Falls Road

The Mayor's Hampden Christmas Parade will be held from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, necessitating the closing of Falls Road between Cold Spring Lane and 36th Street.Sponsored by community associations and businesses in the Hampden-Medfield neighborhoods in North Baltimore, the parade will begin at the Poly-Western High School complex, proceed south on Falls Road and turn east on 36th Street before dispersing along Chestnut Avenue. Information: Kurt Kocher, Department of Public Works, 410-396-5198.

THE CHARACTER of the Falls Road corridor from Cross Keys to Mount Washington and north to Bare Hills has become a mecca for change. When I first arrived in Baltimore in the early 1960s, we rented a house in Mount Washington. The village then was a collection of shabby frame homes with a small A&P where the locals shopped. A year later we bought an old barn-red pile on Falls Road above Poly-Western in Roland Park. It was bucolic at the time since Cross Keys did not exist and from our front porch we looked out on part of the Baltimore Country Club's golf course.

A water main break reopened Wednesday at Falls Road and Northern Parkway in Baltimore, and repair work is likely to affect traffic in the area through the end of the week, according to public works officials. The break was initially found Tuesday on southbound Falls Road about 200 feet north of its intersection with Northern Parkway, according to city Department of Public Works spokesman Kurt Kocher. A clamp on the leak failed Wednesday morning, Kocher said. A portion of Falls Road south of Northern Parkway was being used as a staging area for construction equipment, causing southbound Falls Road traffic to be detoured onto westbound Northern Parkway, Kocher said.

A woman and a young child were found dead in an attic last night after a fire damaged a century-old house near Falls Road and Cold Spring Lane. The 33-year-old woman and her niece, 4, were trapped in the house in the 4600 block of Falls Road when the fire broke out shortly after 9 p.m. As many as 10 others believed to have been in the house - more than half of them children - escaped unhurt, officials said. "I could smell the smoke, a bunch of children were running out of the house, and I saw smoke coming out the window," said Amanda Sheridan, a pharmacist who was working at the CVS store next door.

Robert Pollock, a Baltimore County builder and real estate salesman who constructed homes along the Falls Road corridor, died yesterday of cancer at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 47 and lived in Reisterstown. Mr. Pollock built homes in the Laurelford and Westwicke sections of Baltimore County, wooded subdivisions he helped develop in the 1980s and 1990s. He was also a leading sales agent at the Greenspring office of O'Conor Piper & Flynn real estate firm. "He built magnificent homes," said Candace Claster, a business associate.

It was former newspaper columnist Hollis Paschen's misfortune to be the first motorist who rolled up to the crumbling, 59-year-old Falls Road Bridge just after it closed.Headed for a job interview at a professional office center just north of the short, high bridge near Lake Roland, she pulled up yesterday just as barricades were put into place. The bridge is to be demolished and rebuilt by Dec. 20."I can't believe it," she said, contemplating a seven-mile detour to get about 700 feet north.

The 5800 block of Falls Road in North Baltimore will be closed indefinitely as public works employees repair a huge break in a 20-inch water main, the city Office of Transportation announced yesterday. The break, which occurred about 2 p.m. yesterday, flooded a swath of Falls Road, created traffic delays and forced area businesses to close. The city suggested motorists take alternative routes around the problem area.

The married couple and the widowed cousins live on the same street -- 30 miles and several worlds apart -- and they wouldn't trade places for anything.Yet they are connected by Falls Road, the oldest and one of the most historic roads leading out of Baltimore. Once an Indian trail along the Jones Falls, the road offers picturesque views of rolling countryside and glimpses of the industrial past.Crossroads named Clipper Mill, Benson Mill, Resh Mill and Gorsuch Mill recall the mills that operated along the Jones Falls ,, and other nearby streams.

Talbots, a women's clothier, plans to relocate to The Village of Cross Keys, making it the seventh new store to open at the Rouse Co.-owned center in the last year.Rouse spokeswoman Joan Davidson said yesterday that Talbots' officials have signed a lease to move its Falls Road store to Cross Keys, although the store's design is still subject to approval by the city planning commission, which may occur as early as Thursday.Talbots, based in Hingham, Mass., has seven stores in the Baltimore metropolitan area, including two Talbot Kids shops and one Talbots' Surplus in Towson.

A 28-year-old woman was killed and her boyfriend seriously injured when her pickup truck skidded out of control, broke through a guardrail and rolled down an 80-foot embankment early yesterday.Baltimore County police cited excessive speed and alcohol in the accident that claimed the life of Michelle Chambers of the 2400 block of Fairmount Road in Hampstead. Her boyfriend, George Bosley III, 37, of the same address, was flown to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was listed in serious condition.