The Garrett Building

Canton House is a historic office building located on the northeast corner of Water Street and South Street in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a 4+1⁄2-story Colonial Revival-style building, with seven bays across the front façade of Water Street to the south and three bays across the side facing South Street to the west. The first story level is in marble and brick is laid in Flemish bond from the second story up. It has a sloped peaked roof with two dormer windows facing west to the side. The main entrance features two fluted Corinthian stone columns. It was constructed in 1923 as the headquarters of one of Baltimore's oldest, largest and most colorful businesses, The Canton Company, a business established in 1828 by Peter Cooper (1791-1883), noted engineer and industrialist most remembered for inventing and manufacturing the Tom Thumb steam locomotive for the recently established Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first passenger railway line in America in 1827 as it made its transition from using horse power to steam power to pull its railroad cars on the first segment of the line from Baltimore southwest to Ellicott Mills, Maryland on the upper Patapsco River from Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore. Columbus O'Donnell, the son of John O'Donnell, a sea captain who brought in the first trade cargos from Canton, China to Baltimore and America in 1784, along with William Patterson (1752-1835), a noted city merchant, civic leader, co-founder of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the father of the infamous Elizabeth ("Betsy") Patterson Bonaparte, the "Belle of Baltimore", who married Jerome Bonaparte on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1803, the younger brother of the French Emperor Napoleon I and the donater of land for nearby Patterson Park in 1827. The company was established to develop the industrial, commercial and residential potential of the large tract of land along the north shore of the Patapsco's Northwest Branch, east of the Inner Harbor (then called "The Basin") and southeast of old Baltimore Town and neighboring Fells Point, Baltimore The Canton House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

The Merchants' National Bank Building (1895), Baltimore was a historic bank building at 301 Water Street, at the corner of South Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. It was a 7-story, Renaissance Revival style building designed by the Baltimore-based architectural firm of Baldwin & Pennington, and constructed in 1893-1895. Johns Hopkins, a Baltimore businessman, abolitionist, and philanthropist, had been president of the bank from 1853 until his death in 1873.

Commerce Place is a high-rise in Baltimore, Maryland. The building rises 31 floors and 454 feet (138 m) in height, and stands as the fifth-tallest building in the city. The structure was completed in 1992. Commerce Place's project architect and lead designer was architect Geraldine Pontius of RTKL Associates, a Baltimore-based architectural and engineering firm; the structure is an example of Postmodern architecture. 23 of the building's 31 floors are used for commercial offices, while six are used for parking. The remaining two floors are used as retail space.

The Chamber of Commerce Building is a historic office building located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a Renaissance Revival-style of architecture with a brown glazed brick building five floors in height, eleven bays long on the west/east sides, facing Commerce Street on the west and Custom House Avenue to the east. Three bays wide (north/south) on the Water Street side, and rebuilt 1904–1905, using still standing walls / facades. It was built during the rebuilding of the old financial district in Downtown Baltimore following the Great Baltimore Fire of Sunday/Monday, February 7–8, 1904 (third worst conflagration to ever hit an American city) and features many terra cotta decorative elements. The rebuilt structure was designed by well-known Baltimore architect Charles E. Cassell. The original pre-fire building was designed by locally famous and prominent architect John Rudolph Niernsee in 1880 and was used by the old Corn and Flour Exchange, which maintained a trading floor on the fifth level.It was later occupied during the 1990s by the Baltimore International Culinary College (later renamed the Baltimore International College) as one of their utilized buildings on an urban campus of nearby city blocks and later taken over by Stratford University, a for-profit educational institution. Currently it has been renovated to function as a Staybridge Suites - Baltimore Inner Harbor Hotel. Chamber of Commerce Building was listed in 1983 on the National Register of Historic Places, maintained by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Business and Government Historic District is a historic district in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, United States, that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The district comprises the center of Baltimore's municipal government and the eastern portion of Baltimore's commercial district. The major feature of the district is the War Memorial Plaza with City Hall to the west and the War Memorial to the east.The district includes several Registered Historic Places, including Baltimore City Hall and Battle Monument. It is within Baltimore National Heritage Area. Other contributing properties include the B&O Railroad Headquarters Building.

One Calvert Plaza, formerly the Continental Trust Company Building, is a historic 16-story, 76 m (249 ft) skyscraper in Baltimore, Maryland. The Beaux-Arts, early modern office building was constructed with steel structural members clad with terra cotta fireproofing and tile-arch floors. Its namesake was chartered in 1898 and instrumental in merging several Baltimore light and gas companies into one citywide system (known as the "Consolidated Gas, Light, Electric Power Company of Baltimore City" until 1955 when it was shortened and renamed the "Baltimore Gas and Electric Company"). It was constructed in 1900–1901 to designs prepared by D.H. Burnham and Company of Chicago and is a survivor of the Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904, that destroyed more than 100 acres (40 ha) in the present downtown financial district. When it was built in 1901, it was then the tallest building in Baltimore, and it kept that title until being surpassed by the iconic Bromo-Seltzer Tower of the Emerson Drug Company on the northeast corner of West Lombard and South Eutaw Streets on the downtown west side. Led by Capt. Isaac Edward Emerson, (1859–1931), the inventor of the stomach remedy and antacid, "Bromo-Seltzer" in 1911. Continental Trust Company Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It is within the Baltimore National Heritage Area.

Mercantile Trust and Deposit Company is a historic bank building in Baltimore, designed by the Baltimore architectural firm of Wyatt and Sperry and constructed in 1885. It has a brick-with-stone-ornamentation Romanesque Revival structure, with deeply set windows, round-arch window openings, squat columns with foliated capitals, steeply pitched broad plane roofs, and straight-topped window groups. The interior features a large banking room with a balcony, Corinthian columns and ornate wall plaster work.The Safe Deposit Company on Redwood Street in Baltimore was one of the few buildings that survived the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. It was "created as a repository of Southern wealth in 1864" This date was not only "one year before the start of the Civil War but one year after the National Bank Act of 1863". Coincidentally, the March 10, 1864 grant of the state charter for the Safe Deposit was on the same day that newspapers reported General Sherman's arrival in Vicksburg, MS at the end of the Vicksburg Campaign. The Safe Deposit Building was finished in 1886, was "red brick with light red firestone trim". Around the turn of the century, the Safe Deposit Company boasted about the security of their vaults. Safe Deposit touted its "Great Vault," whose three fireproof outer doors and two burglar-proof inner ones sat in walls of steel and iron, surrounded by a foot of concrete and 2 feet of brick, according to a company history. Along the street, there were "spy steps" which enabled roving late 19th century policemen to peer into the windows. These "spy steps" provided in the center of the south part of the west wall, and on each side of the doorway are about three feet from the ground. They are a protruding stone step, and at shoulder height is a bronze ring. This was intended to assist a policeman to look in the windows. The "brass ring at shoulder level was used to balance them on the step. The steps are still jutting out into the sidewalk on both the Calvert and Redwood street sides of the Safe Deposit building. However, metal rings are only on one of the Calvert "spy steps" and on the right-hand side of the Redwood Street main entrance. The February 1904 fire that devastated downtown Baltimore left the Safe Deposit Building still standing. It did, however, sustain some damage when bricks from an adjacent building "fell through the skylight and set fire to the interior". The structural iron in the roof and basement helped to preserve the structure. The exterior and safe deposit boxes survived, but the interior had to be rebuilt.Mercantile Trust and Deposit Company was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.Previously the home of Club Dubai, the building was purchased by Modern Globe LLC for $1.25 million in May 2012 for use by the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. After improvements estimated to cost about $6 million, there are plans to open the Mercantile building as a new venue for the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in 2014. Plans call for a thrust stage, surrounded on three sides by two mezzanine levels.

The Alex. Brown & Sons building is a historical structure located at 135 East Baltimore Street in Baltimore, Maryland. During the 20th century it served as the corporate headquarters for the banking firm Alex. Brown & Sons, the oldest in the United States when it was purchased by Bankers Trust in 1997. The two-story building, completed in 1901 and designed by the partnership of J. Harleston Parker and Douglas H. Thomas. Jr., survived the 1904 Baltimore fire. The building was modified on the Calvert Street side and in the interior by the firm Beecher, Friz, and Gregg in 1905.The building was sold to Chevy Chase Bank in 1997. A plaque on the side of the building states: A thorough historical renovation of the building was completed in 1996 when it was reopened as a traditional retail bank branch. The beautiful stained glass dome, probably the work of Baltimore artist Gustave Baumstark (who studied under both Louis C. Tiffany and John LaFarge) was cleaned and refurbished. The marble columns and the plaster moldings of the great banking hall were restored to their original designs. During the renovation the original teller line was reconstructed. Even such details as the design and placement of the freestanding furniture now in existence in the bank branch were designed to mimic the original furniture. The Alex. Brown & Sons Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.It was reported in May 2021 that the building has been leased for the set of the Disney-FX film pilot The Spook Who Sat by the Door, based on the novel of the same name.

The Baltimore City Circuit Courthouses are state judicial facilities located in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. They face each other in the 100 block of North Calvert Street, between East Lexington Street on the north and East Fayette Street on the south across from the Battle Monument Square (1815-1822), which held the original site of the first colonial era courthouse for Baltimore County (third county courthouse after previous locations / county seats in old Baltimore village on the Bush River and later Joppa) and Town, after moving the Baltimore County seat in 1767 to the burgeoning port town on the Patapsco River established in 1729-1730. The first courthouse in Baltimore Town was built in 1767 and also later housed briefly for a decade the new United States federal courts in the city, after the ratification and operation of the new Constitution in 1789. On July 28, 1776, it was the site for the public reading of the Declaration of Independence, just previously approved by the Second Continental Congress on behalf of the Thirteen Colonies, now United States of America, meeting at the old Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) three weeks earlier in Philadelphia and read out loud to a gathering of Baltimore Town citizens. It was undercut in 1784 by local builder/contractor Leonard Harbaugh with a pair of arched stone/brick arched piers and raised stone foundation to permit extension of Calvert Street to the north by passing traffic underneath at a lower level. This town/county courts structure was torn down around 1800, leaving an empty small square for fifteen years.A second city/county courthouse of Georgian and Federal style architecture in red brick and limestone trim with a cupola was constructed to the west of old Courthouse Square (later renamed Battle Monument Square in honor of the monument raised for remembering local casualties from the British attack in September 1814 during the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812). It was sited on the southwest corner of North Calvert and facing north towards East Lexington Street, completed in 1805. This second City/County Courthouse (which also served the small federal district court and judges chambers for 15 years until 1820, when they were relocated into one wing of the huge massive H-shaped Merchants Exchange building capped with a low dome at South Gay and East Lombard Streets, designed and completed that year by famous British-American architect Benjamin Latrobe) was partially burned on 13 February 1835 during a spate of mysterious arson fires in the city during the bank riots that year, but it was soon repaired. An adjacent Egyptian style masonry building to the west along Saint Paul Street was constructed for a Records Office. It was razed around 1896 along with the other structures on the block to its south and west.A third and current courthouse, was built 1896–1900, on the entire city block west of the 1815-1822 Battle Monument. It is bounded by North Calvert Street on the east, East Lexington Street on the north, East Fayette Street on the south and St. Paul Street on the west. A small federal district courthouse and United States Post Office of white marble and limestone was constructed on the northwest corner of East Fayette and North Street (later renamed Guilford Avenue) in 1860 for the federal offices relocated from the one wing of the 1820 Merchants Exchange and was dedicated by 15th President James Buchanan and served only 29 years until 1889. Then it was replaced by a much larger structure with a clock tower and eight massive chimneys facing to the west on Calvert Street and the Battle Monument, occupying the rest of the entire block between Calvert, Lexington, North (Guilford) and Fayette Streets. That Federal courts and central city Post Office on Calvert Street was replaced after only forty years of use in 1932, during the administration of 31st President Herbert C. Hoover which served for the next four decades until replaced by the current Edward A. Garmatz U.S. Courthouse at West Lombard and South Hanover / Liberty Street/Hopkins Place structure adjacent to the 1960s era Charles Center downtown redevelopment project. The old Hoover era federal courts and post office was then transferred to the city by the federal government in 1977 for its use and renovated with being renamed Courthouse East. Today the two historic main structures of the Maryland state judicial system in the City of Baltimore are the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse of 1896-1900 and Elijah E. Cummings Courthouse (the former Baltimore Post Office and U.S. Courthouse of 1932). Together they house the 30 judges of the 8th Judicial Circuit for the State of Maryland (Circuit Court of Maryland for Baltimore City). In addition to the criminal, civil and family (formerly orphans court) courts, these two courthouses also contain the Office of the State's Attorney for Baltimore City, the Clerk of the Circuit Court, the historic Baltimore City Bar Law Library, the City Sheriff's Office, the recently established Baltimore Courthouse and Law Museum (in the former Orphans Court chambers), the Pretrial Release Division of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, several pretrial detention lockups, jury assembly rooms, land records, court medical offices and Masters hearing rooms.

Baltimore City Hall is the official seat of government of the City of Baltimore, in the State of Maryland. The City Hall houses the offices of the Mayor and those of the City Council of Baltimore. The building also hosts the city Comptroller, some various city departments, agencies and boards/commissions along with the historic chambers of the Baltimore City Council. Situated on a city block bounded by East Lexington Street on the north, Guilford Avenue (formerly North Street) on the west, East Fayette Street on the south and North Holliday Street with City Hall Plaza and the War Memorial Plaza to the east, the six-story structure was designed by the then 22-year-old new architect, George Aloysius Frederick (1842–1924) in the Second Empire style, a Baroque revival, with prominent Mansard roofs with richly-framed dormers, and two floors of a repeating Serlian window motif over an urbanely rusticated basement.

Baltimore's The Block is a stretch on the 400 block of East Baltimore Street in Baltimore, Maryland, containing several strip clubs, sex shops, and other adult entertainment merchants. During the 19th century, Baltimore was filled with brothels, and in the first half of the 20th century, it was famous for its burlesque houses. It was a noted starting point and stop-over for many noted burlesque dancers, including the likes of Blaze Starr. By the 1950s, the clubs became seedier, as burlesque was replaced by strip clubs and sex shops. The Block of that era is featured prominently in several films, notably Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights and Diner, as well as Steve Yeager's independent feature drama On The Block, with Howard Rollins.The decades to follow would bring a marked increase in general crime, sex work, and drug dealing, an unusual situation considering the location of Baltimore's Police Headquarters and Central Police District House at the east end of the block. It has been suggested that the police, whose headquarters are located right next to The Block, chose to contain the prostitution and drug dealing in that small section of Baltimore rather than combat it.The passing decades would see a shrinking of the area. Once several blocks long, stretching almost to Charles Street in the central part of downtown Baltimore, today The Block only stretches about two blocks long from South Street to Gay Street.Polock Johnny's sausage restaurant was a local landmark on the strip into the 1980s. In recent years, The Block has undergone a bit of a revival with the opening of Larry Flynt's Hustler Club, and its next-door neighbor Norma Jean's, an upscale urban strip club.A five alarm fire on December 6, 2010, heavily damaged four buildings, including the building that formerly housed the Gayety Theater. The fire was believed to be an act of arson.

U.S. Custom House is a historic custom house building located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a granite, steel frame structure measuring 252 feet 8 inches (77.01 m) by 139 feet 6 inches (42.52 m). It is an exceptionally distinguished example of Beaux Arts architecture and was built from 1903 through late 1907 from plans by Hornblower and Marshall, a Washington, D.C. firm. The ceiling of the Call Room, located in the pavilion, was painted by Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912). It served as Baltimore's Custom House until 1953. Since that time various Federal agencies have occupied the building.U.S. Custom House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.