NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare | September 12, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Jonathan Pitts | August 30, 2009
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.
NEWS
By FREDERICK N. RASMUSSEN | August 9, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Andrea F. Siegel | April 19, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Marie Gullard | April 12, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Frank D. Roylance | March 8, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare | February 15, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Laura Barnhardt | November 30, 2008
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.
NEWS
By SAM SESSA | November 20, 2008
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.
NEWS
By Jacques Kelly | November 16, 2008
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,"...