Domino plant’s a sweet ticket for annual tour
Doors Open Baltimore includes refinery in this year’s event
A sweet Baltimore landmark is opening its doors for a rare public tour next week. Locust Point’s Domino sugar refinery is part of Doors Open Baltimore, the annual event in which local institutions and businesses welcome visitors.
Buildings that are part of the tour include spots as diverse as an old Woodberry industrial stable and the UnderGround Science Space in Highlandtown. The event is an opportunity to catch up on the everchanging face of the city.
Doors Open Baltimore runs Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 6-7, though the Domino plant’s tour will be a day early, on Friday, Oct. 5. Go to doorsopenbaltimore.org/events/ domino-sugar-factory-tour for details. Domino’s interior ranks right up there with the hardest places in the city to visit. It’s a busy, hard-working operation where cargo ships, railway cars and tractor-trailers pull up daily.
It’s a tight ticket too. Although free, only a handful of visitors will be admitted and there is a lottery to gain a spot.
The tour sponsors, the Baltimore Architectural Foundation and AIA Baltimore, note in their event materials that the Domino facility was designed by the firm of Charles T. Main.
“The Domino Sugar Baltimore Refinery has been in continual use for 96 years and today produces 14 percent of the nation’s cane sugar,” the tour guide says. “The original buildings of steel, concrete and brick each serve a distinct purpose in the refining, packaging and shipping of sugar.”
Those lucky enough to get the Domino tour will be in a place normally as inaccessible as the Howard Street Tunnel, Fort Carroll or Federal Hill’s underground caverns.
Still, even if you don’t make it to Domino, there are enough other stops to wear out a pair of walking shoes next weekend.
In Highlandtown is the UnderGround Science Space on Haven Street. Located within the former campus of the Crown Cork and Seal Co., the facility is described as “a public laboratory offering classes, seminar and lab access so that anyone can safely investigate the living world.”
Meanwhile, Woodberry’s former Poole & Hunt Machine Works offers three stops on the tour: Gutierrez Studios — where metal architectural canopies and the gates to Charles Street’s Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden were fabricated; the nearby Amaranthine Museum, which houses works by artist Les Harris; and the old foundry’s stables.
The whole Poole & Hunt complex is an industrial campus dating to 1852 under the management of Robert Poole. Tour organizers say that it once employed 700 men who made parts for steam engines and The Domino Sugars refinery has been in constant operation for 96 years. It is one of the sites on this year’s Doors Open Baltimore tour. railroad cars. The factory produced the iron columns supporting the dome of U.S. Capitol in Washington. It also worked overtime during World War I to make ammunition shell casings.
After the war, the company declared bankruptcy and the property was acquired by another heavy industrial user, Balmar Corp. World War II made it busy again as the company made airplane wings and parts for the top-secret Manhattan Project.
In the 1970s, its mission changed again. The old foundry became a kitchen cabinet assembly factory, Bilt-In Kitchens.
By the 1990s, the Poole & Hunt property had changed directions once more, this time becoming studios for artists and a rock-climbing gym. The old stone buildings were filled with potters, painters and welders until a fire roared through much of the complex in September 1995.
While the old Northern Central and later Pennsylvania railroad had a spur into Poole & Hunt, the foundry relied on work horses and mules to assist in heavy hauling and lifting. Its former stables, a handsome stone structure, is now Biohabitats, a consulting firm where engineers, conservation planners and landscape architects work.
“The biggest impression we make on our visitors is how green our space is,” said Jennifer Missett, a team leader for the company’s Chesapeake/Delaware Bays Bioregion.
She said about 30 people work in the former stables. The creative team recently completed a design for the Stony Run Valley through the Remington, Wyman Park and Roland Park neighborhoods.
Yet while it looks to the future, the facility still has a few nods to the past. “Our conference room has a large window that was once the stable door,” Missett said.