Architect

Theodore A. Bork, a retired architect who had worked for the Rouse Co. and later the U.S. State Department, died May 23 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at his Columbia home. He was 83. The son of a businessman and a homemaker, Theodore Alvin Bork was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. After graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School, he earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in 1950 in architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Mr. Bork served in the Army stateside during the Korean War, teaching mathematics to officers.

As many times as I have stood on the MARC station platform in West Baltimore, I never considered there was a fantastic, Jules Verne-like interior just across Franklin Street. I assumed the fire-damaged brick building alongside the rail tracks was just another derelict structure. After a visit there this week, I learned that one of Baltimore's fascinating industrial archaeological sites endures in the Midtown Edmondson neighborhood. The story of this dusty old West Baltimore ice-making and storage plant has been making the rounds of planners and architects.

Gwen Darwin McDade, a retired architect who worked on the Johns Hopkins medical campus and later designed structures for the State Highway Administration, died of heart disease Saturday at his Glen Arm home. He was 87. Born in Verona, Pa., he was the son of a contractor and a secretary. The family lived in New Kensington, Pa. Mr. McDade joined the Army immediately after graduating from New Kensington High School. He was assigned to an infantry unit fighting in Belgium during World War II. Family members said he was injured as he was loading heavy- armament shell casings during the Battle of the Bulge.

Designed by the influential Baltimore architects Edward L. Palmer and William D. Lamdin in 1925 and built in 1928, the home at 101 Witherspoon Road is one of the premier properties in Homeland. This North Baltimore home is built of local stone with a Vermont slate roof, and it has over 7,000 square feet of living space. The property is being offered by Hill & Co. Realtors for $1.25 million. "It's a unique property with one of the largest lots in Homeland," said Mary Lynne Mullican, the listing agent for Hill & Co. "The wrought-iron work on the back loggia is beautiful.

John Johansen died on October 25. His name is virtually unknown in Baltimore, but his legacy is not. He was the architect of our Morris Mechanic Theater. Johansen was one of the Harvard Five, a group of young post World War II architects that included such giants as Philip Johnson and Marcel Brewer. To add further to his professional creditability, he married Walter Gropius' daughter. (Gropius was the founder of Germany's Bauthaus School of Architecture.) The Morris Mechanic is a wonderful rendition of the style known as Brutalism.

I repeated a blooper in my recent column on the 100th anniversary of Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station that was caught by a sharp-eyed Roland Park resident and lawyer, John C. Murphy, who comes from a family of Baltimore architects. I had stated with the authority of numerous articles (some that appeared in this newspaper) that Kenneth Murchison, who had designed Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station, had been a member of the esteemed New York City architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White.

George Spear Salabes, an architect, died Dec. 1 of complications from surgery at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 68. Born in Baltimore and raised near Druid Hill Park and in Mount Washington, he attended the Park School and was a 1958 City College graduate. He earned an architectural degree from Cornell University and served in the Army. Mr. Salabes was a co-founder of Nelson-Salabes Architects in Towson. Among his projects were Heather Ridge, the Owings Mills Jewish Community Center, midrise apartments at the Village of Cross Keys, the RCMD Building in Towson and the Cove apartments in Columbia.

Richard Winston Ayers, an architect whose use of both traditional and modern design elements can be seen in some of Baltimore's most notable institutional buildings, died Friday at his Homeland residence of melanoma.Mr. Ayers, a principal in the architectural firm of Ayers-Saint-Gross Inc., was 84. He had been semiretired since 1985.In the 1940s, he designed Shriver Hall on the Homewood Campus of the Johns Hopkins University. Thus began a relationship with the university that lasted more than four decades and led to seven other buildings, including the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, the Newton H. White Athletic Center, the Mudd Biology Research Complex, Barton and Garland halls and the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy.

LOS ANGELES -- Richard Rogers, an Italian-born Englishman who wields political influence as a liberal member of Britain's House of Lords and the unpaid chief of the London city government's Architecture and Urbanism Unit, was named the winner yesterday of the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's leading award. Rogers' signature buildings over the past 30 years include heralded temples to art (the Pompidou Center museum in Paris, co-designed with Renzo Piano), commerce (the Lloyd's of London insurance tower)

William Tashlick, a retired architect who roamed the world on bicycle, died of liver cancer Sunday at his Northeast Baltimore home. He was 76. Born and raised in the Bronx, N.Y., Mr. Tashlick served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After his discharge in 1947, he worked as a New York City taxi driver for several years before attending Columbia University on the GI Bill of Rights. He earned a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1955 and began his career in New York. Mr. Tashlick came to Baltimore in 1967 when he joined the Rouse Co. Projects he worked on included shopping centers and the planned city of Columbia.

Chloe A. Gudmundsson is a senior at Eastern Technical High School in Essex, and at the suggestion of her English teacher, she decided to research a paper on Maximilian Godefroy, the quirky architect who designed Baltimore's Battle Monument to commemorate the battle for the city in 1814. She also decided to submit her paper to the annual History Day competition this month on the Dundalk campus of the Community College of Baltimore County. The competition, which has been held for the last 12 years at Dundalk, features both city and Baltimore County public school students.

From the dentils that punctuate the roofline to the wide staircase leading upstairs, the home of Gretchen and A. Denis Clift is a classic. And it's in an Annapolis community where architecture is distinctive, gardens are gracious and century-old trees shade winding streets. The house offers views of the Severn River through original windows of rippled glass and looks over sections of Wardour. Even though the neighborhood is in the city of Annapolis, it feels anything but urban.

Gwen Darwin McDade, a retired architect who worked on the Johns Hopkins medical campus and later designed structures for the State Highway Administration, died of heart disease Saturday at his Glen Arm home. He was 87. Born in Verona, Pa., he was the son of a contractor and a secretary. The family lived in New Kensington, Pa. Mr. McDade joined the Army immediately after graduating from New Kensington High School. He was assigned to an infantry unit fighting in Belgium during World War II. Family members said he was injured as he was loading heavy- armament shell casings during the Battle of the Bulge.

Roland V. "Danny" Danielson, a retired Bethlehem Steel Corp. naval architect and avid outdoorsman, died Nov. 17 of renal failure at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 92. The son of Swedish and Danish immigrants, Roland Victor Danielson was born and raised in Cambridge, Mass. After graduating from Cambridge public schools, Mr. Danielson was awarded a scholarship to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he earned his bachelor's degree in 1942 in marine engineering.

John Johansen died on October 25. His name is virtually unknown in Baltimore, but his legacy is not. He was the architect of our Morris Mechanic Theater. Johansen was one of the Harvard Five, a group of young post World War II architects that included such giants as Philip Johnson and Marcel Brewer. To add further to his professional creditability, he married Walter Gropius' daughter. (Gropius was the founder of Germany's Bauthaus School of Architecture.) The Morris Mechanic is a wonderful rendition of the style known as Brutalism.

In a career spanning more than half a century, New York architect Hugh Hardy says he has never worked on an arts-related project like the one his office is designing in Maryland: Harford County's $60 million Center for the Arts. What sets it apart, Hardy said, is the bucolic setting and the mixture of cultural spaces and other facilities that will be under one roof. It's not just an arts center, he says. "It's a community center. It will always have a foundation in the arts. But it's a true community center.

Powell Raymond Staines III, an architect and avid boater, died of cancer Jan. 17 at Anne Arundel Medical Center. He was 53. Mr. Staines was born in Annapolis and was a lifelong resident of Severna Park. He was a 1970 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington and earned an associate's degree in architecture from Anne Arundel Community College. "He passed the architectural licensing examination and became a certified architect," said his son, Timothy R. Staines of Arnold. For the past 20 years, Mr. Staines had been a staff architect at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he checked designs for new buildings and oversaw renovations and remodeling projects, his son said.

WASHINGTON -- Criticizing what she called his "plantation mentality," Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski yesterday demanded the resignation of the man who supervises the 285-acre Capitol Hill complex, which includes the Capitol, congressional office buildings and the Supreme Court.Ms. Mikulski wrote to George M. White, the architect of the Capitol, that a report by the investigative arm of Congress "describes a lack of management principles and employee protections in your office that is outrageous and intolerable."

Janet Browne, a retired designer who outfitted the interiors of colleges and banks during a lengthy career collaborating with her architect husband, died of congestive heart failure Oct. 12 at the Pickersgill Retirement Community in Towson. The longtime Guilford resident was 91. Born Janet Augusta Biedler in Baltimore and raised on Calvert Street in Charles Village, she attended Friends School and was a 1939 Western High School graduate. She then earned a degree in design from the Maryland Institute College of Art . She later earned a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University.

Forty years after Frank Gehry completed a series of buildings in the fledgling "new town" of Columbia, the current master developer wants him to come back and design more. The Dallas-based Howard Hughes Corp., which in 2010 took over as lead developer of Columbia's town center, invited the acclaimed architect to spend a day touring the town as part of its effort to spur development around the Merriweather Post concert pavilion and the lakefront. On Thursday, Gehry — who has created such buildings as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles — returned for the first time in more than two decades to take a whirlwind tour, learn how his local designs are holding up, and see what future role he might play in the town created by the Rouse Co. The California-based architect, 83, said he has not visited Columbia since the early 1990s — before company founder James Rouse died of Lou Gehrig's disease and Rouse executive Michael Spear died in a plane crash.