164 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE Saratoga Street Map 11. Howard's Addition, 1782. physical. The horseshoe bend in the Jones Falls stood in the path of Calvert Street. Projects were commissioned to provide a northward passage. In the plans for grading Calvert Street the bluff overhanging the falls was to be cut away, but the court house stood in the way. Projector Leonard Harbaugh persuaded the town fathers that he could preserve the building by excavating the earth from beneath it, leaving the court house twenty feet up in the air. In 1783 Harbaugh accomplished this incredible feat, and Calvert Street was extended thereunder to the very precipice of the Falls (Map 9). And in 1786 Englehart Yeiser, with the consent of the proprietors of the adjacent land (Alexander Lawson to the south and Andrew Steiger to the north), cut a canal through Steiger's Meadow, diverting thejones' Falls from its old horseshoe curve into a due southeast course98 (Map 9). Once the Falls' course had been diverted into the "canal of Jones' Falls" the bluff was naturally washed and artificially pushed into the precipice, thereby allowing new development and bringing into question ownership of the original bed of the Falls. Did this now valuable terrain belong to Lawson's heir, or to Andrew Steiger, or was it still vested in Charles Carroll of Annapolis? In an ejectment action decided thirty-five years after the fact, the Court of Appeals of Maryland discounted the Parceling Out Land 165 Carroll claim to the bed and split the difference between the heirs of Lawson and rt « » • QQ Steiger s successors in interest. On the east side of town loose ends left over from before the Revolution impeded development. A1773 assembly authorization to add eighteen acres owned by J ohn Moale and Andrew Steiger to the Old Town section had never been formally acted upon. It was re-enacted in January 1782 by the General Assembly. That same law also provided for the addition to Fell's Point of as much of William Fell's Prospect as the town commissioners "may think necessary." Separate legislation authorized annexation of such portions of Parker's Haven and Kemp's Addition as would "contribute to promote the trade and commerce"; this authorization was not acted upon100 (Map 10). On the west side of town parts of Lunn's Lott had been annexed to Baltimore Town in 1753 and 1765, which Cornelius Howard had laid out into lots. After John Eager Howard succeeded to his father's estate in 1782 he persuaded the General Assembly to add the rest of Lunn's Lott. Howard took one hundred thirty-five acres of it and laid out approximately three hundred fifty lots along a grid from Warren Street up to Saratoga Street with the new Howard Street as the north-south axis. Howard's Addition, as it was known, was the largest single addition in the history of Baltimore Town101 (Map 11). The assembly also authorized the town commis- sioners to annex so much of Gist's Inspection and Howard's Timberneck as "well calculated for the purposes of commerce and navigation." Part of Timberneck was left outside the town limits, but all of Gist's Inspection was appended to Lunn's Lott and included.10^ The influx of the Acadian French from Nova Scotia and Scots-Irish from central Pennsylvania increased the population, from over six thousand in 1776 to more than thirteen thousand by 1790. These newcomers demanded affordable houses.103 John Eager Howard and William Fell the younger were the primary suppliers of land, selling and leasing hundreds of acres within the town limits. They utilized Thomas Harrison's ninety-nine year lease plan to dispense most of the lots, retaining a ground rent. Typically, the lots were leased to speculative builders, who further subdivided the lots and built houses in block rows for sublease to artisans and mechanics and skilled workers.104 Indeed the demand for housing close to the town center was great enough that in the 1780s developers began to fill the mud flats and fringing marsh to make building lots. They were encouraged in this practice by the 1745 act incorporating Baltimore. It provided: "ft]hat all improvements of what kind soever, Either Wharf, Houses, or other Buildings, that have, or shall be made out of the Water, or where it flows, as an Encouragement to such improvers, be forever deemed the Right, Title, and Inheritance of such Improver or Improvers, their Heirs and Assigns for ever." Waterfront owners had a license to fill.1 Reclamation proceeded quickly. By 1786 Charles Street was extended south across land fill. Fifty new building lots were thereby created along the Howard's Addition waterfront.106