Design
The tower was built by Jacob Wolfe using bricks manufactured by the Burns and Russell Company of Baltimore. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Roman Catholic lay leader and wealthiest man in America at that time, laid its cornerstone (the year after he did the same thing to another project of future promise: the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Mount Clare pictured in a famous illustration/painting).
The circular brick structure's walls are 4.5 feet (1.4 m) thick from the bottom to about 50 feet (15 m) up; then they narrow in stages of 4 inches (10 cm) each, until at the top the thickness is 21 inches (53 cm).
Read more about this topic: Phoenix Shot Tower
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“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)