Photo Essay: The Monumental City

Nicknames. Every city's got them, often several times over (Billings, Montana has four). Baltimore's no different.

Charm City. Mobtown. Bmore. The City That Reads. The Greatest City in America. The City of Firsts.

Among them, only Charm City rises today to the level of sobriquet. This wasn't always the case. Before any of the above came or went, Baltimore was known the nation over as The Monumental City.

Figuring the origins of the term is an imprecise act at best. Some sources attribute it to John Quincy Adams, others say it goes back even further. General agreement holds that it derives from both the number and quality of monuments found here along with the fact that Baltimore was the first city to erect a Washington Monument, memorializing the man who was "first in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

But let's set all that aside. Let's turn the phrase a bit and look not to the physical manifestations that make a "Monumental City" but rather to the notion of a city which is, itself, monumental. Grand. Significant. Impressive, and important.

These are things to which any city would naturally aspire. And to those cities I say, "have at it." Because we've got a head start. There's only one Monumental City.

This heritage is ours alone, and it's a sleeping giant.

Consider that next time you find yourself faced with one of Baltimore's many grand constructions. And consider further the words of George Washington Howard, who, when writing about Baltimore in 1873, noted the following:

"If readers at a distance are disposed to regard critically, the spirit which induces a citizen of Baltimore to sound her praises more than perhaps the most guarded taste might suggest...let them remember that a pardonable pride is the greatest incentive to development and progress in the future."

For this photo essay, Bmore's staff photographer, Arianne Teeple, visited a few of Baltimore's more interesting monuments with an eye on bringing fresh perspective to the past that lies hidden before us every day.