BALTIMORE, GEORGE CALVERT, 1st Baron (c. 1580–1632), English statesman, son of Leonard Calvert, and Alice, daughter of John Crosland of Crosland, was born at Kipling in Yorkshire and educated at Trinity College, Oxford. After travelling on the continent, he entered the public service as secretary to Robert Cecil, afterwards earl of Salisbury. In 1606 he was appointed clerk of the crown in Connaught and Clare, in 1608 a clerk of the council, and was returned to parliament for Bossiney in 1609. He assisted James I. in his discourse against Vorstius, the Arminian theological professor of Leiden, and in 1613 took charge of the Spanish and Italian correspondence. The same year he was sent on a mission to Ireland to investigate grievances. For these services he was rewarded by knighthood in 1617, followed by a secretaryship of state in 1619 and a pension of £2000 a year in 1620. He represented successively Yorkshire (1621) and Oxford University (1624) in the House of Commons, where it fell to him in his official capacity to communicate the king’s policy and to obtain supplies. He was distrusted by the parliament, and was in favour of the unpopular alliance with Spain and the Spanish marriage. Shortly after the failure of the scheme he declared himself a Roman Catholic, and on the 12th of February 1625 threw up his office, when he was created Baron Baltimore of Baltimore and received a grant of large estates in Ireland. Henceforth he was seen little in public life and his attention was directed to colonial enterprise, with which his name will be always associated. He had established a small settlement in Newfoundland in 1621, for which under the name of Avalon he procured a charter in 1623, and which he himself visited in 1627. In consequence of disputes and the unsuitable nature of the climate he sailed thence for Virginia, but was forbidden to settle there unless he took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. He returned home, and died on the 15th of April 1632 before a new concession was secured, the charter of Maryland passing the great seal on the 20th of June 1632 in favour of his son Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, who founded the colony. Baltimore married Anne, daughter of George Mynne of Hurlingfordbury, Hertfordshire, by whom he had six sons and five daughters. He wrote Carmen funebre in D. Hen. Untonum (1596); The Answer to Tom Tell-Troth ... (1642) is also attributed to him, and Wood mentions Baltimore as having composed "something concerning Maryland." His letters are to be found in various publications, including Strafford’s Letters, Clarendon State Papers and the Calendars of State Papers.
Bibliography.—George and Cecilius Calvert by William Hand Browne (1890); article by C. H. Firth in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. with references there given; Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses (Bliss) ii. 522; Doyle’s, The English in America; Discourse on the Life and Character of Sir G. Calvert by J. P. Kennedy (1845), with the Review and the Reply to the same; London Magazine, June 1768; "Sir G. Calvert," by L. W. Wilhelm (Maryland Hist. Soc., 14th April 1884); The Nation, vol. 70, p. 95; American Historical Review, vol. 5, p. 577.
BALTIMORE, a city and seaport, and the metropolis of Maryland, U.S.A., the 7th city in population in the United States. It is at the head of tide-water on the Patapsco river and its middle and north-west branches where they form an estuary 12 m. from the entrance of their waters into Chesapeake Bay, in lat. 39° 17′ N. and long. 76° 37′ W., about 172 m. by water from the Atlantic Ocean, 40 m. by rail N.W. from Washington, 26 m. N. by W. from Annapolis, 97 m. S.W. from Philadelphia, and 184 m. from New York. Pop. (1890) 434,439; (1900) 508,957 of whom 79,258 were negroes, and 68,600 foreign-born (of these 33,208 were natives of Germany, 10,493 of Russia, 9690 of Ireland, 2841 of England, 2811 of Poland, 2321 of Bohemia and 2042 of Italy); (1910, census) 558,485. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington (the Pennsylvania system), the Baltimore & Annapolis Short Line, the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic; the Northern Central; the Western Maryland and the Maryland & Pennsylvania railways; and by steamship lines running directly to all the more important ports on the Atlantic coast of the United States, to ports in the West Indies and Brazil, to London, Liverpool, Southampton, Bristol, Leith, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast, Havre, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremen, Hamburg and other European ports.
The city extends nearly 6½ m. from E. to W., and except on the W. side a little more than 5 m. from N. to S., covering an area of about 32 sq. m. The ground on which it is built is for the most part gently rolling; originally some portions were swampy and others were marked by precipitous heights, but the swamps have been drained and filled and the heights rounded off. Jones’s Falls, a small stream shut in between granite walls several feet in height, crosses the N. boundary line a short distance W. of its middle, flows S.E. to the S.E. corner of the main business quarter, and there meets the north-west branch of the Patapsco, in which lies the harbour, defended at its entrance by the historic Fort McHenry, built at the S.E. extremity of Locust Point, an irregular peninsula extending S.E., on which are grain-elevators and a number of wharves, including those of the Baltimore & Ohio railway.
That part of the city which lies E. of Jones’s Falls is known as East Baltimore, and is in turn nominally divided into Fells' Point to the S. and E., now a shipbuilding and manufacturing quarter, and Old Town to the N. and W. In the Old Town still remain a few specimens of eighteenth century architecture, including several old-fashioned post-houses, which used to furnish entertainment for travellers starting for the Middle West by way of the old Cumberland Road beginning at Fort Cumberland, and from Baltimore to Fort Cumberland by a much older turnpike. The more inviting portion of the modern city lies on the western side of Jones’s Falls, and the principal residential districts are in the northern half of the city. A little S. from the centre of the city, Baltimore Street, running E. and W., and Charles Street, running N. and S., intersect; from this point buildings on these two streets are numbered N., S., E. and W., while buildings on other streets are numbered N. and S. from Baltimore Street and E. and W. from Charles Street. Baltimore Street is the chief business thoroughfare; S. of it as well as a little to the N. is the wholesale, financial and shipping district; while West Lexington Street, a short distance to the N., and North Howard and North Eutaw Streets, between Fayette and Franklin Streets, have numerous department and other retail stores. In North Gay Street also, which runs N.E. through East Baltimore, there are many small but busy retail shops. North Charles Street, running through the district in which the more wealthy citizens live, is itself lined with many of the most substantial and imposing residences in the city. Mount Vernon Place and Washington Place, intersecting near the centre of the city, Eutaw Place farther N.W., and Broadway running N. and S. through the middle of East Baltimore, are good examples of wide streets, having squares in the middle, adorned with lawns, flower-beds and fountains.
The buildings of the principal business quarter have been erected since 1904, when a fire which broke out on Sunday the 7th of February destroyed all the old ones within an area of 150 acres. Within a year after the fire, however, 225 places of business were again occupied and 170 more were building. A city ordinance prohibited the erection of any building more than 185 ft. in height, and prescribed a uniform height for those in the same neighbourhood; a large portion of the new buildings are of either three or four storeys, but a few tall ones range from ten to sixteen. The principal materials of which they are built are limestone, granite, marble and bricks, and terra-cotta of various colours.
The city hall, the post-office and the court-house, standing in a row, and each occupying a separate block along E. Fayette Street in almost the exact centre of the city, are three of Baltimore’s most imposing buildings, and all of them narrowly escaped destruction by the great fire. The city hall, completed in 1875, in the Renaissance style, consists of a centre structure of four storeys surmounted by an iron dome 260 ft. high, and two connecting wings of three storeys surmounted by a mansard roof; the entire outer facing is of white Maryland marble. The post-office, completed in 1890, is built of Maine granite. The court-house, completed in 1899, is of white marble, with mural paintings by La Farge, E. H. Blashfield and C. Y. Turner. Two of the principal library buildings—the Peabody and the Enoch Pratt—
