Neighborhood Associations and the Municipal Art Society Take the Lead, 1890s–1904

In Baltimore, sustained, organized anti-smoke agitation first arose during the late 1890s. In a series of meetings, the Northeast Baltimore Improvement Association complained about the Pennsylvania Railroad's Union Tunnel that opened onto Bond and Hoffman Streets and emitted smoke into the area, thus lowering the area's property values and threatening its residents' health.Footnote ¹⁴ Likewise, the smoke issue first appeared on the city council's agenda in 1898, when Councilman E. Clay Timanus—who represented a northern ward—“introduced an ordinance intended to abate the smoke nuisance.”Footnote ¹⁵ By 1901, neighborhood associations and the Municipal Art Society were denouncing area railroads for puffing “enormous volumes of smoke and cinders, which are wafted hither and thither by the passing breezes, entering our homes, besmearing our furniture, decorations and works of art and defying our best efforts at aesthetic housekeeping, a menace to health and a serious injury to property values.”Footnote ¹⁶ Much as in Chicago, Baltimore activists targeted the railroads because the city's rail operations impinged on prominent neighborhoods in the northern portion of the city.Footnote ¹⁷

That neighborhood associations initiated early anti-smoke agitation is not surprising. Beginning in the 1880s, these associations had proliferated as businessmen and middle-class residents sought to obtain municipal improvements that enhanced their neighborhoods' comforts and property values.Footnote ¹⁸ Still, only a small number of neighborhood associations—those located in northeastern, more affluent neighborhoods—regularly participated in the anti-smoke movement. Some of these associations—like the Mount Royal Improvement Association (MRIA)—represented established residential areas such as Bolton Hill that were situated near smoky railroad operations and were concerned about becoming less desirable places to live. Others—like the Peabody Heights Improvement Association (PHIA)—acted on behalf of new housing developments that were seeking to establish themselves as preferred destinations for prosperous Baltimoreans. In the years before the city adopted its first systematic zoning plan in the 1930s, the PHIA fought any unwelcome incursions that threatened its growth, from the possible arrival of black residents (1910, 1919, 1925) to the erection of an armory (1914) and establishment of a motion picture parlor (1924). Opposition to smoke pouring from the Belt Line trains on 26th Street and area apartment buildings was but one part of the PHIA's broader effort to preserve the exclusive, residential character of the neighborhood.Footnote ¹⁹

Meanwhile, the Municipal Art Society (MAS), founded in 1899, emphasized urban beautification in its early years and viewed smoke as an aesthetic problem that had social consequences. Organized by the city's elite, this society included Theodore Marburg (future minister to Belgium), Charles J. Bonaparte (future secretary of the Navy and U.S. attorney general), and Daniel C. Gilman (president of Johns Hopkins University). Initially, the society's goals were those of the City Beautiful movement. By eradicating the filth and gloom of smoke, the society would not only beautify the city, but would also enhance the spiritual, moral, and civic lives of the people.Footnote ²⁰

Though both the neighborhood associations and the MAS fought smoke during the years 1900–05, the former naturally stressed how smoke affected their particular areas whereas the latter pushed for citywide ordinances. For their part, the neighborhood associations' achievements during these years included an agreement by the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) Railroad to address smoke from the Baltimore Belt Line through electrification, and a commitment by the Pennsylvania (Pennsy) Railroad to abate the Mount Royal “smoke nuisance.” Both of these controversies stemmed from the fact that rail traffic relied on underground tunnels ventilated by “open cuts” or parts of the tunnel lines where trains ran uncovered through the city.

As fierce competitors, the Pennsy and the B & O vied to establish direct through service between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington via Baltimore after the Civil War. By the time the roads were ready to construct direct lines, however, Baltimore was already densely developed. To gain government approval for their expansion plans, railroads had to build tunnels under the city. (See map 1 for the city's major rail tunnels.) The Pennsylvania Railroad acted first and built the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, completed in 1873, under Winchester and Wilson Streets to grant it direct access to Washington. In the next decade, the Pennsy acquired the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (PW & B) and the Union Railroad of Baltimore, which had completed the vital Union Tunnel in 1873. These two lines had previously provided service between Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York for both the Pennsylvania and the B & O Railroads. In 1884, however, the Pennsy denied the B & O further access to the PW & B and the Union Tunnel to reach Philadelphia and New York.Footnote ²¹

Map 1:

Railroad tunnels in Baltimore, derived from “Railroad Sidings and Industrial Tracks in Baltimore: Location Map,” Industrial Bureau, Baltimore Association of Commerce. Original map on which this is based courtesy Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University, accessed via. Jscholarship, https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/.

In response, the B & O built a new line to connect Philadelphia (via the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad) and New York (via the Central Railroad of New Jersey). To link this new route with the rest of its track, the B & O began construction of the Baltimore Belt Line in 1890. This project involved building a 1.4-mile tunnel directly under Howard Street and a series of short tunnels along 26th Street, ambitious undertakings that upset local property owners and residents.Footnote ²² Indeed, some Belt Line opponents were familiar with the operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad's two tunnels and questioned the new road's environmental impact. As one correspondent to the Baltimore Sun wrote in 1890, “For the evil effect of the [B & O's] contemplated route, I refer you to the mouth of the [Union] tunnel at Bond and Hoffman streets. The suffocating smoke is carried in all directions at the passing of every locomotive.”Footnote ²³ To address these concerns, the Baltimore and Ohio deployed an electric locomotive in 1895 to pull northbound trains through the Howard Street Tunnel.Footnote ²⁴ In future anti-smoke campaigns, activists would frequently propose that area railroads abandon the smoky coal-powered steam engines and follow the B & O's example.

However, even this precaution did not spare the Belt Line from anti-smoke agitation after 1900. On May 22, 1901, the Citizens Association of North Baltimore lobbied Mayor Thomas Hayes about the line's open cut between Charles and St. Paul Streets along 26th Street. The citizens' association had solid legal grounds for seeking the mayor's intervention; in 1890, the city had enacted an ordinance that empowered it to compel the B & O to enclose the open cuts in this area should its trains become a nuisance. While the city had periodically called the B & O's attention to the smoke and dirt associated with the open cuts along 26th Street, the railroad typically promised to electrify that portion of the road in the future.Footnote ²⁵ By 1901, though, the mayor was losing patience; citizens were increasingly complaining about the smoke, cinders, and sparks from passing engines. Furthermore, the Pennsy's Union Tunnel had recently suffered a cave-in, and its use of the Belt Line to get through the city only worsened the traffic and smoke that was pouring into the area bounded by Charles and St. Paul Streets.Footnote ²⁶

On July 2, 1901, Mayor Hayes and City Register George N. Numsen ordered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to enclose that part of the Belt Line tunnels east of St. Paul Street and to build a station and train shed between St. Paul and Charles Streets, in accordance with the 1890 ordinance. Again, the B & O temporized by promising to purchase three additional electric locomotives for use on the Belt Line. In response to the B & O plan, Chairman James B. Guyton of the City Council Committee on Police and Jail proposed on December 23 a substitute ordinance for the 1890 measure that would grant the B & O the time necessary to expand electrification along the Belt Line. Guyton's committee then took up the matter in May 1902, and both branches of the city council debated and passed it in June. Finally, on July 15, Mayor Hayes signed an ordinance that granted the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ten months to introduce additional electric motors on the Belt Line. In a concession to the railroad, the city only required electrification on its eastward route through the 26th Street tunnels. On its westward path (that went downhill), the B & O planned to rely primarily on gravity to propel its trains through them. To show its good faith, the B & O posted a $10,000 bond and agreed to a penalty for noncompliance of $500 a day past the city's deadline.Footnote ²⁷

While the B & O seemed willing to electrify, the Pennsylvania Railroad had no such plans, even as residents of northeastern Baltimore increasingly mobilized against the open cuts in its tunnels after 1900. In January of 1902, the MRIA sought to close an open cut in the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel that extended from Mount Royal Avenue to John Street. The group mobilized doctors, religious leaders, and residents to write letters to city newspapers and lobby city leaders and then testify before the state legislature about the ill effects they suffered from area smoke. While the anti-smoke activists cited harm to both their health and property values, they also contended that smoke besmirched the Mount Royal Avenue entrance to the Druid Hill Park, “our prettiest park.” Their critiques were bolstered by several editorials in the Baltimore Sun that demanded smoke relief. Anti-smoke commentators proposed two possible solutions: the Pennsy could either close the cut by building a connection between the two segments of its tunnel, or it could use electric locomotives in the tunnel. Ultimately, the MRIA convinced Peter J. Campbell, a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates, to propose a state law that directed the railroad to close the open cut within a fixed time or to pay $100 a day after the deadline.Footnote ²⁸

In response, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's general agent, George C. Wilkins, testified before the legislature that the railroad would address smoke abatement but that the solution would entail neither electrification nor the covering of the open cut. Closing the cut, Wilkins maintained, would only worsen the air in the already smoky tunnel, threatening the health and comfort of the passengers and railway employees. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania officials contended that the tunnel ceiling was too low to accommodate electrification equipment.Footnote ²⁹ Ultimately, the Maryland House of Delegates obliged the Pennsy by tabling Campbell's bill.Footnote ³⁰ In June of 1903, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that it would build a fanhouse and cover the opening in the tunnel with a shield. Large electric fans would drive the smoke from the passing trains into the fanhouse and up a large smokestack 150 feet high. Though some pointed out that the Pennsylvania's smokestack at the open cut at Madison Avenue and Wilson Street had not solved that area's smoke problem, the Pennsylvania Railroad duly constructed the fanhouse.Footnote ³¹

While northeastern neighborhood associations focused on specific smoke nuisances in their areas, the MAS sought a citywide ordinance. In December 1901, Councilman Timanus responded to its pleas by introducing an ordinance that died in the 1901–02 session but that would have made it a misdemeanor to emit “thick or dense black or gray smoke.” At the City Council Committee on Police and Jail's public hearing about the ordinance on January 11, 1902, representatives from an impressive array of local associations were on hand, including the MAS; the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association; the Old Town Merchants and Manufacturers' Association; the South Baltimore Business Men's Association; and the Arundell Good Government Club, a women's club. However, it was the MAS's John N. Steele who took the lead at the hearing and proposed an exemption from the ordinance for manufacturing plants that used boilers of twenty-five horsepower or less.Footnote ³²

This solicitude for manufacturers would resurface later in the Municipal Arts Society's more successful 1904–05 campaign to regulate air pollution in Baltimore. Also supported by the Arundell Good Government Club and the Baltimore Reform League, the 1905 ordinance banned the emission of “dense or black smoke” from city buildings, hotels, office buildings, apartment buildings, theaters, meeting halls, stores, and dwellings within the city limits, subject to fines. It did not apply to manufacturing outfits because several city council members maintained that Baltimore's economic future depended on its capacity to attract manufacturers. As one councilman remarked, “We want to protect the residence section of the city, and the ordinance will do that. The proprietors of the buildings [named in the ordinance] don't compete with other cities, but the manufacturers do.”Footnote ³³

The Baltimore Anti-Smoke League: An Experiment in Common-Law Regulation

The MAS lent moral support to anti-smoke efforts during the first decade of the twentieth century, but it eventually focused on multiple issues, including park development, creating a new sewage system, and urban planning. Moreover, some society members personally solved the smoke problem by moving from central Baltimore to Roland Park, an exclusive suburb on the city's northern edge.Footnote ³⁴ In the meantime, attorney David Stewart formed the Baltimore Anti-Smoke League (BASL) in December of 1905.Footnote ³⁵ As maps 2 and 3 show, most BASL members lived in the northeastern part of the city in neighborhoods associated with social prominence (e.g., Bolton Hill) and middle-class respectability (e.g., Reservoir Hill).Footnote ³⁶ Establishing a group devoted specifically to the smoke nuisance was not new to Baltimore; back in 1900, a subscriber had written to the Baltimore Sun, asking, “Why cannot an association be formed to fight the smoke nuisance in Baltimore? It is getting to be unbearable; it is affecting public health.”Footnote ³⁷ Moreover, residents in St. Louis (1891) and Cleveland (1892) had already established groups dedicated to the cause.Footnote ³⁸

Map 2:

Overall Distribution, Anti-Smoke Group Membership in Baltimore. This map uses Google Maps to situate the street addresses of members of the Baltimore Anti-Smoke League and the Women's Civic League. Constructed from Anti-Smoke League of Baltimore, “Fifth Letter and List of Members,” May 1, 1906, “Smoke Control,” RG 29, S1, Baltimore City Archives, and from Women's Civic League, Civic Courier, 1912–1915 (the peak years of Civic League anti-smoke activity).

Map 3:

Prosperous Neighborhoods and Anti-Smoke Group Membership in Baltimore. This map uses Google Maps to situate the street addresses of members of the Baltimore Anti-Smoke League and the Women's Civic League. Constructed from Anti-Smoke League of Baltimore, “Fifth Letter and List of Members,” May 1, 1906, “Smoke Control,” RG 29, S1, Baltimore City Archives, and Women's Civic League, Civic Courier, 1912–1915.

David Stewart, the BASL's founder, was a typical progressive in that he was an urban-born, well-educated professional man of old American stock, as were many others active in the BASL.Footnote ³⁹ He had also participated in the birth of the Baltimore Reform League in 1885 and was considered an advocate of “good government” more generally.Footnote ⁴⁰ Still, his background as an attorney and real estate investor had perhaps the most significant impact on his career as a social reformer. In broader professional circles, Stewart cultivated an expertise in marital law.Footnote ⁴¹ As a practicing attorney and real estate investor, though, he was heavily involved in transfers of city real estate and thus could speak knowledgeably about the impact of smoke on property values. In his specific complaints about the Pennsylvania Railroad, for example, he noted his own experience in developing rental properties on Guilford Avenue in the middle-class Peabody Heights neighborhood. Due to railroad smoke and noise, Stewart complained that “people would not live in them at the rent asked—$420 a year—and they had finally to be rented for $300 a year, and I got rid of them at a loss of more than $10,000 actual cost put into the transaction.” Indeed, Stewart's concern about stabilizing property values in the central city was such that he was a vocal participant in the 1910 debate about Baltimore's residential segregation ordinance, which introduced uncertainty into the real estate market by sidestepping the vexing issues of racially mixed neighborhoods and changing residential patterns.Footnote ⁴²

In any case, the lawyer-led BASL predictably pursued a path of reform with the common-law regulatory regime as its starting point. Embraced by anti-smoke activists elsewhere, this approach was the traditional method for coping with harmful business practices and was not merely “the legal manifestation of the cumulative anger that had built up among antismoke activists over the continuing deterioration of the air quality in large cities,” as Frank Uekoetter maintains.Footnote ⁴³ For groups like the BASL, nuisance law was the element of common-law jurisprudence deemed most appropriate for their purposes:

Though it sometimes helped prosecute private smoke nuisances,Footnote ⁴⁵ the BASL was primarily interested in bolstering the city's capacity to declare smoke to be a public nuisance by definition (or nuisance per se). In 1906, the group lobbied the state legislature for a general law that would have declared the discharge of dense smoke to be prima facie evidence of a public nuisance “with all the incidents, civil and criminal, of a public nuisance under the common law.”Footnote ⁴⁶

League leaders pursued this approach in order to rectify the deficiencies of common-law regulation that failed—in their eyes—to effectively empower complainants and public officials to use the courts to regulate smoke. Indeed, they specifically cited the “uncertainty of the common law in distinguishing what is and what is not a nuisance in connection with smoke cases.” Innovating within the framework of the common law was typical of the age; other reformers had similarly sought to forge new regulatory weapons out of the basic tools of common-law adjudication.Footnote ⁴⁷ The BASL also sought a state law (rather than a municipal ordinance) because it wasn't clear that the city had “the power to condemn the use of smoke as a public nuisance.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Ultimately, a state law declaring the discharge of dense smoke to be a nuisance per se would bolster the city government's enforcement capacities, since it had always been easiest to abate nuisances by definition, such as slaughterhouses.Footnote ⁴⁹ For the BASL, such capacities had recently been called into question during the attempted prosecution of three premises located in central Baltimore: the St. James and the Belvedere Hotels and the Hutzler Brothers department store.

In December 1905, the state's attorney prosecuted Louis P. Samanni, proprietor of the St. James Hotel, for maintaining a public nuisance. Witnesses for the prosecution testified that they had seen black smoke emanating from the hotel; witnesses for the defense rejected such claims. Some defense witnesses claimed to have seen no smoke issue from the hotel; others claimed that any nearby smoke came from other sources. The jury, after forty-five minutes of deliberation, acquitted Samanni. Though Samanni stood trial, his counterparts from the Belvedere Hotel and Hutzler Brothers instead opted to reach agreements with prosecutors. The managers of these establishments agreed to take immediate steps to prevent the discharge of dense smoke if charges against them were dropped. However, by December 28, the BASL was claiming that the Belvedere was still a nuisance and that it was “emitting dense smoke … as great, or greater, than before the settling of the indictment.” The Belvedere responded by agreeing to install a smoke-prevention device recommended by the league, but the group's experience in these cases led them to believe that the existing regulatory regime was wanting. By relying on the common-law approach, government officials struggled to convince a jury that an everyday behavior (emitting smoke) constituted a public nuisance, and they failed to monitor promises of abatement once charges had been dropped.Footnote ⁵⁰

The Anti-Smoke League also believed that a broader state statute was necessary because the 1905 ordinance applied only to hotels, apartments, stores, and other stationary premises. To the league, the measure's biggest flaw was its failure to force the railroads to reduce their smoke output. Indeed, some of David Stewart's first actions as an anti-smoke leader involved calling out the Pennsylvania and Western Maryland Railroads for their contributions to the city's smoky atmosphere. Though he initially hoped that the railroads would voluntarily reduce their emissions, their resistance convinced Stewart that legal compulsion (or the threat thereof) might be necessary.Footnote ⁵¹ A secondary concern involved the ordinance's exemption of manufacturers. While the BASL generally shared the Municipal Art League's position that penalizing manufacturers was a political nonstarter, a few members publicly announced their support for “some restrictions” on their activities. Still, the Anti-Smoke League generally did not blame manufacturers for the air pollution in Baltimore, particularly in the northern residential areas where few were located.Footnote ⁵² Moreover, league president Stewart was very careful to argue that his group's proposed law would give city officials enough discretion to make the exemptions necessary to protect the city's economic interests.Footnote ⁵³

Despite the BASL's assertion that the anti-smoke ordinance would not sap the economic vitality of Baltimore, its proposal faced open opposition from a box manufacturer, the Pennsy, and the United Railways and Electric Company, all of which sent representatives to testify against it at a hearing held by the Judiciary Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates in February 1906. After stripping out its most stringent provision, namely, that the emission of smoke would constitute prima facie evidence of guilt, this committee reported the bill favorably to the house, which proceeded to kill it on March 28, 1906. During the debate, it became clear that some legislators feared that it would harm Baltimore's economy. Other lawmakers noted that anti-smoke agitators represented a small fraction of Baltimore's population, though they sometimes exaggerated the narrowness of their geographical base. “They all live in the Twelfth ward,” exclaimed one bill opponent when a supporter read names from the BASL's membership list.Footnote ⁵⁴ Home to middle-class neighborhoods like Peabody Heights, Abell, and Barclay, the Twelfth ward was one also of the wealthiest wards in Baltimore and included a population that was 54 percent “old stock” Americans.Footnote ⁵⁵ Though several anti-smoke activists lived in this ward, my mapping of 1,289 League unique street addresses from 1906 suggests that many BASL members were also from the Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth wards, home to the prosperous Reservoir Hill, Mount Vernon, and Bolton Hill neighborhoods. (See map 3 above.)

Thwarted by the state legislature, David Stewart and the BASL lowered their sights and drafted a city ordinance in April 1906. Stewart later acknowledged that, unlike the state legislature, the Baltimore City Council lacked the police power to designate black smoke a public nuisance. Drawing on the city's existing powers, then, the proposed ordinance sought to prohibit “the emission or discharge of black or dark gray smoke into the open air … for more than six minutes in any hour,” under threat of fine ($25 for the first offense and an additional fine of $10 a day thereafter if smoke persisted). Political leaders from southern Baltimore were unenthusiastic. “In South Baltimore,” asserted Republican congressman Frank Wachter, who represented the area, “we are willing to have more smoke as long as it means more factories. Lots of smoke means more salaries to our people there, and we in that section need that more than we do boulevards.” While Wachter's constituents (who included many African Americans) apparently appreciated his emphasis on economic development, both branches of the city council passed this measure in October, and on November 19, 1906, Mayor Timanus, long on the record as supporting smoke abatement, signed it into law. A “jubilant” Stewart shortly thereafter published a “Warning to Smoke Producers” in city newspapers, announcing that the BASL would “listen to complaints, collect evidence, and in every way possible aid in securing compliance with this law.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Such assertions were typical of early anti-smoke activists and of common-law regulation more generally.Footnote ⁵⁷

Significantly, from 1800 to 1925, American citizens were heavily involved in regulatory policy, particularly its enforcement. Moreover, they often either created voluntary associations to accomplish this purpose or incorporated enforcement activities into existing organizations, thus providing institutional support for their vision of a mutual polity comprised of alert citizens. Citizens were central to regulation because public officials were more reactive than proactive, and the common-law regulatory regime depended heavily on citizens to monitor their communities and prod officials to act. Indeed, this regime was no accident: when enacting new regulatory policies, lawmakers often assumed that private citizens would supplement public enforcement efforts.Footnote ⁵⁸ In addition to bolstering anti-smoke efforts, private action helped to uphold laws against theft, robbery, trespassing, counterfeiting, child abuse, cruelty to animals, pornography, abortion, prostitution, gambling, illicit alcohol sales, and the depletion of wildlife.Footnote ⁵⁹

While the BASL's announcement that it would directly aid enforcement efforts was commonplace in the early twentieth century, its partial assumption of this task was not necessarily required, as the ordinance lodged responsibility for its enforcement in the city's health commissioner and department.Footnote ⁶⁰ Baltimore had long appointed health officials to cope with threats to the public health, such as epidemics. In 1793, Baltimore officially established a Health Department; by 1875, a modernizing department initiated systemic surveillance and data collection. During the 1890s, the Health Department capitalized on the discoveries of bacteriology by developing a lab, compulsory vaccination policies, and inspection regimens to further its aims. In 1900, the authors of the new city charter responded to the demand for “the appointment of experts in all departments where professional knowledge and skill are required” by requiring that the commissioner of health be a physician of five years' experience and actively practicing medicine when appointed. Despite its gradual modernization, the Health Department was not a full-fledged professional agency during the Progressive Era, and its personnel policies reflected that. In March 1900, for example, Health Commissioner James Bosley obtained his job the old fashioned way—through political patronage. Appointed by the newly elected Democratic mayor, Thomas Hayes, Bosley replaced Heath C. Hampson Jones who was demoted to assistant commissioner despite his superior qualifications. Significantly, the 1906 ordinance created no specialized officers or offices devoted solely to anti-smoke work.Footnote ⁶¹

Instead, the Health Department administered anti-smoke ordinances through a clerk (later called the complaints clerk) and health wardens. The clerk's duties were “to receive complaints, to distribute them among the health wardens for investigation and action, and to keep the necessary check on them to see that they have been attended to properly.” Both the citizenry and the police made complaints about nuisances, and contentious cases were resolved through city prosecutions. If a grand jury found a nuisance to be irremediable, the police would serve notice to abate. In addition to the emission of black smoke, the health wardens were empowered to act in cases involving dead animals, manure piles, oyster and clam refuse, cow and horse stables, the practice of “offensive trades,” the unauthorized dumping and burning of refuse, slaughterhouses, hogpens, and defective plumbing and drainage, among others. Though typically physicians, health wardens were thus generalists, and they were expected to respond to situations outside of their knowledge and training. Moreover, the city spent relatively little on their work during the years 1890–1930; despite the “rising concern with municipal health during this period, ... monetary commitment on the part of the city government remained below 1 percent of the budget.”Footnote ⁶²

In short, while the BASL had to rely on the Health Department as a source of official action, there was no guarantee that its officers would be proactive in policing the smoke nuisance. Hence, like the anti-smoke activists in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, BASL leaders assumed that they would be key players in the enforcement of the 1906 ordinance.Footnote ⁶³ Moreover, while they enjoyed statutory authority to act under the ordinances of 1905 and 1906, their enforcement activities focused on using that old common-law standby, the courts. To initiate enforcement actions, the BASL employed its own smoke inspectors to make investigations and report violations of the law to the Health Department, which was then expected to prosecute violators. After some BASL inspectors turned up several violations in February 1907, the Health Department issued warrants to seven prominent businessmen, including the president of the B & O Railroad and the managers of hotels and other buildings. The Health Department selected these individuals “because they were well able to defend themselves,” thus allowing for a thorough consideration of the matter and a sense of how the 1906 ordinance would fare in court proceedings. Their cases were referred to a grand jury that promptly dismissed the charges against the accused. Apparently, the grand jury was responding to the findings of a grand jury committee that visited the “nuisances” and to the claims of alleged offenders that they were either innocent or willing to install smoke-consuming devices.Footnote ⁶⁴

Similar attempts to secure injunctions and damages through the 1906 ordinance by the BASL also foundered. In October 1908, a grand jury dismissed a case against the Belvedere Hotel despite David Stewart's contention that “a dense cloud of smoke was constantly issuing from the chimney of the Belvedere.” By rejecting the claim that the Belvedere Hotel was maintaining a nuisance, the grand jury seemingly sided with many Baltimore businessmen. Speaking in support of the dismissal, a Chesapeake Shoe Company officer asserted, “There is no way of preventing smoke…. Black smoke must of necessity issue from the chimneys of our hotels and wholesale houses, no matter what precautions are taken…. The ordinance should unquestionably be made less drastic.” In fact, the Baltimore American reported that public opinion was so strongly opposed to the law that “city officials have admitted that it was very difficult to enforce the ordinance.” One of the newspaper's readers went so far as to label the anti-smoke movement as “foolish” and likely to have a detrimental effect on the city's business climate if it succeeded in enforcing the measure.Footnote ⁶⁵

Public indifference or hostility to the Baltimore anti-smoke movement may well have diminished its influence during the debate about the Pennsylvania Railroad and its proposed capital improvements. During the years 1908–09, the city council considered two ordinances that would have reduced the railroads' contribution to the city's smoky atmosphere. One ordinance prohibited the Pennsy from using steam locomotives in the Union Tunnel. Supporters of the ordinance hoped that the electrification of this tunnel would abate a smoke nuisance at the tunnel's Hoffman Street entrance.Footnote ⁶⁶ A second ordinance would have banned “the use of soft coal or wood in locomotives within the city limits.” This measure would have presumably left the railroads with two alternatives for fuel: hard coal (which produced less smoke) or electric motors.Footnote ⁶⁷

In backing these measures, anti-smoke activists and their political allies seemingly had some political leverage over their powerful opponents. In 1908–09, the Pennsylvania Railroad was planning a new station facility, and it needed permission from the city before beginning construction. Presumably, the city council could have required this company to use electric motors in exchange for approval of its construction plans. The MRIA, for one, recommended that the Pennsy be allowed to build the new station with the provision “that within two years after the passage of the ordinance or after a certain day named the Pennsylvania Railroad and all the companies using these tracks shall operate all trains within the corporate limits of the city by electric motors, or else use steam locomotives equipped with a smoke-condensing device.” However, Pennsy managers successfully argued that electrification would force them to move some of their operations out of Baltimore, leading to hundreds of lost jobs. Furthermore, they argued that electrification of the Union Tunnel alone would cost upwards of $6,000,000 and was thus “prohibitive and impracticable.” In the end, the railroad secured permission to construct a new Union Station without making any significant concessions regarding the “smoke nuisance.”Footnote ⁶⁸

In light of successful urban anti-smoke campaigns elsewhere, the Baltimore movement's failure to secure both support for new ordinances and the enforcement of existing measures is somewhat surprising. After all, as Baltimore reformers were quick to point out, anti-smoke activists elsewhere were securing far more community and government support for their efforts.Footnote ⁶⁹ What reformers failed to note, however, was that they never secured much support outside of the northeastern neighborhoods during the first decade of the twentieth century. Time and time again, support for anti-smoke efforts emanated from these neighborhoods, either through the BASL or through groups such as the MRIA, the PHIA, the Citizens Association of North Baltimore, and the Northeast Baltimore Improvement Association. Indeed, as maps 2 and 4 show, the BASL could claim few members from the southern residential areas surrounding the garment district, sweatshop area, or the inner harbor, which were home to substantial working-class populations. Likewise, the league had a modest presence in the “Old West” neighborhood that gradually became home to about half of the city's African Americans by 1904.Footnote ⁷⁰ Ultimately, the only neighborhood associations to testify in favor of smoke ordinances not from the northeastern portion of the city included the Southwest Baltimore and East End associations, and their participation was minimal. Meanwhile, the anti-smoke movement's proposal that the Pennsy use electric motors raised the ire of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, who feared job losses for firemen should the new technology be adopted. Furthermore, the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association was an enthusiastic proponent of the Pennsy's proposal for a new Union Station and had little patience for the anti-smoke concerns of the BASL and those who wanted to use the station issue to improve air quality.Footnote ⁷¹

Map 4:

Working-Class Neighborhoods and Anti-Smoke Group Membership. This map uses Google Maps to situate the street addresses of members of the Baltimore Anti-Smoke League and the Women's Civic League. Constructed from Anti-Smoke League of Baltimore, “Fifth Letter and List of Members,” May 1, 1906, “Smoke Control,” RG 29, S1, Baltimore City Archives, and Women's Civic League, Civic Courier, 1912–1915.

Finally, economic concerns seem to have given the business community extra leverage in Baltimore after the turn of the century. In 1904, Baltimore suffered a devastating fire in the commercial district,which destroyed 1,526 buildings and left more than 2,500 businesses temporarily homeless, including the B & O Railroad, which lost its headquarters. In the aftermath of the fire, the city adopted a reconstruction plan that involved eminent domain takings from burnt-district property owners at submarket prices, a levy of “betterment assessments” on such owners, and a dramatic increase in their property taxes. These property owners would benefit disproportionately from the reconstruction plan in the future, but they bore some of its costs in the short run.Footnote ⁷²

While the business community dealt with the fire's aftermath, some community leaders hoped that the disaster would serve as a wake-up call to the city, whose manufacturing sector had stagnated for decades. Compared to the other most important industrial cities in the United States, Baltimore had ranked ninth in 1880 in terms of the net value of its production; in 1900, the city was still ninth.Footnote ⁷³ Indeed, the Baltimore American viewed the burnt district as “a fine opportunity … to the city to acquire manufacturing plants.” The paper even encouraged the city to purchase property at low rates (much as it was already doing in the burnt district for improvements like street widening) and then donate that land to manufacturers. This desire to promote industrial production in Baltimore had made it politically impossible for activists to apply anti-smoke ordinances to manufacturers. Critiques of their efforts fixated on how groups such as the BASL were contributing to a poor business climate in the city overall. “If a compulsory [anti-smoke] law be passed which cannot be made operative [by manufacturers,] it will result in such annoyance that contemplating manufacturers will invest where no such law exists, and some who have been long in business in the city would doubtless go elsewhere,” opined the American. In fact, smoke was often touted as evidence of prosperity, most notably by South Baltimoreans, who bore the brunt of manufacturing-related pollution. “Our city is growing,” declared Congressman Wachter, “and if you will but give us your support we will have a larger, better and grander city than ever before, and the smoke from the factories in this section will float across the skies as a mute evidence of the vast amount of business that is being done.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Regardless of whether tough anti-smoke measures would have made a difference, this fear of industrial stagnation had merit. By 1909, Baltimore had slipped from ninth to thirteenth place in terms of the net value of manufacturing production when compared to other American industrial cities.Footnote ⁷⁵ Meanwhile, the BASL languished and eventually became inactive after the defeats of 1908–09. In December of 1910, David Stewart issued a final complaint about the city's failure to enforce its anti-smoke ordinances and then became most noteworthy for his foreign travel and various scandals in his personal life.Footnote ⁷⁶ The anti-smoke movement was not dead, however. Instead, it would be led by the Women's Civic League, which initiated a sustained period of female anti-smoke activism in 1911.

The Women's Civic League and the Twilight of Common-Law Regulation

Prior to 1911, some Baltimore women had participated in the anti-smoke movement through the Arundell Club, a group formed in 1894 as an offshoot of the Women's Literary Club to engage in “more than purely literary work.” An affiliate of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Arundell Club then created a subsidiary, the Woman's Good Government Club, in 1895 to address municipal housekeeping and other political issues.Footnote ⁷⁷ By assuming the role of municipal housekeepers, women of this era found a means of exporting their traditional domestic role as protectors of health, cleanliness, and morality to the public sphere. Women's groups that took up this task could be found agitating for improvements in garbage collection, street cleaning, and sewage systems, as well as for smoke abatement. Concerning the anti-smoke movement, the Arundell Good Government Club periodically made public statements in favor of its endeavors and hosted anti-smoke addresses. However, the club never made smoke abatement a top priority, and it did not provide leadership on this issue. Thus, in contrast to similar groups in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Chicago, the Arundell Good Government Club is best remembered for its work regarding child labor reform and compulsory education in Baltimore.Footnote ⁷⁸

In a more dramatic episode of early anti-smoke agitation, women did play a key role in one of the few successful nuisance-law prosecutions of a Baltimore factory during the first decade of the twentieth century. On June 18, 1906, State's Attorney Albert S. J. Owens brought charges against Wilson K. Levering, proprietor of a company that manufactured window-sash weights, for emitting dense smoke, cinders, and soot. At Levering's trial, several women testified that the smoke from his plant had made it difficult for them to dry their laundry outside and had blackened clothes, curtains, and furniture in their homes. They brought photographs of the smoke and its impact on their homes and also introduced “a small box of cinders and soot” as evidence. Though others testified that Levering's company was at most a “slight annoyance,” the jury thought otherwise and found Levering guilty. As punishment, the firm paid a nominal fee in exchange for a promise to rectify the nuisance. Though new complaints cropped up in 1910, Levering had seemingly complied by 1911, as the Baltimore Sun reported the city's findings that his firm “had erected a smokestack at a cost of more than $3,000 and that the majority of the people living near the plant have no complaint to make.”Footnote ⁷⁹

The Levering trial's success suggested that Baltimoreans might have been more willing to penalize smoke producers if credible prosecution witnesses could clearly demonstrate the harm they caused. Women reformers in the role of municipal housekeepers perhaps had an advantage over male complainants who merely relied on testimony and photographs of smoke discharged in violation of city ordinances. After all, in contrast to the cases sponsored by the BASL, female witnesses at the Levering trial could point to actual cinders and soot that had to be “scraped off the furniture.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Indeed, in other cities, women had been particularly active in securing evidence of illicit smoke and were key participants in the common-law regulation of the smoke nuisance. For instance, women in Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and elsewhere served as volunteer smoke inspectors, who watched smokestacks and chimneys and recorded their observations of smoke density (often determined by use of the Ringelmann Chart) for the purposes of enforcing or strengthening anti-smoke measures.Footnote ⁸¹ When calling upon the members of the Chicago Woman's Club to serve in this capacity in 1909, Mrs. John O'Connor conjured up the common-law vision of a mutual polity comprised of alert citizens to motivate her listeners. “In New England,” she declared, “they have civic spirit in the small towns where they have to chop their wood and keep their front walks clean themselves.”Footnote ⁸² What was particularly remarkable about the efforts of groups like the Chicago Woman's Club was the gender of their participants. Private policing was often perceived to be a male responsibility, as it frequently involved initiating legal proceedings and engaging in secret surveillance or other activities that could expose the participant to physical or moral hazards.Footnote ⁸³

Aside from the Levering case, women in Baltimore were never personally involved in policing or prosecuting the “smoke nuisance.” This proved to be true even after 1911, when the establishment of the Women's Civic League (WCL) propelled women into a leading role in the city's anti-smoke movement. Created to improve the living and working conditions in Baltimore, this group listed “to abate the smoke nuisance” in its original organization plan, and it formed a Smoke Abatement Committee as one of its original two subject committees.Footnote ⁸⁴ The league's initial focus on smoke abatement was a natural one, as several of its founders and members of its first board of directors had connections with the now-defunct BASL; the MAS; and the Arundell Club, long-time supporters of this aim.Footnote ⁸⁵

The WCL began its anti-smoke efforts with an educational campaign, which most notably brought Thomas E. Donnelly from the Chicago Smoke Abatement Commission to Baltimore. Drawing upon the Chicago experience, Donnelly convinced league leaders to pursue a conciliatory, constructive approach to smoke abatement that relied on smoke abatement experts employed by city government.Footnote ⁸⁶ Instead of depending solely on prosecution and litigation to punish smoke producers, Chicago city government engaged knowledgeable smoke inspectors to secure the voluntary cooperation of the city's business community to reduce smoke emissions:

In fact, as Frank Uekotter demonstrates, the approach outlined by Donnelly would be adopted by several major cities that had previously focused on prosecutorial strategies.Footnote ⁸⁷

Once they embraced this conciliatory approach, the WCL argued that Baltimore needed to create its own smoke abatement commission of “representative men” to help map out a citywide strategy for reducing smoke emissions. Its leaders also pushed for a more comprehensive municipal ordinance that would require polluters to eventually adopt technologies that minimized smoke. Most importantly, the league maintained that the city should hire a smoke inspector (and assistant inspectors) with the engineering expertise necessary to grapple with smoke as a technical issue. Again, the Chicago case was instructive. As the Baltimore Sun noted, “The anti-smoke warfare went through various stages in Chicago. At one time the smoke inspector was a florist whose efficiency was not first class. Results began to be obtained only when they got hold of a competent engineer who could understand and deal with the situation.”Footnote ⁸⁸

From the beginning, then, the WCL preferred administrative regulation to common-law regulation. At first, it seemed as though the league was on track to replicate Chicago's system, complete with the city's first set of smoke inspectors. In 1912, its members asked Mayor James H. Preston to create the Baltimore Smoke Abatement Commission, which he did without even waiting for the city council's approval. As in Chicago, the commission included manufacturers, engineers, and businessmen who presumably understood the practical and technical challenges of reducing smoke. With the commission in place, the league then convinced the mayor to appoint a smoke inspector, Edward A. Thompson, and to approve an annual municipal appropriation of $1,500 for his salary. Later, the Smoke Abatement Commission appointed an assistant smoke inspector, C. R. Wells, who was directed to secure the railroads' compliance with the city's anti-smoke ordinances. Both Thompson and Wells were engineers who had worked for the Consolidated Gas Electric Light and Power Company; Thompson had served as superintendent of steam plants, while Wells had been his assistant.Footnote ⁸⁹

From 1912 to 1915, Baltimore's new anti-smoke regime seemed to be making progress toward reducing air pollution. In 1913, Inspector Thompson issued a positive report that suggested that manufacturers, hotels, and railways would voluntarily reduce their smoke output when they were given the necessary technical advice and when they understood that cost savings could be achieved by wasting less fuel. Furthermore, he heralded a “50 per cent reduction in the smoke nuisance so far as railroads are concerned and a reduction of from 12 to 15 percent in the factory districts within the last year.” Later, he claimed the railroads had lowered their emissions by 70 percent, while all other polluters had decreased theirs by 12 percent. By 1915, the chairman of the City Wide Congress (a gathering of various local associations) announced that “Inspector Thompson had exerted a moral influence upon 30 or 40 large manufacturers and the railroads, and had given them valuable devices and assistance in the matter of changing their boilers without any cost.” Though the city council failed to enact additional measures to regulate smoke emissions, the inspection regime had seemingly gone beyond the purely reactive approach associated with common-law regulation and had instead pursued preventive measures to ensure compliance with city ordinances.Footnote ⁹⁰

Despite its promising start, this new inspection regime faltered because city government failed to fully institutionalize either the Smoke Abatement Commission or the inspector's office, which began as public-private hybrids. Members of the Smoke Abatement Commission served as unpaid volunteers, and the WCL paid for their expenses. The league also contributed $1,000 to the smoke inspector's salary ($1,500 was from the city) and $1,000 for the salary of his assistant (no contribution from the city).Footnote ⁹¹ Such public-private partnerships were fairly common during the era of common-law regulation, though perhaps not as extensive as in the field of social service provision.Footnote ⁹² Furthermore, Baltimore in particular had long relied on private individuals and associations to pay for what amounted to public services. Most notably, Baltimore's public bath system was heavily subsidized by its wealthiest citizen, Henry Walters, “who donated four public bath facilities to the city, which then agreed to operate them.”Footnote ⁹³ On a smaller scale, city residents and building contractors developed similar relationships with Baltimore city government:

In other words, the WCL's pact with the city regarding the Smoke Abatement Commission and the smoke inspector seemingly conformed to Baltimore's traditional public-private arrangements.

By 1915, however, the league's interest in this arrangement waned. Its leaders had fully embraced the Chicago model of administrative regulation, whereby policing the smoke nuisance should be an entirely public responsibility. The private-public regulatory regime had been fine as a temporary measure, but the smoke inspector and Smoke Abatement Commission had proven their worth and thus deserved the full support of city government. As Mrs. James Swan Frick, chairman of the league's Smoke Abatement Committee explained,

Mayor Preston, however, demurred. He said that he had only approved the $1,500 annual appropriation because he was assured “that it would not lead to the establishment of an elaborate bureaucracy that would cost the taxpayers money.” Rather than accede to the league's request that the city fully fund the Smoke Abatement Commission and the inspectors, Preston instead sought to discredit their work. He declared that the commission was “ineffective” and called Smoke Inspector Thompson “incompetent.” More specifically, he charged Thompson with forcing a manufacturer to install a smoke-burning device that proved useless. Thompson fought back, but the mayor's public rebuke and financial stinginess had undermined the inspector's authority and morale. In May of 1915, Thompson formally resigned his position, as did the “discouraged” members of the Smoke Abatement Commission. While Mayor Preston promised to appoint a new set of smoke inspectors once the Board of Estimates had approved the 1916 tax budget levy, he never did so.Footnote ⁹⁶

Why was Mayor Preston so reluctant to embrace the inspection regime? At first glance, his posture seems irrational. After all, Preston was up for reelection in 1915, and his failure to support the inspection regime generated criticism of his administration.Footnote ⁹⁷ Furthermore, anti-smoke agitation had surged after 1911. Along with the WCL, neighborhood associations had mobilized during 1912 to protest the smoke pouring out of the Baltimore and Ohio's Belt Line on 26th Street (a situation that had persisted despite the railroad's adoption of electric motors on the line in 1902). They argued that the B & O had reverted to using steam engines on the line and either had to use the electric motors or pay to cover the open cuts.Footnote ⁹⁸ Moreover, the Pennsylvania Railroad's most recent construction plans, which proposed the construction of “huge freight yards in the heart of the city,” were denounced by many opinion leaders in 1913 for threatening to “increase the smoke nuisance like a blight over a large area.”Footnote ⁹⁹

Still, Preston's opposition to a publicly funded inspection regime was consistent with his politics and his perception of the city's finances. A conservative Democrat, Preston had been elected mayor in 1911 while running on a platform of “lower taxes, economy in city expenditures, progress and growth in our municipal life, encouragement and establishment of new … manufacturing industries.” His emphasis on fiscal prudence was not groundless; Baltimore had borrowed heavily after the 1904 fire to construct a sewer system, improve its dock facilities, and widen the streets. Those loans would have to be paid off, Preston noted in 1912, and he generally believed that “the city ought not to float any more loans for the present.” At least one student of Baltimore's finances agreed with Preston's assessment, as he held that the “city had reached the limits of prudent borrowing” by 1914. In any case, Preston was not interested in adding smoke inspection to the city's responsibilities, but instead focused on securing economy in existing government activities. Preston had also demonstrated his antipathy to anti-smoke forces by rejecting all new proposed anti-smoke ordinances unless they exempted manufacturing.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Moreover, public support for the Smoke Abatement Commission and smoke inspector was uncertain. Sympathetic reformers, businessmen, and opinion leaders showered their efforts with praise.Footnote ¹⁰¹ On the other hand, some Baltimoreans were critical of the inspection regime, either for being too lax or for being too threatening. Those citizens who accused the smoke inspector of leniency disputed Thompson's reports of improved smoke conditions.Footnote ¹⁰² Moreover, the neighborhood association most active in anti-smoke agitation during this period was the Peabody Heights Improvement Association, a group that represented only a northeastern district of the city.Footnote ¹⁰³ As maps 2–4 above illustrate, the Civic League's membership was concentrated in the northeastern neighborhoods that had supported the BASL, and it boasted of only scattered members elsewhere. Meanwhile, one group hostile to the inspection regime was the Old Town Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, which represented a portion of the city northeast of the central business district that had seen its property values decline since the Civil War. Attracted by the low cost of real estate, new investors sought its revival during the 1880s through manufacturing, regardless of its impact on the atmosphere. After being accused of holding retrograde views on the smoke question by Smoke Inspector Thompson, the leaders of the Old Town group shot back: “The factory kept away from Baltimore through ‘too much smoke’ agitation will do the city more harm than the alleged ‘too much smoke.’ New industries are a little wary of cities that are in the clutches of faddists whose cry is ‘Suppress the smoke, suppress the smoke.’”Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The concerns of the Old Town Merchants and Manufacturers' Association were not isolated; in fact, Mayor Preston used them to bolster his own position on the smoke question. The smoke inspector and the smoke commission had developed a comprehensive perspective on the causes of the smoke nuisance:

In contrast, Preston blamed the railroads as the sole cause of Baltimore's smoke. By narrowing the cause of the problem, the mayor could depict himself as a friend of manufacturers and as an enemy of the unpopular railroads, most notably the Pennsy. By singling out the railroads as “the chief offenders in producing the smoke nuisance,” Preston proposed that the solution was not a costly, invasive public agency but instead railroad electrification, which had been adopted successfully in New York. “My visit to New York demonstrated very plainly that the smoke nuisance, which is an intolerable burden on many sections of the city, may be prevented,” announced the mayor. “While we are considering the electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad terminals, … the prevention of the smoke nuisance by the other railroads … should also be considered.” Indeed, Preston maintained that electrification was the key to solving the smoke nuisance until he left office in 1919.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Unfortunately for Baltimore, Mayor Preston—like the vast majority of American mayors in the United States—failed to secure such electrification. Frank Uekoetter suggests that this failure was understandable, given that electrification would have forced the railroads to invest millions of dollars at a time when they were intent on minimizing their fixed costs. As the electrification debate grew louder, however, citizen participation in smoke abatement activities declined. In other cities, some anti-smoke groups shifted from private policing to aiding and monitoring the activities of their smoke inspectors.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ In Baltimore, which had lost its smoke inspection regime, opponents of the smoke nuisance had no similar focal point, outside of indifferent health and building departments.

More significantly, Baltimoreans had no intention of resuming the old ways of common-law regulation, in which amateurs instigated prosecutions against smoke offenders and collected evidence about their misconduct. Instead, for the next fifteen years, the public discourse on the smoke question stressed the need for government action, intensive educational efforts, and expert guidance. Citizens periodically looked to existing public officers for action; in 1921, John R. King “appealed for relief to his Honor the Mayor, to the Commissioner of Health, to the City Engineer and to the City Solicitor” in his attempts to abate the smoke nuisance. The PHIA threatened the B & O with legal action only once during these years, instead relying on entreaties and letters to railroad representatives and the mayor to ameliorate the smoke nuisance along 26th Street. In general, though, observers wrote hopefully about how engineers could help define the smoke problem and then educate the citizenry about its solutions. Looking ruefully at past anti-smoke efforts, the Baltimore Sun opined in 1926:

Though Baltimoreans increasingly called for government action and expert guidance, they also implored the WCL to resume its anti-smoke agitation during the early 1920s. In the wake of the resignations of the smoke inspector and Smoke Abatement Commission in 1915, the league's anti-smoke activities declined and were further disrupted by the death of its anti-smoke leader, Mrs. James Swan Frick, in 1916. After World War I, citizens and officials urged the league to again lead the anti-smoke cause. “It is the woman who suffers most,” declared Health Commissioner C. Hampson Jones, “and I am in hopes that with the new interest which the women are taking in health matters because of their new responsibilities of citizenship it may be possible to get some action.” But, observers like Jones urged the women to pursue educational and opinion leadership, not to abandon their historical preference for administrative regulation. Still enamored with the Chicago model, the WCL worked primarily to bring the city's engineering, business, and manufacturing interests together to create a comprehensive smoke inspection regime.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

By the early 1930s, the league's emphasis on administrative regulation seemed increasingly possible, given the growing capacity of Baltimore city government to systematically regulate private property. While it had adopted minor land-use regulations earlier, the city initiated its first comprehensive zoning plan during the early 1920s, which sought to regulate land use and building and road construction. Although some of zoning ordinances were held unconstitutional by the courts, they lay the groundwork for the city's first effective zoning plan, which was adopted in 1931 after the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld zoning in 1927. With the implementation of zoning, city government demonstrated that it was able to manage a complex, proactive regulatory regime. Beginning in the 1920s, the city's zoning measures required the building inspector to establish a more thorough system of permitting, whereby property owners and developers submitted their land use plans for approval before they commenced their activities.Footnote ¹¹⁰

Finally, on May 14, 1931, Mayor William F. Broening signed a sweeping smoke-control ordinance. The measure authorized the mayor to appoint a qualified engineer as commissioner for smoke control, who would choose a deputy and other assistants, as approved by the Board of Estimates. For the first time, a Baltimore anti-smoke ordinance affected all types of buildings, including dwellings and manufacturing plants. Most notably, when new buildings were constructed or old ones were remodeled, developers and owners had to file plans and specifications with the new commissioner's office if they affected the discharge of smoke into the atmosphere.Footnote ¹¹¹