Growing up in Randallstown, Brian Glazer Gerber first glimpsed the Bromo Seltzer Tower as a boy with his grandfather who owned a business on Whitelock Street.

“It became one of my favorite buildings, period,” he said.

Painting in his studio in the newly renovated Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, Gerber spars passionately with his canvas.

“Creating in a building that inspires you architecturally, also inspires you as an artist.” 

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He is one of the many painters, writers and visual artists who rent studio space in the tower. 

The Baltimore Office for Promotion and the Arts played a major role in converting the tower into an effervescent spring of high artistic talent.

The studios range from $400 to $1,500 per month and floor plans are available on the Web site. 

Superintendent Kristine Grey eventually hopes to be able to open the first two floors to the public to capitalize on traffic that the new Hilton and a revitalized convention business might bring.

“We’re trying to bring in a coffee company or another retail vendor,” she said. 

There’s inspiration to be found in every occupied space and it doesn’t take long to find it.

On the second floor, visual artist Linda Day Clark won a contest for the Eddie and Sylvia Brown space with her poignant and riveting photos of North Avenue, Nigeria, and the quilters of Gee’s Bend Ala.    

“I’m addicted to light,” she said. “Whether it’s an onion or a pair of underwear, I’m going to shoot it.”

Walking up the marble steps, the interior hallway looks much the same as it did in 1911. Influenced by the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, Joseph Evans Sperry designed the tower and Captain Isaac Emerson, the inventor of Bromo Seltzer, constructed it.

On the eighth floor, W. Scott Broadfoot continues the tradition of the Baltimore Six Realist painters schooled by Jacques Maroger in the ‘40s and ‘50s, best known for rediscovering the mediums of Jan Van Eyck. 

Broadfoot’s street scenes portray instances of hope amid a harsh urban landscape.

“I do sketches from life,” he says.

In “The Letter, “a homeless man is writing a note, huddled in a corner with his dog on West Baltimore Street, and engrossed in the task of writing.

“He could be writing a letter or applying for a job.

“He doesn’t seem to be too down and out.”

An Iraqi born painter in Studio 1003, Najwa Al-Amin has greatly increased her output since coming to the tower. “I’ve painted twenty new works.”

The theme of her work is happiness. “Look at my kite paintings,” she beams. “Floating, colorful and free.”

From a play-in-progress about the Underground Railroad by Barbara Bryan to the lacquered baseball collages on the “sports trays” of Patricia Trulia, the Bromo Seltzer Arts tower features exciting artists inspired by one of the city’s defining structures.

“Driving up to the studio and seeing the tower itself, I still get chills,” Brian Glazer Gerber says.  “I do.”