There are 15 floors in the tiny elevator of the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower. At the top, visitors exit out into a small atrium, surrounded by a miniature museum, dedicated to the building’s namesake—a now-discontinued headache and heartburn remedy, of all things.

And yet from this landing, on a warm summer morning in early July, Eliza Kurtz is taking us even higher. On the 16th floor, accessible only via the marble staircase, she reaches a narrow hallway where a window in the wood-paneled wall reveals the bottom of a large pendulum, swinging back and forth, back and forth, roughly every other second. Then she gestures toward a set of industrial steps—up one more, to the tower’s main attraction.

“Watch yourself on the ship’s ladder,” says Kurtz, facilities manager for the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), which oversees this city-owned landmark on the corner of Lombard and Eutaw streets—one of the skyline’s most iconic features.

When completed in 1911, the downtown tower was the tallest building in Baltimore, visible for miles and from the ships that entered the city’s bustling harbor. Originally known as the Emerson Tower, it was built by Isaac Edward Emerson, the pharmacist who invented the best-selling antacid, and the owner of the Maryland Glass Corporation, which manufactured the medicine’s blue-glass bottles in a factory on the same corner.

Modeled after the Palazzo Vecchio in Italy, the brick skyscraper was the talk of the town, crowned with a castle-like clocktower, atop which sat an illuminated, revolving, super-sized bottle of Bromo Seltzer. That dazzling advertisement was later removed for safety reasons (like the product itself), but the four-dial timepiece remains, with the story-high hands of each face still ticking around roman numerals and the dozen blue letters that spell out that late brand name today.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” says Kurtz, stepping out onto the 17th floor, where natural light pours into an old workroom from the north, south, east, and west. Warehouse lamps hang from above. Paint fades on century-old beams and brick. And in the center of the room sits the surprisingly compact yet complex clock mechanism, slowly but surely moving time.

It’s a feat of physics, this gravity-driven piece of machinery, powered by a 400-pound stack of weights suspended in the air on a steel cable. Eventually wound back up by an electric motor, they gradually descend throughout the day, turning a set of shiny brass gears. Those engage two pencil-sized pins that keep the downstairs pendulum steadily swinging, which ultimately turns the hours and minutes on the story-high hands outside, visible to passersby from the streets below.

And it’s up to Kurtz to keep it all running. One of the few female clock-keepers in the world, the 28-year-old Monkton native and University of Maryland grad is tasked with routine upkeep, from daily checks to monthly maintenance, which includes dusting surfaces, oiling gears, and resetting the time when necessary. Which is not only twice a year for daylight savings.

“Mechanical timekeeping is notoriously imperfect,” says Kurtz, pointing to a variety of factors that can impact its function, like wind and humidity. “Usually, by the end of the month, it’s at least five minutes off.”

For big fixes, she enlists a restoration company from Maine. Other days, she oversees the rest of the building, helping manage the 25 artist studios located between the fourth and 14th floors, which opened here in 2008, a few years after BOPA took over the building. She also coordinates the gallery exhibitions on the lower levels and lobby, and on Saturdays, leads public tours, hosting both awestruck tourists who’ve spotted the building from a hotel or ball game and longtime locals, some visiting for the very first time. This month, during the biannual Bromo Art Walk on Sept. 11, all floors are open for exploring.

Kurtz remembers touring the tower as a little kid, but never expected to work here. She arrived at BOPA six years ago, knowing next to nothing about horology (aka the science of clock keeping), instead learning along the way.

“These days, the clock gets hidden behind other buildings,” says the 28-year-old, looking like a chic mechanic in her 1940s-inspired workwear and platform combat boots, “but in Baltimore, you grow up seeing it.”

And while no longer the city’s tallest structure, the Bromo tower is still something to marvel at—its dials even being one whole foot larger than those of its better-known cousin, located across the pond in England.

“Take that, Big Ben,” says Kurtz.

Art Space is a recurring element in the UpFront section of our print publication that spotlights a local artist or project making an impact in the city at large. Here’s what’s going on this month:

In August, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) will select the winner of its 18th annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize, which includes a $30,000 grant. Through Sept. 3, art lovers can view the works of this year’s finalists—artists Abigail Lucien, Kyrae Dawaun, and Nekisha Durrett—during the Sondheim Finalists’ Exhibition at The Walters Art Museum, where an award ceremony and reception will also take place on Aug. 10. Runner-up prizes include a six-week residency at Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy and a six-month residency at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower.

The once lifeless lot on the corner of Sisson and West 27th streets in Remington has come a long way since 2015, when the Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA) took over the property through the city’s Adopt-A-Lot program.

Since then, the vacant space full of untamed weeds and browning grass has transformed into a lively hub for community engagement. The park is now equipped with garden beds, picnic tables, an outdoor stage, play structures for kids, and—its most recent addition—a colorful mural commissioned by GRIA and funded by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts’ community art prize.

“It’s a really active site for our neighbors,” says Molly McCullagh, former GRIA president who has been overseeing the park project since the beginning. “And we want to continue to program it with them in mind. Creating the mural really helped to enliven the space even further.”

McCullagh had recently worked with local street artist Gaia to produce a series of portraits on blank walls around the neighborhood, but the Sisson Street canvases—a chain link fence and two repurposed shipping containers—made way for something more abstract.

“The fence and the shipping container are pretty unusual materials to mural,” she says. “So it made sense to add a lot of linear elements rather than portraits. There are so many organic shapes at the park, including plants and gardens, so we thought the balance of these linear, more geometric shapes would really create a nice juxtaposition.”

As it does with many of its initiatives, GRIA surveyed Remington residents to get their feedback on color and design. The result is an eye-catching piece by local artists Greg Gannon and Carol P. Jarvis, who also recently worked together on the striking exterior of the new Beyond Video store in Remington.

“There’s been a lot of community input,” Gannon says. “When you’re presented with a long wall like this, it really makes you think about what fits in the space and how you can use the mural site as part of its design.”

Featuring bright shades of green, blue, and yellow, the piece showcases a three-dimensional design that spreads throughout the 100-foot fence and continues the aesthetic on two shipping containers stationed throughout the park. The work also includes blossoming flowers and a line drawing of an alligator as a nod to the reptilian mural on West 28th Street by longtime local artist John Ellsberry.

“Everybody in the community loves that landmark, so we thought it would be nice thing to reference,” Gannon says. “I love the challenge of carrying this out in a clever way. Chain link fences are not one of Baltimore’s most charming features, but that’s the part that I’m most excited about—making this fence look so different that you wouldn’t even notice it surrounds the back of a gas station.”

Gannon’s sentiments also reflect the overall trajectory of the site since it was taken over by GRIA four years ago. McCullagh says that locals who remember the state of the park back then are constantly awed by the transformation.

“It provides inspiration for our whole community to see what you can do with something that didn’t seem like much of an asset to begin with,” she says. “With a lot of volunteer effort, fundraising, and creative thinking, we’ve been able to turn it into a great community space. That’s really empowering for neighbors to understand that they can have that control.”

Two of Baltimore’s most celebrated festivals, Light City and the Baltimore Book Festival, will join forces next year. Both events will merge into a 10-day mega festival in 2019 that will run November 1-10, centered at the Inner Harbor with more events scattered throughout town.

At first blush, this might seem like an odd idea. Why change these two landmark festivals when they’ve been so successful? But planners believe that folding them into one major event will strengthen them both and ultimately benefit the city and its arts community as a whole.

“We just thought that combining the two festivals would have such a tremendous impact on the city, and we could have a greater reach,” says Kathy Hornig, COO and festivals director with Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA). “There’s really nothing else like it in the entire country.”

At its core, Light City is known for its elaborate, large-scale art installations that light up in various ways along the BGE Light Art Walk. Many are site-specific and created by artists from across the globe, as well as right here in Baltimore. In the past, artists have incorporated the harbor itself into some of the pieces. Others feature interactive, musical, and even kinetic elements. The Inner Harbor Promenade becomes a wonderland of lights under the festival’s spell—and all of that will continue.

So, too, will the Book Festival’s variety of panels, readings, book signings, open mics, and other activities.

The change is being made, in part, because BOPA heard from Light City attendees who wished the festival occurred later in the year. Some festival-goers suggested pushing it back to allow kids time to wander along the Inner Harbor Promenade and enjoy the light installations earlier in the day—rather than having to wait until 8 or 9 p.m. for the sky to darken so that they could see them in all their illuminated glory.

Booksellers had a similar need. Book Festival partners, such as The Ivy Bookshop, explained that an influx of books are published during the fall each year, and a September book festival is sometimes slightly premature for authors who have books being released in October, November, or December.

Pushing both festivals back further in the year and combining them “just seemed to check all the boxes,” Hornig says. “We just had an ‘ah-ha’ moment.”

Light installations will be on view for all 10 nights, and literary events will also occur each day of the festival. (As for an official festival name, organizers are still working on it.)

Neighborhood Lights, where local artists make site-specific illuminated pieces in several of Baltimore’s neighborhoods, will still be part of the event, but books will be a focus, too. In order to connect with each featured neighborhood, BOPA has partnered with Enoch Pratt Free Library to offer literature events at several of the 22 library branches within Baltimore City.

Another slight variation to the combined festival will be the elimination of Labs@LightCity, the coinciding panel discussions that occur throughout Light City’s run. Instead, Baltimore Book Festival readings and speaker series will take place throughout the day.

Some of the favorite Labs@LightCity events, like the Pitch Competition for entrepreneurs and the popular Kindling Community Dinner, will continue. These events will be held indoors and outdoors.

“We want to illuminate the city with light during the day and art at night,” Hornig says. “As I looked out onto the harbor today—which is a year to the day from the start of this festival—I’m just so excited about all the possibilities for Baltimore and our arts community.”