Fayette

Made in granite and bronze, it is embedded firmly at the intersection of two vital city arteries.A signpost of a new ethnic era in East Baltimore, the new 6 1/2 -foot-tall monument to Cuban poet, philosopher and revolutionary Jose Marti signals the expansion -- and permanence -- of a thriving Spanish-speaking community intent on making its mark on the city.The monument, to be dedicated in a ceremony this afternoon, is the city's first public, permanent acknowledgment that immigrants and their children from Spain, El Salvador, Cuba and Mexico and numerous other Latin countries have settled here.

Anticipating a rush of last-minute tax filers, the Baltimore City Department of Transportation announced street closings and parking restrictions in effect tomorrow night near the main post office at 900 E. Fayette St. North High Street will be closed between Baltimore and Fayette streets tomorrow from 5 p.m. until midnight. Traffic will be directed east on Fayette Street to Exeter Street, where it can exit onto Interstate 83 via Baltimore and President streets. In addition, parking will be prohibited along both sides of Fayette Street from Colvin to Front streets so that the right lanes may be used as dedicated lanes for dropping off tax returns.

A glimpse over the television director's shoulder shows the next transformation involving the corner of West Fayette and Monroe. Two video screens, each the size of a compact disc box, display views from two cameras capturing a scene distilled from a book detailing a year in a West Baltimore neighborhood overrun by illegal drugs.Actors are portraying the sadness of a real father and the alienation of a real teen-age son. In take after take the boy turns away from his father's soft-spoken plea to stay in school, stepping off the curb outside the corner bar, turning his back on his old man, dropping his dreadlocked head and walking out of the picture.

Bank One Corp., the nation's fourth-largest bank holding company, plans to bring 500 jobs to downtown Baltimore with a check-remittance center slated to open by October. The facility will be located on a parcel of land in the 1000 block of E. Fayette St. across from the main post office, which is in an empowerment zone. Under an agreement between Bank One and Baltimore and the state, the Maryland Economic Development Corp., a public, nonprofit economic development corporation, will serve as developer for the project.

The Baltimore City Department of Transportation today announced evening lane closures along Fayette Street for intersection resurfacing this week. Shifting lane closures on Fayette Street at the intersection of President Street are scheduled to begin tonight and continue through Wednesday, officials said. Various lane closures will also be in effect at the intersection of Fayette and Gay streets on Wednesday and Thursday. All lane closures are in effect between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. each night, weather permitting, and at least one lane of through traffic will remain open in each direction during construction, according to the department.

Temporary lane closures are scheduled Saturday along the northbound and southbound Jones Falls Expressway for work along the medians, the City Department of Transportation said. The closures will be implemented from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. between North Avenue and Fayette Street, weather permitting. At least one lane of through traffic will remain open at all times while the work is being performed. Motorists are encouraged to use alternate routes. Originally published June 10, 2005, 11:51 AM EDT

Baltimore firefighter Karl Zimmerman remembers falling 20 feet off a ladder while fighting a fire Wednesday morning. He remembers landing hard on his back. Most of all, he remembers losing all feeling below the waist."When I first hit the ground, I didn't have any motion," the nine-year veteran firefighter said yesterday from his hospital bed at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center. "I couldn't move my feet at all, or even my legs."Now the feeling has returned. Zimmerman, 36, is with Rescue 1, the elite group of firefighters who are called to perform the city's most dangerous rescues.

Bank One Corp. executives said yesterday that plans are on track to hire 500 people at a new check-remittance center in downtown Baltimore, and staffing could begin by September. The nation's fourth-largest bank-holding company, which is based in Chicago, plans to open the center in October and it expects up to 500 people to be employed there within five years. "We are going to go at it big time," said Ray L. Valour, senior vice president and manager of Bank One Corp.'s national retail lock box service, which is based in Phoenix, Ariz.

A federal grand jury indicted a former Baltimore Development Corp. official yesterday on charges he extorted $5,000 last summer from businessmen involved in two city revitalization projects that he was helping to oversee. Terry P. Dean, 46, a senior economic development officer with the BDC until earlier this year, is accused of soliciting and accepting two payments of $2,500 each from Baltimore businessmen who were negotiating financial assistance from the BDC, according to the indictment.

About the time the stock market crashed in October 1929, a Baltimore carpenter was salting away some small pieces of city history in a ketchup bottle.Each afternoon after his daily work's quitting time, Emil Urban carried home a bucket of dirt on the streetcar to his Monument Street home a few blocks east of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.The dirt was from the ground floor of Baltimore's 1828 Shot Tower at Fayette and Front streets, just across from today's main city post office. Mixed in with ordinary soil, sand and pigeon-droppings were about five pounds of lead shot used in 19th Century firearms.