Information
Limited Hours: 11-4, last tour at 3:30
The Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, originally The Emerson Tower, has been a Baltimore landmark since its construction in 1911 and was the tallest building in Baltimore at the time. This historic structure, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was modeled after the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. The tower was designed by Joseph Evans Sperry and built by Captain Isaac Emerson.
Captain Isaac Emerson, the inventor of the headache remedy Bromo Seltzer and builder of the Bromo Seltzer Tower, had a genuine interest in the City of Baltimore as one of his contemporaries noted, “…he interests himself thoroughly in everything tending to advance our city, and is a patron of all worthy enterprises seeking to push Baltimore to the front.”
After an extensive renovation, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts officially opened the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower with studio spaces for visual and literary artists in 2008.
The most interesting feature is the still-functioning tower clock, the face of which displays the word BROMO-SELTZER instead of numbers. Designed by Seth Thomas in 1911, it was the largest four-dial gravity-driven non-chiming clock in the world. A full restoration of the clock was completed in 2017. The original tower was topped by a 51-foot revolving replica of the blue Bromo-Seltzer bottle, which was illuminated with 596 lights and could be seen 20 miles away. Due to structural concerns, the bottle was removed in 1936.
Also inside the Tower is the Emerson/Maryland Glass Museum which houses the largest collection of Bromo Seltzer and Maryland Glass bottles in existence. The Museum is on the 15th floor and is on loan from and curated by Ernest Dimler.
- Accessibility: Partially Accessible
- Parking: Street
- Photography: permitted
- Hours: 11:00 am – 3:30 pm
