The great fun of antique shopping is in the unknown. Every booth, table, and display is an opportunity for discovery. (Or even riches if you watch enough Antiques Roadshow.) It takes patience, luck, and a lot of digging to unearth a special find. And if you’re really in the mood to browse? Enter the antique mall.

Antique malls emerged as a popular retail format in the late 20th century, evolving from individual antique shops to centralized, multi-vendor spaces where dealers lease booths to sell vintage items. They became prevalent as a way to consolidate, offering diverse, sometimes high-quality, and often curated finds all in one place.

They have proven to be the perfect place to go on a leisurely, solitary shopping trip, but there’s an exhibitionist element to them as well. Seeing what others are finding. Hearing gasps and delighted chatter, sometimes a hearty laugh. Was the day’s find a treasure or trash? Curious or bizarre? Opulent or meager?

We spent time at several antique malls in the area—or collectives for a more modern verbiage—and here’s what we found.

THE DISTILLERY COLLECTIVE
Cockeysville
Tucked down Beaver Run Lane in Cockeysville, The Distillery Collective started as a warehouse for Gore Dean, the high-end interior design furniture and accessories store. When customers would come to pick up a custom order they would want to “shop” other items (none of which were for sale) and so Deborah Gore Dean had the idea to add other curated booths as an antique collective.

Now about 12 local antique and vintage dealers share the space, occupying the second floor of the Sherwood Rye warehouse. The collective keeps pretty regular hours (they are open Wednesday to Sunday), offers custom curation services by appointment, and can pretty much ship anywhere. Booths are well organized and everyone working is warm and helpful—especially Andrea Nugent (“most of us started as collectors,” she explains) who loves mid-century and keeps a well-appointed booth of beautiful bowls, artwork, and trinkets.

Other standouts include Elise Rulan’s The Sourceress and her handsome vintage furniture, Strega Sano’s tabletops and kitchen accessories, and of course Gore Dean herself, who often pops up on the collective’s up-to-date Instagram account. Some of our favorite finds include vintage postcards, a replica diving helmet, a vintage-y orange graduated bead necklace, and a set of eight hand-painted casserole dishes shaped like turtles from prominent American designer Carole Stupell.

THE ANTIQUE CENTER
Savage Mill
It’s a super rainy Saturday morning, and Savage Mill is mobbed. This historic, re-purposed 19th-century cotton manufacturing complex (now listed on the National Register of Historic Places) houses the Antique Center on the ground floor of the Old Weave Building. It’s a little overwhelming with more than 100 “dealers” (as they call them) and 20,000 square feet of antiques and collectibles. It feels like entering a labyrinth with every turn looking a bit like the one before. (“Have I been here before,” I wondered more than once.) But the selection is impressive—artwork, accessories, furniture, militaria, glass, ceramics, jewelry, and toys. The website also mentions “gas station memorabilia,” although I didn’t see any the day I visited.

The Antique Center is clean and well-lit (despite being in the basement) with a central information desk where you can ask question and pay for all the merchandise. (The Antique Center also provides scheduled appraisals.) We found an impressive selection of glasses (especially gold rimmed coupes), vinyl, a vintage 1970s Mickey Mouse push button phone, sports memorabilia, and plenty of colorful Fiesta dinnerware, old guitars, and stained glass that looked like it came from somewhere important. And The Antique Center had an impressive number of dolls. From Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids to a vintage Shirley Temple doll, a “Teeny Tiny Tears” babydoll, and fancy French antique dolls with the eyes that sort of follow you around (if you’re into that sort of thing).

THE ANTIQUE DEPOT
Ellicott City
If you like to find your antiques in a space a bit more antiquey, The Antique Depot is pretty perfect. This charming 1873 livery stable—just across the street from the B&O Ellicott City Station Museum on Maryland Avenue—houses more than 60 booths selling antiques and vintage items across several floors. Quick history lesson: The Dorsey Livery Stable provided services, primarily offering horses, carriages, and wagons for rent, along with stabling (housing, feeding, watering) for travelers’ own horses, and also delivered ice and coal for 51 years. It became Clark Hardware Store in 1924 and finally the Antique Depot in 1989.

There’s a certain charm here—creaky floors, quiet basement, and a kind of sweet chaos. Some of our favorite finds included a chicken-shaped cookie jar, old campaign buttons (“Mondale Ferraro for America”), copper Jello molds, and Royal Navy rum rations (the daily amount of rum given to sailors aboard naval ships). Here you can discover lots of Lionel train sets, Beanie Babies, license plates, and an eight-piece antique German Lusterware spice jar set. There were loads of books, comics and vintage magazines. Plus, tons of old McCormick spice containers and pharmacy bottles, ecru linens, “wedding hankies,” and patterned napkins. One area even had an assortment of old-school Fisher-Price toys (still in the boxes) and an Easy-Bake Oven. And the Antique Depot has one of the best selections of vintage clothes too.

THE ARTFUL FLEA
Catonsville
In a sweet little house in Catonsville (just a few blocks off Frederick Road), you’ll find The Artful Flea, owned by antique maven Reggie Sajauskas. Objects Found, her bigger antique store, has been closed since May 2025 because of a fire. But this spot and the (other) Objects Found in Arbutus remain open. The Artful Flea tends towards art, antiques, fashion, flora, and furniture, with a healthy nod to local artists. If you like your antiques mixed in with new pieces, this will be right up your alley.

We found timeworn Nancy Drew books, a vintage deviled egg plate, old globes, hand-made (new) birdhouses, and antique glasses turned into pincushions. There’s a room packed with vintage-style clothes on racks. We loved the framed crewel floral bouquet, and the odd assortment of lawn ornaments (R2-D2, Buddah, gargoyle, flamingo). The Arbutus space is small and very, very full of stacks of dishes, glasses, mixing bowls, serving platters, mugs, juicers, and Corningware. There’s tons of costume jewelry including chunky bracelets and clip-on earrings and a gorgeous set of vintage Anchor Hocking floral drinking glasses. (Maybe my favorite find of the day.)

If there’s one thing antique enthusiasts love to talk about, it’s their favorite places to find collectibles. So, here are 11 more shops (nearby or worthy of a road trip—including one with a soda fountain inside) that were suggested for more antique hunting.

MARYLAND

• Beaver Creek Antique Market, Hagerstown
• East Main Antiques, Westminster
• Emmittsburg Antique Mall, Emmitsburg
• Emporium Antiques, Frederick
• Englanders Antiques Grill and Soda
• Fountain, Oakland
• Foxwell’s Antiques & Collectibles, Easton
• Seneca Cannery Antiques, Havre de Grace

PENNSYLVANIA

• The Antique Marketplace of Lemoyne, Lemoyne
• Cackleberry Farm Antique Mall, Paradise
• Renninger’s Antique Market, Adamstown
• Shrewsbury Antique Center, Shrewsbury

It’s hard to miss the mammoth Baltimore Traction Co. building on Druid Hill Avenue—it stretches an entire city block. But the real mystery is what’s inside the 30,000-square-foot space, constructed in 1891 to introduce cable car service to the city powered by underground cables.

Now it holds Keith Kitts’ treasures—the vintage décor, miscellaneous junk, interesting artifacts, and occasional curiosities he’s amassed over the last few decades.

His MD Architectural Rescue is centered on the idea of ephemera—that things exist, are used or enjoyed for only a short period of time, but still have an inherent value. He believes his mission is to be the steward of these wayward items—to make sure that they don’t end up lost, dumped in a landfill, or worse, forgotten.

Kitts, 57, who looks like a salvager out of central casting—flannel-lined shirt jacket, gruff but gentle voice, sturdy shoes—grew up on Kent Island and always fancied himself not only a collector, but a keeper of stories. “I just love old stuff,” he explains.

He came to Baltimore in the late ’90s, despite growing up “being scared of Baltimore.”  He started hanging out with some friends who lived in the city and realized “that I actually liked it and everything I was told about Baltimore was a lie.”

He was hired by a buddy to caretake the National Brewery Stock House, a nine-story brick building on Dillion Street, a major part of the National Brewing Company production facility, in what is now known as Brewers Hill. In exchange for a free rent, he was tasked with clearing out the warehouse. It was a great deal—from that vantage point he could see everything from Ft. McHenry all the way around the skyline.

“But my power bill was $1,600 a month just to heat that damn thing—it had 18-foot ceilings, and I was the only person there.”

Around that same time, Canton was being developed and Kitts would drive around as rowhomes were being demolished or remodeled and pick up fireplace mantels that were leaning against dumpsters. He’d drag them back to the warehouse and, little by little, he started accruing his own collection.

“I was a construction dumpster diver,” he laughs. He would go and talk to the construction team working on houses and convince them to let him inside before the places were gutted so he could strip the old lighting and entry locks.

“Everybody was working in that area, so it was easy to find people,” says Kitts.  “I felt good about what I was doing. It’s all about salvaging the history. If I don’t take them, they’re lost.”

“I felt good about what I was doing. It’s all about salvaging the history. If I don’t take them, they’re lost.”

But don’t call Kitts a hoarder—everything is for sale. “I’m an anti-hoarder,” he says. “I’m an adoption agency.”

It’s a line he says often, because it’s not just about moving something out of his warehouse; it’s about making sure whoever takes the item appreciates it and knows its lineage, too.

After the great Canton salvage tour of the late ’90s, most of Kitts’ items now come from hustling, relationships he’s built, and patience. He’s cleaned out asylums, Bethlehem Steel, The Hershey Company warehouses, colleges, and the Howard Street Business District.

“I work with contractors and demolition companies and also property developers.” He likes when a stand-alone or complex of buildings have been forgotten. “It’s better when it’s been sitting for a long time and nobody knows what’s in there.”

And one of his favorite things is bringing the disregarded items back to relevance. “That’s where the juices get flowing,” he says. “It’s like the sugarplums start dancing.”

He says he often has a vision that other salvagers don’t. Case in point: Around 2013, when The Hershey Company began demolishing a significant portion of its iconic, aging chocolate factory complex on Chocolate Avenue in Pennsylvania, Kitts spoke to a buddy who was running the job site.

“He goes, ‘Man, it’s just a bunch of weird stuff. I don’t think there’s anything you want.’”

In fact, Kitts spent 18 months salvaging the place. That equated to 16 semis filled with items that Kitts felt could be sold, including vintage Hershey’s chocolate factory tubs, circa 1910 (picture a classic bathtub shape), made from a heavy stamped steel. There were 1,500 tubs in the factory. Kitts took 300 and is down to his last 21. (He sells them for $250 each.)

“Some of them were marked ‘cacao,’ some ‘cocoa butter recovery,’ some were marked ‘dark chocolate,’ some ‘milk,’ and some were just ‘cocoa,’” he reports. People have bought them to use as firepits, coolers, and planters.

Sometimes selling items takes the patience of a saint. Memorial Stadium was one of Kitts’ first big jobs. Potts & Callahan, a Baltimore- based construction and demolition company, was the primary contractor for tearing down the stadium, and Kitts was able to get inside before demolition began in 2001. (Kitts still has a trophy case waiting for the right buyer.)

For a similar job at D.C.’s Capital One Arena, he ended up with the flooring that went between the basketball court and the ice for Caps games. And when Towson University’s Smith Hall did its renovations, he found unwanted laboratory equipment, like beakers, flasks, and test tubes.

Kitts is walking around the warehouse showing off his goods like a proud papa. There are boxes filled with cogs, wheels, and spikes.

“Those letters were used to mark Bethlehem Steel telephone poles,” explains Kitts, pointing to a case with small metal letters. He has the brackets that held up the roof to Broadway Pier (a set sells for around $2,500). There are nails and pulls, lithography stones, and massive wrenches. There’s a whole section filled with chairs from classrooms and waiting rooms. And galvanized metal firehouse buckets with strange rounded bottoms.

“They’re probably 100 years old or more,” says Kitts. “They made the bottoms round so if you needed a damn bucket to put out the fire, somebody hadn’t already stolen it and used it for something else.”

If there’s anything to know about Kitts, it’s that he knows a lot about a lot. And he has lived a hundred lives—a true renaissance man. He has a vacation home in Negril, Jamaica. He lives in Annapolis on a 30-acre old mill site. He lived in Prague—“because I was selling lighting to a lady in Spokane, Washington, and she offered me a job to go over and make glass with her in Eastern Europe”—and also spent time in Romania, Latvia, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Eugene, Oregon.

Even his warehouse came about through trade from a job in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, at an old Catholic school. “When I got this, there were probably 50 cars in here, there were boats, there were a few airplanes. It took me a few years just to get rid of all the stuff.”

When he was quoted $300,000 to fix the roof, he decided to do it himself. He already owned one forklift. “I got another lift and [two workers]. Took me eight months, but I got it done for $80,000.” Okay, it took a while, he admits with a chuckle, but “I’m not a builder. I’m a salvage guy. I take stuff apart.”

And he’s still fixing up the building. For example, he’s putting together an official office space made almost entirely of salvaged material. And he says he likes tinkering on the warehouse, as it gives him a chance to really spend time with his inventory.

“Because you go into antique shops, they’ve got the fanciest and the prettiest and the most in-style. Well, you know what? I’ve got the land of misfits.”

And despite the fact that he barely has any presence on social media or the web and that he doesn’t keep traditional business hours his stuff sells. (He hosts an open house on the second Saturday of every month and, in his one concession to e-commerce, puts items on Facebook Marketplace.)

He doesn’t have set prices for his goods, but he has a general idea. “I mean, nothing’s concrete, but it’s not going to be Jell-O either.” He pauses. “I haven’t put my rules up—but rule number one, this is not a damn flea market. This is like, I invited you in. I can invite you out.”

He’s joking—kind of. He’s a fascinating person and he wants other fascinating people in his orbit. “It’s the reason I do what I do: the people that come in here. I get some of the nicest people from all walks of life who identify with my stuff. I do not attract assholes, you know.”

There are still so many historic buildings he’d love to get his hands on. “I want people to know that someone like me exists, so that I can get access to places where things have sat for a long time and people don’t even realize that there’s an option to find homes for these things.”

He doesn’t want to cut in front of the museums or historical societies, but “they don’t have the ability to absorb everything that they see, and everything is not suitable for a museum.”

He stops walking. “They keep the cherries and then they throw out the pits. I’m the Pit King.”