They might be museums. The two Bolton Hill houses are dignified enough, and the most finicky curator would be happy to snap up such fine chandeliers and marble fireplace mantels. The rugs are Persian, the prints by Audubon and the atmosphere genteel enough that one is tempted to speak in hushed tones.

Relax. Although the Gamse and Woltereck homes are featured on the Bolton Hill walking tour segment of this year's Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage, neither is a shrine to bygone elegance. Not only will visitors find no purple velvet ropes stretched in front of the antique furniture, but they will discover that the two houses are as expressive as they are impressive.

When Alan and Barbara Gamse bought their corner town house 20 years ago, they, like many young couples in their 20s, didn't have a lot of cash to spare. "Budget? What budget? We didn't have any money," laughs Alan Gamse, a lawyer.

But the Gamses, Bolton Hill residents since their marriage in 1966, did find a rich-looking residence. The three-story building, which is several feet wider than most neighborhood houses, and four rooms deep instead of three, was built in 1857. The price was modest (especially by today's standards), but the house was replete with aristocratic flourishes, including 13 1/2 -foot-high ceilings -- a mixed blessing in winter, Mr. Gamse admits -- marble mantels (including one in an unusual coral shade in the dining room), a library with built-in mahogany bookcases and handsome display cabinets in the parlor.

Even though funds were limited, the young couple favored a traditional, somewhat formal style -- no beanbag chairs and macrame for this pair, even in the '60s -- and set about furnishing their home in suitable fashion. To heirlooms from both families and gilt-framed paintings from her grandmother, they added pieces from local sales and classified ads.

"We would get the classifieds on Saturday night. If we'd see them when we were at a friend's for dinner, and if there was something we needed, we'd have to go," admits Mrs. Gamse, who manages the gift and antique shop at the Maryland Historical Society.

An especially distinguished note is provided by an enormous mantel mirror, a move-in gift from a friend. The mirror was once owned by Edwin Warfield, governor of Maryland from 1904 to 1908.

The Gamses did some strategic renovation, principally in the kitchen, which now has a modern food preparation island, a casual country-looking dining area, a powder room with hidden laundry facilities and a door leading out to a garden deck. Shortly after the 1977 renovation began, a drunken 15-year-old in a "borrowed" Cadillac plowed right into the side of the kitchen, doing $15,000 worth of damage. Thanks to a loyal crew, the work was finally completed -- on the eve of the house's first appearance on the Pilgrimage!

A magazine story was done on the house after its first full-scale redecoration in 1981. A picture from that time shows the parlor looking breezy, almost tropical, with white walls, unadorned hardwood floors, and an apricot brocade sofa set in front of the white-shuttered windows.

Today's room is very different, although much of the furniture is the same. A recent redecoration by Claudia Sennett gave the room a look that was at once more sumptuous and more intimate. The furniture was rearranged, and much of it, including a couple of quirky thrift-shop chairs, has been reupholstered in rich blues or in plaids or tapestries in shades of blue, green and warm red.

The most noticeable difference, however, is the fact that the room is now a dark, glossy ivy green. Color makes a big impact in this house; the hallway, which is lined with vintage prints of Baltimore scenes and wildfowl art, is a vivid persimmon-red, and the library is a gentle periwinkle. During the redecoration the dining room received a brightening when its buff walls were covered with lively chinoiserie paper.

It looked great then; it looks great now. The reason for the change, Mr. Gamse explains, was not dissatisfaction with the former look, but because change is part of living.

"You go out to an antique show, or shopping, and see a piece you really like, so you buy it. Every once in a while you get to the stage we are at with our library: one book in, one book out! Things are being recycled constantly."

The house, despite its formality, has always been child-friendly. The two Gamse children, Erin, now 23 and Mac, 20, coexisted peacefully with such things as apricot brocade and cut crystal. The library was the children's favorite playroom, Barbara Gamse reports; if company was coming she'd scoop up the toys that were lying around and deposit them in a big brass pot she kept for the purpose.

"We raised our two kids down here, and they absolutely loved it," says Barbara Gamse. "Both of them became urban children, and wanted to settle in cities."

While the Gamse house looks clubby and English -- the kind of place where you'd expect Jeeves to appear bearing a snifter of cognac -- the home of Mrs. John Woltereck might be the cozy Viennese apartment of an emigre countess, who entertains her visitors with cups of cinnamon-spiked coffee and adventurous tales of her travels. Christine Woltereck might not be a countess, but her gracious house, smaller in scale but even more packed with personal treasures than the Gamse place, attests to a busy, travel-filled life.

Fourteen years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Woltereck moved to Bolton Hill from the "typical five-bedroom family house" in the suburbs where they had raised three daughters and a son. "My husband got tired of the expressway," she says with a laugh.

The 125-year-old town house they chose had a narrow, curving hallway that proved to be a problem when it came time to move in the baby grand piano. But it had plenty of wonderful features, including gracefully proportioned rooms, a marble patio with New Orleans-style ironwork, and the elegant fireplace mantels that are a neighborhood pride.

"The house at one time had five apartments," Mrs. Woltereck explains. "Two or three other people who owned the house made changes to convert it back, but we had to take out a lot of junky-looking cupboards that had been stuck in here and there."

Baths and kitchens were redone, and an "inadequate" light fixture was replaced by a grand 19th century Austrian chandelier.

"Once you get into those things you just can't imagine how much money you're going to spend," remembers the homeowner with a sigh. "And even when you think you're finished, there's more!"

The rewards of the couple's efforts are obvious, though. Mrs. Woltereck, now a widow, lives in surroundings that are elegantly old-fashioned but comfortably up-to-date.

Much of the furniture is antique; some pieces the Wolterecks purchased specifically for their Victorian house, others had been theirs for decades.

"We bought this when we were first married, in 1939," she says, pointing out a chest with 12 small drawers which sits in the front hall. "It was the first piece of antique furniture we bought. It's American cherry wood, and it was sold to us as an apothecary chest. It was supposed to have come out of an old drugstore here in Baltimore. Actually, at that time, if you opened the drawers you could smell that medicinal smell."

Other notable antiques include a tall, glass-fronted Potthast display cabinet, which holds Mrs. Woltereck's collection of vintage Wedgwood, and two German oil paintings from the mid-1800s, depicting views of the church and house in which Mr. Woltereck's grandfather was raised.

Family mementos -- including Steiff teddies belonging to the Wolterecks' youngest daughter and a mirror made from discarded wood (from the aforementioned junky cabinets) by their son -- abound, as do plants; Mrs. Woltereck, an avid gardener, grows flowers in a small romantic garden out back, and has a living room full of flowering plants.

The Wolterecks were dedicated travelers, and Mrs. Woltereck continues the tradition. Their souvenirs fill the house: The religious painting over the fireplace is from Peru, a marionette of a Saracen warrior is from Sicily, an olive wood Madonna and child in the library came from Spain and the tapestry that hangs above it was made by San Blas Indians in Panama.

Despite the fine Chinese export porcelain on display, though, a trip to the Far East was never part of the Woltereck itinerary.

Like and Gamses, Mrs. Woltereck loves color, and uses it lavishly. The dining room's daffodil yellow walls are a sunny backdrop for bird prints by Audubon and John Gould. A small powder room makes a big statement with intense sapphire blue trim, a Chinese motif porcelain sink and wallpaper to match. The upstairs library features raspberry-hued walls and a dark slate fireplace with a fire screen on which a friend painted a whimsical Ronald Searle cat. (Mrs. Woltereck's real live cat, a chocolate-point Siamese named Coco, is a decorative element, too.)

Mrs. Woltereck also agrees that a house should not always remain the same, and she periodically revamps her displays of objets d'art, as well as the plants in her garden.

"I think you get a fresh look at things when you change them around," she says. "A house should never be static."