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Charles Center under construction

Maryland Historical Society

Baltimore's downtown district has been revitalized due to long-term urban planning. The Inner Harbor development and the Charles Center development are two aspects of this urban vision.

Charles Center
Charles Center is a thirty-three-acre urban renewal project in the heart of downtown Baltimore. The Greater Baltimore Committee, a business organization, proposed the project in 1958 to meet the growing challenge of suburban malls and office parks. Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. was an enthusiastic supporter and helped it get underway later that year. Most of the work took place in the 1960s and 1970s, but the project was not officially completed until 1986. About $35 million in public funds was used for site acquisition, land clearance, and new infrastructure; the rest came from the private sector. The total cost was approximately $200 million.

Charles Center was primarily an office tower complex, similar to Pittsburgh's Gateway Center, an earlier model urban renewal effort. Charles Center included two apartment buildings, a theater, a hotel, some stores, and two large plazas for public events. (Parking garages were beneath the plazas.) Intended to be a new center for downtown, it was located midway between the financial and retail districts, in an area bounded by Saratoga, Charles, Lombard, and Liberty Streets, in what planner David Wallace called a "natural economic valley" ideal for new investment.

Buildings in Charles Center
The best known office building is One Charles Center (1962), a twenty-two story office tower that was designed by Mies Van der Rohe, a leader in the Internationalist School of modern design. With its sleek lines and glass exterior, One Charles Center was similar to the architect's prize-winning Seagram Building in New York (1958). The George H. Fallon Federal Office Building (1967), Sun Life (1966), Mercantile Safe-Deposit and Trust (1969), and Charles Center South (1975) were the other major office towers. The most distinctive building in Charles Center is the Morris A. Mechanic Theater (1967), with a stark, modernist design that its architect John M. Johansson called "functional expressionism."

The Skywalk
Charles Center had an unusual architectural feature: an elevated walkway or "skywalk" that connected the buildings around the two large plazas. It reflected the interest among urban planners at the time in separating pedestrians from vehicular traffic. The main entrance of the Mechanic Theater was on that level. Vermont Federal Bank (1964) and Hamburger's (1963) a men's clothing store, also had entrances for customers on the walkway. It was later extended all the way to the Inner Harbor. It did not prove to be much of a success in Charles Center, and that part of the skywalk was later razed.

Historic Preservation
Charles Center was also noteworthy for saving several distinguished older buildings that were on the site: Baltimore Gas & Electric (1916), the Baltimore & Ohio building, the Fidelity and Deposit (1894) and the Lord Baltimore Hotel (1928).The planners did so in part because the structures were too costly to demolish. Whatever the reason, Jane Jacobs, the noted architectural critic, praised their decision, saying she was "so grateful to be delighted for a change instead of depressed and disheartened by a downtown project."

Workers on Charles Center

Maryland Historical Society

Inner Harbor Renewal Plan
The Inner Harbor renewal plan was first proposed by Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin in his inaugural address in May 1963. Work began in the fall of the following year. In effect it was the second stage of downtown renewal. Many businessmen were concerned about starting a new project when Charles Center was not completed, but McKeldin won them over with the argument that they could not be sure of support for such a plan from a future mayor. Unlike the plan for Charles Center, the Inner Harbor plan was less detailed in its ideas and timeframe, in part because it covered a much larger area (240 acres). Development costs far surpassed the early estimates of $260 million. The plan was divided into Inner Harbor East and West and technically remains unfinished. Oriole Park at Camden Yards (1993) and the Baltimore Ravens football stadium (1998) are two of the more recent projects in Inner Harbor West.

Inner Harbor as a Tourist Attraction
In the early 1960s the Inner Harbor was a depressed part of downtown, with aging piers and empty warehouses. It was no longer an active port facility, shipping having moved to deep-water docks at Dundalk. Urban renewal turned the Inner Harbor into a tourist destination with attractions like the Baltimore Science Center (1976 ) and the National Aquarium (1981). The Hyatt Regency (1981) was the first hotel to open on the Inner Harbor. With its appealing mix of shops and restaurants, Harborplace (1980) was perhaps the most significant project in the success of the Inner Harbor. Developer James Rouse had created a sensation in the late 1970s in Boston with his Fanueil Hall Marketplace, which in effect was a new kind of downtown mall. He did the same thing at the corner of Light and Pratt Streets and got his picture on the cover of Time in l981.

New Office Buildings
The Inner Harbor plan also extended the business district southward by adding office towers along Pratt Street. The forty-story Legg Mason Building, originally the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company Building (1973) was the first of the office towers to be constructed. Others included the IBM building (1975, second tower 1991) and the World Trade Center (1977), which was built by the Maryland Port Authority. As it turned out, all this new construction had an adverse effect on Charles Center, because tenants, lured by the availability of offices with waterfront views, began to move southward. Indeed with the completion of Rouse's Gallery at Harborplace (1988), which contained an office tower, a hotel, and a small urban mall, Light and Pratt in effect became the new center of downtown.

Inner Harbor Housing
The Inner Harbor plan included some middle-income rowhouses, mostly in the Otterbein district, but the main emphasis was on high-rise apartments to boost the city's tax base. A few of the larger buildings went up, among them Harbor Court (1986), Scarlett Place (1988) and Harborview (1993). The recent approval of the upscale Ritz-Carlton project on Key Highway, albeit low-rise in scale, is similar in spirit. Ironically, the first new housing in the Inner Harbor was a low-income retirement home on South Light Street built by the Christ Lutheran Church with the help of federal funding. It opened in 1972.

—Michael P. McCarthy