Alternative names | Baltimore Custom House, Old Custom House |
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General information | |
Architectural style | "Greco-Roman" (American Neoclassical) |
Coordinates | 39°17′19″N76°36′32″W / 39.2886°N 76.6088°W |
Year(s) built | 1815–1820 |
Demolished | 1901–1902 |
Cost | $200,000 |
Technical details | |
Size | 1,275,610 ft3 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Maximilian Godefroy |
The Baltimore Exchange Building, also known as the first Baltimore Custom House, the Merchants' Exchange Building, and the Baltimore Government Building was a structure in Maryland, United States that housed an eclectic array of commercial enterprises and government offices during the 19th century. The Merchants' Exchange Building site was bounded by Water Street, Gay Street, and Lombard Street.
The H-shaped Exchange Building was designed by Benjamin Latrobe and Maximilian Godefroy, [1] and constructed under the supervision of Jacob Small beginning in 1815. [2] The U.S. government paid for the erection of the custom-house wing in 1817. [3] The building opened to the public in 1820. [2]
The Irish comedic actor Tyrone Power visited Baltimore in the 1830s and described the building as a handsome failure: [4]
The Merchants' Hall (usually called the Merchants Exchange) built by private subscription, has been a great failure with regard to the value of the stock. It is a noble building and of grand dimensions; the front being 255 feet by a depth of 140, having four stories, including the ground floor. The great hall, where the merchants daily assemble, is 86 by 53 feet, and lighted from the dome, whose summit is 90 feet from the floor. The sides of the hall are supported by columns of marble; each being a single block. An excellent newsroom, custom-house, and other public offices, adjoin. It was only built ten years since, at an expence of 200,000 dollars; but the original subscribers have sunk most of their money, from that part of the build ing which was constructed for letting out to shopkeepers and lawyers being unoccupied.
An 1845 advertisement marketing the hotel within the building promised "large and airy" rooms, and that it was "located convenient to all the PRINCIPAL STEAMBOAT LANDINGS and RAILROAD DEPOTS." [5]
In its day it was "the most important structure in Baltimore," even hosting the offices of Baltimore City Hall for a time. [6] The federal government acquired most (but not all) of the building with purchases in 1853 and 1857. [3] Before the American Civil War there was a hotel on the Gay Street side. [4] In 1884 a newspaper reporter interviewed an old American slave trader named Jack Campbell, and asked if he knew of any surviving remnants of the slave trade in the United States, and Campbell replied, "More than you'd think...Go into any Southern hotel that was built before the war and ask them to let you go down into the cellars. See if you don't find these old cells where the servants of travelers were shut up at night. The Baltimore Custom House was once a hotel, and there are more than two dozen cells under it now." [7]
Abraham Lincoln's body lay under the dome on April 21, 1865, during his multi-day funeral procession from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. [8] According to a history of U.S. federal buildings, the dome was "decorated with paintings of the Maryland coat of arms and seals, and representations of commerce and the 'Dignity of the United States,' and supported by 12 Ionic marble columns, quarried, cut, and polished in Italy." [3]
Circa 1869, a directory of Baltimore described the Merchants' Exchange, located on Second and Gay Streets, and Exchange Place, as "a large and elegant structure...The whole is surmounted by an immense dome, the apex of which is 115 feet above the street. In the reading room, newspapers from all parts of the world may be found." Part of the building housed the post office, and the customs office occupied the south wing, at Gay and Lombard. [9] Circa 1874, the building hosted the offices of the U.S. customs collector, U.S. surveyor, and the U.S. internal revenue office. [10]
At the turn of the century, it was "heated by hot water, open grates, and stoves. The number of rooms occupied is fifty-eight, assigned principally to the customs service, pension office, subtreasury, civil service, and Light-House Board." [3] The building was demolished in 1901 or 1902, and replaced with the new Customs House. [1] [11]
Isaiah Rogers was an American architect from Massachusetts who eventually moved his practice south, where he was based in Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. He completed numerous designs for hotels, courthouses and other major buildings in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City, before that relocation.
The Bank of Baltimore was a bank based in Baltimore, Maryland, that was chartered in 1795 and failed during the Panic of 1857. It was the seventh American bank to begin business in the United States and the second bank in Maryland.
55 Wall Street, formerly the National City Bank Building, is an eight-story building on Wall Street between William and Hanover streets in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The lowest three stories were completed in either 1841 or 1842 as the four-story Merchants' Exchange and designed by Isaiah Rogers in the Greek Revival style. Between 1907 and 1910, McKim, Mead & White removed the original fourth story and added five floors to create the present building. The facade and part of the interior are New York City designated landmarks, and the building is listed on both the New York State Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as a National Historic Landmark. It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, listed on the NRHP.
George Proctor Kane was an American politician and policeman. He is best known for his role as Marshal of Police during the Baltimore riot of 1861 and his subsequent imprisonment at Fort McHenry and Fort Warren without the benefit of habeas corpus. His position as Marshal of Police and his southern sympathies were two of many factors in Abraham Lincoln's decision in February 1861 to pass through Baltimore surreptitiously on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, in order to avoid a possible assassination attempt. Despite his politics, Kane was instrumental in providing protection and an escort for Mary Todd Lincoln on her arrival in Baltimore in February 1861 on her way to the inauguration of her husband, who had preceded her.
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Baltimore City Hall is the official seat of government of the City of Baltimore, in the State of Maryland. The City Hall houses the offices of the Mayor and those of the City Council of Baltimore. The building also hosts the city Comptroller, some various city departments, agencies and boards/commissions along with the historic chambers of the Baltimore City Council. Situated on a city block bounded by East Lexington Street on the north, Guilford Avenue on the west, East Fayette Street on the south and North Holliday Street with City Hall Plaza and the War Memorial Plaza to the east, the six-story structure was designed by the then 22-year-old new architect, George Aloysius Frederick (1842–1924) in the Second Empire style, a Baroque revival, with prominent Mansard roofs with richly-framed dormers, and two floors of a repeating Serlian window motif over an urbanely rusticated basement.
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The Baltimore bank riot of 1835 took place in Baltimore, the major port city of Maryland. It was a violent reaction to the failure of the Bank of Maryland in 1834. Thousands of citizens had lost millions of dollars in savings. The riot, which lasted from 6 to 9 August, attacked the homes and property of a number of former directors of the bank, who had been accused of financial misconduct and fraud, as well as the federal district courthouse located on Battle Monument Square. The Baltimore bank riot was one of the most violent and destructive events of civic unrest in any American city prior to the Civil War.
J. Maximilian M. Godefroy was a French-American architect. Godefroy was born in France and educated as a geographical/civil engineer. During the French Revolution he fought briefly on the Royalist side. Later, as an anti-Bonaparte activist, he was imprisoned in the fortress of Bellegarde and Château d'If then released about 1805 and allowed to come to the United States, settling in Baltimore, Maryland, where he became an instructor in drawing, art and military science at St. Mary's College, the Sulpician Seminary. By 1808, Godefroy had married Eliza Crawford Anderson, editor of her own periodical, the Observer and the niece of a wealthy Baltimore merchant.
U.S. Custom House is a historic custom house building located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a granite, steel-frame structure measuring 252 feet 8 inches (77.01 m) by 139 feet 6 inches (42.52 m). It is an exceptionally distinguished example of Beaux Arts architecture and was built from 1903 through late 1907 from plans by Hornblower and Marshall, a Washington, D.C. firm. The ceiling of the Call Room, located in the pavilion, was painted by Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912). It served as Baltimore's Custom House until 1953. Since that time various Federal agencies have occupied the building.
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