Baltimore

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Baltimore's fortuitous location on the northern Chesapeake Bay has been at the heart of its social and economic development. Farther inland than other eastern seaport, the city is convenient to landlocked areas. Water-related industry quickly developed around Baltimore harbor, and when tracks for the nation's first railroad were laid there in 1829, the thriving port city increased both its accessibility to other cities and its attractiveness to immigrants and investors.

Through careful city planning and cooperation between public and private investors, Baltimore has entered the ranks of America's "comeback cities" in recent years. Its downtown business district has been transformed into a mecca of sparkling new hotels, retail centers, and office buildings. But Baltimore has not wholly exchanged its traditional working-class image for high-technology polish. Many of its urban renewal programs focus on the preservation or renovation of historical buildings and neighborhoods amidst new construction. For example, its wildly popular Oriole Park at Camden Yards offers state-of-the-art amenities in a turn-of-the-century style baseball stadium. Nicknamed the "charmed city," Baltimore has become a top tourist destination.

The City in Brief

For more information on Baltimore, visit Britannica.com.

Baltimore, Maryland.Although Baltimore was the scene of occasional theatricals in the early 18th century, it long played second fiddle to nearby Annapolis, which called itself “The Athens of America” and where Douglass, Hallam, and the American Company performed regularly. Thomas Wall and Adam Lindsay built Baltimore's first important playhouse in 1781 on East Baltimore Street and opened it in January of the following year. In 1794 Thomas Wignell and Alexander Reinagle erected the Holliday Street Theatre, which with several rebuildings remained a major playhouse throughout the 19th century. One of its later managers was John T. Ford, who also built Ford's Theatre there. In the 20th century the city served as a relatively important touring and tryout town, although by the Great Depression the only surviving active playhouse was Ford's. The theatre was demolished in 1964, and the city had no regular legitimate theatre until the opening of the Morris Mechanic in 1967. Downtown Baltimore, and the riverfront district in particular, was revitalized in the late 1970s and theatregoing has continued to flourish at the Mechanic, the Center Stage, the Everyman Theatre, the Lyric Opera House, and other venues.

Baltimore, the largest city in Maryland, was founded as a port city in 1729 and then incorporated as a city in 1796. Baltimore takes its name from Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore. Due to its vast natural harbor, the city served as a shipbuilding and transportation hub for the Middle Atlantic states throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During the growth of railroads in the 1830s, Baltimore served as a headquarters for the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the largest in North America. The city continued to compete vigorously with Philadelphia and New York into the twentieth century, gaining Bethlehem Steel's main shipyards and maintaining large port facilities. Heavy industry's movement away from major cities in the 1950s and 1960s contributed to Baltimore's sharp economic decline. Beginning in the 1950s, city leaders attempted to reverse its fortunes.

The city's renewal efforts rank among the most ambitious in the United States. William Schaefer, the city's outspoken mayor from 1971 to 1986, managed construction of the Inner Harbor Project, the National Aquarium, the Maryland Science Center, as well as a convention center and two waterfront malls. Neighborhoods, however, lagged, and lost business to the harbor area, but Schaefer obtained federal money for housing improvement loans and neighborhood pride projects. Despite these efforts neighborhoods continued to decline and the drug trade flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, blighting neighborhoods even further.

Baltimore's African American population increased from 24 percent in 1950 to more than 60 percent in 1994, and in 1987 the city elected Kurt Schmoke its first black mayor. After his reelection in 1991, the stimulus of urban reconstruction was almost over, federal and state funds had dried up, and the tourist boom had leveled off. Schmoke and Schaefer, the latter was elected governor in 1987, persuaded the Maryland legislature to expand the city's transportation system; to assume certain expenses from its community college, libraries, zoo, and jail; and to build a stadium, Camden Yards, beside the Inner Harbor for the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. Even as the city declined in population and wealth, it was merging with its suburbs and surrounding area. In 1993, the U.S. Census Bureau recognized a combined Washington-Washington-Baltimore Consolidated Statistical Area. The city's population dropped from 950,000 in 1950 to 736,000 in 1990 and then to 651,154 in 2000. Despite a booming economy, the population drop in Baltimore was among the largest in U.S. cities during the 1990s. The 2000 mayoral election emphasized the crisis of Baltimore's neighborhoods as the city's social network continues to struggle.

Bibliography

Callcott, George H. Maryland and America, 1940 to 1980. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Fee, Elizabeth. et al., eds. The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

Olson, Sherry H. Baltimore: The Building of an American City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Orser, W. Edward. Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Edmondson Village Story. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.

—George H. Callcott

Largest city in Maryland.

• Named after Lord Baltimore, founder of the colony of Maryland. The city is a major industrial center and port.

Dansk (Danish)
n. - Baltimore

Deutsch (German)
n. - Baltimore

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮בלטימור‬

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