One Charles Center is a historic

office building An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific ...

located in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean t ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. It is a 23-story aluminum and glass International Style

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ri ...

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloy ...

and constructed in 1962. It was the first modernistic office tower in Baltimore and part of the city's downtown

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

movement. The base consists of a concrete-faced podium topped by a paved plaza, with the "T"-shaped office tower atop. The tower includes metal trim and gray glass. The tower was previously the subject of a design competition. It was completed in 13 months at a cost of $10,350,000. One Charles Center was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2000. It is located next to the Fidelity Building, which was completed in the 1890s. In 1983, the

Charles Center Charles Center is a large-scale urban redevelopment project in central Baltimore's downtown business district of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Beginning in 1954, a group called the "Committee for Downtown" promoted a master plan for arresting th ...

stop of the Baltimore Metro Subway opened one block south of the Charles Center complex at the intersection of Baltimore Street and Charles Street. This stop serves as a transportation hub that connects the Metro (extending west to the northwest suburbs of the city and east to

Johns Hopkins Hospital The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. It was founded in 1889 using money from a bequest of over $7 million (1873 ...

) to local bus routes and the Charm City Circulator. An anchor tenant,

CSX Corporation CSX Corporation is an American holding company focused on rail transportation and real estate in North America, among other industries. The company was established in 1980 as part of the Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries merger ...

, sold and vacated the property in the mid-1990s, leaving the tenancy rate low. This prompted an auction for new ownership in which

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, wi ...

, its mortgage holder, bought One Charles Center in 1993 for $11.5 million. Three years later in 1996, the building was purchased for $6 million by Peter Angelos, a lawyer native to Baltimore and the majority owner of the

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...

major league baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (A ...

team. After renovations, new tenants moved into the building, including the law offices of Peter Angelos as well as the firm Wright Constable & Skeen. Former tenants of One Charles Center include

T. Rowe Price T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial inter ...

, an investment counsel firm and the Center Club of Baltimore.

References

External links

* *, including photo from 1999, at Maryland Historical Trust
One Charles Center website
Skyscraper office buildings in Baltimore Downtown Baltimore Office buildings completed in 1962 Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Baltimore Ludwig Mies van der Rohe buildings Modernist architecture in Maryland {{BaltimoreCityMD-NRHP-stub