City Life

What are proud Baltimoreans to do when there's no space left on their cars' bumpers among all those "Believe" and "I City Life" stickers? Now they can make a more permanent statement by making their vehicles "rolling billboards" for the city with Live Baltimore's new "I City Life" license plates. Unveiled last week, the new vanity plates go beyond ephemeral displays of civic pride such as bumper stickers or T-shirts - but could also make a more permanent dent in your wallet. Unlike the ubiquitous "I City Life" bumper stickers, offered free to city ambassadors who support Live Baltimore and to passers-by at city events, the license plates are a fund-raising tool.

The vacant Baltimore City Life Museums property in East Baltimore could have been converted to house the proposed Maryland Museum of African-American History and Culture, but organizers say they didn't want to inherit another group's castoffs.As part of their planning for an African-American museum in downtown Baltimore, directors say, they held "focus groups" and learned that prospective patrons and supporters would rather see the museum board build anew than take over a museum that has shut down once -- even if the cost is higher.

Less than a year after appointing John W. Durel executive director of the Baltimore City Life Museums, the museum's board of directors has quietly pressured him out, saying it needs a leader capable of putting the museum in a brighter spotlight.Durel agreed to resign Friday after meeting privately with board Chairwoman Marcella Schuyler. He was not offered another position at the museum, where he has worked for 11 years. The decision followed numerous private discussions among board members over the past two months.

THE RECENT closing of the Baltimore City Life Museums has spawned a new effort to strengthen the local history attractions that are still open.In a hastily convened meeting yesterday, representatives of more than two dozen history-oriented museums and attractions in central Maryland appointed a steering committee to explore ways that the surviving attractions can serve their audiences better, promote themselves more aggressively and avoid the fate of...

An article in Friday's editions inaccurately reported that the Maryland Historical Society had acquired a third of the non-paper artifacts from the City Life Museums. The society has acquired all non-paper City Life pieces.The Sun regrets the error.In a move that leaves area historians aghast, Baltimore is planning to sell or lease some of the city's most treasured properties -- including the Carroll Mansion and H. L. Mencken House -- to dissolve its failed City Life Museums.The group of eight buildings that memorialized Baltimore's red-brick history ranges from the 1814-vintage Peale Museum to the Shot Tower.

He may be Maryland's new comptroller in Annapolis, but William Donald Schaefer has wasted little time letting everyone know his heart is still in Baltimore.On Monday, moments after he was sworn in before a cheering crowd in the State House, Schaefer called for the state to take over the Baltimore Convention Center.Yesterday, even as he began scrutinizing state contracts, Schaefer had his staff prepare a letter urging Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke not to sell some of Baltimore's most treasured historical properties that made up the failed City Life Museums.

A SOON-TO-OPEN museum addition is the latest building to be illuminated at night as part of the "Brighten Baltimore" campaign.The Morton K. Blaustein City Life Exhibition Center, opening April 12 as the newest phase of the Baltimore City Life Museums at Lombard and President streets, will be lighted in a ceremony that begins at 5:30 p.m. today.Its western facade -- featuring hundreds of cast-iron pieces salvaged from the old G. Fava Fruit Co. building -- will be illuminated each evening as part of a citywide effort to light the downtown skyline at night.

THE FACADE OF THE historic Horn & Horn lunchroom in downtown Baltimore, originally targeted for salvation by the Baltimore City Life Museums, may be reduced to rubble after all unless an angel can be found to save it.The private museum has been negotiating with the city of Baltimore to save the arched stone front when the rest of the building is razed to make way for a public garage.Museum spokesman Jamie Hunt said this month that the parties had reached tentative agreement on a plan to save the facade and store it for re-erection elsewhere in the city, possibly as part of an addition to the City Life campus in East Baltimore.

On the second floor of the Blaustein City Life Exhibition Center, opening tomorrow, you're met by a sign overhead that announces "I Am the City" -- the title of the building's core exhibit on Baltimore history. Not far into the exhibit, on the wall to your right is the text of a small segment on archaeology, titled "Fragments of City Life."That title would be a better one for the exhibit as a whole, and even for the center as a whole, for it well describes what this new addition to Baltimore's museum scene offers its visitors: fragments, bits and pieces, a soupcon of this and a smidgen of that, all packaged handsomely and cleverly to give visitors two things -- a pleasant experience and the idea that they're taking an in-depth look at the city.

Baltimore City Life Museums, where attendance has dropped by more than half this year, are in such financial trouble that the board is appealing to the city for an immediate infusion of cash.Contacted yesterday, City Life executives refused to disclose how bad the museums' financial condition is.Sources, however, say the institution is having trouble meeting payments on its bank loan.The museums this year embarked on a multimillion-dollar reconstruction of their newest showpiece on South Front Street.