There are cities that exist within the stories that make up history, and there are cities that actually make history, like Baltimore.
From the storied writing of the national anthem to the courtrooms that deconstructed segregation; from the home that nurtured one of literature’s most mysterious figures; to a bar that quietly held a community together for generations…
Baltimore rewards the curious and the offbeat. Are you a history buff? A baseball fan? Someone who wants to understand how the rights Americans hold dear were won?
Baltimore has something to say to you.
2400 East Fort Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21230
On the night of September 13, 1814, the British Royal Navy rained down a 25-hour bombardment on the star-shaped fort that guarded Baltimore Harbor. Over 1,000 American soldiers held the line while a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched the assault from a British ship. He’d gone to negotiate a prisoner’s release, but before the night was over he would pen one of the United States’ most iconic tunes. At dawn, when Key saw the American flag still flying, he began writing what would become “The Star-Spangled Banner”, also known as the national anthem.
During the Civil War, the fort served as a prison for Confederate soldiers and political sympathizers. In one of the war’s most significant legal flashpoints, a man named John Merryman was held here without charge. The case reached the Supreme Court and challenged President Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. The fort was also continuously used by U.S. armed forces through WWI, when it served as an army hospital. It was designated a National Monument in 1939. The park’s “Rodman Battery” is one of the most complete collections of Civil War-era seacoast cannons in the country.
699 Washington Place (699 North Charles Street), Baltimore, MD 21201
Before the one in Washington, D.C., there was Baltimore’s Washington Monument. The obelisk was begun in 1815 and was the first significant architectural monument built in the United States to honor George Washington. It was also one of the earliest major monuments erected anywhere in the newly formed USA. Designed by architect Robert Mills (who would later design the D.C. monument), the 178-foot Doric marble column stands at the heart of the elegant Mount Vernon neighborhood.
The monument was built on land donated by Colonel John Eager Howard, a Revolutionary War hero, and constructed from marble quarried in the Baltimore region.
“Mount Vernon Baltimore” by alwright1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
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203 North Amity Street, Baltimore, MD 21223
Poe was born in Boston, but Baltimore absolutely shaped him. A modest two-and-a-half-story rowhouse in the Poppleton neighborhood is where the master of the macabre lived from 1833 to 1835. It was here, under low slanted ceilings accessible by a narrow winding staircase, that Poe wrote some of his earliest and most celebrated works.
The house was nearly demolished in 1938 to make way for public housing, but was saved by the Edgar Allan Poe Society, opened as a museum in 1949, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
Poe is also buried in Baltimore — his grave at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground (519 West Fayette Street) is one of the city’s most-visited landmarks. For over 75 years, a mysterious figure known as the “Poe Toaster” left cognac and roses on his grave each January 19th, his birthday.
“108a.DruidHillAve.BaltimoreMD.11June2019” by Elvert Barnes is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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1320 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217
Baltimore was an engine of the American civil rights movement.
Known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” Dr. Lillie Carroll Jackson led the Baltimore branch of the NAACP from 1935 to 1970. This was one of the longest tenures of any chapter president in the organization’s history. Under her leadership, Baltimore’s NAACP membership grew from 100 to over 17,600 members. She spearheaded campaigns to register Black voters, desegregate Baltimore’s public schools, and ensure equal employment. Her Eutaw Place home, now a museum, was literally the command center of the civil rights movement in Maryland.
Statue at U.S. District Courthouse, 101 West Lombard Street | Childhood home marker at 1632 Division Street
Thurgood Marshall was born and raised in Baltimore, growing up in the Marble Hill/Upton neighborhood of West Baltimore. He attended the city’s segregated schools and was later rejected by the University of Maryland Law School because he was Black. He eventually earned his law degree from Howard University, graduating first in his class. He returned to sue that very same University of Maryland in 1935. He won the case.
Marshall went on to argue Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954. This landmark case resulted in the decision that declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. After that ruling, Baltimore was the first southern city to begin integrating its schools. In 1967, Marshall became the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
A bronze statue honors him outside the U.S. District Courthouse on Lombard Street. A historical marker stands at 1632 Division Street, site of the home where he grew up. Baltimore/Washington International Airport bears his name.
830 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21202
The Lewis Museum opened in 2005 and is a Smithsonian affiliate. Its collection of more than 11,000 objects, artifacts, documents, and photographs spans 400 years of Maryland history beginning from the Middle Passage and spanning all the way through the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights Movement, voting rights campaigns, and beyond.
The building’s architects deliberately incorporated the colors of the Maryland state flag, beginning on the exterior and flowing inside. As one of the designers put it, they “Afrocentrized” the flag in recognition of the museum’s location next to the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House.
“Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture” by KellyDoyle is marked with CC0 1.0 
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216 Emory Street, Baltimore, MD 21230
George Herman “Babe” Ruth was born on February 6, 1895 in this modest Baltimore rowhouse, now just a “long fly ball” from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The museum preserves the upstairs bedroom where Ruth was born, along with rare artifacts, family memorabilia, and a comprehensive history of the Baltimore Orioles, Ravens, and Colts.
Follow the baseball bats painted on the sidewalk from the museum to the Babe Ruth statue at Camden Yards. The museum stays open until 7pm on Orioles game days.
“Babe Ruth’s Birthplace Memorabilia” by Jim, the Photographer is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .
Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighbourhood has been a hub of LGBTQ+ life for decades, home to historic bars, galleries, and gathering spaces. The city also claims filmmaker John Waters, whose transgressive, camp films starting in the 1960s challenged mainstream American notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Waters is upheld as one of Baltimore’s most beloved cultural sons. Waters grew up in the Baltimore suburbs and has always called the city home.
John Waters’ film Pink Flamingos (1972) is widely regarded as a foundational text of queer transgressive cinema.
Waters’ Hairspray (1988) prominently featured racial integration in 1960s Baltimore and was adapted into a Tony Award–winning Broadway musical.
Baltimore’s annual Pride festival, Baltimore Pride, dates to 1975 and is one of the longest-running in the mid-Atlantic region.
The city hosted the first U.S. conference on transgender identity in the 1970s, partly facilitated by Johns Hopkins — the first hospital in the country to perform gender-affirming surgeries.
2418 St Paul St, Baltimore, MD 21218
The anchor institution of Baltimore’s LGBTQ community, offering services, resources, and community programming. Its predecessor organization, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore (GLCCB), has roots stretching back to the early 1970s — among the earliest such organizations in the country. Located in the Charles Village neighbourhood, a longtime heart of Baltimore’s queer life.
1415 Key Hwy, Baltimore, MD 21230
Housed in an 1865 oyster cannery on the Inner Harbor, this museum celebrates the working people who built Baltimore into one of America’s great industrial cities. Hands-on exhibits cover garment manufacturing, printing, canning, and more. Many exhibits are complete with the original machinery still in working order.
The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 9am–4pm.
400 Cathedral St, Baltimore, MD 21201
Founded in 1882 as one of America’s first truly free public library systems, the Pratt Library was a model Andrew Carnegie studied before funding libraries across the country. Edgar Allan Poe’s manuscripts are held in its special collections. H.L. Mencken — Baltimore’s most famous journalist and literary critic — donated his personal library and papers here.
