Demolition Still Makes No Scents

I closed my eyes, inhaled gently, and imagined hard, but the Timonium traffic din quickly short-circuited the conceit that had placed me at the Inner Harbor. How silly; I, maybe more than most, knew the lovely nutmeg scent wafting downwind from the McCormick plant two miles north hadn't perfumed the downtown air for over two decades.

On 8 December 1988, it was announced that the McCormick Spice Company would abandon its landmark Inner Harbor building and the Rouse Company would tear it down. The lawsuit I filed and the "Demolition Makes No Scents" campaign I spearheaded for Baltimore Heritage quickly turned legions of citizens into historic preservationists; I've seen nothing to rival that reaction in all my 30 years of advocacy, and certainly not for a building as vernacular as the spice plant.

But it really wasn't about the building. Intense civic pride for McCormick, homegrown and world-known, fueled the losing fight that concluded with another chink in Baltimore City's ever-eroding industrial legacy.

Less than a mile southeast from where McCormick stood, the displays in the Baltimore Museum of Industry recount the story of what we invented, innovated, and fashioned, often out-churning other cities in straw hats, umbrellas, men's suits, raincoats, bottle caps, silver flatware, canned oysters, coal, beer, soap, etc. It's tough now, though, to tally a fair number of factories still humming within Baltimore City limits. Some companies moved to Baltimore County or far, far away to expand or cut costs, while others merged out of existence. Whatever the reason, the industrial drain sucked away large numbers of jobs employing citizens across a wide spectrum of education and experience. But the building could have found new life beyond McCormick.

I contend I lost my lawsuit because the judges on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals considered the McCormick factory building plain and thus worthless. Demolition commenced in June 1989, but the building put up a valiant, months-long fight as the wrecking ball much more often bounced off of it than landed solid blows. The Rouse Company (now out of business and its successor, General Growth Properties now in bankruptcy), contending the building needed to come down for "immediate soil testing" in advance of new construction, of course never built a thing, landbanking the parcel after demolishing the building to avoid paying property taxes on the improvements.

The last Baltimore Sun article detailing plans for a new building on the vacant site, published three years ago, made no mention of McCormick, a factory so handsome the company long-featured it on their packaging. I choked over Sunday’s auction ad which never references the site’s importance and reduces it merely to a parking lot.

The building, were it still standing, would no doubt today be Baltimore's hottest harborfront condominium complex. Instead, all that's left is that vacant lot and memories of visits to Ye Olde McCormick Tea House, though some brokenhearted swear they still smell what can only be a phantom cinnamon fragrance.