# One Charles Center

Cator Collection, Enoch Pratt Free Library

Lexington and Charles Streets, West. 1924.

Artist: Pullinger, Herbert, 1878-1961.

This 1924 print looking west on Lexington Street shows the Baltimore Gas & Electric building without its modern addition. To the right of the image is the Fidelity and Deposit Building. This area today is the northern part of Charles Center, and is closed to vehicular traffic.

The 14-block Charles Center project, begun in 1958, was the first piece of Baltimore's nationally recognized downtown Renaissance. The 33-acre project was strategically placed between the financial district on the east and

the retail district on the west. The new development consisted of office buildings, apartments, retail space, a hotel, a theater and parking facilities. Four older structures in the Charles Center area have remained, the Lord Baltimore Hotel (1928), the Baltimore Gas and Electric Building (1916), the Fidelity Building (1894) and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Building (1905).

The centerpiece of the development was One Charles Center. This 23-story aluminum-and-glass International Style office building constructed in 1962 was designed by Mies van der Rohe. The building had a pioneering role in the introduction of the International Style of Modernism to Baltimore.

The Baltimore City Fair was first held on the plaza in Charles Center in the 1970's to celebrate Baltimore's many ethnic neighborhoods.