LESS than a dozen views of early Baltimore are preserved upon blue china. The first one here presented is a harbor scene known to collectors as the harbor of Baltimore, but it is of disputed authenticity and resembles in its minaret-like spires some city of the Orient rather than a settlement of the young American Republic. The second harbor sketch is more probably taken from the original scene. In it two flagstaffs rise from a small wharf in the foreground, from which banners float —one of them displaying an anchor, and the other, the letter B. The water front of the city may be seen, with sailing vessels and small steamboats passing to and fro, and rows of low regular buildings lining the streets that run down to the river. Here and there a church spire or a monument towers above the roof line, those "spires and grove of vessels" which Lafayette remarked when he visited Baltimore in the year 1824. The French guest considered Baltimore one of the handsomest cities in the Union, with its streets so broad and regular, but without the monotony of the streets of Philadelphia. He was impressed with the elegance and delicacy of manners of Baltimore's citizens, naturally ascribing the fact to the influence of their French blood; likewise, he was impressed with the beautiful buildings of the city, many of which had been designed by French architects. At the time of Lafayette's visit, Baltimore numbered about sixty thousand inhabitants.
Baltimore is younger than the other cities of the United States which have already been considered. To be sure, fourteen years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the New England coast Captain John Smith had sailed up the Patapsco River and looked upon the site of the future city of Baltimore; and fifty-three years later, Lord Baltimore, who afterwards gave his name to the settlement, had come into the region; but not until the year 1730, was the city laid out. Originally, Baltimore consisted only of a group of plantations whose owners were engaged in tobacco raising for the English market—the Horn of Plenty and the full rigged vessel in Maryland's Coat of Arms (presented in a later chapter) symbolizing her agriculture and her commerce. For many years the taxes of Baltimore were paid in tobacco.
A sketch of Baltimore which was made in the year 1752 shows that the city then contained but twenty-five houses, four of them only being of brick. In the year 1756, there came to Baltimore from Nova Scotia that little band of French exiles of whom the poet Longfellow sings, "Friendless, homeless and hopeless, they wandered from city to city." Here many of them found a refuge and settled, a number of the old French names lingering in the present city. Of Colonial and early Republican Baltimore, Staffordshire pottery illustrations present the Court House, Exchange, Battle Monument, Hospital, Almshouse, University of Maryland and Masonic Hall, several of them framed in borders of unusual attractiveness. The Court House, which is not standing at the present time, a view of which could not be procured, was a large, square, dingy gray-stone pile built above a basement, with arches for openings, the structure resembling, an old citizen remarked, "a house perched upon a great stool." In the basement there stood during the strict Colonial years a whipping-post, stocks and pillory—instruments for the serving of the sentences imposed in the Hall of Justice above.
The view of the Baltimore Exchange is very rare. The Exchange was erected in the year 1820, and in the old times at a certain hour each day the merchants of Baltimore were accustomed to meet in its great Hall for the dispatch of business. The building excited much admiration in the early days, becoming famed as one of the handsomest establishments of its kind in the world. It faced as the illustration presents it, upon an open square, several shops or warehouses of old Baltimore being seen in its neighborhood, while a coach and pair typical of the period are driving by. Indeed, our gratitude goes out to the English artists not only for the exact and beautiful reproductions of the prominent buildings of Colonial America which they took pains to secure, but as well for the interesting and significant details of everyday life which they depicted. The border of fruits and flowers around this scene might have been copied, so close is the resemblance, from some old Flemish tapestry picturing an allegorical figure of Abundance.
From the fact that a large number of columns adorn its public squares, Baltimore is known as the "Monument City," Lafayette remarking a century ago upon the number of her monuments, adding that the most beautiful one of them, the Washington monument, a white marble column 200 feet tall surmounted by a statue of the first president, called to his mind the lofty column in the Place Vendome in Paris. Of the Battle Monument, which was erected in memory of the soldiers of Baltimore who fell in the War of 1812, an old chronicle records that on the day the corner-stone was laid a long procession of citizens passed through the streets of the city to Monument Square, a feature of the procession being a funeral car surmounted with a model of the intended shaft drawn by six white horses, caparisoned and led by six men in military uniform. The cornerstone is inscribed, "On the 12th day of September, 1815, in the fortieth year of Independence, James Madison being President, the Monument is dedicated to the memory of the brave defenders of the city." The monument, as a study of the illustration discloses, is of a peculiar style of architecture. The square base twenty feet high is of Egyptian type, the four corners of the pedestal being ornamented with sculptured griffins, and a door with inscriptions and reliefs being a feature of each front. The column is in the form of a bundle of Roman fasces, upon the bands of which are inscribed the names of those whom it commemorates; the whole is surmounted by a female figure, the emblematical genius of the city.
An elderly resident of Baltimore records the fact that the first hospital building was located on Franklin Street, near Calverton, outside the city limits, and that this foundation remained the city hospital until the year 1851, when Baltimore removed the institution within the municipality; the original structure is the one here presented. The poor of Baltimore, before a special home for them had been provided, were supported by a tax of tobacco. From the years 1812 to 1866, they were lodged in the spacious institution situated in the outskirts of the city which the potter-historians discovered and made subject for decoration.
The University of Maryland was founded at a much later date than the colleges of the northern cities which have been considered, having been chartered in the year 1807. The rather indistinct view of the University building which is presented upon the cup is of a domecovered structure with a many-columned facade. Baltimore was the pioneer city in steam railway enterprise, as a later chapter will explain. One of her citizens, Peter Cooper, invented the first type of locomotive to be tried on rails in this country, the "Tom Thumb." Pictures also of the earliest engines in use upon the Baltimore and Ohio railway, one of the first roads in the country and one of the first highways into the great uncultivated region west of Baltimore, will be found in another chapter.
(From The Blue-China Book by Ada Walker Camehl, 1916.)
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