Bromo Seltzer

A local photographer and professor of fine art at Coppin State University will be the first artist to occupy a studio in Baltimore's newly renovated Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower. And she won't have to pay rent for the privilege. Linda Day Clark, a 44-year-old Reservoir Hill resident and 1994 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, has been named the first winner of the C. Sylvia and Eddie C. Brown Studio Competition. Clark will receive a lease for a 360-square-foot studio on the second floor of the historic Bromo-Seltzer tower, rent-free for two years.

Talk about a gym with a view.Developers are proposing to build a 20-story apartment tower in downtown Baltimore featuring a rooftop exercise complex with windows gazing out at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the glowing clock of the Bromo Seltzer Tower.The Quadrangle Development Corp. of Washington, and Mendel Friedman of Baltimore plan to present sketches of the 300-unit Market Center West apartments to a city architectural review board Thursday.The $30 million-plus project, which would replace a city-owned parking lot at Lombard and Howard streets, would fit with the city's strategy of reviving the west side of downtown by attracting hundreds of students and young professionals, said Edward M. Hord, designer of the project and principal of the Hord Coplan Macht architecture firm.

For decades, the Bromo Seltzer Tower in Baltimore was the symbol for a famous headache remedy made by the Emerson Drug Co. The tower even had a large blue Bromo Seltzer bottle on top.Now a developer in Aruba is planning to build a clone of the Bromo tower to symbolize a different kind of remedy: sun and fun at the beach.Aruba's tower, inspired by the 1911 landmark in Baltimore, will be the centerpiece of a shopping and recreational center called Beachside Aruba -- part of the Dutch Caribbean island's upscale Palm Beach area.

Here are some of the perks of renting an apartment in the 300-foot Bromo Seltzer clock tower near Camden Yards.You could catch Orioles games out the bedroom window. You could set your watch by looking up at a clock face larger than Big Ben's. And if you got a hangover, the name of your remedy would be printed in letters lighted at night by spotlights.Baltimore officials announced yesterday that they plan to convert the landmark tower, built in 1911 as an advertisement for the head and stomach-ache medicine, into about 12 apartments with panoramic views of downtown.

Get up and get funky.Landmark plans call for Baltimore's 300-foot Bromo Selt-zer clock tower to be converted to 12 panoramified apartments, city housing officials said this past week. Among other amenities, future residents would be able to watch the Orioles' bullpen collapse without paying to see it happen.Perhaps this novel redevelopment notion for the clock tower -- Baltimore's downtown lighthouse -- will open the field for similar projects. Why should a city's landmarks be structures merely to leer at, or to list in architecture guides?

FIVE MONTHS before Kurt L. Schmoke left the mayor's office in Baltimore, his housing commissioner suggested creating upscale residences inside one of Baltimore's best known landmarks, the historic Bromo Seltzer Tower at 15 S. Eutaw St.Now it's up to Mayor Martin O'Malley and acting housing commissioner M. J. "Jay" Brodie to decide whether the project moves ahead and, if so, who will carry it out.In response to a request for proposals issued when Schmoke was...

For Justin Talbot, the other three seasons are for playing football, running track and hanging out with friends. Summer is for hanging out with his grandfather, Rowland Fontz, and that is part of the reason that Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer clock is working again.Justin, 15, and Fontz, 71, have spent the last month going to the top of the Bromo Seltzer Tower with one purpose in mind: to revive the clock.Success came Thursday afternoon about 2: 30, ending a hiatus of about three months. The clock had faltered April 7, then stopped early in June -- reading "10: 04" -- because the hands were weighing too heavily on the clock's gear mechanism.

Edward Emerson Murray, one of the owners of the Bromo Seltzer Tower who helped forge the deal that gave the building to Baltimore in 1973, died Thursday of pneumonia at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury. He was 77.The Baltimore resident, who was on vacation in Salisbury, was 77.Mr. Murray's great-uncle, Capt. Isaac E. Emerson, founded and ran Emerson Drug Co., which built the 300-foot-tall tower at Eutaw and Lombard streets to advertise one of its products, Bromo Seltzer, a powder for headaches and upset stomachs.

It's a question that gets posed over and over again: Whatever happened to the big Bromo-Seltzer bottle on Baltimore's skyline?Today is the anniversary of what happened. On Jan. 16, 1936, work began to dismantle and remove Baltimore's most potent advertising promotional device. The bottle went to the scrap yard.The 51-foot-high bottle was fabricated of laminated steel. It was 20 feet in diameter, tinted blue to resemble the headache remedy's bottle and mounted on the very pinnacle of the Emerson Drug Company headquarters at Lombard and Eutaw streets.

Who hasn't cleaned out an old storage carton and discovered a crumbling newspaper folded in the bottom?Forget the news stories contained on the browning pulp pages. It's the ads for the $12 topcoats at Brager-Eisenberg's that claim attention.In this light, about 2,000 persons with a similar passion for ancient advertisements, old roadside signs, posters and penny post cards filed through an exhibition hall at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium this past weekend for the Baltimore Paper Show.

TODAY 'Night in Spain': The musicians of Veritas Musicas present an evening of Spanish songs composed by Manuel De Falla, Fermin Marla Alvarez, Enrique Granados, Fernando Obradors and others. "A Night in Spain: Songs of Spain" will be held from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Jewish Community Center, 5700 Park Heights Ave. Admission is $15-$18. For tickets and other information, call 410-542-4900. Acoustic music: The band Arbouretum previews its all-acoustic set with the band Violet Hour before playing a sold-out Carnegie concert hall next week.

Rowland W. Fontz, a master Baltimore clockmaker who kept the Bromo Seltzer and City Hall dome clocks ticking for decades, died Saturday of pneumonia and complications of Parkinson's disease at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. The Pasadena resident was 82. Mr. Fontz, who was born and raised in a Montgomery Street rowhouse, graduated in 1944 from Southern High School, where he had studied music. During the war years, he ushered at the old McHenry Theater in Federal Hill, and later played the organ at the now-demolished Century Theater.

theater The Nativity story: This retelling of the Nativity story at Rep Stage was written by William Gibson, who replaced the archangel Gabriel with an inept spirit who follows Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut & The Slaughter of the 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree is performed through Jan. 4 at Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $12-$30. Call 410-772-4900 or go to www.repstage.org.

Outdoor Art Station North Arts & Entertainment Inc. and Shanklin Outdoor Media are presenting a new public art display in Station North. The art consists of two 20-foot-by-20-foot reproductions of works by area artists. They are Grade Finale by Brady Starr and Station North by Daniel Stuelpnagel. They are mounted side-by-side on the back of the large billboard in view of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists from the sidewalk and street. They will be on display through the fall, and new art will be featured on a rotating basis.

Salsa, Polka FEST There's a lot more than salsa and polka at Salsapolkalooza, hosted by Creative Alliance. At this outdoor event there will be live bands; break dancers; children's art activities, including an egg-decorating workshop and face-painting; a global marketplace and more. Vendors will also be selling international foods. The event takes place 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday in front of the Creative Alliance at the Patterson, 3134 Eastern Ave. Call 410-276-1651 or go to creativealliance.

TOWERING TALENT The grand opening of the newly remodeled Bromo Seltzer building approaches. Modeled after the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, the famous Bromo Seltzer clock tower has undergone renovations to convert its offices into studios for visual and literary artists. The renovations, which were completed at the end of last year, transformed the 97-year-old building into 12 floors of artist studios. Today is the first chance for the public to see the interior since the renovations ended.

In Studio 702, Billy Joel sings "The Piano Man" as Baltimore native Brian Glazer Gerber swirls red paint around a large canvas he has stretched across the floor. In 904, writer Sarah Richards types notes to herself for a tale about the "camping trip from Hell" that she'll relate this month as part of the popular storytelling series at Center Stage, "The Stoop." Open House 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, 15 S. Eutaw St. Visitors can register for a drawing to win a work of art donated by the tower artists.

Creating artists' studios inside Baltimore's historic Bromo Seltzer Tower, part of the factory where Capt. Isaac Emerson made his famous headache and heartburn remedy, brought its own set of headaches for the public officials, architects and contractors who worked on the $1.5 million project. Their solution, which will be unveiled at a grand opening Thursday, is one of the most inspired and resourceful preservation projects Baltimore has seen in some time, a feat of ingenuity that retains the tower's 1911 appearance while promising to keep it bustling with activity.

For the time conscious - and challenged - commuter, the Bromo Seltzer Tower clock has been invaluable. Stark against the sky, it offered assurance that you would get to where you had to be in time. Or on time. Punctual, an old professor once said. And if you fell in with the latecomers, an impulse to step on it never followed derision or complaint. It may have been encouraged, the clock's big wooden hands so seriously set at keeping time. Whether driving east, west, north or south, the commuter only had to look up to know the time, the day moving slowly and steadily across the clock face.

A local photographer and professor of fine art at Coppin State University will be the first artist to occupy a studio in Baltimore's newly renovated Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower. And she won't have to pay rent for the privilege. Linda Day Clark, a 44-year-old Reservoir Hill resident and 1994 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, has been named the first winner of the C. Sylvia and Eddie C. Brown Studio Competition. Clark will receive a lease for a 360-square-foot studio on the second floor of the historic Bromo-Seltzer tower, rent-free for two years.