Baltimore is rectangular in plan and picturesque, covering an undulating surface, the hills, which are many, inclining either to Jones's Falls or the harbor. Its popular title is the "Monumental City," given because it was the first American city that built fine monuments. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the State of Maryland erected on Charles Street a monument to General Washington, rising one hundred and ninety-five feet, a Doric shaft of white marble surmounted by his statue and upon a base fifty feet square. This splendid monument stands in a broadened avenue and at the summit of a hill, surrounded by tasteful lawns and flower gardens, with a fountain in front. It makes an attractive centre for Mount Vernon Place, which contains one of the finest collections of buildings in the city, and presents a scene essentially Parisian. Here are the Peabody Institute and the Garrett Mansion, both impressive buildings. Baltimore has a "Battle Monument," located on Calvert Street, in Monument Square, a marble shaft fifty-three feet high, marking the British invasion of 1814, and erected in memory of the men of Baltimore who fell in battle just outside the city, when the British forces marched from Elk River to Washington and burnt the Capitol, and the British fleet came up the Patapsco and shelled the town. The city also has other fine monuments, so that its popular name is well deserved.
The City Hall is the chief building of Baltimore, a marble structure in Renaissance, costing $2,000,000, its elaborate dome rising two hundred and sixty feet, and giving a magnificent view over the city and harbor. There are two noted churches, the Mount Vernon Methodist Church, of greenstone, with buff and red facings and polished granite columns, being the finest, although the First Presbyterian Church, nearby, is regarded as the most elaborate specimen of Lancet-Gothic architecture in the country, its spire rising two hundred and sixty-eight feet. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is an attractive granite church, containing paintings presented by Louis XVI. and Charles X. of France. Cardinal Archbishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, is the Roman Catholic Primate of the United States. The greatest charities of the city are the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University, endowed by a Baltimore merchant who died in 1873, the joint endowments being $6,500,000. Hopkins was shrewd and penurious, and John W. Garrett persuaded him to make these princely endowments, much of his fortune being invested in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, of which Garrett was President in its days of greatest prosperity. This railroad is the chief Baltimore institution, giving it a direct route to the Mississippi Valley, and was the first started of the great American trunk railways, its origin dating from 1826, when the movement began for its charter, which was granted by the Maryland Legislature the next year. This charter conferred most comprehensive powers, and the story is told that when it was being read in that body one of the members interrupted, saying: "Stop, man, you are asking more than the Lord's Prayer." The reply was that it was all necessary, and the more asked, the more would be secured. The interrupter, convinced, responded: "Right, man; go on." The corner-stone of the railway was laid July 4, 1828, beginning the route from Baltimore, up the Potomac and through the Alleghenies to the Ohio River.
DRUID HILL AND FORT McHENRY.
Baltimore is proud of the great art collection of Henry Walters in Mount Vernon Place, exhibited for a fee for the benefit of the poor; and it also has had as a noted resident Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, who married, and then discarded by Napoleon's order, Miss Patterson, a Baltimore lady. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has remarked that three short American poems, each the best of its kind, were written in Baltimore: Poe's Raven, Randall's Maryland, My Maryland, and Key's Star-Spangled Banner. It is also proud of its park—"Druid Hill"—a splendid pleasure-ground of seven hundred acres, owing much of its beauty to the fact that it had been preserved and developed as a private park for a century before passing under control of the city. The route to it is by the magnificent Eutaw Place, and the stately entrance gateway opens upon an avenue lined on either hand by long rows of flower vases on high pedestals, laid out alongside Druid Lake, the chief water-reservoir. The Park has an undulating surface of woodland and meadow, with grand old trees and splendid lawns, making a scene decidedly English, not overwrought by art, but mainly left in its natural condition. The mansion-house of the former owner, now a restaurant, occupies a commanding position, and on the northern side the land rises to Prospect Hill, with an expansive view all around the horizon and eastward to Chesapeake Bay.
In this beautiful park the higher grounds are used for water-reservoirs. Baltimore has the advantage of receiving its supply by gravity from the Gunpowder River to the northward, where a lake has been formed, the pure water being brought through a tunnel for seven miles to the reservoirs, of which there are eight, with a capacity of 2,275,000,000 gallons, and capable of supplying 300,000,000 gallons daily. These reservoirs appear as pleasant lakes, Montebello and Roland, with Druid Lake, being the chief. Across the ravine of Jones's Falls is Baltimore's chief cemetery, Greenmount, a pretty ground, with gentle hills and vales. Here, in a spot selected by herself, is buried Jerome's discarded wife, Madame Patterson-Bonaparte, whose checkered history is Baltimore's chief romance. Here also lie Junius Brutus Booth, the tragedian, and his family, among them John Wilkes Booth, who murdered President Lincoln.
The most significant sight of Baltimore, however, is its old Fort McHenry—down in the harbor, on the extreme end of Locust Point, originally called Whetstone Point, where the Patapsco River divides—built on a low-lying esplanade, with green banks sloping almost to the water. It was the strategic position of this small but strong work, thoroughly controlling the city as well as the harbor entrance, that held Baltimore during the early movements of the Civil War, and maintained the road from the North to Washington. Its greatest memory, however, and, by the association, probably the greatest celebrity Baltimore enjoys, comes from the flag on the staff now quietly waving over its parapets. Whetstone Point had been fortified during the Revolution, but in 1794 Maryland ceded it to the United States, and the people of Baltimore raised the money to build the present fort, which was named after James McHenry, who had been one of the framers of the Federal Constitution and was Secretary of War under President Washington. When Admiral Cockburn's British fleet came up the Chesapeake in September, 1814, the Maryland poet, Francis Scott Key, was an aid to General Smith at Bladensburg. An intimate friend had been taken prisoner on board one of the ships, and Key was sent in a boat to effect his release by exchange. The Admiral told Key he would have to detain him aboard for a day or two, as they were proceeding to attack Baltimore. Thus Key remained among the enemy, an unwilling witness of the bombardment on September 12th, which continued throughout the night. In the early morning the attack was abandoned, the flag was unharmed, and the British ships dropped down the Patapsco.
Key wrote his poem on the backs of letters, with a barrel-head for a desk, and being landed next day he showed it to friends, and then made a fresh copy. It was taken to the office of the Baltimore American and published anonymously in a handbill, afterwards appearing in the issue of that newspaper on September 21, 1814. The tune was "Anacreon in Heaven," and there was a brief introduction describing the circumstances under which it was written. It was first sung in the Baltimore Theatre, October 12th of that year, and afterwards became popular. The flag which floated over Fort McHenry on that memorable night is still preserved. Fired by patriotic impulses, various ladies of Baltimore had made this flag, among them being Mrs. Mary Pickersgill, who is described as a daughter of Betsy Ross, of Philadelphia, who made the original sample-flag during the Revolution. The Fort McHenry flag contains about four hundred yards of bunting and is nearly square, measuring twenty-nine by thirty-two feet. It has fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, which was then the official regulation, there being fifteen States in the American Union. The poem of the Star-Spangled Banner, thus inspired and written, has become the great American patriotic anthem, and has carried everywhere the fame of the fort, the city, and the flowery flag of the United States. The following is the song, with title and introduction, as first published:
DEFENCE OF FORT McHENRY.
Tune—"Anacreon in Heaven."
O! say can you see by the dawn's early light,