Fell's Point

Jacqueline Greff

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781439613092
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Fell's Point documents the interesting history of this diverse Baltimore community.

Fell's Point, Baltimore's original deep-water port, was founded in 1726 by William Fell, a shipbuilder from England. The community's shipyards developed the famed Baltimore Clippers; built two of the first ships in the United States Navy, the USS Constellation and the USS Enterprise; and financed the privateers that helped win the War of 1812. In the late 19th century, Baltimore was second only to Ellis Island as an entry port for European immigrants, many of whom initially settled in Fell's Point. When the Great Fire of 1904 swept through Baltimore, Fell's Point was the only historic neighborhood that survived. In the 1960s fight to keep from being demolished for an expressway, Fell's Point became Maryland's first district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today in Fell's Point, cultures, lifestyles, and generations mingle in a romantic seaport setting accented by working tugboats, cobblestone streets, tiny brick rowhouses, and a dazzling variety of bars, restaurants, shops, and coffeehouses.

Two

SAILORS, IMMIGRANTS, AND INDUSTRY

With the advent of metal steamships after the Civil War, Baltimore moved its port facilities downstream, and the community began a long, slow decline. Fell’s Point’s bars, brothels, boardinghouses, and missions continued to cater to seamen, and it became the point of entry for waves of immigrants who found work in the canneries and other industries that thrived on its harbor location. This 1930s photo shows the 1600 block of Thames Street looking east. In the center is the southernmost Broadway Market building, which no longer exists. (Photo by A. Aubrey Bodine, © Jennifer Bodine.)

The Anchorage was founded in 1892 as an extension of the Port Mission to provide boarding for seamen. The first building was located where the Recreation Pier now stands. The building above was erected in 1900. The YMCA ran it from 1929 to 1955, when it closed, having served over 5 million seafarers. For the next 20 years, it housed a cider and vinegar factory. It has been the Admiral Fell Inn, a historic hotel, since 1985.

This photo shows executive secretary Frank Mitchell and various members outside the Anchorage Seamen’s Branch, YMCA, on September 9, 1938. (Photo above by the Hughes Co.; photo to the left by G. H. Anderson; both courtesy of the Admiral Fell Inn.)

Above are the lobby and reading room of the Anchorage in 1942. According to Steve Bunker, Fell’s Point was once known as “Shanghai town” and “an exceedingly rough place.” One of America’s last shanghai incidents occurred as recently as 1948. Seaman Jim Tomas went to sleep in his bed at the Anchorage one evening and woke up on a Chinese freighter bound for the African coast.

Above is a photo of the boys of Hamilton Junior High Y Club baking cookies for the seamen’s Christmas packages. Three thousand or more packages were distributed each Christmas season. Over 200 groups and 1,000 individuals cooperated to bake, pack, and distribute the packages. (Photos by the Hughes Co., courtesy of the Admiral Fell Inn.)

Tugboats have been a fixture in Fell’s Point since Vane Brothers moved here from Inner Harbor in the 1950s. In this 1972 photo, a series of tugs are stacked with Domino Sugar as a backdrop.

In this 1930s photo, an unknown woman poses on Broadway Pier. In the background, a ship and tug are tied up at Recreation Pier. Henderson’s Wharf is visible at the right rear. (Both photos courtesy of the Preservation Society.)

Low wages and poor working conditions gave rise to a number of seamen’s unions. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) building above was located on Aliceanna Street. For a detailed account of strikes, boycotts, and union battles that occurred here in the 1920s and 1930s, see The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History, chapter eight, by Linda Zeidman and Eric Hallengren. (Photo by John Horn.)

With the sailors also came bars that catered to them. This photo is from inside the Waterfront bar in 1972, across from the tugs on the upper left of the opposite page. The Waterfront was featured in many episodes of the Homicide TV show. (Photo courtesy of the Preservation Society.)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Baltimore was one of the leading ports of entry for immigration into the United States, second only to Ellis Island. By 1913, Baltimore was averaging 40,000 immigrants per year, and immigration had become a big business. Conditions in the economy accommodations or steerage of the ships of this era were deplorable. Sanitation and ventilation were poor, and washrooms and lavatories inadequate. Each person had a berth for sleeping and storage of baggage that measured six feet by two feet, with two feet of space above. In the 1907 photo above, The Steerage, passengers crowd onto the deck for fresh air. (Photo by Alfred Stieglizt, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-62880.)

Between 1830 and 1850, thousands of Germans from Bremen landed at Henderson’s Wharf. By 1868, a fourth of the 160,000 population of Baltimore was German. Poles began to settle here in the 1880s, and by t...