The Baltimore Immigration Memorial Foundation was awarded a Maryland State Heritage Areas Grant of $50,000. These and additional funds will help the BIM implement the multiple phases of this memorial project, including the upcoming Liberty Garden at Tide Point. The BIM is currently seeking additional matching funds from private and institutional donors interested in supporting the project.

And the walking tours are underway. The BIM, in partnership with The Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell’s Point, is proud to announce new Saturday walking tours that will explore all the hot spots of Baltimore's immigration history.

Read excerpts below from an article in The Baltimore Sun by columnist Michael Olesker.

"In my hand is a photograph sent by Ron Zimmerman Sr. He is the real estate man trying to hold onto Baltimore's yesterdays. In the photograph are people gathered at a gate at the end of a Locust Point pier around the turn of the last century. On mornings like this, Zimmerman can still hear their voices calling across the years.

"Zimmerman, who grew up in Southwest Baltimore's Pigtown and has run Ron Zimmerman Realtor® in Federal Hill for a few decades, looks at this photograph of these people just off the boat, and thinks that their long-ago world matters, too."

"[Mr. Zimmerman] is getting closer to institutionalizing Baltimore's memory. Over the past seven years, he's pitched his idea for a Baltimore Immigration Museum/Memorial to politicians, architects, real estate developers, foundation chiefs. The project seems to be moving.

"[The people of Baltimore have] a notion of the past. It's down there at the old shipping piers off Fort Avenue, and the old railroad tracks near Tide Point, and cobblestone streets of Fells Point. You can see some of it in Ron Zimmerman's photograph of the newly arrived [immigrants] gathered by a fence. Their journey signaled the beginning of so much of Baltimore's history, waiting to be remembered."