Pikesville Arsenal: From Federal Guns to State Police

The grounds you are passing through have served the government, in one form or another, for more than two centuries. Built originally in eighteen sixteen as a federal arsenal, the Pikesville complex stored and maintained military arms for decades before the Army withdrew in eighteen seventy-nine and conveyed the property to the State of Maryland. For the next four decades it served as a home for Confederate veterans, a reminder of how Maryland's divided loyalties during the Civil War persisted long into the postwar era.

By the late nineteen forties, state officials saw a new use: headquarters for the Maryland State Police. The transformation from federal arsenal to Confederate veterans' home to modern law enforcement campus traces a long arc through American and Maryland history.