Historic Fells Point Trail: Merchant House

Be Here Stories

This tour of Fells Point Historic Trail is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours. Located at 1732 Thames Street Transcript: Looking at this meticulously maintained federal style home gives you a solid picture of life in the early 1800s. Built with rose toned bricks set in Flemish bond, the merchant house is a living example of the homes wealthy merchants would have lived in. They were typically three and a half stories high. The first floor was usually a shop, with the owner living in the other stories above. Homes like this had two entrances, one for the shop and one for the family living space. In this case, the family's private door was set to the east, although it was bricked in long ago. The details on this building have survived amazingly well, considering it's 200 years old. Notice the dormer window on the roof, and the stone lentils above the windows.