Maryland in 1838 - Baltimore, Fells Point, Canton

This Baltimore city plan is part of Thomas G. Bradford's 1838 An Illustrated Atlas, published by Weeks, Jordan & Co. and Wiley and Putnam and engraved by George W. Boynton at a close scale of about 1:24,000. Baltimore in 1838 was in a genuine race against New York and Philadelphia for western trade, its young Baltimore and Ohio Railroad — the country's first common-carrier line, chartered back in 1827 — still under construction toward the Ohio River, a project the city's merchants saw as their best shot at competing with the Erie Canal for the fortunes to be made moving goods between the coast and the interior.

Baltimore College and the Battle Monument, built to commemorate the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812, are both noted directly on the map, with the city's organized street grid laid out along the Patapsco River — a rising commercial city that hadn't forgotten the war that once threatened to burn it down.

Baltimore natives and anyone raised in Maryland's port city tend to want this one, a Marylander who's moved on but kept ties to the city, or a collector of early American city plans. This is a closer, city-scale companion to our statewide 1838 Maryland sheet. The print is offered unframed and in multiple sizes.