Mick Hartley

A century before The Wire:

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Co.]

Plenty of detail to marvel at in the full size picture here at Shorpy.

That tower in the distance, to the right of the smoking power plant, is, a commenter informs us, the Phoenix Shot Tower, now known as the Old Baltimore Shot Tower.  From its construction in 1828 up until 1846 it was the the tallest structure in the US, and remained the tallest free-standing masonry structure in the world until 1884.

Shot tower?

Molten lead was dropped from a platform at the top of the tower, through a sieve-like device, into a vat of cold water at the bottom of the tower, [3] to produce both "drop shot" for pistols and rifles and "moulded shot" for larger weapons such as cannons. When hardened, dried and polished, the shot was sorted into 25-pound bags. The annual production about 100,000 bags of shot a year, with the capacity of doubling that in case of war or other high demand.

The Great Baltimore Fire happened just one year after this picture was taken. See here.