tin plate for canners and meatpackers, bar and sheet steel for the
auto industry, steel rods for wire, springs and nails, and steel for
rails and railroads.
Talk about Maryland’s economic development! Fast forward to
1947: When four out of every five items manufactured in America
contain steel, there are worse things in life than having the world’s
biggest steelmaker in your backyard, adjacent to a transportation
hub where international supply and demand lines converge.
Baltimore’s great fire of 1904 charred 140 acres, threw 35,000
people out of work and destroyed the downtown business district
and most of Cheapside Wharf, the Inner Harbor’s mercantile hub.
Fortunately, the Port’s plentiful lines of international trade kept
Maryland’s diversified economy humming. American Crown Cork
& Seal, which sold half the world’s bottle caps during the 1930s, was
expanding by tapping into Highlandtown and Canton’s workforces
to make an array of products supplying packers and canners along
Boston Street’s waterfront. Shipyards thrived, doing double duty
handling steam and sail-powered boats. The Menzies family’s long
relationship with the Port had entered its second decade; founded
in 1893, The Terminal Corporation today is a leading mid-Atlantic
provider of logistics services like warehousing and transportation.
Black & Decker, founded in Baltimore in 1910, was then
just another little contract machine shop tethered to the Port’s
supply line. In the early 1960s, nearly 5,000 manufacturers in
Above, left: Bethlehem Steel
produced cylinders used in con-
struction of the Harbor Tunnel,
as well as the Baltimore City
fireboat
Torrent
, built in 1921.
Above, right:
Torrent
,
constructed partly in response
to the devastating Great
Baltimore Fire of 1904, inset,
was stationed in Canton.
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