Maryland Daily PhotoEvery Week Day a New Picture from MD

I love this picture of the shot tower in Baltimore becasue those clouds make it look like some sort of video game backdrop.  

Of course the tower itself was designed for a very real purpose: the manufacturing of ammunition.   To do that in 1828, you climbed to the top of the tower and dropped molten lead though a sieve, to create small pellets which would cool and take a smooth round shape on their way down to the bottom of the tower.  

The tower, at the time called the Phoenix Shot Tower, was the tallest building in the country, and remained so for many decades.    Believe it or not, in the late 1800’s somebody found a better way to make small round pellets of lead.  However, the tower remains for us to enjoy despite its obsolescence.   For that we can thank a group of concerned citizens, who in 1924 raised enough money to buy the tower and give it to the city, thereby preventing its demolition.  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 12:05 AM and is filed under Baltimore City. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.