Digitization and Re-Cataloging of the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company Image Collection

Material Description

Comprised of approximately 50,000 image sets containing roughly 180,000 photographic prints, negatives, and film reels, the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company (BGE) Image Collection is one of the largest collections in the BMI’s archives. This extensive collection was created by BGE, the nation’s first and longest continuously operating gas and electric utility company, as a means of documenting its progress in providing services to a broad spectrum of residential and commercial customers. Previously held by the now defunct Baltimore City Life Museums, the BGE Image Collection has been part of the BMI’s archives since 1999 and is a popular resource for local historians and researchers. The value of the BGE Image Collection lies in the unique look it provides at how goods and services were produced in Baltimore as well as the physical facilities in which these processes took place. In many cases, this collection—which includes still and moving images taken between the years 1920 and 1975—provides the only extant photographic record of the businesses and industries that it documents. Besides chronicling the process by which gas and electric power spread throughout Baltimore and the surrounding region, the BGE Image Collection also provides a rare glimpse into the lives of the utility company’s employees and customers, making it one of the most comprehensive visual records of the city’s changing economic and social landscape.