Story
On March 23, 1868, the S.S. Baltimore arrived in Locust Point, ushering in a wave of future Americans with origins across Europe. Their journeys are remembered in this community through the Baltimore Immigrant Museum and the Baltimore Immigration Memorial.
Between the early 1800s and 1914, nearly two million people arrived in Baltimore via boat. From the time of the Civil War to the onset of World War I, Locust Point was the second largest point of entry for European immigrants after Ellis Island in New York. This was mostly due to location; at Locust Point people could arrive by sea and venture across America by rail, thanks to the country’s first railroad, the B&O.
Germans made up the greatest number of immigrants during that period. Thanks to the North German Lloyd Steamship Company - One Ticket Program, one ticket offered passage on a steamship in Bremen, Germany, across the Atlantic, through customs at Locust Point, and then potentially onto a B&O Railroad car to anywhere the B&O went in America. Baltimore had the fourth largest German immigrant population in the mid-1850s. The three cities with more German immigrants were all end point of the B&O: Milwaukee (the actual endpoint was nearby Chicago), St. Louis, and Cincinnati. Baltimore also became home to significant numbers of immigrants from Lithuania, Poland, and Bohemia.
Some famous Baltimoreans whose relatives immigrated through Locust Point include: Frank Zappa (his father and all grandparents were born in Italy); Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas (all four of her grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants); radio personality Ira Glass and composer Phillip Glass (of Latvian-Jewish descent); David Hasselhoff (his great-great-grandmother immigrated from Germany to Baltimore in 1865); Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (her mother immigrated from Italy); and baseball legend Babe Ruth (his grandparents were born in Germany).
Today’s immigrants to Baltimore hail mostly from Central America and Africa.
The Baltimore Immigration Memorial asks visitors to consider the many individuals who came to the United States looking for opportunity. Designed by local artist Alex Castro, the memorial sits at the edge of Hull Street, overlooking the harbor. It consists of large concrete discs once used to support vats containing Proctor & Gamble products like Tide and Ivory Soap. Concrete balls and cones are interspersed throughout, giving the waterfront park movement.
In 2006, Castro described his vision for the memorial in an article from The Sun: "This is not a museum…It's a place to orient oneself to the many places in Baltimore that speak to immigration history and a place to collect oneself, in a quiet way. It's a place to begin to tell the story of where the ships docked, how people took trains to the Midwest, what the city looked like from the water ..."
“Ultimately, it's a place about aspiration,” he added. "We're all human. That's the one thing we share. We all have aspirations that pull us along."