Baltimore Sewerage and State Roads Commission photograph collection

With the population of Baltimore approaching 500,000 at the end of the 19th century, the city still had no public sewers. Instead, a combination of wells, private sewers, and gutters carried waste away, most of it destined for the Patapsco Basin. In 1906, the state of Maryland finally prohibited Baltimore from discharging sewage into the Chesapeake Bay or any of its tributaries, and provided $10,000,000 for a sewerage system, with a matching amount for the project coming from the city on a bond issue. Under Mayor Edwin Clay Timanus, the city began construction of the sewer system, and the project was continued by Mayors J. Barry Mahool and James Harry Preston. By 1911, the Back River disposal plant opened on the eastern edge of the city, and by fifteen years later the city had constructed 1200 miles of sewer leading to the plant.

Meanwhile, above the ground, development of Baltimore's infrastructure of streets and railroads was continuing, with the creation of the Paving Commission in 1911, directed by R. Keith Compton. The commission's primary mission was to resurface the streets of Baltimore with sheet asphalt. One of its first contracts awarded was for paving Preston Street behind the Fifth Regiment Armory in time for the Democratic National Convention to be held there in 1912.