Architectural Preservation

HECHT CO.'s former flagship department store at Howard and Lexington streets is likely to become Baltimore's newest landmark.Members of Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) voted unanimously this week to add the eight-story building at 118 N. Howard St. to their list of official city landmarks.The panel's action must be approved by the Planning Commission, City Council and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke before the building can be declared a landmark.If the other officials concur with the preservationists, as is usually the case with landmark designations, the 1924 structure will become the third department store building to receive landmark status in Baltimore, along with the 1888 Hutzler Bros.

Lady Baltimore's right arm looks as if it has been attacked by the flesh-eating virus. Her face has been darkened by soot from years of auto exhaust. Her crown is tarnished, and green fungus is growing up her robe.But by early next year she could be presentable again, if friends can raise enough money for a long-overdue face lift.Baltimore's Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation is scheduled today to join local historians and others to launch a $250,000 fund drive aimed at restoring Lady Baltimore and the memorial she adorns, the Battle Monument on Calvert Street near Fayette Street.

Southeast Baltimore's Washington Hill is a 28-block neighborhood with a Greenwich Village feel.The community boasts a variety of architectural styles -- Federal, Queen Anne, Italianate, Second Empire and Victorian -- dating from the 1790s to the present. Some of the community's larger homes feature elaborate mansard, slate roofs, decorative New Orleans-style wrought ironwork, intricate stained glass transoms, wood cornices and limestone or brick embellishments.Other homes, some smaller, are characterized by 2 1/2 stories -- they are known as "eyebrow houses" -- and three-story, all-brick structures with sloped or flat roofs.

Taking its strongest step yet to help preserve the old Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube, a city commission voted yesterday to deny the owner's request for a demolition permit.Members of the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) listened to nearly four hours of testimony before unanimously rejecting an application to raze the four-story building at 913 N. Charles St. The commission voted last month to designate it a "contributing building" within the Mount Vernon historic district, which means it cannot be razed without the panel's consent.

WASHINGTON -- Brendan Gill is no late bloomer. He's 81 years old. He has been in full bloom all his life. And he doesn't show any signs of fading.The New Yorker writer is as spirited, happy, realistic, interesting, genial and youthful an octogenarian as you could imagine. He has just published a book of vignettes about people who have achieved success and renown late, or at least later, in life. Called "Late Bloomers," it includes such tardy luminaries as Julia Child, Paul Cezanne, Eubie Blake, Harry Truman, Miquel Cervantes, Col. Harland Sanders and Emily Post.

Go ahead and repair that mid-19th-century front door and start painting those cornices with the intricate dentil moldings. The city is in the mood to pick up part of the tab -- in the form of a 10-year property tax credit for thousands of historic buildings.A City Council bill is in the works to give property owners a financial break if they have wanted to do significant improvements but couldn't because of the threat of higher property taxes."This will ensure that your tax bill will not rise if you make your house beautiful," said Eric L. Holcomb, a city planner with the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation.

Owners of the Southern Hotel are seeking permission to tear down the city landmark and replace it with a park until they are ready to move ahead with construction of a $180 million office tower.Baltimore's Architectural Review Board was scheduled to see plans this week for a "people's park" that would be constructed in place of the vacant 14-story hotel at Light and Redwood streets.The presentation was postponed at the last minute but most likely will be held next month.The owners contend the building has deteriorated to the point where it threatens public safety.

Preserving historic landmarks can be a challenge in good times and bad. When the real estate market is strong, developers often want to tear down old buildings to make way for larger new ones. When the market is weak, few people seem to have money to do much of anything.No one is more familiar with Baltimore's preservation than Deborah Goodman, a businesswoman who has served on the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) for the past eight years, the last five as chairman.

Owners of the Southern Hotel are seeking permission to tear down the city landmark and replace it with a park until they are ready to move ahead with construction of a $180 million office tower.Baltimore's Architectural Review Board was scheduled to see plans this week for a "people's park" that would be constructed in place of the vacant 14-story hotel at Light and Redwood streets.The presentation was postponed at the last minute but most likely will be held next month.The owners contend that the building has deteriorated to the point where it threatens public safety.

JUST ABOUT six years ago then-Mayor Schaefer shared the rostrum at the Convention Center with James W. Rouse to greet several thousands of preservationists who had come to Baltimore for the annual meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Baltimore's greats and near-greats basked in the thunderous applause which followed a lengthy recital of our city's preservation accomplishments. And what other American city was then more worthy of such accolades?Baltimore had it all in the early '80s: eminently successful tax-act projects (the Garrett Building, old Southern High School)

Landmark status will protect theater The controversy over the future of the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre continues, and tomorrow, the Planning Commission will decide whether to support a landmark designation for the Mechanic. In its recent editorial "Landmark in all but name" (Aug. 17), The Baltimore Sun was correct in stating that the theater "qualifies as a genuine architectural landmark" but wrong in recommending against a formal landmark designation. On Aug. 14, 2007, the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP)

Fast forward 50 years, to 2058. The Baltimore region's population has doubled, and the port is booming in the post-petroleum era. Mass transit has finally taken hold, and the city's population is over 1 million. In the surrounding counties, most houses, 50 to 60 years old, with vinyl siding and vinyl windows, are looking shabby. In contrast, most city neighborhoods have become historic districts, especially those from the 1920s through 1950s - totally rehabbed and looking great. At a neighborhood school, a teacher explains that Baltimore was not always this way. The economy thrived in the 1950s, but by the 1960s many businesses and residents were fleeing to the suburbs.

It's certainly not to everyone's taste, but there's no doubt the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre at Baltimore and Charles streets qualifies as a genuine architectural landmark. Built in 1967 in a Brutalist style, it's neither sleek nor inviting by today's standards. Yet it commemorates an important chapter in Baltimore history that ought to be preserved. The question is how, and preservationists, city planning officials and the property's developers seem unable to agree on that. The city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation wants landmark status for the building to protect it from demolition.

Right way to save Mechanic Theatre Thanks to Edward Gunts for pointing to a solution regarding the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre and its uncertain future ("Heightened drama," Aug. 4). The architectural and cultural significance of the building is without question, as affirmed by a unanimous vote for landmark designation by Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) and a flood of testimony from local and national experts. Among historians of architecture and urbanism, Benjamin Latrobe's Basilica of the Assumption is the only building in Baltimore better known beyond the city.

One year after the leaders of Calvert School told residents of Baltimore's Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood of their plans to seek permission to tear down a former headmaster's residence to make way for an amphitheater, the private school is moving ahead with plans to restore and expand the residence for academic use instead. Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) voted 5-0 yesterday to give conceptual approval to the school's plans to expand Castalia, the 1928 residence at 200 Tuscany Road that noted architect Laurence Hall Fowler designed for Calvert School headmaster Virgil Hillyer.

With another five days to go before its scheduled dismantling, the golden chain-link fence that is serving as the controversial opening phase of a two-month-long art exhibit in Mount Vernon Place survived the weekend - remaining up, open and a source of disagreement. The fence originally blocked all access to the historic park and was to remain in place until Saturday. Late last week, amid heavy criticism from residents, the Maryland Institute College of Art student who created the fence removed a section from each of the park's four quadrants, allowing public access.

Usually, local buildings must be at least 50 years old to be designated as national landmarks. But for only the second time in its history, Baltimore's preservation commission has made an exception. The panel voted this month to add Highfield House, a 16-story condominium building in Baltimore's Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood, to the National Register of Historic Places - even though it's just 43 years old. The only other Baltimore building individually listed before reaching 50 was One Charles Center, a 1962 office tower at 100 N. Charles St. It was added in 2000.

Controversies surrounding the demolition of the Rochambeau Apartments and a block of 1820 rowhouses, as well as the plight of the Senator Theatre, have brought renewed focus on the future of Baltimore's architectural heritage. Preservationists welcome recent calls for the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) to be more proactive in designating buildings as historic landmarks. But landmarking is a political process that requires CHAP, Planning Commission, and City Council approval to protect individual buildings and historic districts.

Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) will consider granting landmark status today to a row of historic downtown homes slated for demolition by Mercy Medical Center. Preservationists are trying to prevent the hospital from razing the 1820s-era houses in the 300 block of St. Paul Place, some of the oldest downtown, for a planned $292 million expansion. City housing officials gave Mercy a demolition permit Friday, and Baltimore Heritage, a preservation organization, immediately appealed, arguing that a law paving the way for Mercy to quickly get the permit passed the City Council improperly.

The author of a new book about Baltimore architecture will speak at noon tomorrow at a forum. Charles Belfoure will discuss Niernsee and Neilson: Architects of Baltimore, at the Johns Hopkins Downtown Center at Charles and Fayette streets. John Rudolph Niernsee and J. Crawford Neilson designed 19th-century buildings, including Camden Station and the Green Mount Cemetery chapel. They also planned the original Johns Hopkins Hospital campus. The discussion, part of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation's fall forum, is free.