Hey look, a big giant 100 year old map of the inner harbor

Ok well, it’s only 99 years old but 100 sounded better. At any rate, while perusing the Big Map Blog last night I came across a massive 8300×5000 pixel hand-drawn map of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society. If you so desire you can order prints of the map from the site, or download the 13.2MB image right up in this. The really nerdtastic part is loading 2011 Baltimore’s Inner Harbor into Google Earth and comparing/contrasting the various buildings, factories and train stations that no longer exist and the lack of GIANT UGLY GREY HOTELS THAT MAKE NO MONEY AND BLOCK THE VIEW OF THE BROMO SELTZER TOWER FROM CAMDEN YARDS.

Granted, the scaling is a bit off in the hand drawn version, but for someone to be able to estimate a bird’s eye view of Baltimore so accurately in *any* era is pretty astonishing. Enjoy!

Reader Question: Is this the same map on the wall at Pub Dog (20 East Cross St., Federal Hill)? I think it might be. I seem to remember staring at it on the wall over there when I used to frequent Pub Dog, which I don’t anymore.

4 thoughts on “Hey look, a big giant 100 year old map of the inner harbor

  1. HEY! This might be helpful in my thesis! Thanks!

    And I’m totally with you on the big ass ugly hotel. They could have at least made it pretty. Does it really make no money?

      1. I reviewed that hotel for Fodor’s Travel. I was like, “WHERE IS PARIS HILTON?” They cut that part from the final version.

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