Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower is marking its first century this month as a commercially impractical but beloved curiosity named for a top-selling hangover cure.
On Thursday night, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and others celebrated the centennial at the 1911 tower, the tallest downtown structure until 1923. Guests rode a 1911 Otis elevator to the historic chamber high above the corner of Lombard and Eutaw streets to observe the clockworks and elevator motors.
"Like Baltimore, it's quirky," said artist Greg Otto, who has painted the tower numerous times and reproduced it on postcards. "The clock face is gorgeous, an extravagancy we don't see anymore. The tower itself is not particularly beautiful — an unadorned shaft with a wonderful crown. And yet, everybody knows that damn building."
Capt. Isaac Emerson, who held the patent for Bromo Seltzer and realized the publicity value of tall buildings, was the genius behind the structure. His 289-foot tower was an advertisement for his fizzy concoction, a patent medicine whose effervescent bubbling was produced when its crystals mixed with water. It was used for upset stomachs and hangovers, or what magazine ads discreetly called "dead-fish eyes." It is no longer produced.
Today, artists rent 33 studio spaces in the tower, which is run by the city's Office of Promotion & the Arts, but there are vacancies.
1 comment:
interesting. . .I was renovating an older home a few weeks back and found a bunch of little blue Bromo Seltzer bottles.
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