The National Aquarium – also known as National Aquarium in Baltimore and formerly known as Baltimore Aquarium – is a non-profit public aquarium located at 501 East Pratt Street on Pier 3 in the Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. Constructed during a period of urban renewal in Baltimore, the aquarium opened on August 8, 1981. The aquarium has an annual attendance of 1.5 million visitors and is the largest tourism attraction in the State of Maryland. The aquarium holds more than 2,200,000 US gallons (8,300,000 L) of water, and has more than 17,000 specimens representing over 750 species. The National Aquarium's mission is to inspire conservation of the world's aquatic treasures. The aquarium's stated vision is to confront pressing issues facing global aquatic habitats through pioneering science, conservation, and educational programming.The National Aquarium houses several exhibits including the Upland Tropical Rain Forest, a multiple-story Atlantic Coral Reef, an open-ocean shark tank, and Australia: Wild Extremes, which won the "Best Exhibit" award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2008. The aquarium also has a "4D Immersion Theater."The aquarium opened a marine mammal pavilion on the adjacent south end of Pier 4 in 1990, and currently holds six Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Of the six, five were born at the National Aquarium, one was born at another American aquarium.In 2003, the National Aquarium and the much older and independent National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., formed an alliance to operate as a single National Aquarium with two sites.This arrangement continued until 2013, when the Washington location closed permanently.Left to right: The red building with a green glass front (north) wall holds the 2005 extension, the blue building with the glass pyramid top is the main building of poured concrete construction from 1981, and behind it, across a pedestrian bridge to the east is the Pier 4 marine mammal pavilion.In 2012, the National Aquarium was named one of the best aquariums in the United States by the Travel Channel[9] and also received the popular vote as one of the top five best aquariums to visit by the website 10best.com. Coastal Living magazine named the National Aquarium the #1 aquarium in the United States in 2009. In November 2006, the National Aquarium won a Best of Baltimore award from the Baltimore City Paper as the "Best Over Priced Destination for Families." In September 2011, the City Paper Reader's Poll awarded the National Aquarium with the title of "Best Attraction" and the "Best Place to Take Kids".The aquarium began in the mid-1970s when then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer, (1921-2011), and the Commissioner of the city Department of Housing and Community Development, Robert C. Embry, inspired by a visit to the two-decade old New England Aquarium on the waterfront of Boston, Massachusetts, conceived and championed the idea of an aquarium as a vital component of Baltimore's overall downtown and Inner Harbor redevelopment scheme. In 1976, Baltimore City residents supported the idea of an aquarium by voting for it on a bond loan referendum, and the groundbreaking for the facility took place on old Pier 3 facing East Pratt Street, just east of the newly completed World Trade Center in the city's Inner Harbor on August 8, 1978.Although no federal funds were used for its construction, the United States Congress later designated the facility as the "national aquarium" in 1979. The aquarium opened to the public on August 8, 1981, after three years of construction, and one year after the booming "festival marketplace" of the two Harborplace shopping pavilions further west conceived by nationally famous, local developer James Rouse.The National Aquarium, Baltimore's initial conceptual design, architecture and exhibit design was led by Peter Chermayeff of Peter Chermayeff LLC while he was at Cambridge Seven Associates.The conceptual, architectural, and exhibit design for the Glass Pavilion expansion was led by Bobby C. Poole while at Chermayeff, Sollogub & Poole. After two decades, construction began on the Glass Pavilion north extension on September 5, 2002, and it opened to the public on December 16, 2005. It measures 64,500 sq ft (5,990 m2), and is 120 ft (37 m) high at the tallest point.
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