BALTIMORE, Md. — Bertha's Mussels closed in October of 2023, and its longtime owner, Tony Norris, auctioned off its contents last spring as he and his wife headed into retirement.
"We'd like to see the best thing happen to it, but right now, we’re just concerned with getting on with our lives,” Norris told us at the time.
When the property didn’t bring enough at auction, its fate was left uncertain, and it didn’t help this week when city inspectors posted a sign on the building’s door stating it had been condemned.
Work is underway to brace an exterior brick wall that posed a risk of collapsing.
“Basically, we’re replacing the Lancaster wall because it has a big bow in it, so we’ll remove that section of wall along Lancaster,” said Marty Bement, the general contractor on the project. “We’ll build a modern, structural wall and then veneer it with brick so it looks very much like the brick that’s there, and in the end, it will look just like it looks now.”
It will also have six over six historic windows that have double-glazed glass, and workers will preserve the building’s historic façade along Broadway.
The emergency repairs will come at no small cost to the lender who actually holds the deed on the property, estimated at a quarter of a million dollars.
Securing a wall and saving a building with an investment in the future of a structure tied to the city’s long history.
“I started working in Fell’s Point as part of the development team for the Admiral Fell Inn in 1983, and it was like that in 1983,” added Bement, “so it had some star and bolt work done, but we can now see it’s still moving a little bit, and it really just needs to be redone.”
