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B
ananas were first introduced to America at the Centennial
Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia and quickly caught on
as a favorite exotic fruit. Today, the average American
consumes 26 pounds of bananas each year.
Pier One in the Inner Harbor, where the National Aquarium
now stands, was ground zero for banana imports bound for the
local region and the Midwest during most of the 20th century.
Several steamship companies made direct calls to Baltimore
first from Jamaica and later from Central America, where the
banana business was so powerful that countries there became
known as “banana republics.” Chief among the importers was
STORY BY KATHY BERGREN SMITH
the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita. But there were
other, smaller concerns, such as the Fava Fruit Company, whose
Pratt Street cast iron warehouse facade now greets visitors at the
Baltimore City Life Museum. There was also Lanasa & Goffe, a
partnership of an Italian-American and a Jamaican.
This photo from 1928 shows longshoremen unloading a
banana ship, hefting 100-pound stems of fruit onto conveyors
where they were loaded directly into railcars waiting on a barge.
The “car floats” would then carry the railcars and their perishable
cargo across the harbor to the B&O or Pennsylvania rail yards.
The above photograph is provided courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Industry and is part of the museum’s
BGE collection. Visit the Baltimore Museum of Industry at 1415 Key Highway on the south side of the Inner
Harbor; check out their website at www.thebmi.org; or call 410-727-4808. The museum is open Tuesday through
Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
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The Port of Baltimore
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March/April 201 2
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