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Established | 1998 |
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Location | 35 Market Place Baltimore, Maryland, USA |
Public transit access | ![]() BaltimoreLink routes Blue, Orange, Brown, Purple, 63, 65, 150 Charm City Circulator Green Route |
Website | PortDiscovery.org |
Port Discovery Children's Museum is a non-profit institution located in the historic Fish Market building in Baltimore, Maryland's Inner Harbor. It is 80,000 square feet and has three floors of exhibits and programs designed to be interactive and educational. It receives more than 265,000 visitors annually. The museum's focus is on children ages birth through 10 and their caregivers.
The museum is served by the Baltimore Metro Subway's Shot Tower/Market Place station.
The original Baltimore Children's Museum was a Baltimore City agency founded in 1976 and was originally housed in The Cloisters, a historic property located in Baltimore County. The property and structure were donated to the City and the Museum operated out of this location for nearly 20 years. In 1990, the Baltimore Children's Museum formed its own 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and merged with the Maryland Children's Museum. The merged entity's Board of Directors, along with Baltimore's Mayor Kurt Schmoke, decided to relocate the museum to downtown Baltimore to reach a broader audience. A 35-million dollar capital campaign, led by the Board of Directors, resulted in the renovation of Downtown's historic Fish Market building, which became the new home to Port Discovery Children's Museum in December 1998.
The building underwent major renovations in 2019. It added several new exhibits as well as a lunchroom and additional restrooms. The renovation cost $10.5 million.
In February 2022, the museum also functioned as a children's vaccine clinic for COVID-19. [1]
Port Discovery has served over 2.5 million visitors and ranks among the top Children's Museums in the U.S. by Parents Magazine [2] (2015) and Forbes (2012).
In 2009, Port Discovery received the MetLife Foundation and Association of Children's Museums Promising Practice Award for their partnership with PACT: Helping Children with Special Needs.
In January 2011, Port Discovery was designated as a “Good to Grow Museum” for promoting healthy living for families. They are one of six children's museums out of 350 nationally and internationally to receive this designation. This national recognition comes from the Association of Children's Museums. [3]
The Great Baltimore Fire raged in Baltimore, Maryland, United States from Sunday, February 7, to Monday, February 8, 1904. More than 1,500 buildings were completely leveled, and some 1,000 severely damaged, bringing property loss from the disaster to an estimated $100 million. 1,231 firefighters helped bring the blaze under control, both professional paid truck and engine companies from the Baltimore City Fire Department (B.C.F.D.) and volunteers from the surrounding counties and outlying towns of Maryland, as well as out-of-state units that arrived on the major railroads. It destroyed much of central Baltimore, including over 1,500 buildings covering an area of some 140 acres (57 ha).
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The Peale Museum, officially the Municipal Museum of the City of Baltimore, was a museum of paintings and natural history, located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It occupied the first building in the Western Hemisphere to be designed and built specifically as a museum. The museum was imagined by American artist and inventor Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860) and designed by architect Robert Cary Long, Sr. Much later, it functioned separately as Baltimore City's historical museum while the original structure was being rebuilt, restored, and renovated in 1930–1931, and then was merged with other historic sites, houses and museums in the early 1980s under the expansive efforts of a new executive director, with the name of the Baltimore City Life Museums and a broader mission in conjunction with the other historical locations/sites/structures in Baltimore.
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