Left: Influential financier S. Davies Warfield (1859–1927) used his considerable financial and bargaining skills to merge competing industries and create the Consolidated Gas Electric Light and Power Company in 1906. Consolidated and BG&E would control Central Maryland’s utility as a regulated monopoly for most of the 20th century. Right: George Beadenkopf was an essential engineer in the Baltimore gas business for almost 50 years. After the 1904 Great Fire, he won special recognition for unifying the gas lines and mains. When Beadenkopf died in 1923, all of Consolidated went into mourning.
After a slump while competing with electricity, the gas business came back selling appliances. By the early 1900s, Spring Gardens was again expanding with new giant gas holders that dominated the Baltimore skyline until the 1990s. Here workers construct the foundation of a 220-foot holder.
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