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Baltimore, Maryland:
(County: Independent City)

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Baltimore is located in northern Maryland at the head of navigation of the Patapsco River, which empties into the western portion of the Chesapeake Bay. Major cities within 100 miles include Washington, DC; Wilmington, Delaware; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Area (land): 80.8 sq mi
Park Acres (as % of Land Area): 0.1
Area (water): 11.3 sq mi
Elevation: 32 ft
Latitude: 39-29-51 N
Longitude: 76-62-31 W
Time Zone: EST
Area Code: 410, 443 sq mi
State Sales Tax: 0.05
State Corporate Income Tax: 0.07
State Individual Income Tax: 2.0 - 4.75%
Local Individual Income Tax: 3.05% of taxable income


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

Founded: 1696 (incorporated 1797)
Head Official: Mayor Martin O'Malley (D) (since 1999)
City Population
1980: 786,741
1990: 736,014
2000: 651,154
2003 estimate: 628,670
Percent change, 1990–2000: −11.5%
U.S. rank in 1980: 10th (MSA)
U.S. rank in 1990: 12th (MSA)
U.S. rank in 2000: 23rd (State rank: 1st)
Metropolitan Area Population (CMSA)
1990: 6,727,050
2000: 7,608,070
Percent change, 1990–2000: 13.1%
U.S. rank in 1980: 15th
U.S. rank in 1990: 18th
U.S. rank in 2000: 4th
Area: 80.8 square miles (2000)
Elevation: 148 feet above sea level
Average Annual Temperature: 55.1° F
Average Annual Precipitation: 41.94 inches (22.7 inches of snow)
Major Economic Sectors: services, government, wholesale and retail trade
Unemployment rate: 4.2% (December 2004)
Per Capita Income: $16,978 (1999)
2002 FBI Crime Index Total: 55,820
Major Colleges and Universities: Johns Hopkins University, Towson State University, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Morgan State University Loyola College
Daily Newspaper:The Baltimore Sun
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(bôl'tə-môr', -mōr') pronunciation

A city of northern Maryland on an arm of Chesapeake Bay northeast of Washington, D.C. It has been a busy port since the 18th century. Population: 631,000.

Baltimorean Bal'ti·mor'e·an n.

City (pop., 2010: 620,961), north-central Maryland, U.S. Located at the head of the Patapsco River estuary, 15 mi (24 km) above Chesapeake Bay, it is Maryland's largest city and economic hub. Established in 1729, it was named after the Irish barony of Baltimore (seat of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland). It became the first U.S. Roman Catholic diocese in 1789. In 1827 the nation's first railroad began operations there. In World War I, Baltimore began to develop industrially, and it has since become a major seaport.

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

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Baltimore, city (1990 pop. 736,014), N central Md., surrounded by but politically independent of Baltimore co., on the Patapsco River estuary, an arm of Chesapeake Bay; inc. 1745. The largest city in the state, it is a commercial and industrial center, a major railhead, and a seaport with extensive anchorages and dock and storage facilities. Coal, grain, and iron, steel, and copper products are exported. Among Baltimore's leading industries are shipbuilding, sugar and food processing, oil refining, biotechnology, and the manufacture of chemicals, steel, copper, clothing, and aerospace equipment.

Institutions and Attractions

A cultural and educational center, Baltimore is the seat of The Johns Hopkins Univ. with its famous medical center, the Univ. of Baltimore, Morgan State Univ., Loyola College in Maryland, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Coppin State Univ., and the Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore, with schools of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, law, and social work. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has had its headquarters in the city since 1986. Also there are the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Maryland Academy of Sciences, the Walters Art Gallery, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. The Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra are well known. Since the 1970s filmmakers including John Waters and Barry Levinson have made Baltimore scenes widely familiar, as has novelist Anne Tyler.

The city's historical sites include Flag House; the first Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States (1806-21; designed by B. H. Latrobe); the Edgar Allan Poe House (c.1830); Westminster Churchyard, where Poe is buried; Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine (see National Parks and Monuments, table); the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum; and numerous colonial homes. The U.S.S. Constellation, the first U.S. navy ship (1797) and a national historic shrine, as well as other historic ships, are docked at Baltimore's Harborplace.

Other landmarks are the historic square Mt. Vernon Place, which contains the Washington Monument (1815-42; designed by Robert Mills); Druid Hill Park, with a zoo and a natural history museum; and Pimlico Race Course, site of the Preakness, held annually since 1873. Many of the city's famous streets of redbrick row houses with scrubbed white steps still exist, although recent populaton loss has led to much demolition. H. L. Mencken, Babe Ruth, and Billie Holiday were born in Baltimore. Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport is nearby.

History

The site was settled in the early 17th cent. and Baltimore founded in 1729. The excellent harbor soon made it a center for the shipping of tobacco and grain. Shipbuilding, an early industry, flourished during the Revolution and the War of 1812 with the fitting out of many privateers, and in the early 1800s the famous Baltimore clippers were built. The nation's wars have played a large role in the city's history. When the British occupied (1777) Philadelphia, Baltimore became the meeting place of the Continental Congress. In the War of 1812 the gallant defense of Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-spangled Banner."

After the War of 1812, Baltimore experienced phenomenal growth, largely because of the National Road. When the Erie Canal (completed in 1825) endangered the city's hold on trans-Allegheny traffic, Baltimore businessmen chartered (1827) the Baltimore & Ohio RR to meet the competition of New York as the ocean outlet for the West. During the Civil War, Baltimore was strongly pro-Southern in sentiment; the 6th Massachusetts Regiment, passing through the city in Apr., 1861, was attacked by a mob. A disastrous fire in 1904 destroyed almost the entire downtown but enabled the emergence of a better planned city.

In World Wars I and II, Baltimore was an important shipbuilding and supply-shipping center. During the 1960s and 70s, however, Baltimore decayed rapidly, losing population and commerce, largely to neighboring suburbs. Urban redevelopment in the late 1970s and 1980s included the construction of Harborplace (shops and restaurants) in the Inner Harbor area, the National Aquarium, shopping pavilions, hotels, a convention center, the Maryland Science Center, and the American Visionary Art Museum. Waterside renewal continued through the 1990s, and old neighborhoods such as Fells Point became newly popular. In 1983 a rapid-transit line to the suburbs was opened. In 1992, Baltimore's professional baseball team, the Orioles, moved to the new Oriole Park at Camden Yards; the National Football League's Ravens began play nearby in 1998.

Bibliography

See J. T. Scharf, History of Baltimore (1881; repr. in 2 vol., 1971) and The Chronicles of Baltimore (1874, repr. 1972); S. Olsen, Baltimore (1976) and Baltimore: The Building of an American City (1980); R. Miller et al., Baltimore (1988).


(Dūn na Sēad) Cork. ‘Townland of the big house’. The English name represents Irish Baile na Tighe Mór, while the present Irish name means ‘fort of the jewels’.

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Largest city in Maryland.

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

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Baltimore, MD

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Last updated May 23, 2012 11:49 (EST)

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Baltimore, Maryland

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It is 1:10 PM, May 23, in Baltimore (Maryland).

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Baltimore

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Baltimore

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - Baltimore

Deutsch (German)
n. - Baltimore

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮בלטימור‬


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St. John's Catechism (1990 Spirituality & Philosophy Film)
Middle River (river, Maryland)
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