On September 2, 2002, The Baltimore Immigration Project was awarded a Maryland State Heritage Areas Grant of $50,000, funds designated to help the BIM implement Phase 1 including the Immigration Gateway Heritage Park. The BIM is currently seeking additional matching funds from private and institutional donors interested in supporting the project.

Also in September, The Baltimore Immigration Memorial Foundation hired a full-time Project Coordinator. We are very proud to welcome the dynamic and highly-skilled Mary Sue McCarthy—fresh off her great success with Baltimore's popular 'Fish Out of Water' sculpture campaign.

Writer/Producer John D. Jones is producing a promotional video for the BIM that will be an integral part of BIM promotions and exhibits in the near future. Mr. Jones, has written and produced numerous full-length documentaries for the Discovery Channel, History Channel, and PBS. The BIM promotional video, celebrating area ethnic heritage festivals and other pertinent events and institutions, will be used to support the BIM fund-raising campaign, and will be available soon on this web site.

Last but not least, the walking tours are getting 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. Learn more about the walking tours on the walking tours web page.

While you're here... read excerpts from a recent article in The Baltimore Sun by columnist Michael Olesker, Tuesday, March 19, 2002.

"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."