Baltimore’s Top of the World Observation Level is about to get more nautical, just in time for the SAIL250 Maryland celebrations next year.
Now that Create Baltimore has reached an agreement in principle with state officials to keep the tourist attraction open on the 27th floor of the Baltimore World Trade Center, its operators are thinking about making physical changes that will improve the visitor experience there.
And one of the first changes that visitors are likely to see is the addition of more than a dozen model ships representing the range of vessels that have plied Maryland waterways since the country was founded.
The ships have been on display since the mid-1980s at the Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Most of the 22 models are replicas of vessels with a strong connection to Baltimore, Annapolis or the Eastern Shore and can be found near the building’s Sharp Street lobby and along its main concourse.
According to various labels, there are models of a clipper ship, a bugeye, a masted schooner, a pungy, a skiff, a skipjack, a PT (patrol torpedo) boat and several other variations of work boats.
Names include The Danmark, Sovereign of the Sea, Margaret Haskell and Amerigo Vespucci. A model of the USS Constellation was on display at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City before coming to Baltimore. The one outlier is a large-scale model of an ancient Roman galley ship that was used in the filming of the 1959 movie, “Ben-Hur,” which starred Charlton Heston in the title role.
Mac Campbell, who became Executive Director of the Convention Center in early 2023, wants to fill the building with contemporary art. He told Mayor Brandon Scott’s Arts & Culture Advisory Committee last year that he’d like to make the Convention Center a place where visitors can see and learn about local artists and their work.
Last year, Campbell allowed 10 teams of artists to paint murals on the Pratt Street side of the building as part of an event called BRUSH Mural Fest. Another mural, by Maryland Institute College of Art graduates Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn, was painted on the building’s west side as part of the Birdland Mural series.
Showcasing Baltimore’s artistic excellence “helps amplify the cultural heartbeat of our community to the countless residents and visitors who walk through and by our doors,” Campbell said.
Campbell is working on a plan to exhibit contemporary art inside the convention center as well. To display the art work that he wants to bring in, he told the advisory committee members, he envisions using the areas now occupied by the ship models, if he can find a new home for them.
He confirmed this week that he’s working with Create Baltimore and the Living Classrooms Foundation to bring the ship models to the Top of the World observation level, where they’ll be widely visible to the public.
“They’ve served an admirable tour of duty here at the convention center,” he said. “It seems like a logical progression.”
Popular attraction
Like the Convention Center, the Top of the World is a destination for both tourists and area residents. Besides offering sweeping views of the city in all directions, it’s a setting for exhibitions, receptions, artist and author talks, school field trips, summer camps and other events. When the Harborplace pavilions were full of merchants and the Inner Harbor was drawing millions of visitors every year, the Top of the World made money that helped pay for civic events such as the Inner Harbor fireworks.
The Baltimore World Trade Center is a 30-story office tower that’s owned by the State of Maryland and primarily houses state agencies, including the headquarters of the Maryland Port Administration (MPA). The City of Baltimore leases its 27th floor for a nominal sum. It’s the only tenant that the state has had on the 27th floor since the building opened at 401 E. Pratt St. in 1977. The Top of the World is the building’s only ticketed attraction, although another floor is used as an event space for the MPA and others.
Create Baltimore, formerly known as the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), operates the Top of the World under a separate agreement with the city. Part of the Top of the World space is occupied by the indoor component of the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland, created by the state when Martin O’Malley was governor to pay tribute to the 68 Marylanders who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 at the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Dedicated in 2011, the indoor memorial has a companion outdoor memorial at the base of the World Trade Center.
In January, when Create Baltimore was still called BOPA, CEO Robyn Murphy told her board that the Top of the World would be shutting down because the city’s lease was about to expire and state officials didn’t want to renew it. “The state wants the space back and we are in the process of terminating the lease,” she told the board. Her announcement alarmed civic leaders who said the Top of the World is a valuable asset that promotes Baltimore and shouldn’t be closed, and they asked state officials to reconsider.‘
On Monday, during an event held primarily to announce BOPA’s name change to Create Baltimore, Murphy disclosed the city has reached an agreement in principle with the state to keep the Top of the World venue open past Nov. 30, when its lease was due to expire. The agreement still needs to be ratified by Baltimore’s Board of Estimates. Murphy didn’t disclose exactly how long a lease the Top of the World will have after Nov. 30, but she said the new agreement will permit it to remain in place “for years to come.”
Historic Ships in Baltimore
To operate the Top of the World, Murphy said, Create Baltimore will be collaborating with a non-profit partner, the Living Classrooms Foundation. The organization was founded in 1985, and its mission is to “strengthen communities and inspire children, youth and adults to achieve their potential through hands-on education, workforce development, health and wellness and community safety programs that use urban, natural and maritime resources as living classrooms.”
The Living Classrooms Foundation uses a variety of sites and campuses to provide programming, including a maritime fleet that includes floating classrooms and historic museum vessels that are open to the public in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Its Historic Ships in Baltimore division includes the USS Constellation, USCG Cutter 57, the USS Torsk submarine and the Lightship Chesapeake as well as the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse.
Historic Ships in Baltimore is a lead producer of the SAIL250 Maryland and Airshow Baltimore activities planned for June 24 to July 1, 2026, part of a global gathering of international tall ships, military ships and aircraft celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
Improving the space
In her remarks about the Top of the World, Murphy also said Create Baltimore will be launching a campaign to raise funds to make improvements to the space.
Under previous CEOs, BOPA had secured funds from the state to plan improvements but never moved ahead with actual renovation work. When the attraction’s future was in doubt because the lease might not be renewed, officials said, it was difficult to raise funds to go beyond the planning stage. But now that operators have been assured by state officials that the Top of the World can stay on the 27th floor, Murphy said, Brenna O’Grady, Director of Fundraising for Create Baltimore, will lead the fundraising campaign.
In addition to displaying the ship models, ideas include updating exhibits and digitizing kiosks. Many of the graphic panels in the space are out of date, giving old names for buildings that have changed lead tenants, or not showing the most recent upgrades to areas such as Rash Field Park. They’re also showing signs of wear.
Steve Bountress, executive director of Historic Ships in Baltimore, is working on plans to upgrade the Top of the World. He said some improvements can be completed quickly and others will take longer. One long-range idea, he said, is to introduce technology that will allow visitors to look out the windows and see not only what’s in Baltimore now but also what the city and its harbor looked like 100 or 200 years ago, to show how the city has changed.
Moving the collection five blocks
One challenge of moving the ship models, Campbell said, is that almost all of them are technically on long-term loan to the city and convention center from various individual and institutional owners who need to be contacted, but some of them no longer exist.
One of the lenders, for example, was former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer, who died in 2011. He loaned a model of a vessel called the Clipper City. The convention center display includes a label that reads: “Personal Property of Mayor William Donald Schaefer on loan to Baltimore Convention Center January 1985.”
Campbell said the city owns only one of the models outright, and the convention center plans to lend the rest to the operators of the Top of the World.
Another issue is transporting the models up to the 27th floor of the World Trade Center. Some are small enough to pick up and carry, but others may be difficult to fit into the tower’s freight elevator without being taken apart. Most but not all come with glass cases, which have protected them over the years and will come with them.
Some of the models, Bountress said, may end up in other maritime locations controlled by Historic Ships in Baltimore, such as the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. Eventually, he said, they may be loaned to other maritime museums around the Chesapeake Bay.
Ship from ‘Ben-Hur’ still needs a home
One model that won’t be coming to the World Trade Center is the one that has little to do directly with Maryland’s maritime history – the replica of an ancient Roman trireme, an oar-driven warship, that was used in the filming of “Ben-Hur.”
Campbell said it’s the last of several scale models that were used in the movie, which won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role. A plaque on display says the model was given to “Mayor William Donald Schaefer and the citizens of Baltimore” by the Peter S. Atsaides Family, owners of Kibby’s Restaurant.”
The Roman galley ship replica is prominently displayed near the Sharp Street entrance of the convention center and visible through its street-facing windows. Part of the reason it’s at the convention center, Campbell said, is that it was restored by students at Northern High School, and the convention center paid for the work after then-director John Zerbe authorized it.
According to the plaque on display, “[t]he ship was turned over to the Vocational Education Department for needed renovation. Students there did reconstruction and repair work under the direction of instructor Algimantas K. Grintalis” and the restored model was dedicated in a ceremony on April 28, 1986. Heston was invited to the ceremony but was unable to attend, so Schaefer stood in for him.
“As the story goes, there were six or so of these, and they were either destroyed as part of the battle scenes of the movie, or they were lost due to time,” Campbell said. “This is the only one still remaining.”
“Gesture of appreciation’
At the dedication ceremony, Schaefer explained how Kibby’s Restaurant’s owners came to control a ship replica from “Ben-Hur” – and the role played by Baltimore’s school system in preserving it.
“I have to answer a question some of you might have: How in the world did one of the ships from ‘Ben-Hur’ end up in the Baltimore Convention Center?” Schaefer said to the crowd, according to a transcript of his 1986 remarks in the convention center files.
“To make a long story short, when MGM studios auctioned off some of their movie props in the 1960s, the owner of a health spa in the Wilkens Shopping Center here in Baltimore purchased it,” he said. “When the spa went out of businesses, the owner sold the ship to Peter Atsaides, whose son James owns Kibby’s Restaurant in the same shopping center. The ship remained in the basement of Kibby’s until recently, when the family decided to give it to the people of Baltimore as a gesture of appreciation for the success that the Atsaides family has enjoyed living here.”
That’s where the city school system came in, Schaefer said.
“Because the ship was in need of some restoration work and repairs, it was turned over to the Vocational Education Department of Northern Senior High School,” he said. “There, under the expert supervision of instructor Al Grintalis, handpicked students spent months making the needed repairs and doing the restoration work. And I am not just talking about a little sanding and painting.
“Those kids did such work as repairing the captain’s cabin, constructing molds to replace the decorative shields, replacing missing masts and oars, constructing and installing floor boards for the decks, repairing cracks and holes, and sanding and repainting the entire ship, among other things,” he continued.
“All of that is work that requires skills, skills that these kids can take with them when they go out looking for a job after they graduate. And that is what is so very important about our vocational education program. What the students learn in their classes are skills that translate into jobs.”
‘Our guests certainly do wonder…”
Today the scale model is missing several oars, which moved in tandem at one point, and is deteriorating in other ways. Because it doesn’t exactly help tell a story about Maryland’s maritime history, and definitely wouldn’t fit up the elevator, the Living Classrooms Foundation’s leaders didn’t see it as a good fit for the Top of the World venue. (It might have been more in keeping with the Pier 4 Power Plant when it housed P. T. Flagg’s, a short-lived Six Flags indoor theme park that was supposedly created by a fictional inventor and explorer named Phineas T. Flagg, opened in 1989 and closed in 1990, or the Port Discovery children’s museum when it contained the fanciful exhibits that Walt Disney Imagineering’s Bran Ferren created for it.)
Campbell said he’s looking for an appropriate steward for the ship model from “Ben-Hur,” and perhaps another school or institution that can restore it again. “I will make sure that we find a public home” for it, he said. “And if it’s here for a little bit longer, then so be it. Our guests certainly do wonder about it.”
