One of Baltimore's most distinctive buildings is hunting for a tenant.
The four-story Fava Building in Jonestown, featuring a cast-iron facade salvaged from an 1869 warehouse, has been largely vacant since Gardel's Restaurant and Supper Club went out of business last fall. It formerly housed the Baltimore City Life Museums.
A private entity, the 1840s Corp., owns the building at 33 Front St. and last year opened the 1840s Carrollton Inn, a 13-room, $2 million bed-and-breakfast inside three other former City Life buildings on the block. The inn is next to the historic Carroll Mansion, an estate owned by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The inn uses the top floor of the Fava Building as the 1840s Ballroom, a catering hall and meeting center. The third floor could house offices with views of the downtown skyline, said Anne Pomykala, head of the 1840s Corp.
Pomykala is looking for another restaurateur to take over the building's lower levels and help make the inn a regional destination.
"I want a high-end restaurant," she said. "I want somebody who has the experience and funding ability to make a go of it."
Besides a restaurant, Pomykala is contemplating a 140-car garage, spa and 11 more guest rooms for the inn.
Within a few months, she said, she expects demolition to begin on two former ice houses on Albemarle Street to make way for the garage. She said its design will include an elevator rather than ramps to take cars to upper levels.
The spa will be built inside a one-story structure that was built to house a nickelodeon-style theater and orientation center for the museum but never opened.
Visible to drivers heading north from downtown on the Jones Falls Expressway, and originally known as the Morton K. Blaustein City Life Exhibition Center, the Fava Building was constructed for $8.4 million to showcase 200 years of Baltimore history. It was the city's gift to itself for its bicentennial in 1997.
The building's most unusual feature is the cast-iron facade from the old G. Fava Fruit Co. building that stood at the northwest corner of Charles and Camden streets. The facade was taken down in 1976, when the building was demolished to make way for the Baltimore Convention Center. The cast-iron pieces were placed in storage for more than a decade and re-erected as the frontispiece for the museum.
