Landscape Boulders at T. Rowe Price’s New Global Headquarters in Baltimore, MD
When natural stone boulders were specified for the new T. Rowe Price global headquarters at Harbor Point in Baltimore, getting them into position required considerably more than a delivery truck.
Several of the boulders were destined for a rooftop terrace — craned up to the top of a seven-story building, lowered through an open structural frame, and positioned by hand by Ruppert Landscape crews working alongside the building’s construction team.
Quarry Connections supplied the landscape boulders for the project, one of the most logistically unusual applications we’ve supplied stone for.
The Project: T. Rowe Price Global Headquarters at Harbor Point
T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore-based global investment management firm founded in 1937, relocated to Harbor Point with the opening of its new 550,000-square-foot global headquarters at 1307 Point Street. The two-tower, seven-story building connected by a glass atrium was designed by Gensler and represents a $278 million investment in the city.
The LEED-certified facility was designed with connection, sustainability, and community engagement as guiding principles. In addition to bespoke meeting spaces, a client conference center, and an auditorium, the campus includes significant outdoor landscape areas including a rooftop terrace with panoramic views of Baltimore Harbor.
The landscape design, developed by BCT Design Group, incorporates natural stone boulders at multiple locations on the property, including at grade level on the grounds and on the rooftop terrace. The boulders function as landscape anchors — providing scale, visual weight, and a connection to the natural world within an otherwise entirely urban and architectural context.
The Stone: Landscape Boulders from Quarry Connections
Quarry Connections supplied landscape boulders for both the rooftop and ground-level landscape areas at Harbor Point. Our boulders are natural quarried stone — not cast or manufactured — and each one is unique in shape, face texture, and tonal variation.
In a waterfront urban environment like Harbor Point, where the surrounding context is glass, steel, and concrete, the presence of genuine stone adds the kind of material contrast that makes outdoor spaces feel grounded and inhabitable rather than purely designed.
The boulders used for this project range from warm tans and buffs to cooler grays, with the kind of irregular, organic profiles that read as genuine geology rather than landscape decoration.
Each boulder required multiple crew members to receive and position once it was lowered, working carefully within the constraints of the partially completed building structure. The boulders were set into prepared soil beds, which were themselves engineered to manage weight loads and drainage at elevation.
At ground level, the same boulders — sourced from the same Quarry Connections inventory — were incorporated into the landscape areas surrounding the building, placed using conventional equipment and integrated into the planted beds and hardscape of the Harbor Point campus.
Landscape Boulders for Commercial Projects: Common Questions
What are landscape boulders used for in commercial projects?
In commercial landscape design, boulders serve both aesthetic and functional roles. Aesthetically, they provide scale, visual mass, and a natural material contrast within hardscape-heavy environments. Functionally, they can define space, anchor planting areas, create informal seating, and provide erosion control or grade transitions. In urban commercial settings like Harbor Point, where the surrounding context is largely glass and concrete, natural stone boulders introduce material authenticity and a sense of permanence that is difficult to achieve with other landscape elements.
Can landscape boulders be used on rooftop terraces and elevated structures?
Yes, but it requires careful coordination between the landscape architect, structural engineer, and contractor to account for dead load capacity, drainage, and the logistics of getting the stone into position. At the T. Rowe Price headquarters, boulders were craned to the rooftop terrace during the construction phase, when crane access was available and the structural frame was still open. This kind of installation requires a contractor with the equipment and experience to manage the operation safely within an active construction schedule — which is exactly what the Ruppert Landscape team executed here.
How are landscape boulders selected and sized for a project?
Boulder selection typically involves a combination of design criteria — target size range, tonal palette, surface texture — and site-specific constraints like access, weight limits, and placement equipment. At Quarry Connections, contractors and landscape architects can visit the stoneyard in Elkridge, Maryland to hand-select boulders from our in-stock inventory, which allows them to evaluate the actual stone rather than working from a generic description. For commercial projects where consistency across a large quantity of boulders matters, our team can help identify stones that share a common character while retaining the natural variation that makes the installation look genuine. Visit our landscape boulders page to learn more about what we carry.
Natural Stone Boulders for Commercial and Residential Landscape Projects in Maryland
Whether your project calls for a single feature boulder or a large-scale commercial landscape specification, the team at Quarry Connections can help you identify the right stone for the application.
Visit the stoneyard in Elkridge, Maryland to view our in-stock landscape boulders and the full range of natural stone products in person, where you can compare sizes, shapes, and tonal ranges before committing to a specification.
Browse more project examples on our Get Inspired page, or contact the Quarry Connections team to discuss your project directly.