonial times forming connection to southbound road from Maryland's largest city 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 (formerly "Pennington") 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) where he began business, 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 high 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, on site of former home of noted author John P. Kennedy. 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 Winans Cove, by Ferry Bar, southern point at Middle or Ferry Branch of Patapsco River, just east of 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, inventive 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, (now The Baltimore City College - 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 C.H.S. 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). This marks the 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 –
  • 1861 –
  • 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.[8]
    • 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 a legislative 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 ("normal" defined in old term for teacher training and education) 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 time of the Civil War became the Union Club, later the Athenaeum Club after the war. 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 school 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, just north of future 1919 annexation city limits in suburban Baltimore County, becoming the Maryland State Teachers College at Towson, then renamed Towson State College expanding with a wider curriculum as a liberal arts institution, finally as Towson State University, second largest college/university in the state, next to University of Maryland at College Park.[18]
  • 1867 –
    • Concordia Hall is founded.
    • Centenary Biblical Institute founded by then several "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 and later moving to northeast Baltimore on Hillen Road near East Cold Spring Lane. Finally by the 1990s known 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.[17]
    • Pimlico Race Course built by the Maryland Jockey Club opens outside northwest city limits of 1818 of Baltimore city, property annexed into city during Second Major Act of Annexation in 1888. Elaborate wood-frame clubhouse of Victorian architecture with wide wrap-around porch/veranda and wide front steps facing the track is constructed. Landmark clubhouse has cupola painted with colors of owners of winning horses.
  • 1871 – Ford's Grand Opera House opens on West Fayette Street between North Howard and Eutaw Streets, (owned by John T. Ford (1829-1894), who also owned infamous (Ford's Theatre) playhouse on 10th Street, N.W. in Washington and other playhouses in several other cities. He later becomes leading politician in city and as president of the Baltimore City Council, briefly as acting mayor and member of parks board), Ford's Opera House plays major productions from Broadway in New York City when owned in later decades of the 20th century by Morris A. Mechanic, (who later has new modernistic theatre in Charles Center downtown redevelopment from 1958 to the early 1970s. Mechanic operates old Ford's Grand Opera and lasts until 1964, replaced by the 2010s by "Centerpoint" apartment/condo/commercial building at North Howard and West Fayette Streets.[8]
  • 1872 –
  • 1873 –
    • Leadenhall Street Baptist Church built, by "Negro/Colored" Baptists in old south Baltimore, (later African Americans).
    • First running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course which opened three years earlier in 1870 on the northwest edge of the city in what later becomes the Pimlico neighborhood. Owned and operated for many decades by the Maryland Jockey Club which builds an elaborate wood-frame clubhouse of Victorian architecture with a distinctive landmark cupola and wide front steps from the wrap-around extensive porch/veranda facing onto the track. The Preakness becomes one of the "jewels" in what was later called the "Triple Crown" of professional thoroughbred horse racing along with the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky and the Belmont Stakes in Belmont, New York.
    • 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.
    • Big fire destroys Old "Assembly-Rooms" in November, (just across street from under construction project of 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, previously the Male High School in 1844, then "The High School" of 1839 establishment). Before the high school moved in, a third floor with a flat roof surrounded by a balustrade railing was added around 1835. Famous Georgian–Federal style architecture originally with two stories - red brick with white wood trim structure of the old fashionable Baltimore Dancing Assembly for social, civic and literary activities, also balls and dinners/banquets from the 1790s to the 1830s. Also site of early subscription libraries, the Library Company of Baltimore and the Merchants Library. Designed c.1796 by noted local builder/architect Robert Cary Long, Sr. and built by Col. Nicholas Rogers of Druid Hill estate. On north side of Assembly Rooms facing Holliday Street is neighboring famous Holliday Street Theatre which also burns for the second time located on block between East Fayette and Lexington Streets. Famous legendary theater nicknamed "Baltimore's Old Drury" was built 1794, rebuilt in 1812. After fire, theatre will be rebuilt again 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 North 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 Hotel, (later Congress Hotel) and Maryland Theatre constructed nearby in new uptown theater /cultural district.
    • Johns Hopkins (1795–1873), age 78, noted merchant, financier, banker and stockholder of several companies, railroads and steamship lines, dies at his West Saratoga Street townhouse by North Liberty Street (adjacent east of old St. Paul's Church Rectory - site is a 1930s era parking garage in 2019). Later his will is probated to find that years earlier he endows a university, hospital and a medical school, leaving his several estates of "Clifton" for the use of his new The Johns Hopkins University selected board of trustees and bequest also for future educational institutions.
    • 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 rail 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 under allotted budget since October 1867 cornerstone-laying on city block facing Holliday Street between East Fayette and Lexington Streets (also overtop old Orange Alley with North Street - later Guilford Avenue to the west) ceremonies dedicated with great fanfare, civic parade, pride and enthusiasm led by Mayor Joshua Van Sant, replacing various earlier sites since city's incorporation in 1797 (replacing old town commissioners since 1729) and later 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. This Academy also will serve in coming decades as auditorium for the new Johns Hopkins University which will be located just a block north. Built just south of and next to George A. Frederick's new building of English Tudor Revival style for the male high school The Baltimore City College facing North Howard at West Centre Streets which was completed the previous year, but will only last 17 years until collapsing in 1892, to be replaced by a second larger structure of 1895-1928.[8]
    • Free Summer Excursion Society incorporated.[8]
  • 1876 –
    • The Johns Hopkins University founded with opening ceremonies on September 12, at the new Academy of Music on 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)who planned it in the early 1870s. First temporary "campus" of this German-style university established by President Gilman and trustees two blocks north along North Howard Street at intersections with Little Ross Street/West Monument Street instead of as Hopkins' originally thought of and planned at his summer country estate "Clifton" northeast of city. Hopkins bequest plans establishing later a teaching hospital (1889) and a medical school (1893).
    • The Baltimore City Zoo, (later renamed Maryland Zoo in Baltimore in the 1990s) opens in Druid Hill Park on April 7, 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.
    • The Baltimore Cathedral, later renamed Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary facing Cathedral Street, between East Franklin and East Mulberry Streets on "Cathedral Hill", is now finally debt-free, the prelate announced. Constructed for 15 years from 1806-1821 and designed by famous architect Benjamin Latrobe, was consecrated on May 25, 1876 by the then Archbishop of Baltimore James Roosevelt Bayley, 55 years after it was mostly completed.
  • 1877 – Great Railroad Strike:[19] Massive disruptive riots spread throughout the Northeast almost nation-wide in July begins in Martinsburg, West Virginia, hit violently in Pittsburgh and later centers at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's headquarters and main terminal at the Camden Street Station in southwest downtown. Later appeals by B. & O. officials result in the Governor of Maryland calling out the state militia's newly reorganized National Guard of the local Fifth and Sixth Regiments which assembled and marched from their armories with the 5th (nicknamed "The Dandy Fifth") coming south on North Howard Street from its armory above Richmond Market (near modern Read Street) and the 6th coming west from their station at North Front and East Fayette Streets, by the Phoenix Shot Tower, (east bank of the Jones Falls), marching west along East Baltimore Street, several blocks north of the waterfront. The labor dispute and ensuing riots force a violent suppression of the disaffected protesting railroad workers about their drastic pay cuts and austerity measures announced suddenly from the Board of Directors of the B. & O. Railroad resulting from the economic recession continuing since 1873 for four years. Serious bloodshed occurs along the 6th Regiment's line of march along Baltimore Street and around Camden Station with many casualties. Other disturbances continue nationwide resulting in action by newly elected Republican 19th President Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) to mobilize Federal troops in one of the worst widespread civil strife in American history besides the recent Civil War. In later years, the reputation of the 6th Regiment is decimated and it is eventually dissolved.
  • 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 northeast corner of 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).[20]
    • The Grand Lodge Č.S.P.S. of Baltimore is founded to help Czech and Slovak immigrants to Baltimore integrate into American society.
    • Population: 332,313.[17]
  • 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.
    • Northeast Market is opened on East Monument Street's commercial district at intersection with North Chester Street in later renamed neighborhood of Middle East, just several city blocks east of future Johns Hopkins Hospital campus facing Broadway seven years later. This was one of the last of the expanding network of municipal market buildings system which dot the inner Center City since the first Centre Market in the 1760s (on Market Place of eastern Downtown between East Baltimore and East Lombard Streets, north of Inner Harbor) which will number 12 by the mid 20th century, supervised by the office of the City Comptroller.
    • Unknown to many Baltimore citizen passers-by, excavations begin in the late Fall on West Mulberry Street near Cathedral Street on properties recently acquired by local merchant and businessman Enoch Pratt (1808-1896). Later announced the following January 1882 for construction of a new central public library building to be donated to the people of the city.
  • 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 in January to the Mayor and City Council with planned central building and initially four (later a fifth branch 2 years later and a sixth in a decade) branches in four quarters of the city with circulating books, along with $833,333.33 an endowment of $1,058,000, if the City will promise to continue to support and provide for it. Unbeknownst to Baltimoreans, demolition and excavation of earlier townhouses on site and construction of "Old Central" Library designed by well known local architect Charles L. Carson, in a Romanesque style of architecture, in white marble was already underway since Fall 1881 at a cost of $250,000. The additional first four branches of red brick and buff stone trim but in similar but simpler style by Carson with a capacity of 15,000 volumes each, will cost a total of $50,000 for a total outlay of $1,145,833.33 (over 1.1 million dollars) given to the Board of Trustees set up by Pratt after agreements are reached with the city and state legislature approving the gifts. Completing construction of all structures by September 1884, and opening later in January 1886, after four to five years construction, with an initial collection of 28,000 books, facing West Mulberry Street, west of Cathedral Street with the branches following.
    • 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 (grammar/primary) school building on the east side of Courtland Street (now Saint Paul Street/Place) in the area of the current terraced "Preston Gardens", which replaced it by the razing of five north-to-south city blocks in 1914, 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 earlier 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 in 1925) founded on East Saratoga Street, between North Charles and St. Paul Streets, near the former location of the earlier private Douglass Institute of 1865, providing educational opportunities for new freedmen (free Blacks and former slaves). Influenced by nearby Newton University of 1845, on the 200 block of East Lexington Street (between North Calvert, Davis Street (alley), and North Streets – later Guilford Avenue).
    • Baltimore Young Women's Christian Association founded. First Y.W.C.A. building located at West Saratoga and North Charles Streets (site of former St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral of city's Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore), later relocated with substantial building at northeast corner of Park Avenue and West Franklin Streets.
  • 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" to a large stone structure with landmark tower, designed by famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White of New York City (with local supervising architect Charles L. Carson) as a "Centennial Monument" for the founding of American Methodism, at St. Paul Street and 23rd Street (now Charles Village). Uses name of "First Methodist Episcopal Church". Later changes name from "First M. E. Church" back to the original historic name Lovely Lane Methodist Episcopal 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
    • Dr. Lewis Henry Steiner is chosen to become the first Librarian of the planned Enoch Pratt Free Library in November after several months deliberation by Pratt and his Board. Steiner is one of the state's most distinguished scholars with a well-known reputation. Charles Evans is chosen as Assistant Librarian. Steiner serves for eight years in 1892 upon his death and is succeeded by his son. He begins the many plans and work to set and prepare the new Pratt Library for opening.
  • 1885 –
  • 1886 – Opening ceremonies held at Academy of Music (grand luxurious theatre auditorium on North Howard Street recently built/opened 1875) with many notables, honored guests and citizens/patrons in attendance for the new Central Building and four neighborhood branches (fifth added 2 years later) of Enoch Pratt's (1808-1896), 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 system than the earlier bequest of the George Peabody Library of 1857/1866/1878 two decades earlier by similar former city merchant/banker George Peabody (1795-1869), whom Pratt had served as treasurer. The new Pratt Library is a circulating public library system, with a central headquarters / main library and numerous community branches scattered through Baltimore, first in America. Buildings planned and designed by local architect Charles L. Carson, who also designs similar subsequent branches numbers 5 and 6 a few years later.
  • 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 Act of Annexation of land by the City from surrounding Baltimore County, known as "The Belt", adds 23 square miles and 38,000 new residents. Referendum election held and is divided into three sections: West, North and East, two of which approve, but the Eastern side with the large towns of Canton and Higlandtown with their packed streets of rowhouses, heavy industrial businesses vote against the bill and are not taken into the City until 31 years later with the next Third Major Annexation of 1918–1919.
    • - Fifth branch of new Enoch Pratt Free Library system opens on west side of Broadway, (north of East Monument Street), in northeast corner of city (near future Johns Hopkins Hospital buildings / campus which opens a year later - 1889. EPFL system established six years earlier in 1882 by hardware merchant / banker and philanthropist Enoch Pratt (1808-1896), and constructed with a central library on West Mulberry Street, west of Cathedral Street and four neighborhood branches of similar architecture by Charles L. Carson (plus new Broadway branch number 5 also) opened two years earlier in 1886.
    • "The Daily Record" legal, real estate and business affairs newspaper reorganized and founded. Later owned and published by noted Warfields family.
    • Municipal architect George A. Frederick (1842-1924), designs a glass conservatory later named the "Palm House" for Druid Hill Park, (which opened 28 years earlier in 1860). Park land site for the "house of plants" was selected in 1873 and the Baltimore City Conservatory and Botanical Gardens was opened on August 26, the largest and one of four in the several major city parks. Earlier during the Union Army's occupation of the city, some of the future park was used for Fort #5 and various regiments from several states were stationed there briefly for guard duty, so in recent decades archeological digs have found Civil War artifacts. In 1948, a significant civil rights demonstration was staged nearby to protest the segregation of adjacent tennis courts, two black and white tennis clubs peacefully competed against each other on the "whites only" courts with over 500 watching, the police were called and many arrested. A civil court case was filed and went through the city and state courts until lost at the highest level of the Appeals Court of Maryland refused to hear the case. But a decade later racial restrictions on all city park facilities were removed. Over the 132 years of this landmark structure, it has been changed and renovated several times, most recently in 2004 when two rear class pavilions similar in style to the 1888 work were added and the original Palm House restored / renovated. It is the last botanical conservatory from the original beautiful four that once later dotted Baltimore parks in the late 19th/early 20th centuries Gilded Age: (Patterson Park (1876), Clifton Park (built by Johns Hopkins at his country estate before his death in 1873), Carroll Park, and this remaining landmark in Druid Hill Park. It was also renamed in the early 21st century in memory of a deceased Maryland state senator and father of a mayor, Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens of Baltimore
  • 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 center clock tower opposite old 1805/09 [second] Baltimore City Courthouse (at Calvert and Lexington). Replaced earlier 1862–1865 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/rear addition to this 1889 Courthouse).[6] A decade later, a new massive monumental matching City Courthouse is erected on opposite/west side of the Battle Monument Square during 1896-1900.
    • 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.[17]
    • 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 1890s 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) and becomes longtime publisher and succeeded by his descendants. The "Afro" later grows with several other similarly named papers in nearby cities into a chain / syndicate for "Colored/Negro" Afro-American citizens in Maryland and nearby states.
    • 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).
  • 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".
  • 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" for the new institution and the literary resources of the also nearby 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 on the Wyman Villa estate donated by William Wyman which also includes land to the west for Wyman Park and the earlier old Charles Carroll, Jr./Charles Carroll of Homewood's 1800 estate of "Homewood" along North Charles Street. "Clifton" is built in the early 19th century by Henry Thompson who commanded a local militia cavalry unit in the War of 1812 defense of the City in the Battle of Baltimore, "Clifton" Mansion becomes future headquarters for a time of the Baltimore City Bureau of Parks and later occupied by a non-profit organization Civic Works and begins a renovation/restoration project with publicizing its historical and architectural character. Clifton Park is later surrounded by a well-known public golf course and Lake Clifton, a supplementary reservoir for public water supply system.[6]
  • 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.
    • Enoch Pratt (1808-1896), benefactor and founder for the city's public library in 1882/1886 and named for him (Enoch Pratt Free Library on West Mulberry Street and five local branches) dies in September and is buried in Green Mount Cemetery. His library system's collection has increased from 75,000 volumes to 187,000 books. Circulation has increased from 400,000 books to 650,000 copies. Local civic leader and original board member James A. Gary becomes first President of the Board. The sixth branch library (also similar to Carson's other five previous buildings) opens in November, two months after the founder's death on Saint Paul Street in the Peabody Heights (later known as Charles Village) neighborhood in the north.
  • 1897 – Baltimore celebrates 100th Anniversary Centennial of incorporation as a city in 1796/1797, growing from Baltimore Town.
    • 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.

References
  1. Fry 1812.
  2. "History of Fort McHenry". U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved September 15, 2012.
  3. Varle 1833.
  4. Keenan 1822.
  5. Davies Project. "American Libraries before 1876". Princeton University. Retrieved September 15, 2012.
  6. Britannica 1910.
  7. Yeatman 1985.
  8. Scharf 1881.
  9. Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell (1903), "Chronology", The medical annals of Maryland, 1799–1899, Baltimore: [Press of Williams & Wilkins company], OL 6966537M
  10. Michel S. Laguerre (2005). "Hatians in the United States". In Melvin Ember; et al. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Springer. p. 828+. ISBN 978-0-306-48321-9.
  11. M.F. Mikula; et al., eds. (1999), Great American Court Cases, Gale
  12. "US Newspaper Directory". Chronicling America. Washington DC: Library of Congress. Retrieved September 25, 2012.
  13. Charles Coffin Jewett (1851), Notices of public libraries in the United States of America, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
  14. Cox 1979.
  15. Woods 1858.
  16. Steven Anzovin and Janet Podell, ed. (2000). Famous First Facts. H.W. Wilson Co. ISBN 0824209583.
  17. Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990, US Census Bureau, 1998
  18. "Baltimore", Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), New York: New York : Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910, OCLC 14782424
  19. Aaron Brenner; Benjamin Day; Immanuel Ness, eds. (2015) [2009]. "Timeline". Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-45707-7.
  20. 150th Anniversary 1881.
  21. "American and Western Photographic Societies", International Annual of Anthony's Photographic Bulletin, New York: E. & H. T. Anthony & Company, 1890

Bibliography
  • 1730–1880: Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Settlement of Baltimore Town, Printed by order of the Mayor and City Council, 1881, OL 19368892M
  • Cox, Richard J. (1979). "The Plight of American Municipal Archives: Baltimore, 1729–1979" (PDF). The American Archivist. 42 (3). pp. 281–292.
  • "Baltimore". Baltimore. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). New York. 1910. OCLC 14782424 – via Internet Archive.
  • William Fry (1812), Fry's Baltimore directory, for the year 1812, Baltimore: Printed by B.W. Sower, & Co. for the publisher, OL 24653908M
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