Lionel Model Trains

Figure 1. Wooden locomotive with iron wheel fittings from a late nineteenth-century context at the Magruder House (18MO324). This simple wooden train would have been pushed along the floor or pulled by a string—a far cry from the Lionel Corporation’s electric powered model trains. With … Continue reading →

Food the Old-Fashioned Way-Getting Groceries in 19th-Century Baltimore

In the days before Uber Eats and DoorDash, Baltimore’s residents got their food the old-fashioned way—by purchasing ingredients and preparing it themselves at home. While some residents tended small gardens, raised fowl, or worked the local waterways for fish, oysters, crabs, and other … Continue reading →

A Good Flush Beats a Full House: Baltimore Builds a Sanitary Sewer System

This month’s archaeological artifact is a small porcelain flush toilet that once graced a child’s toy house (Figure 1). Today, most of the western world take flushing toilets for granted, but they are a relatively recent modern convenience, particularly in Baltimore! Figure 1: Japanese … Continue reading →

The Great Baltimore Fire

This month’s item—a stack of charred paper—might not look like much, but it represents what was perhaps the worst disaster in Baltimore’s long history. Most people have heard of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the San Francisco Fire of 1906, but the lesser-known 1904 Baltimore … Continue reading →

Prohibition, Beer and Baltimore

Figure 1. Beer bottle dated c. 1910 from the Monumental Brewing Company of Baltimore, Maryland. As I perused social media and news feeds early in January, I kept coming across stories about the benefits of a dry January. An alcohol-free month was not in my cards, however, because an early … Continue reading →