Marking the 300th birthday of the Port of Baltimore, city officials, along with Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley and other dignitaries, held a birthday celebration Wednesday at Baltimore?s Lexington Market, complete with a traditional cutting of the cake by O?Malley.
“Our port is the face that Baltimoreans show to the world,” said O?Malley. “It?s not every day we get to celebrate such a significant milestone and the history of a place that we all depend upon so much for the quality of our lives.”
He added that the port currently employs more than 112,000 people and generates more than $1.5 billion in business revenue annually. Additionally, the port puts more than $2 billion in the pockets of Maryland workers and contributes $220 million in tax revenues each year, O?Malley said.
The port?s celebration continued Wednesday night at the Orioles? home game against the Cleveland Indians, where former U.S. Rep. Helen Bentley, chairwoman of the Port of Baltimore Tricentennial Committee, threw out the first pitch.
Bentley said in a phone interview that the port?s 300th anniversary is particularly important because it is the only time that the city and the state have been truly able to celebrate a century marker for the port.
“Any 300th anniversary is very important and very significant,” Bentley said. “This one is particularly significant, because it?s the first time at the century mark that the economic viability of the area was such that we could celebrate another century of the port.”
She said that when the port marked its first century in 1806, the country was between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and nothing was done to mark the anniversary. Likewise in 1906, the century mark came just two years after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, and nothing was done as the city was in the midst of rebuilding.
The port was founded on April 19, 1706, when Maryland?s colonial legislators designated Whetstone Point, an area adjacent to Fort McHenry, as the official Port of Entry for Maryland?s tobacco trade with England.
The cake
» Between 4 and 5 feet long
» Designed to look like a ship with red and blue stars and sails
» Surrounded by blue icing with a red brick port on one end, resembling a pier
» Created by Harbor City, a Lexington Market vendor
