Domino Sugars glows in red neon above the refinery in front of you, one of Baltimore's most beloved industrial landmarks and one of the most recognizable neon signs on the East Coast. The Domino Sugar sign — a red neon diamond with the words Domino Sugars glowing above the refinery — has illuminated the South Baltimore waterfront since 1951 and has been a navigational landmark and emotional touchstone for generations of Baltimoreans. The American Sugar Refining Company built its Baltimore refinery at this site in the 1920s, taking advantage of the deep-water port access for importing raw sugar cane from Cuba and the Caribbean.
At its peak, the Domino plant was the largest sugar refinery in the world, processing millions of pounds of raw cane into refined white sugar every day. The refinery employed thousands of South Baltimore residents — union workers, many of them Polish, Ukrainian, and Italian immigrants or their descendants, who built stable working-class lives in the rowhouse neighborhoods nearby. The refinery is still operational, one of the few remaining industrial facilities on the Inner Harbor waterfront.
When Baltimore's other industrial landmarks — the Bethlehem Steel plant at Sparrows Point, the foundries, the canneries — closed one by one, the Domino sign remained lit. It has appeared in countless photographs, films, and paintings as a symbol of the city's blue-collar identity and its stubborn persistence.