Silhouettes were once among the most popular forms of art. Anyone could afford a silhouette because they were sold in resort gift shops and on seaside boardwalks. The one my mother had made of me came from Coney Island.
Is it some sort of munitions testing facility? Why build it in downtown Baltimore? There’s a reason for everything, and then I found out there were lots of them, and some are still around, almost 200 years and several technological revolutions later.