This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 317 S. Broadway

Transcript: The story of St. Patrick's Church begins with, and is currently tied to, Fells Point's diverse community of immigrants. When the first Catholic parish was established in Fells Point in 1792, French immigrants greatly outnumbered Irish immigrants, so many of the priests were French. When it was time to dedicate this church, the French and Irish agreed to call it St. Patrick after the saint who emigrated from the region of France to Ireland. 

This church served a large community for more than 100 years, but after the Second World War, many people moved out to the suburbs and stopped coming to St. Patrick's. After decades of barely attended Mass, the church now has a thriving parish thanks to new groups of immigrants of Hispanic descent.

Historic Fells Point Trail: St. Patrick's Church

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 524 S Dallas Street

Transcript: This row of five unassuming houses is here because of one of the most passionate abolitionists of the 19th century, Frederick Douglass. Douglass was born into slavery in 1818. At the age of eight, he was sent by his master, Thomas Auld, to work in Baltimore, assisting Thomas' brother, Hugh. The young Douglass asked Hugh's wife, Sophia, to teach him how to read, even though teaching slaves to read was against the law.

Although Sophia later had to stop teaching him, Douglass' reading skills grew. He continued to educate himself. At the age of 20, he successfully escaped along the Underground Railroad to New York City. Douglass spread his story of freedom and grew into a respected writer, speaker, and abolitionist. He acknowledged how his life as a slave in Baltimore shaped him.

Douglass later wrote, that "going to live in Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway to all my subsequent prosperity." In 1864, Douglass returned to Baltimore to this very site, which then had a church to celebrate the end of slavery. Years later, he came back and found the church abandoned seeing an opportunity. Douglass bought the dilapidated church, razed it, and built these five row houses to provide affordable housing for African Americans.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Douglass Place

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1534 Fleet Street

In 2000, archaeologists meticulously searched this small building on the corner and found thousands of artifacts that tell the story of colonial life, weary travelers, children growing up, and German Jewish immigrants.

This was the original home of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. Most members were German-Jewish immigrants and met inside this building from 1830 to 1832. The congregation went on to build Maryland's first synagogue, located on Lloyd Street, in the Jonestown neighborhood.

Throughout the years, this building was used as a family home, a boarding house, and a stained glass shop. The youngest son of Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, also lived here.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Baltimore Hebrew Congregation

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1627 Aliceanna Street

Transcript: On your right across the street, the green building contains a mystery. Did this two-story building serve as a school? For years, it's been thought that schoolmaster Nicholas Leeke ran the Leeke Academy here. Now, researchers aren't so sure, but what they do know is he taught many of the students living in Fells Point.

Nicholas Leeke's daughter, Mary, married a young sea captain who served in the War of 1812. While her husband was at sea, Nicholas helped his daughter build a splendid family home that still stands in Fells Point at 700 South Broadway. Leeke's great, great granddaughters bought this site in the 1960s and dedicated it to his honor.

The house is now owned by the Preservation Society.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Leeke Academy

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1640 Aliceanna Street

Transcript: If all this walking has made you hungry, you're in the right place. The Broadway Market has several lunch counters where you can grab a bite, and it is the oldest continuously operating public market in the country. Established in 1784, people have come to this market for centuries to get food for their families.

Years ago, livestock was also sold here. Farmers would ferry their animals over, or bring them by wagon, and weigh them on a big platform right in front of buyers. Though these buildings are clearly not the originals, the footprint from the first market is more or less what you see today. The North Building was built around 1864, and originally had a second story where people would gather for social and civic events.

That second story was taken down in the 1960s after a fire, but there are plans to reconstruct it.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Broadway Market

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1607 Shakespeare Street

Transcript: This small, somewhat spooky cemetery plot between two houses is the Fell family tomb. The Fells were instrumental in establishing Fells Point as a commercial and maritime center. There are several generations of Fell men memorialized on the stone, beginning with Edward Fell. Edward was the first of the Fell family to come to the New World from Europe.

He was a merchant who imported goods and had a well respected store over near Jonestown. He is not actually buried in this tomb because he died in his native England, but is remembered here. Edward's brother, William, was a Quaker who came to this area around 1730 and began acquiring land. He eventually amassed 1100 acres and became the commissioner for Baltimore Town.

He died in 1746 and lies in the tomb. William's son, Colonel Edward Fell, is also buried here. After his father died and he inherited the 1100 acres of land, he sold or leased the land. It is then that Fells Point really began to take shape. He died when he was just 33, possibly because of tuberculosis. The colonel's son, William, also died at a young age. He was only 27 when he was buried here. Historians suspect he also died from tuberculosis. 

You might be wondering why these men's wives are not memorialized at this tomb. Since some of the Fells died at an early age, like the Colonel and William, their wives remarried and carried on after their deaths. No one knows for sure where the women are buried.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Fell Family Tomb

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1417 Thames Street

Transcript:  This maritime park and museum has something you've likely never seen before. A working reconstruction of the first Black-owned marine railway and shipyard in the United States. Inside the museum, you get a vivid picture of what life was like for African Americans who worked in Baltimore's maritime industry.

Frederick Douglass and Isaac Myers, to whom this museum is dedicated, both worked in Fells Point shipyards as caulkers. The more prestigious shipyard jobs, like ship carpenter, were reserved for White men. Later in life, as Douglass and Myers grew into respected, outspoken abolitionists, Myers and several other Black entrepreneurs joined ranks and founded the Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, which employed both Blacks and Whites.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1713 Thames Street

As you step in front of City Pier, you can almost hear the old ships clanging against the docks, water sloshing below. This pier served as a loading and unloading dock for farmers and merchants who bought and sold produce that eventually made its way to family dinner tables. The pier was also called Recreation Pier because its upper stories were used as a recreational area.

The roof over the long shed in the back was a children's playground, and an opulent ballroom took up the second floor. The pier served a number of functions over the years, and was even a film location for the TV show, "Homicide, Life on the Streets." After sitting vacant for almost 20 years, in 2017, City Pier was transformed into the luxury waterfront hotel you see today.

Historic Fells Point Trail: City (Recreation) Pier

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1701 Thames Street

Right here, on this very pier, hope was born. Immigrants who had made the long journey from Poland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Greece arrived across the harbor at Locust Point, took ferries over to this pier, and began to make their way to their new homes and their new lives as Americans. They came because word had spread that there were plenty of jobs on the railroads in Baltimore.

Immigration to Baltimore came to a screeching halt during World War I, but the international community that shaped Fells Point continues to thrive. Still in use today, the Broadway Pier now serves Navy vessels, Coast Guard ships, sailboats, and towboats.

Fells Point Historic Trail: Broadway Pier

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours.

Located at 1732 Thames Street

Transcript: Looking at this meticulously maintained federal style home gives you a solid picture of life in the early 1800s. Built with rose toned bricks set in Flemish bond, the merchant house is a living example of the homes wealthy merchants would have lived in. They were typically three and a half stories high.

The first floor was usually a shop, with the owner living in the other stories above. Homes like this had two entrances, one for the shop and one for the family living space. In this case, the family's private door was set to the east, although it was bricked in long ago. The details on this building have survived amazingly well, considering it's 200 years old.

Notice the dormer window on the roof, and the stone lentils above the windows.

Historic Fells Point Trail: Merchant House

The "Be Here" storytelling project, in conjunction with the Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum, and the Smithsonian's Stories from Main Street initiative, is an effort to gather and distribute stories about community life and places across the United States. The first version of this project began in 2011 with the Stories from Main Street storytelling initiative,  the brainchild of the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street (MoMS) team. Today, the Peale is partnering with Museum on Main Street to continue the storytelling campaign, often connected thematically to MoMS' traveling exhibitions about topics like work history, waterways, food culture, traditional music, hometown sports, etc. Anyone with an interest in life in America’s towns and communities can add their own experiences to the archive.

The "Be Here" program is an effort to diversify the voices of American cultural stories, stories especially about places that are important to people. To leave a story, download the "Be Here Stories" app on the App Store. Learn more at https://www.thepealecenter.org/bherebmore/

New tracks tagged #Fells Point