The Fells Point Story by Norman G. Rukert

Bodine & Associates, 1976.

extract from pages 48 & 49:

The first successful and largest bichromate factory in the United States was built in FellsPoint. The plant was started in 1845 by Isaac Tyson, jr., son of Jesse Tyson, a Baltimore grain merchant. Isaac was so interested in chemistry that he left a job in his father’s grain warehouse to sign as an apprentice to an apothecary. One day in 1813, while walking around the grounds of his father’s summer home near Bare Hills, he noticed the gardener digging up heavy black rocks. The old man, who had once worked in a chemical plant in England making chrome pigments, told Isaac that the rocks were chromate. These, he said, are what we used to make chrome yellow out of in the old country.

Realizing the value of the ore, they young Tyson began mining it and exporting the raw material to England and Scotland. Shortly thereafter he found rich deposits in Jarrettville and Rising Sun and by 1833 he held a monopoly on chrome mining in the United States. In 1828 he established a factory on what is now Washington Boulevard [Fells Point], for the manufacture of Chrome Yellow, but was unsuccessful. He tried again in 1833 and again failed.

Between 1828 and 1850 he supplied most of the chrome ore consumed in the world. He had cornered practically all know sources and had more raw material on hand than the European market could conveniently consume. To take care of this surplus, Tyson in 1845, erected a plant of his own at Block and Point Streets. It was the first plant in the United States in this field and its product for many years was bichromate of potash.

Isaac Tyson, jr., headed the company until his death in 1861. it was taken over by his sons who operated it successfully. In the late 1860’s the name of the firm was changed from Jesse Tyson & Company to the Baltimore Chrome Works. In 1905 the plant was acquired by the Mutual Chemical Company and in 1951 it was purchased by the Allied Chemical Company. It was modernized in 1952 and still runs at capacity.