Breathing new life into old buildings

July 4, 2009

My curiosity led me to walk a few blocks from my front door and ask just what was happening at the old Federal Land Bank building on St. Paul Street. This elegant 1923 limestone structure, vacant for years, was obviously being thoroughly renovated, but there was no posted notice giving details or a completion date. I knew of no media hype about it, either.

Recent columns

• In Baltimore, the shock of (a lack of) recognition

  June 27, 2009

  How can this be? This isn't supposed to look like this.

• Where are the traditional foods of summers past?

  June 20, 2009

  My mouth waters for traditional Baltimore summer cooking, a commodity that seems to grow more elusive. Then, on a recent trip to Rehoboth Beach, Del., came a revelation: remarkable coleslaw.

• Attorney rode equine case to victory

  June 13, 2009

  Attorney and arts activist Donald Rothman, who died this week, spent hours in the courtroom, but no case swallowed more of his time than a decade-long lawsuit surrounding a race horse named Saggy. This legal drama had more turns than a racetrack's oval contours.

• Farmers' markets: a growth industry

  June 6, 2009

  Denied my rhubarb fix the previous week (all sold out), I toured three Baltimore farmers' markets in 84 hours to land this elusive vegetable. The rhubarb season is short and neatly overlaps with soft-crab time. Its devotees are apparently few but aggressive.

• Penn Station upgrade would be welcome boost for neighborhood

  May 30, 2009

  The news that Pennsylvania Station's unused upper floors will be renovated and used as a hotel ran through my head as I passed Baltimore's main railroad depot. On a gloomy Friday morning, it looked like a big gray ship marooned in the mothball fleet. The place needs a good paint job. Its window sashes are sagging. The window glass appears filthy.

• The nuts-and-bolts stores that make a neighborhood

  May 23, 2009

  In a crumbling old city where so many houses look as if they could use a coat of paint, the arrival of a new neighborhood hardware store is a cause for rejoicing. So when I was walking up Old York Road a few weeks ago and spotted a nuts-and-bolts inventory being moved into a building fronting Homestead Street, I felt as if old Waverly had turned a corner.

• Preakness isn't Baltimore's only May tradition

  May 16, 2009

  By Preakness Saturday, every last Christmas tree pine needle has to be out of my house. I also have to cut my first rose of the season. It's also the day when the winter rugs must disappear down into my cellar.

• A historical tribute and Mass mark Ireland's Great Hunger

  May 9, 2009

  Applause to retired Judge Tom Ward, who is among the organizers of a historical tribute to recall Ireland's Great Hunger, a period between 1845 and 1853 when thousands left the Emerald Isle and sailed for America.

• The good old days of listening to music make an encore

  May 2, 2009

  Friends held a yard sale and told me their Waterford glass salad plates attracted no buyers. The pickers who showed up early that Saturday wanted vintage musical recordings.

• Weekend festival to celebrate North Avenue awakening

  April 25, 2009

  Baltimore is often changing before your eyes. I was reminded of this as I talked with Maryland Institute College of Art students as they readied a part of the old North Avenue Market for an event to be held this evening at 6 and 9 at 12 W. North Ave. The show, or "multimedia, experimental fashion event" is called "Brouhaha: A Six-Alarm Affair."

• General Growth underestimated Harborplace

  April 18, 2009

  Ouch! On a visit to Harborplace this week, as the news was coming out about its owner's bankruptcy, I couldn't help but think about that brilliant summer day in 1980 when it opened. Some 29 years later, in the financially gloomy spring of 2009, it was hard not to feel concern for the hard times at the Pratt and Light Street pavilions.

• In Md. Casualty Auditorium, you could sense the grandeur

  April 11, 2009

  An article in Friday's Baltimore Sun told how Zurich American will be moving its city work force from Keswick Road in the Wyman Park-University Parkway area to quarters in Baltimore County. I thought of an afternoon, nearly 40 years ago, when I took a last look at that same site.

• Audit, caulk take some sting from old house energy bills

  March 29, 2009

  The moment of truth arrived last week in a green-and-white envelope - a BGE bill. I opened the invoice slowly, then ran to consult last year's records. It was like opening a report card or a set of SAT scores.

• Tradition makes welcome return

  November 29, 2008

  It wasn't just that the apple pie and the pumpkin cookies smelled so good - the curtains on the windows were right, too. I liked what I saw when the restaurant at the Woman's Industrial Exchange reopened this week.

• Charles North is already more than just a vision

  November 1, 2008

  Doreen Bolger, my Charles Village neighbor, invited me to join her at the Single Carrot Theatre, one of the cultural arrivals along North Avenue. The place was new to me, and it was time to learn what's going on in the slow but steady rebirth of Penn Station's environs.

• Hope rises as the wrecking balls fall

  October 4, 2008

  Is the future of a new East Baltimore becoming evident on Washington Street just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital?

• Hippo's opening another night to remember

  February 14, 2004

  AS MY CAB turned south on Eutaw Street on Tuesday night, I asked the driver, "Where are the moving lights?"

• Hoping B&O Museum is able to maintain pieces of history

  February 22, 2003

  I’VE OFTEN thought that Baltimore possesses three truly great object collections: the Cone sisters' canvases, the treasure of Henry and William Walters and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Yes, the rail museum at Pratt and Poppleton, which suffered such a direct hit from this week's snowstorm, is this country's knockout stable of iron-horse history.

• Saturday nights in 'Perry Mason's' courtroom

  February 17, 2001

  THE TELEVISION shows of 45 years ago were fairly tame fare compared to what the networks and cable deliver today. But certainly when this medium was relatively new - and the arrival of a fresh set in the neighborhood was still something of a novelty - gathering around the black-and-white screen was an event.

• Chief medical advice from family: Get better

  February 10, 2001

  IHEARD this week from my sister, the mother of the twin girls who just turned 3. All her children (she has three) are down with the sort of childhood maladies that arrive in the late winter. Her washing machine is working overtime. The children just aren't themselves. Or are they?