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When most cities set out to preserve history, the everyday goings-on often get overlooked. Not so at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
The 1865 Platt Oyster Cannery has been converted to a showcase for Baltimore working life. Upon entering one is immediately immersed in the sometimes gritty industrial heritage of the city of Baltimore. A garment loft contains antique commercial sewing machines and bolts of fabric. The machine shop and blacksmith shop showcase the tools and belt-driven machinery used to drive Baltimore industry. Several of the machines in the Baltimore Museum of Industry can still be operated.
In the 19th century, as American industry exploded, Baltimore stood at the center of the canning industry. A tinsmithing exhibit leads to Thomas Kensett's patent of a tin can machine in 1839. It was an expensive process that required a high-cost product to realize a profit and just such a product was readily available to Baltimore area canners. The oysters that proliferated in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay were harvested by the ton and canned in Baltimore. The canning operation is demonstrated at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Artifacts that often disappear with a dying business have been saved from the scrap heap at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. There are meat-chopping blocks and a wide variety of industry-specific tools. On display is an ice cream wagon from Baltimore's rich ice cream heritage at the Ice Cream exhibit. The exhibit on Gas and Electric shows how Baltimore generates her power. Radio Hall features old radios and the stories of pioneering Baltimore radio stations and on-air personalities. Volunteers operate a recreated Baltimore print shop, circa 1888, where you can get custom-printed handbills. A display on the Port of Baltimore highlights the docks and the work done there as goods were pumped in and out of town.
The adjacent Butler Building at the Baltimore Museum of Industry contains various prototypes and actual vehicles from Baltimore streets of long ago including a 1922 steamroller and a 1914 moving van. Hanging overhead is the 1937 Mini-Marner, the flying prototype of the World War II flying boat bomber. It was built in Baltimore. An 1886 bank building can be explored and one can walk into the 1910 Bunting Pharmacy, where Noxema was invented.
Baltimore was the birthplace of much more than shaving cream. The Maryland Milestone Wall highlights many of the contributions of Baltimore industry to the world: the first umbrella company, the first street gaslight, the first disposable bottle cap, the first workable radar system, the first power hand tools and more.
The steam-powered tug S.S. Baltimore, built in 1906 and the oldest steam-powered, coal-fired vessel of its kind, is tethered at the dock behind the museum. The S.S. Baltimore was salvaged from the Chesapeake Bay in 1981 and painstakingly restored by volunteers. Tug tours of the Baltimore harbor are offered Monday through Friday.
The Baltimore Museum of Industry is located at 1415 Key Highway - look for the green building with the giant red crane looming overhead.
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