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A History of Firsts in Baltimore
The Baltimore Museum of Industry
From its founding in 1729, Baltimore's proximity to the Chesapeake Bay was the engine that drove commerce, trade and industry. The most inland port on the eastern seaboard, Baltimore boomed as a leading city, center of industrial innovation and transportation hub linking the National Road, the B&O Railroad and the Bay. The Baltimore Museum of Industry celebrates and explores this side of Baltimore, highlighting the city's many first---from the invention of the first railroad and first artificial lighting to the manufacture of the first umbrellas.
The hands-on museum displays Baltimore's major industries over 100 years in shipping, printing, garments, machining, broadcasting, food canning, and even a corner pharmacy. Just outside you can visit the coal-fired S.S. Baltimore, the only operating steam tugboat on the East Coast and a National Historic Landmark, once used to guide larger commercial vessels in and out of port and into the Chesapeake Bay.
Canning the Bay's Bounty:
The Baltimore Museum of Industry is located in the original 130 old old Plant Oyster building, the only surviving cannery structure (the balance of the text is not legible).
Chesapeake Connection:
Although the Chesapeake Bay will produce about 500 million pounds of seafood each year, the Bay's oyster population has declined dramatically since the late 1970s, due to a combination of over harvesting, disease, and pollution. Today the local oyster population's at about 2 percent of historic levels. |