The Canal Street Malt House takes its name from its previous incarnation. Built in 1866 to store malt for the city's growing brewing industry, the building features brick walls and high window panes. Today, it's home to a thriving and engaged community in Little Italy.  The residents of the 38 industrial style loft units enjoy all of the shopping, dining and activities of Harbor East, the Inner Harbor, Fells Point as well as nearby Canton and Federal Hill. 

 

Before it was called the Canal Street Malt House, it was called Solomon Straus’s Malt House.  Solomon completed the Malt House in 1866 on what was then the corner of Canal Street (named for the canal that ran through the middle of the street and still runs under the road today) and Fawn Street.  It was built to supply the growing brewing industry not only in Baltimore, but had capacity to export malt to brewers to the South and West.
As built, the building was seven stories high, outfitted with all of the equipment needed to turn the high quality hand selected Canadian Barley into the Malt required by the brewing industry.  On a spur of the Northern Central Railway, the barley was brought to the building  and raised by elevator to the top floor where it passed through a cleaner to free it from dirt and other impurities.  From there it was weighed and distributed to tubs on different floors in the building to mature.  The final phase was to pass the grain to one of the 8 kilns for drying before ‘being conveyed to the Delivery Department, where it was packed in two and half bushel sacks.’(1)
In more recent times, before it was redevelopment into what we have today, the Malt House building served as a warehouse for the Atlas Food distribution company and most recently served as studio space for artists. 
 The Monumental City – by George Washington Howard