Page 32 - Rukert - 100th Anniversary

ABOVE:
A brochure for the new fumigation facility (1946), which was the first facility of its kind at the port.
FACING PAGE:
An aerial shot of Lazaretto from 1945
equipment at Pier 5 and storing canned goods and other military supplies, like large drums of sugar, in Fells Point. With much of the American workforce serving in the war effort, Cap struggled to find clerks and laborers.
In 1944, the company purchased a group
of houses in the 800 block of Caroline Street in Fells Point. With the help of a $50,000 loan from
Maryland Trust Company, the property was leveled and replaced with a one-story warehouse building and machine shop.
Next, in his eagerness to bring new tonnage to the port, Cap erected a 60-foot fumigation chamber at Pier 5 in 1946; it was the first of its type at the port. Upon arrival at the Port of Baltimore, foreign agricultural products were placed in the chamber and fumigated with methyl bromide to eradicate bugs and pests. For the next 20 years, hundreds
of thousands of bales of imported broomcorn and cotton moved through this facility.
By the end of the Second World War, Baltimore’s port had deteriorated and needed modernization to remain viable. In 1945, Cap was advised that the Western Maryland Railway was considering selling its Lazaretto Depot for postwar development into a modern waterfront terminal. From the day he signed the lease at Lazaretto in 1940, Cap was certain that it was the most desirable property in the Port of Baltimore. Unwilling to go further into debt and buy it himself, Cap went to Philadelphia to persuade the Pennsylvania Railroad to purchase the property and lease it to him. The railroad not only agreed to acquire the property; officials also promised Cap that when his company was in sound enough position, it could buy the facility for the same price the railroad had paid.
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