We were struck, editing Gerry Neily’s piece on the Inner Harbor, by how dramatically Baltimore’s famous basin has been reshaped since the Fell brothers (Edward, a settler of the lower Fallsway) and William (the founder of Fells Point) arrived from England in the 1700s.

When French geographer A.P. Folie mapped out the harbor in 1792, the eastern border of the basin was present-day Bond Street, the northern shoreline was Water Street, the western boundary was Charles Street and the southern rim was Honey Alley just north of Montgomery Street.

Some 200 years later, more than half of the harbor has been filled-in and smoothed-out, creating such thoroughfares as Pratt, Lombard and Light streets downtown and Key Highway skirting Federal Hill.

Charm City trivia: There once was an island off Pier 6. The entirety of Harbor East rests on man-made land. An inlet of Middle Branch washed as far inland as Hanover and Warren streets in South Baltimore.

And witness the fate of the creek that once divided today’s Little Italy from Fells Point. First it was converted to a shallow canal (hence its original name, Canal Street), then overlaid by tracks and used as the shipping terminus of the Northern Central Railroad (hence its current name, Central Avenue).

The shrinking of the Inner Harbor coincided with the years of Baltimore’s greatest growth – 1810 to 1860 – when ocean trade and the railroad boom turned a group of small settlements into the nation’s fourth largest city.

Times changed, of course, and the bustling piers, shipbuilding yards and bonded warehouses have been torn down or turned into tourist destinations, marinas and exposed-brick condos.

Below is the layout today, followed by Folie’s map of a town that truly lived, breathed and worked at the harbor.