Shortly after emigrating from Ireland to Baltimore, Thomas Ruckle began advertising his services as a painter and glazier. Notices appeared in the Baltimore City Directories from 1799 until 1850. While Ruckle seems to have had no formal training as a painter, his experiences as a soldier during the War of 1812 lent veracity to his later depictions of the Battle of North Point and the defense of Baltimore (both now at the Maryland Historical Society). Ruckle also created a number of Baltimore street scenes including the house of Frederick Crey (1778 – 1854), a fellow soldier at the Battle of North Point. Crey’s house is the large, redbrick dwelling at the right identified by a Madison Street sign on the wall. Crey is credited with laying the first cobblestone streets in Baltimore. Appropriately, cobblestones fill much of the foreground in Ruckle’s picture. In the distance on the far right, Ruckle included a glimpse of the Washington Monument, completed in 1829.