This stunning mural dedicated to Billie
Holiday can be found in the neighborhood
where the jazz singer grew up—Fell’s Point—
along with other works of art on a street
known as Lady Day Way.
JASON VARNEY
museum, which displays artifacts like paintings, textiles and
decorative objects significant to Maryland’s cultural past.
Downtown at the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, see
the five-room brick home where the author lived from 1832
until 1835. Poe wrote some of his earliest short stories in this
home, and it now explores his life in Baltimore. Nearby, Poe’s
body rests at the historic Westminster Hall & Burying Ground.
In Pigtown—which gets its name from the days when it
was home to butchers and meat-packing plants—is the B&O
Railroad Museum, where visitors can take a ride along the
first mile and a half of track laid in America. Just a block
away is the Irish Railroad Workers Museum, dedicated to
the workers who laid the rail and housed in the homes where
they once lived.
Head to historic Pennsylvania Avenue to visit Avenue
Bakery, famous for its buttery soft “Poppay’s Rolls” and its
commitment to highlighting Baltimore’s African American
KEN STANEK
B&O Railroad Museum
history through photos and murals in the bakery’s front lobby
and outside garden area. Just down the street, don’t miss other
area landmarks: A sign marking the site of the now-demolished
Royal Theater, known for its important role hosting iconic
black entertainers that included Cab Calloway, Louis
Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Etta James, The Supremes and
many more. Across the street is James Earl Reid’s statue of jazz
great Billie Holiday, who grew up in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point. ■
NEIGHBORHOODS
1886
The nation’s oldest free public
library system, the Enoch Pratt
Free Library, was established.
1891
The first commercial stomach
antacid seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer,
was made by Captain Isaac E.
Emerson. It’s now memorialized
in the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower
with a collection of the brand’s
signature blue glass bottles.
1892
The Ouija board was invented
in a boarding house in Mount
Vernon. A plaque marks the spot
at 529 N. Charles Street in what is
now a 7-Eleven.
1916
The Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra, the first municipal
orchestra supported by public funds,
made its debut. Catch
the legendary musicians
at the Joseph Meyerhoff
Symphony Hall.
1983
The first African American
wax museum, The National
Great Blacks In Wax
Museum, opened.
40 BALTIMORE.ORG