← Baltimore Marathon·On foot

Fells Point: Cobblestones and the Old Shipbuilding Waterfront

The oldest part of Baltimore, a working shipyard district turned waterfront neighbourhood, flat the whole way and already familiar because the marathon runs through it.

DurationOn foot
TransitAbout 25 minutes on foot east along the harbour promenade, or a water taxi from the Inner Harbor
DepartsMcKeldin Plaza, Pratt Street

After the Baltimore Marathon: Fells Point

The Route: Inner Harbor → Harbor East → Fells Point → back by water taxi Logistics: 25 minutes on foot along the promenade, or a water taxi across the basin. Flat, apart from the cobbles. Marathon Month: October Duration: An afternoon, or an evening

Inner Harbor ──(≈25 min on foot)──> Harbor East ──> Fells Point
        ▲                                                │
        └──────────────(water taxi, ≈15 min)─────────────┘

You will have already run through Fells Point, somewhere in the middle of the marathon, at a point when you were not looking at it. Go back the next day. It is the oldest surviving part of Baltimore, laid out in the 1760s by William Fell around a deep-water anchorage, and it built the fast topsail schooners that became known as Baltimore clippers. The shipyards have gone and the street pattern has not.

Thames Street and the water

Thames Street runs along the water for a few hundred metres and is the centre of the whole thing. The surface is original Belgian block, which is not cobblestone in the rounded sense but square granite setts, and on legs that ran a marathon yesterday it is genuinely awkward. Wear something with a sole. The broad pier at the foot of Broadway is where the neighbourhood ends and the harbour begins, and it is the best place in the city to sit and watch a container ship come up the channel.

The Horse You Came In On Saloon, on Thames Street, claims a continuous licence back to 1775 and a connection to Edgar Allan Poe's last night. Both claims are argued over locally, which is part of the appeal.

Broadway Market and the streets behind

Broadway Market sits a block inland, two low hall buildings split by the street, rebuilt and reopened in recent years with a mix of stalls. The residential blocks around it are eighteenth and nineteenth-century brick row houses, two and three storeys, painted in a run of colours that changes house by house. Aliceanna Street and Shakespeare Street are the two worth walking.

This is a working neighbourhood with bars in it, so it is busier on a Saturday night than the Inner Harbor and less aimed at visitors.

Where to Stay and Eat

Where to stay: Fells Point has small hotels on the water and Harbor East next door has the larger ones. Either is a fifteen to twenty-five minute walk from the finish line, which is far enough to be quiet on race morning and close enough to walk back.

Where to eat: This is the part of Baltimore where you eat crab cakes without ceremony, standing up if you want to. The waterfront restaurants on Thames Street are the obvious choice; the places a block or two inland are cheaper and no worse.

Getting Home

The water taxi runs back across the basin to the Inner Harbor in about fifteen minutes and saves the walk. For the airport, take the water taxi or a cab back to the Inner Harbor and pick up the Light Rail at Convention Center station for BWI, around 30 minutes. Penn Station, for Amtrak and the MARC Penn Line, is a short cab ride north.