Flag House

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded a $101,000 grant to the Flag House & Star-Spangled Banner Museum to help create a program to expand family and youth programs and boost the museum's presence in the community. The grant requires that the museum raise an equal amount of money. "This grant comes at a critical time for the museum as it allows us to expand our offerings for those in the Baltimore metropolitan region while also strengthening our relationship with the communities in proximity to our facility," Stacey Shelnut-Hendrick, executive director of museum, said in a statement.

ON THE SITE... Mother of rape victim describes horrific attack : Woman who worked at Mad River Tavern in Federal Hill woke up naked on a north Baltimore lawn and was let in when she knocked on the door of a nearby home, her mother said. Baltimore backs out of settlement with family of allegedly kidnapped teens : Attorneys representing City Hall have abruptly backed out of a $150,000 settlement agreement with the family of a teen allegedly kidnapped by Baltimore police.

It was a good day.Big speakers boomed the bass of music -- sometimes live,sometimes off the radio. The sun beamed brightly despite predictions of cloudy skies. Pineapple and orange snowballs awaited those seeking a cool remedy. Hot dogs sizzled on the grill.And smiles sparkled in conversation.The old stony, weed-ridden playground in the middle of Flag House Courts was the center of celebration yesterday afternoon as about 300 residents and a few city officials toasted with canned drinks to the recent rejuvenation of one of Baltimore's most squalid housing developments.

For the better part of a decade, Jill Crowther-Peters has portrayed the widowed seamstress who stitched the Star-Spangled Banner, but on Thursday she had the chance to really feel what it was like to be her. Crowther-Peters, dressed as 19th-century flag maker Mary Pickersgill, stopped to savor the moment as she helped darn three threads from the original banner into a 30-foot American flag that flew over Ground Zero in New York after the Sept....

When the public housing program was created by Congress in 1937, its aim was to provide temporary living arrangements for Americans down on their luck due to the lingering Depression. Over the past half-century, public housing has ceased to be a stop-gap measure. It is now a fixture of big-city living, a symbol of the nation's constant -- and worsening -- urban crisis.In his 1991 book, "The Promised Land," Nicholas Lemann charted the great black migration to the North in the 1940s and how it changed America.

With a big assist from his father, Torrence White, 8, has no missed a day of school this year.Considering Torrence missed almost 50 days of school last year, his perfect attendance thus far is a really big deal for the third-grader and his family."

Several months ago The Evening Sun carried a series of pieces on conditions at the Flag House Courts public housing complex. In describing the early conditions and subsequent improvements, your writers shortened the name of the complex to "Flag House."This naturally had an adverse effect on attendance at the adjacent Star Spangled Banner Flag House and Museum, which is located across Albemarle Street. Now that the nearby projects have been cleaned up, we would like to welcome allBaltimoreans, city and county, to this national historic landmark.

They come in an unrelenting procession. They march to th front of a building, have a few hushed words with a young man, push through the turnstiles, past the security booths, past the laughing children playing in the hallways and into the dank, forbidding stairways where they buy cocaine and heroin.The march continues day in and day out at Baltimore's Flag House Courts public housing project, virtually around the clock. And with the drugs come the guns. Together, they have transformed Flag House into a place so wretched, where violence and death are so familiar, that it resembles a war zone.

Mission: Interpretation, education and conservation of the history of the Star-Spangled Banner and the Flag House, the home of Mary Pickersgill. Pickersgill was commissioned to stitch the original banner that flew over Fort McHenry during the bombardment in the War of 1812. A larger flag, also created by Pickersgill, was raised above the fort the morning of Sept. 14 when the British retreated. That flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem.Latest accomplishment: Museum renovations that included ,X remodeling the show room that displays a Mary Pickersgill mannequin sewing the star-bangled banner, and memorabilia of the War of 1812.

Municipal and Housing Authority workers and police swept through another East Baltimore public housing high-rise building yesterday in an effort to rid the residence of grime and crime.Wearing white hard hats, about 350 workers from 10 city agencies descended on the 12-story building at 26 S. Exeter St. at 9 a.m. and started hammering, sawing, painting and landscaping the grounds under the Extraordinary Comprehensive Housekeeping Operation, or ECHO.The Housing Authority of Baltimore City has now conducted ECHO sweeps at all three high-rise buildings at the Flag House Courts public housing complex at a cost of $200,000 for each sweep.

PATCH WORK Pick from a large selection of pumpkins at the third annual Urban Pumpkin Patch on Saturday in downtown Baltimore. Also, choose from a variety of gourds, Indian corn and baked goods. Proceeds from pumpkin and other sales benefit Navajo Indian farmers in New Mexico, as well as the ministries of First and Franklin Presbyterian Church. .................... The third annual Urban Pumpkin Patch will be open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday at the First and Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, 210 W. Madison St. Call 410-728-5545.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded a $101,000 grant to the Flag House & Star-Spangled Banner Museum to help create a program to expand family and youth programs and boost the museum's presence in the community. The grant requires that the museum raise an equal amount of money. "This grant comes at a critical time for the museum as it allows us to expand our offerings for those in the Baltimore metropolitan region while also strengthening our relationship with the communities in proximity to our facility," Stacey Shelnut-Hendrick, executive director of museum, said in a statement.

A young girl kneels on the floor as she shaves soap into a bucket of hot water in her traditional 19th-century servant garments - a white head scarf, a pink bell-sleeved shirt over a white ruffled shirt and a long linen skirt. The kitchen smells of burning wood from the open hearth and sunrays highlight the dust on antique chairs, a large wooden table, pots and a rack used to roast pigeons. "Did you bring the letter?" the girl asks onlookers. "My mother said she would send me a letter."

10AM HOLIDAY AT FLAG HOUSE // Enjoy holidays of yesteryear at the Flag House & Star-Spangled Banner Museum. Hear tales of days gone by, taste traditional holiday treats, play games from early America and create holiday decorations using natural materials. The museum is at 844 E. Pratt St. Admission is $5-$7. Call 410-837-1793. MORE THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND, PG 3D

Local preservationists are pushing Baltimore's long-dormant Carroll Mansion into the limelight, just as the area around it is buzzing with redevelopment. Carroll Museums Inc., a nonprofit group that operates the historic mansion at 800 E. Lombard St., has reopened the building for tours and made part of the first floor into the Jonestown Visitors Center, a stop on the new Heritage Walk tour from the Inner Harbor to East Baltimore. The group is making space available for art exhibits, conferences and community events at the mansion, considered one of the finest examples of a Federal-era merchant's townhouse standing in Baltimore.

The controversy generated by a new Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is a reminder of the rich history of the 200-year-old Baltimore flag that inspired our national anthem. The enormous, 30-by-42-foot banner hung in a central place of honor in the National Museum of American History from its opening in 1964 until 1998, when it was moved to a laboratory on the same floor, where visitors have been able to watch while a conservation team has worked to clean and stabilize its fragile fabric.

A plainclothes police officer was shot in the head and critically wounded yesterday after being ambushed in a Southeast Baltimore high-rise where sniper fire pinned down police less than a month ago.Officer James E. Young Jr., 26, was shot with his own gun. He remained in critical but stable condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, hours after paramedics and a fellow police officer brought him out of cardiac arrest.Two men and a teen-ager were charged in the shooting last night, and "We're still piecing together what led up to the shooting.

Years ago, they left behind their neighborhoods and childhoods on both sides of a black and white boundary called Pratt Street.Larry Hicks, 45, was reared north of the line in the Flag House Courts public housing project.Lou Catalfo, 46, grew up on the south side of the street in Little Italy.Together they shared boyhood: going to public school, playing baseball behind the old Fleet Street morgue, and visiting each others' homes in the days when "Old Tommy" D'Alesandro was mayor and Ike was president.

In honor of our country's heroes, a "Star-Spangled Banner Weekend" of patriotic events will take place around the city tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. The events, celebrating Defenders' Day and Patriot Day, include parades, music from military bands, fireworks, a memorial service and living-history demonstrations by more than 100 re-enactors engaging in a ship-to-shore bombardment, at Fort McHenry, the Flag House and Star-Spangled Banner Museum and the Harborplace Amphitheatre. Defenders' Day marks the defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812 and the writing of the national anthem by Francis Scott Key in 1814.

With Fort McHenry's huge banner waving behind him, Mayor Martin O'Malley signed an executive order yesterday that called for replacing the modern American flag at city buildings with the 15-star, 15-stripe version that inspired the national anthem in 1814. "From this day forward, the star-spangled banner will be flown from all city buildings in the greatest city in America," O'Malley said. The mayor's order is intended to call more attention to the city's military and cultural contribution to the nation in 1814.