Baltimore Ghosts
Odds & EndsStreetlightsStreetcarsStreetsSigns & SignalsRailroadsBuildingsVintage Advertising
Email MeWhat's NewLinksForum BoardIntroduction

Streets
Ferry Bar Road
Photos and Text by Adam Paul
Ask anyone these days on directions to The Ferry Bar, and you're likely to get a blank look.  Those who do reply may point you in the direction of an alternative lifestyle nightclub.  But few people if anyone will actually know just where the Ferry Bar is.

At one point, the Ferry Bar was the southernmost point within Baltimore City, well before the 1918 expansion into Brooklyn.  Judging by the competition among two different streetcar companies to serve the location, it may well have been a popular place.  Some tales tell of an amusement park of some sort there, but these can likely be discounted.  But what was there that made the Ferry Bar such a potential destination.

The city survey of 1897 shows the peninsula leading to the ferry bar as a mostly empty partial grid cut among the marshlands of the Middle Branch.  At the bar itself were a couple of piers that were home to rowing clubs, but little else that would seem to justify two car lines to serve it.  At the same time, the map does not seem to indicate the presence of connecting ferry service at the location, leading one to wonder if the Ferry Bar is something of a misnomer.

Ferry Bar Map from 1897
High detail map from 1897 shows the Ferry Point peninsula and Ferry Bar road, along with the four car tracks parallelling each other down the peninsula along the road.

By 1914, the Ferry Bar had been largely replaced as an artery for local surface transportation with the opening of the Hanover Street Bridge, and the demolition of the Long Bridge which led off of the point.  A later expansion of the Western Maryland Railroad to serve new wharves in Port Covington gave a new industrial flavor to the area for several decades.

Later, the railroading and shipping operation would decline, and the peninsula would be largely forgotten until the opening of a Wal Mart store on the former Port Covington property in 2001.  With this, the old Ferry Bar road would connect with the access road to the Wal Mart store, though it would still retain a rather forlorn look along the end of the peninsula.

And so it luckily stands today.  A portion of the old brick and belgian block paving remains intact near the end of the roadway, and the Ferry Point stands as a nice way to escape the pressures of Urban living.  Perhaps that is why it was so popular in the first place!!!

Survivors
From Ferry Point Looking North along Ferry Bar Road
Looking North at Ferry Bar Road from the Ferry Point, at the end of the paving.  Note the section of belgian block in the center, as the street approaches the end of paving, as well as the unusually wide street.
 Looking outward from the Ferry Point
Looking outward along the plane of the long removed Long Bridge, whose other base was near the present day intersection of Hanover Street and Frankfurst Avenue.
Partially exposed Cross Tie
A close look in the dirt at the end of the paving reveals a partially emerged cross tie.  Was this from the streetcar tracks, or from the railroad?
 Sunken Boat
Another neat relic seen at the time of the visit was the partially submerged boat that sits about 80 feet offshore.
GOT MORE INFO?!? CONTACT ME!!!
HOME