O'Donnell Square puts you at the center of Canton, one of Baltimore's most vibrant waterfront neighborhoods, on ground named for John O'Donnell, the Irish-born sea captain who purchased this land in 1783 after making a fortune in the China trade. O'Donnell was one of the first American merchants to trade directly with China after the Revolution, and he named his Canton estate after the Chinese city of Canton — giving the Baltimore neighborhood its name. The square and surrounding streets developed into a working-class neighborhood through the nineteenth century, home to the canneries, copper-smelting works, and manufacturing plants that lined the waterfront.
The workers who filled these factories and the rowhouses behind them came from Poland, Ukraine, and Germany, and their churches — St. Casimir's, St. Brigid's — still stand a few blocks away. Canton was one of the neighborhoods hardest hit when Baltimore's industrial base collapsed in the second half of the twentieth century, but unlike many Baltimore neighborhoods, it rebounded dramatically through the 1990s as young professionals were drawn to its intact rowhouse stock, waterfront views, and walkable commercial streets. The square today is surrounded by restaurants and bars that serve a mix of longtime residents and newcomers, the characteristic tension of urban gentrification playing out in real time.
The Irish pub culture is particularly strong here, a legacy of the neighborhood's working-class Catholic heritage.