19th Century

In the mood for a new and unusual dining experience? Or jus looking for a creative way to entertain guests?Either way, you can take a journey back in time with the people at the Baltimore City Life Museum's 1840 House, 800 E. Lombard St."Let's Meet in the Past: An 1840 Get-Together" is offered from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. the second Thursday of each month. The cost is $30 per person for the general public and $27 per person for members.Guests begin the evening by being the cook's helper. Dressed in 19th century costumes, the museum staff guide them in preparing a three-course meal of stew, roast chicken and other 19th century fare over the open hearth.

When she thinks of Fort Carroll, the abandoned 19th-century military installation in the Patapsco River, Beverly Eisenberg thinks of her grandfather - and of duckpin bowling balls. She visited the six-sided artificial island as a little girl, just a few years after her grandfather bought the place in 1958 hoping to turn it into a destination with a slots casino, hotel and restaurants. He was making cast-iron facsimiles of the cannons that once armed the fort, and the cannons needed cannon balls - duckpin balls that she would paint black and set up at the guns to help Benjamin N. Eisenberg nurture a dream.

The last weekend in September brings large crowds to New Market for the town's 19th century heritage celebration, New Market Days. The 32nd annual event will be held Friday to next Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Main Street will be lined with craftspeople and artisans in 19th century costumes demonstrating and selling their wares. You'll see a Civil War encampment, square dancers, old time fiddlers and wandering minstrels. And there's more music -- brass bands, dixeland, bluegrass, barbershop and folk, as well as a wide assortment of food.

The handsome young man sitting in the pink parlor chair radiates restlessness, a disdain for social conventions and undeniable self-satisfaction. The impatience in Richard Caton Woodville's "Self-Portrait with Flowered Wallpaper" can be detected in the wide-thrust knees of the artist born to a wealthy and prominent Baltimore family, and in his hastily buttoned and pointedly shabby jacket. His ego can be gleaned from the care he lavished on painting his face. Woodville imbued his visage with the high, broad forehead and aquiline nose that were thought in that age to signify a lofty mind and an aristocratic, resolute temperament.

HISTORIC WAVERLY Mansion was the setting for the Waverly Cotillion, a 19th-century re-enactment ball, held Saturday in Marriottsville. Guests began arriving at 7 p.m. and were greeted by Howard County employees Ann Combs and Barbara Lett attired in fancy ball gowns. Those who attended were free to tour the mansion and help themselves to refreshments. Food and drink were elegantly displayed in a dining room lighted by candles and the old kitchen area. Hot artichoke dip, vegetables and dip, cheese squares and many desserts, including cheesecake and carrot cake, were featured.

Of the many special events planned throughout the year at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Del., Family Day on Saturday ranks high in popularity. Now in its fourth year, it offers a full day of activity for all ages from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Since the museum stands on the original site of the du Pont black powder mills that flourished during the 19th century, many of the events relate to that era.On Blacksmith Hill, the Hagley's 19th century workers' community, visitors can enjoy a Punch and Judy show, enter wheelbarrow races, participate in school classes or watch interpreters perform daily chores.

The Goschenhoppen Folk Festival celebrates its 25th year Friday and Saturday at the New Goschenhoppen Park in East Greenville, Pa.The festival was started by the Goschenhoppen Historians, who found it was a good way to teach and preserve the heritage and local folk culture of the oldest existing continuously Pennsylvania Dutch community in the country. Today it is nationally recognized as an educational event for the whole family, totally devoid of commercialism.A walk through the 10-acre park is a step back in time with more than 500 skilled and apprentice craftspeople, clad in Colonial costumes, performing 18th and 19th century crafts.

Holiday traditions of the 19th century are highlighted this month at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington. "Christmas at the Hagley" looks back on the holiday celebrations of the first du Pont family at their home, Eleutherian Mills. The grand staircase in the entrance hall is adorned with ribbons and greens; a Victorian Christmas tree in the parlor is surrounded by dolls, miniature furniture and other 19th century toys; and a display of old musical instruments and a "Christmas harp" fashioned from greens and strung with cranberries demonstrates the importance of music to the du Pont family.

If Williamsburg, Va. is the place to learn about Colonial America and New Orleans is identified by its French Quarter, how should Baltimore be known? As the quintessential 19th-century American city, according to a growing contingent of local scholars and cultural leaders. After all, they argue, Baltimore is a treasure trove of 19th-century art and history. Consider: The city was the birthplace of American railroading. It boasts the first Roman Catholic cathedral in America, the mother church of American Methodism, the first monument to George Washington.

Decked out in a matching ankle-length skirt and long-sleeve shirt -- an outfit similar to what women wore during the 19th century -- Rebeqah Bystrak's hair dripped with sweat as she struggled to keep her smile from wilting on a humid 90-plus-degree day. "It's fun feeling like we're back in time," said Rebeqah, 13, one of about 20 student volunteer camp counselors for the Living History Camp at the Carroll County Farm Museum in Westminster. "But it's getting kind of hot." Rebeqah, who will be a freshman at Century High in Eldersburg this fall, said she had it pretty easy because she wasn't wearing all the pieces of the typical woman's outfit from the 1800s -- including a hoop skirt or a corset under her clothes.

The optimistic incorporators and builders of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the nation's first common carrier railroad, which was founded in Baltimore in 1827 and began building westward the next year, envisioned it would take 10 years and $10 million to reach the Ohio River at Wheeling. Instead, it took 25 years and $50 million, and when the first B&O train steamed into Wheeling on New Year's Day 1853, travel time from Baltimore had been reduced from days over rugged, primitive roads to just 16 hours.

North Charles Street motorists, bikers and walkers will notice that the scaffolding that has masked the elegant south portico of historic Homewood Museum since late last fall has been removed, revealing a dazzling and historically accurate restoration. And on a sun-splashed September afternoon on the Johns Hopkins University campus, Catherine Rogers Arthur, Homewood's director and curator, couldn't wait to show off the nearly completed work to a visitor. "We were able to save as much of the True Cross as possible," she said.

It's hard work catching soft crabs, a fickle livelihood in an increasingly precarious part of the world. Starting before sunup, Smith Island waterman Mark Kitching spends hours repeatedly "scraping" the submerged grass beds that grow abundantly around his home in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. On a recent morning, he's commuted 45 minutes through the pre-dawn darkness to work north of Holland Straits some 13 miles away. The Cummins diesel engine in his work boat, Miss Anita, provides the power to drag a pair of nets through thick grass beds where Kitching hopes to find soft crabs and "peelers," those young crabs about to shed their shells and form larger new ones.

Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, the executive producers of "Homicide: Life on the Street," return to prime time tonight on BBC America with "Copper," starring Tom Weston-Jones. (That's Weston-Jones sitting with them in the picture above, taken in California where they were promoting the series.) Set in 1864 in New York, the series is cop drama meets frontier saga, and I like it. I loved "Homicide," "Oz" and Levinson's last TV effort, "You Don't Know Jack," a docu-drama look at Dr. Jack Kevorkian, starring Al Pacino, for HBO. But I hated "The Jury," a series the duo did for Fox. They've had some failed projects since "Homicide" and "Oz," but I think "Copper" could be a winner.

I was fooled by the summer calm of old Lutherville, the Victorian village in Baltimore County that hides behind York Road, the Beltway and Interstate 83. On a cloudy morning, Lutherville's timeless homes seemed to be enjoying a July holiday, with abundant rose of Sharon bushes blooming near the rain-encouraged weeds. But something else was sprouting on the lawns of old Lutherville: a crop of signs devoted to a neighborhood zoning issue. It is a tricky issue. The longtime owners of the College Manor assisted-living complex want a zoning change that would enable them to build a new facility, move the residents into it, then renovate the old complex, portions of which are decades old. But the Lutherville residents say that once a zoning change is enacted, it stays on the books and remains permanent should the property change hands.

Clifton Mansion still towers over Baltimore, but decades of neglect are eroding its underpinnings. Wood is rotting on the signature porches of the 19th-century building. Water stains the walls of its elegant salon. Job-training students wear gloves and hats in winter to ward off cold from a wall of aging windows. Plaster is crumbling, floors need refinishing and research must be done to preserve murals, stencils and paintings. The Italianate stucco home, Johns Hopkins' summer estate in what is now Clifton Park in Northeast Baltimore, is about to undergo a $7 million renovation to restore those gracefully arched porches and floor-to-ceiling windows.

Also, a review of Mozart recordings in Sunday's Arts section incorrectly stated the cause of death for pianist Geza Anda. He died of throat cancer in 1977.The Sun regrets the error.No sensible person nowadays would argue with scholar Alfred Eisenstein's remark that Mozart's piano concertos represent "the peak of all his instrumental achievement, at least in the orchestral domain." The 23 concertos, particularly the dozen or so he introduced to Vienna from 1784 through 1786, almost certainly represent the greatest sustained outburst of genius in the history of music.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - She was a young South African servant who in 1810 set sail for England from this seaside city, dreaming of riches. But Saartjie Baartman never found them. Instead, she became a sexual curiosity in a London freak show. During her exhibitions, a "keeper" unlocked her from a cage, paraded her naked across a stage and ordered her to sit, stand and walk so she could titillate audiences. Tickets to see the "Hottentot Venus," as she was known, cost two shillings apiece.

Reports of wage cuts, social clubs, equipment and dam problems, temperance meetings and more are part of the historical events Laurel Mill superintendent George H. Nye documented during his nine years in Laurel between 1877-1885. The Laurel Historical Society will offer a glimpse into the past through Nye's eyes at "The Diaries of George Nye: An Inside Look 1877-1885," Thursday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Laurel Municipal Pool meeting room, Ninth and Main streets. Ken Skrivseth, who with Jeri Witt has begun detailed transcriptions of Nye's daily entries, will discuss some of their discoveries and what it has taken to ensure accurate transcriptions of the hand-written documents.

Every weekday morning, at about the same hour that dozens of young teachers are finishing their coffee and heading off to classrooms, construction workers arrive for the day at the hillside campus where the educators live. The construction workers are putting the finishing touches on the sprawling Union Mill, a 19th-century loft building once occupied by a textile company and then, for many years, by a firm that made miniature toys for Baltimore's beloved Christmas gardens. Located along the banks of the Jones Falls in Hampden, the once-dormant industrial address has been transformed over the last year into a self-contained, $20 million beehive of residences, offices and meeting rooms that also includes a gym and a small restaurant.