Charles Center is a large-scale urban redevelopment project in central Baltimore's downtown business district of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Beginning in 1954, a group called the "Committee for Downtown" promoted a master plan for arresting the commercial decline of central Baltimore. In 1955, the "Greater Baltimore Committee", headed by banker and developer James W. Rouse, joined the effort. A plan was developed by noted American urban planner and architect David A. Wallace, (1917−2004), strongly supported by Mayors Thomas L. J. D'Alesandro, Jr. (1947−1959) and Theodore R. McKeldin, and many in their administrations, which formed the basis of a $25 million bond issue voted on by the citizens of Baltimore City during the municipal elections in November 1958. The architects' view of the overall Charles Center Redevelopment Plan with the conceptions of possible buildings, lay-out and plan that was publicized to the voters that spring and summer before, only slightly resembles the actual buildings and designs that later were really constructed by the mid-1970s.

RTKL was a global architecture, planning and design firm. The firm was founded in 1946 by Archibald C. Rogers and Francis T. Taliaferro in Rogers’ grandmother’s basement in Annapolis and grew to be one of the largest architectural firms in the world prior to its acquisition by Arcadis NV in 2007. In October 2015, RTKL was formally merged with another Arcadis subsidiary, Seattle-based Callison, to form CallisonRTKL headquartered in Baltimore.