Foundry

Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown took a company public yesterday whose shares leaped 525 percent, the largest first-day gain in an initial public offering this year.Shares of Foundry Networks Inc. closed at $156.25, up $131.25 after being priced by Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown at $25 a share. The company sold 5 million shares, a 9 percent stake.Foundry's shares started trading at 1: 45 p.m. on the Nasdaq stock market at $114 a share, although some traders using other electronic systems bought and sold shares at $109.

Laurel residents are hoping to preserve a 132-year-old industrial building, one of the suburban town's last ties to its milling roots, from the wrecking ball the City Council has aimed at it.People in and around the historic district petitioned the council a few weeks ago for a six-month stay of execution for the Fairhall Foundry -- time to find grants to pay for restoration of the badly damaged stone building. Mayor Frank P. Casula is pushing the council to replace the building with a parking lot for the Department of Public Works.

BEACON, N.Y. -- The queen's torso is hidden behind a 20-foot-high tarp. Her head rests on the foundry floor, next to Leonardo da Vinci's "Colossus." All the foundry's men may be able to put her together, but will she ever make it home to the East River?Few works of art have generated more controversy before their completion than the statue of Queen Catherine, for which bronze is being poured at the Tallix Foundry in this small upstate town. Yet the 17th-century Portuguese princess who became an English ruler is virtually unknown among Americans, including the more than 2 million who live in the New York City borough named after her, Queens.

Laurel residents trying to save one of the suburban town's last ties to its milling roots are getting a little help from a Baltimore group and a state delegate.The Neighborhood Design Center in Baltimore, a nonprofit group that works with grass-roots organizations on revitalization projects, plans to help Friends of the First Street Foundry research the cost of restoring the building, possible uses for it and sources to pay for restoration."We feel this is a big boost," said Sidney Moore, a leader in the campaign to save the industrial building.

David James Smith, a former game warden and wildlife filmmaker, died Sunday of kidney failure in his 18th-century Harford Furnace home, which he spent 40 years restoring. He was 81.In the mid-1940s, while working as a district warden for the old state Game and Inland Fish Commission, Mr. Smith discovered the overgrown ruins of Harford Furnace, a once-bustling iron foundry alongside James Run in Harford County that dated to 1754.At its peak in the 19th century, the foundry, whose actual name was the Bush River Iron Works, grew to 48 buildings, including homes, churches and stores for the iron workers who lived there.

Twelve days ago, a stranger with a kind face, an old man in topcoat and hat, handed me a gift. It was a rectangular box, roughly the size of a carton of cigarettes, wrapped handsomely and neatly in holiday paper. "Please, open it," he said, and I carefully pulled away the wrapping. When I saw the markings on the box, and understood its contents, I dissolved instantly into a quivering mound of sobs, crying as I had not cried since the day my father died.Midst the two worst things that ever happened to my family when I was a kid, the president of the United States was assassinated.

SINCE THIS is summertime and parents are required by law to drag their kids to places they don't want to go, we recently spent three days in Colonial Williamsburg, Va., (motto: 18th Century Living at 20th Century Prices).Yep, the place is a little pricey. The cheapest adult ticket is 25 bucks and they rap your kids for $15, which does not include tickets to the Governor's Palace, which go for another $400, or whatever.I won't even mention what they charge for dinner at any of the quaint taverns that line Duke of Gloucester Street, except to say the waiters might as well be wearing stocking masks and waving switchblades.

They don't make 'em like they used to. Maybe cars are more practical today, maybe they require less care, maybe they're safer; but where is the fender that whispers motion, where is the grille that cuts the air, where are the wheels with whitewalls as snazzy as this period Packard's?They're helped, of course, by the carefully calculated composition of this black and white photograph, called "Wheels," by Richard Kaplan. It's one of Kaplan's works in the two-person show "Tones + Textures" at Art Matters gallery.

SALISBURY -- St. Peter's Episcopal Church got its bell back yesterday, ending a 108-year loan that put the bell in the Wicomico County courthouse and left the church without chimes for more than a century.A handful of parishioners, undaunted by gray skies and intermittent rain, cheered yesterday morning as a crane lifted the 1,500-pound bronze bell away from the tower that had housed it since 1888."The bell, the bell, the bell -- they did it!" said an exultant John P. Phillips, the parishioner in charge of raising money to pay for the bell's refurbishment and reinstallation at St. Peter's.

An eight-alarm fire that seriously injured at least four 'u firefighters -- and possibly killed one -- demolished a massive, historic, one-time iron foundry in the Woodberry section of North Baltimore early today.The fire burned on a rainy night through the building in the 2000 block of Clipper Park Drive, in an 1860s-vintage stone building that once housed the Poole & Hunt Foundry. The complex is near the foot of the city's famed Television Hill, and in the valley of the Jones Falls near the Pepsi Cola sign that Jones Falls Expressway motorists have used as a landmark for years.

The Savage Historical Society will meet at 7 p.m. Sept. 15 in the FYM Center, 9032 Baltimore St., off Foundry Street, in Savage. The society's president, Galen R. Menne, will present "Savage: Just One of the Baldwin Cotton Mills." Admission is free. Everyone is welcome. Information: 301-725-1241. Retiree coaching available Business and life coach Marilyn Thorpe and financial consultant Harvey Davis will offer a retiree-coaching session from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Good Life Wellness Center, 8600 Foundry Street, Savage.

Food *** (3 stars) Service *** (3 stars) Atmosphere ***1/2 (3 1/2stars) The new Woodberry Kitchen in the Clipper Mill complex is based on a principle Californians discovered long ago: A restaurant can be "green" and also indulge its customers. Even if your building materials are recycled and your food mostly locally produced and organic, you can still serve steaks, flourless chocolate cake and martinis. Restaurateur Spike Gjerde, his wife, Amy, and their partner, Nelson Carey of Grand Cru wine bar, have taken a 19th-century foundry (or part of it, anyway)

It's hard to stand out in a wonderland of kitsch, but Jim Pollock does just that. In 1996, the scrap-metal artist made a tiny Christmas tree out of hubcaps. Today, it's 8 feet high, incorporates more than 100 wheel covers and stands in front of his house at 708 W. 34th St. in Hampden, a dented destination of choice for the thousands who crowd his block for the famed miracle of lights every holiday season. They come for his hospitality - he opens his home to visitors, including 30,000 last year - but also for the whimsy in his work.

A property owner cited for allowing a foundry-sand business to operate on his agriculturally zoned land in Keymar goes to Carroll County Circuit Court tomorrow for a hearing on whether the alleged industrial activity has stopped and equipment has been removed. In March, Judge Thomas F. Stansfield gave the family of Charles U. Mehring six months to remove all construction debris and materials housed on the property in the 1200 block of Bruceville Road by Bel Air-based International Minerals and Raw Materials Inc., a company that Mehring leased land to in 2003.

STEPHEN "BEAR" LEHMAN of Jessup, MD., died February 18, 2007 due to lung cancer. He was an accomplished musician and Vietnam Veteran. A Career truck driver who retired from Giant Foods in 2006. He is survived by brother David, two nephews Nick Lehman and Kevin Lehman. A celebration of life Memorial Service will be held March 10, 2007 at 1 P.M. in the Great Room atSavage Mill, 8600 Foundry St., Savage. All are welome to attend.

Awards Catonsville Homes received two Maryland Awards of Excellence from the Home Builders Association of Maryland for its custom home designs in the Charleston II at Patapsco Park Estates and for design of a private residence. Designations Louis R. Woods Jr., a chef instructor at Anne Arundel Community College, has been certified an executive chef and culinary administrator by the American Culinary Federation. New contract SM Consulting Inc., in conjunction with Microsoft Corp., has contracted to provide the National Aquarium in Baltimore with a strategic business intelligence system to improve operations and track customer needs.

At the New Arts Foundry in Hampden, workers still follow the centuries-old process of casting bronze sculptures from molds of wax, rubber and ceramic. But owner Gary Siegel fears the business has irrevocably changed in a matter of months. Last year at this time, Siegel said, he was paying $1.60 a pound for the bronze alloy he uses, which is 95 percent copper. By May, it was $4.50 a pound - nearly triple what he had been paying. Metals prices have soared in the past year, and it's not only affecting foundries that make bronze sculptures, but manufacturers of products from power tools to tap shoes.

SPLURGE OF THE WEEK ROCKER TO HAND DOWN CORRADETTI GALLERY 2010 Clipper Park Road, Suite 119 410-243-2010 Baltimore glassblower Anthony Corradetti's (above) colorful works of art are in major collections, including the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American Art. Now he's opened a studio, gallery and store in Hampden where you can buy his one-of-a-kind pieces. (You can also sign up for a glassblowing workshop.) For a glimpse of Corradetti's works, visit his Web site, corradetti.

I always fall for streets that arrive with history attached. Balmar's is cast in iron. Not so far from the new metal lettering proclaiming Clipper Mill is this newly created thoroughfare called Balmar. Therein lies a tale of what's being built on the western flank of the Jones Falls Valley. Located in Woodberry, Clipper Mill is the name attached to a 17-acre sprawling industrial campus that sits in a little recess between Druid Hill Park and Television Hill. This is a chunk of prime new-old Baltimore, for many years off-limits because of the dangers posed by heavy industry located here.

I HAD BEEN OUT with old friends on that rainy Saturday night in September 10 years ago. It didn't take much to induce sleep after a merry downtown dinner and a couple of drinks. The sound of the phone changed all that. It was Lowell Sunderland, The Sun's night editor, with the news that an old foundry in Woodberry was burning, massively. Could I get over there pronto, and phone in something? I walked outside and heard a distant siren wail, nothing new in a city, but when the noise does not stop, you recognize trouble.