Baltimore Through My Eyes

In a discussion with my boss on other subjects to populate my blog with, the shot tower came up – so I figured I’d add it. It’s always just kind of been “there”.  I’ve always known that it was the “shot tower”, and I’ve always known what it was used for (dad explained it to me on one of our excursions around the city) and even if you’re not from Baltimore and you drive into the city on I-83 (our Jones Falls Expressway) – once you get near the end of the Fallsway (that’s what we call it) and it becomes President Street, you’re confronted by a 234 foot brick tower just sitting on the left side of the street in Historic Jonestown, north of Little Italy, at the corner of Front and Fayette Streets. That is our shot tower. Originally home to several, this is the only one to survive in Baltimore. Only 11 survive elsewhere. Originally called the Phoenix Tower, and then The Merchant’s Tower, it is now referred to as The Old Baltimore Shot Tower. It was the second one built.

Baltimore’s original shot tower was built in 1822 by Jacob Wolfe on the west side of Gay just above Fayette Street (where War Memorial Plaza is today). Called Wolfe’s Tower, it was of varying heights depending on what your source is. According to the Annals of Baltimore, it was 160 feet high. A 1958 edition of the Sun Magazine stated that it was 187 feet tall, and yet a 1828 map of Baltimore lists it at 172 feet, made of 300,00 bricks and being 30 feet wide at the base and 16 feet wide at the top. Razed in 1845, it was visible in the lobby mural of the Sunpaper’s Calvert Street offices. Not a lot is known about this one.

Baltimore’s third shot tower was built on South Eutaw Street near Camden Street (between Conway and Barre – or right where 1st base is today at Camden Yard) in 1833 and was known as Gist’s Shot Tower.  Built by William Gist, and run by the Eagle Lead Company and then The Eutaw Company, it was bought by The Merchant’s Shot, Sheet Lead, and Lead Pipe Manufacturing Company during a rather heated political dispute during the 1844 presidential election. The Phoenix tower was by then 16 years old, and was owned by the Phoenix Company whose president was a New Yorker named John McCullough. During the campaign, a banner was flown from the Phoenix tower with the names “Polk, Dallas, and Carroll” (all Democrats) on it. Customers and local merchants didn’t like this one bit, and seeing how most of them were fans of the opposing party’s candidate, Henry Clay, a Whig –  they filed all sorts of grievances and complaints stating that the tower should not be used for political purposes. McCullough, also a Democrat, promptly ignored them. So they organized and formed their own company, called the Merchant’s Tower Company, and they bought the Gist Tower, which began taking away business in great droves from the Phoenix tower. Polk won the election, but because we from Baltimore were a hardheaded bunch who didn’t forget even way back then, McCullough’s retail remained low because of that darned banner, and he finally gave in and in 1847 he sold the business to the new company. The ledger showed that 409 Phoenix shares were sold to the Merchant’s Shot Tower Company at $42.50 each–$17,385.50.  Thus, the Phoenix Tower, became the Merchant’s Tower. Although it was newer, the tower on Eutaw Street was razed in 1851, to make way for Camden Station, leaving the older but upgraded Phoenix tower as Baltimore’s only shot tower at the time.

Baltimore’s forth tower was built in 1877 by James Robertson & Co. Called the “New Shot Tower”, the business was actually called The Baltimore Lead Works. They made shot AND lead water pipes. The tower stood at the corner of Howard and Montgomery Streets (parking lot C for Camden Yard now – and very close to where Hammerjack’s used to reside on S. Howard Street for all those in the know), a bit south from where tower number two stood. This one was only 110 feet tall and was square rather than round; 24 feet across at the bottom and 12 feet across at the top. The builder had found a way to incorporate a current of cold air which would eliminate the long drop used by the other towers to cool the lead. By 1906 the business was gone, incorporated into the B & O Camden Yard and by 1910, Howard Street had been tracked over  so it can be assumed that the tower had been razed by that point.

There is record of another tower being commissioned in 1838, but there is no record of it ever being built.

THE PHOENIX TOWER

Built in 1828, also by Jacob Wolfe, when complete in November, Baltimore’s second tower, the Phoenix tower, was the tallest structure in the U.S.  Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of our Declaration of Independence, laid the cornerstone. In all honesty, he lived just a block or so away, and was the wealthiest man in the country. Who else would you get?

Prior to its construction, the site was home to the First Baptist Church of Baltimore Town, founded in 1773, and it contained a meeting house, a home for the pastor, a schoolhouse and a cemetery. 150 pounds was paid for a half-acre of land close to the Jones Falls for baptism. The church moved to Sharp and Lombard Street (called Old Round-Top) in 1818, From there the church moved to Lafayette and Freemont (building sold to the Macedonia Baptist Church in 1925) and finally to it’s current location at 4200 Liberty Heights in Gwynn Oak. Hopefully it will stay put. There is an awful lot of history there.

The tower is 40 feet wide at the base and 20 feet wide at the top and contains bricks made by a Baltimore company called Burns and Russell. Some estimates say 1.1 million bricks, other estimates say 11 million bricks, I have no clue, and I’m not counting – its just hella lot of bricks. A bazillion bricks. Okay? The walls at the bottom are about 4.5 feet thick and taper to just under 2 feet thick at the top. The top is capped with a battlement and flies the Maryland flag – no political banners for the tower now. Red lights at night on the top give the illusion of the fire and smoke that once emanated within.

The tower was designed around the William Watts process of making shot. Patented in 1782, it involves pouring molten lead through a copper sieve down the open shaft of the tower. Watts was a English plumber from Bristol, who had the idea of dripping hot lead from a great height to make small pellets. He conducted an experiment from a church tower and discovered that the method actually worked, and thus the shot tower was born. Lead was manually hauled to the top of the tower via a dumb waiter type elevator where it was melted in a small furnace. Once molten, arsenic and antimony were added (the recipe was apparently a very carefully guarded secret) to ensure that the lead separated when it was dropped. As it fell, surface tension ensured that it dropped as perfectly spherical pellets and then landed in a large vat of water at the tower’s base. It was then cooled further, dried, polished and sorted for size, tested for roundness and separated into 25 pound bags. Anything that wasn’t perfectly round got sent back up the dumb waiter to be re-melted and dropped again. The tower produced over 100,00 bags of shot a year, or 2.5 million pounds. Larger shot was dropped from the very top of the tower, while smaller shot was dropped from the half-way point.

In 1878, the interior of the tower burned and while it was rebuilt and kept right on producing shot, the American Shot & Lead Company eventually became a rival, having bought 28 out of the 32 surviving shot towers in the country. Finally sold to the United Lead Company, it was shuttered in 1892 along with others owned by the company. In 1921, United Lead sold it to Union Oil for $14,500.00. They used the ground floor for storage and set about getting permits to have it razed and erect a gas station on the corner. The community complained. Rather loudly. They were able to garner enough support to to raise $17,000.00 and in 1924, some Baltimore citizens bought the tower and turned it over to the city with the understanding that it would be preserved as a local historic landmark. The first restoration work began and was completed in 1930. This would become one of the first acts of historic preservation in the city. In 1971 the site was declared a National Historic Landmark and was placed on the register in 1973. It has been open to tours since the 1980’s and is currently operated by Carroll Museums, Inc. Tour are on Saturdays and Sundays at 4pm.

Our shot tower now also lends it name to our subway system, with the Shot Tower/Market Place station located virtually across the street. The Baltimore Bullets (1944-1954), our now defunct NBA basketball team, also got its name from the shot tower and The Baltimore Whiskey Company, a relatively new distillery which launched in 2015 makes a citrusy Shot Tower Gin. The lower level is now used for art exhibits, and it was the rallying point in Baltimore’s Cease Fire Project, August 2017.