Brick

They saw well-preserved homes built nearly 100 years ago for residents whose children weren't allowed to attend nearby schools. They learned of the modest cabins that black steelworkers had renovated brick by brick into solid cottages. They passed century-old churches that endure at the heart of long-established African-American neighborhoods. As their tour bus drove through parts of Baltimore County's east side, the 60 people aboard heard stories about the area's history from Louis S. Diggs, 76, a self-published author of nine books on African-American life in the county.

Seton Hill residents and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. yesterday settled their bitter two-year dispute over the appearance of a new electric substation in the historic neighborhood. The compromise design requires BGE to completely rebuild an existing brick compound, spending at least $3 million more than required by a plan presented to the Baltimore Planning Commission last month and fiercely opposed by area residents. "I'm not jumping up and down for joy," said Mico Milanovic, a member of the Seton Hill Community Association.

The top-ranked McDonogh Eagles looked impatient and disorganized on offense for most of the first half yesterday afternoon when suddenly -- just like that -- click.The second-quarter stretch, which featured crisp ball movement, strong inside play and hot shooting from the perimeter to go with aggressive play defensively, started with 3: 45 left and turned a three-point deficit against Bullis Prep into a 15-point halftime lead.The Eagles used a similar run at the end of the third quarter to put away their visitor from Washington, 70-51, improving to 21-0 and extending their winning streak to 39 games dating back to last season.

COLLEGE PARK -- Vicki Brick was in the mood for a little celebrating last night and had plans to go out to dinner with her parents and friends.Brick, a 5-foot-7 point guard, had just scored 19 points and had nine rebounds, seven steals, two assists and one block to lead Maryland to an 82-65 victory over Coppin State in the first round of the Terrapin Classic women's basketball tournament at Cole Field House.It was quite a performance for the freshman Brick in just her third collegiate game, even though she did have six turnovers.

Something's crooked in Little Italy, and it isn't the corkscrew pasta at Sabatino's. A three-story garage is being built at the southwest corner of Central Avenue and Bank Street. Its simple lines, colorful Italian crests and brick veneer are designed to fit into the surrounding neighborhood of historic row- houses and restaurants.But now that it's nearing completion, it has begun to acquire a feature that makes it unlike any other building in the immediate area.The difference is crooked bricks: On the east and west sides of the garage, where the street is relatively level, masons are laying the bricks level, too. But on the north and south sides, where the street slopes gradually downhill from west to east, the masons are laying the bricks on an angle that corresponds to the grade.

Daniels was a company town -- a town that in its 132 years straddling the borders of Baltimore and Howard counties was auctioned off, knocked down, flooded and burned.Then it wasn't a town at all, except that its people still haven't gotten the message.So even though the post office was long ago swept away and the old canvas mill that fed, clothed and housed a community is in tatters, Daniels is still standing -- every year when folks such as Douglas "Jack" Jarvis and Gary Rudacille and Alberta Collins get together.

TWENTY YEARS HAVE passed since the Rev. James M. Shields came to the congregation at "Old Brick."Christ Episcopal Church, an early-19th-century brick structure, is at Dobbin and Oakland Mills Roads in Columbia.Shields was not thinking of staying when he visited Columbia more than 20 years ago. The Pittsburgh native was fond of New England and saw himself at the helm of a church in Connecticut.But he visited Christ Episcopal at the behest of the bishop. The church needed a pastor."I saw the building as quaint, but I really wanted to go to Connecticut," Shields recalled.

Exactly where Glen Burnie begins and ends remains a mystery to most people, but yesterday its center was officially defined with the dedication of a brick welcome arch at Baltimore and Annapolis Boulevard and Ritchie Highway."

On a team led by a pair of future Division I players, lightning-quick guard Vicki Brick and dominating center Greichaly Cepero, it's easy for defenses to overlook McDonogh senior Jazmine Norton.The 5-foot-7 guard isn't flashy and doesn't normally produce gaudy statistics. Yesterday against host No. 8 Mercy, however, she was the difference as the top-ranked Eagles stayed unbeaten with a 58-46 win.After going scoreless in the first half, Norton scored 11 in the final 9: 42, including consecutive three-pointers in the waning minutes that turned a three-point game into a comfortable McDonogh lead.

Player of the YearVicki Brick, McDonogh, Sr., G: There wasn't anything the Eagles did not achieve with Brick at the helm. The 5-foot-6 point guard kept the Eagles at No. 1 in The Sun's poll for the entire season, leading them to a perfect record (26-0), a fourth straight Association of Independent Schools championship and a No. 25 national ranking in USA Today. During Brick's career, the Eagles have gone 88-8, winning their last 44 in a row. A three-time All-Metro first teamer and last year's All-Metro Player of the Year, Brick finished her career with 1,942 points -- the best in McDonogh history.

Administrators at Mercy Medical Center used an aging, historic trowel on Friday to place an even older brick into the wall of the downtown hospital's latest expansion. Thomas R. Mullen, president and CEO of Mercy Health Services, and Sister Helen Amos, executive chairwoman of its board of trustees, had their hands on history. Cardinal James Gibbons had held the same trowel when the cornerstone was laid for the first hospital building in 1888. Cardinal Lawrence Shehan marked the construction of the current building on St. Paul Place in 1963 with the same trowel.

You can count the tourists who visit during a summer, the T-shirts sold in stores, the diners who sample Chesapeake crab or raw oysters or imported lobster in the local restaurants. But as Annapolitans are finding out this summer and fall, it's harder to measure the value of beauty. As a flagging economy continues to cause residents and elected officials to tighten their belts, the City of Flowers by the Bay program that has adorned the brick-lined streets of downtown Annapolis with everything from petunias, impatiens and lantana to banana plants for more than a decade is under siege, and a few dozen merchants and residents are working hard to save it. "I'd hate to think of this town without the flowers," says Steve Samaras, owner of Zachary's Jewelers on Main Street and a driving force behind the movement to preserve the program, which comes with a price tag of about $60,000 a year.

Perhaps a herd of goats will help Gibson Islanders solve a mystery that was created when an ancient tulip poplar that blew over six years ago during Tropical Storm Isabel revealed several handmade bricks in its extensively tangled root ball. Earlier this year, a Gibson Islander out for a stroll with his dog was greeted with a present of a handmade brick when his dog exited the thick underbrush. A quick glance and the passer-by realized that it wasn't a typical run-of-the-mill Home Depot brick; it turns out it harks back to the 18th century.

So up for the challenge of renovating and enlarging a century-old Fells Prospect house were Victor Corbin and Marek Tarasiewicz that they bought the small brick house within a half-hour of seeing it. The couple knew they wanted to enhance the original two-story building, giving it a more stylish and cozier living room. They also wanted a new space infused with an airy feel and modern warmth, yet with ties to the style of the old space. "We used old bricks from the back of the house to build a fireplace," Tarasiewicz said.

Frank Weatherly's 1983 acquisition of a vacant candy factory in downtown Lancaster, Pa., was a purchase negotiated, for the most part, out of necessity. A friend had made him an offer he couldn't refuse on a Baldwin grand concert piano and - in addition to the fact that he always wanted to tackle a home renovation - he would need a place big enough to house his "grand" soon-to-be possession. "I spent an entire day roaming around in [the factory], visualizing what could be done," Weatherly remembered.

ST. MARY'S CITY -Henry Miller's assignment might have been hopeless. As research director for Historic St. Mary's City, he was expected to guide the reconstruction of the first Roman Catholic house of worship in English America, for which no drawings or even written descriptions have ever been found. All that was left of the 1667 Brick Chapel in Maryland's first Colonial capital were its huge, 3-foot-thick brick foundation and thousands of fragments of glass, lead, brick and plaster sifted from the soil during 20 years of painstaking archaeology.

They saw well-preserved homes built nearly 100 years ago for residents whose children weren't allowed to attend nearby schools. They learned of the modest cabins that black steelworkers had renovated brick by brick into solid cottages. They passed century-old churches that endure at the heart of long-established African-American neighborhoods. As their tour bus drove through parts of Baltimore County's east side, the 60 people aboard heard stories about the area's history from Louis S. Diggs, 76, a self-published author of nine books on African-American life in the county.

If Maryland is America in miniature, says Jeannette Belliveau, then Upper Fells Point is Baltimore in miniature. With quintessential front steps, brick rowhouses, corner stores and bars, residents say they have some of all that is best about Baltimore. This is a neighborhood with both an old-fashioned hardware store and a community theater. "Saying it's diverse sounds like a cliche, but here it really is true," says Belliveau, a writer and the secretary of the Upper Fells Point Improvement Association, an active community group.

Federal Hill isn't exactly starved for pubs. There's MaGerk's and Muggsy's and Crazy Lil's and Dog Pub and ... well, you get the picture. So I have to admit, when I heard a new brick-and-wood bar called the Abbey Burger Bistro had replaced Sky Lounge Tango Tapas in the South Baltimore neighborhood, I wasn't that pumped. But after visiting the Abbey twice in two weeks, I think it won't have too much trouble distinguishing itself from the neighborhood's many other pubs. The first time I stopped by was Nov. 7 - the Abbey's opening night.

The American Brewery's gates swing open this afternoon for an event that has been 35 years in the making. The nonprofit group that has spent millions on the East Baltimore landmark is celebrating the painstaking restoration of one of the city's most visible Victorian structures, where brewing tanks went dry in 1973 - and the pigeons moved in. "There had been so many false starts, I don't think the community believed the brewery project would ever happen,"...