The Baltimore Museum of Industry’s exhibition and collections document the lives of the workers that helped to propel this city to greatness: the oyster shuckers, garment makers, and steel workers.  Our museum does not document the lifestyle of the elite. 

Baltimore has long been recognized as a major industrial center and is home to the nation’s first passenger railway, oldest gas company, first traffic light, and many other inventions and innovations. The BMI’s collections are evocative reminders of Baltimore’s great history and explain, more effectively than any textbook, how the city developed from a small trading post to a thriving industrial center. The collections also explain how Baltimore’s residents—no matter their station in life, race, ethnicity, or occupation—contributed to this development.

Baltimore has long taken pride in its identity as a “working man’s town” and this industrial heritage, central to Baltimore’s image of itself, is preserved at BMI in one of the nation’s best and broadest collections of industrial items.

We invite you to visit the Baltimore Museum of Industry, where just some of the more than 1,000,000 fascinating artifacts we preserve are on display in our galleries.

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Interested in donating artifacts? Click here for information.

Or contact us with questions:
Jane Woltereck,  Director of Collections . . . jwoltereck@thebmi.org . . . 410.727.4808 x146
Matthew Shirko,  Archivist . . . mshirko@thebmi.org . . . 410.727.4808 x110