Howard Street

A $65 million retail and housing development proposed to replace the Anderson Automotive dealership at Howard and 25th streets in Baltimore would benefit the surrounding area more if its design were not so inward-oriented, neighboring property owners told city planners Thursday. During the first presentation of plans for the project to Baltimore's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel, property owners from Remington and lower Charles Village said they would like the developers to consider saving a former church on 24th Street rather than razing it. City planning director Tom Stosur said he was excited about the project but urged the architects to do more to make the design as environmentally sensitive as possible.

James "Jimmie" Judd, a well-known antiques dealer recalled for his elaborate homes and discerning eye for art, died of prostate cancer Thursday at his Inner Harbor home. He was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised on East North Avenue at Collington Avenue, he attend city public schools until he was in the eighth grade. "He was severely dyslexic," said his wife, Barbara Katz Judd, who had owned the old White Coffee Pot restaurant chain. "He was a rags-to-riches story and had a reading disability that he was able to transcend later in life.

The city's Department of Transportation has extended the closure of Howard Street between Lombard and Conway Streets until next Thursday. City workers are rebuilding the intersection near where Interstate 395 ends at the Camden Yards baseball stadium. Officials are encouraging motorists to use Sharp Street before the closure of Howard Street or take Lombard Street to southbound Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard as an alternative to I-395.

Barney "Barr" Harris, who was born above his father's Howard Street cabinetmaking business and turned it into a successful antiques auction house, died of dementia complications Thursday at Arden Court in Pikesville. The longtime Bolton Hill resident was 94. "His auctions were like the original 'Antiques Road Show,'" said John Huppert, a collector who lives in Charles Village. "You sat there and were entertained and informed. You learned as he spoke. It was a delightful spectacle.

Ever since Howard Street's 1970s decline to what today is essentially a ghost town of vacant retail properties, Baltimore's one-time department store hub has posed a seemingly insurmountable redevelopment challenge. Nothing has worked so far and the area is deader than ever.In a major change of direction, Baltimore City officials are signaling they are ready to abandon their long-time premise that predicated Howard Street's revival on retailing.Instead, the talk now centers on turning the corridor into an "Avenue of the Arts."

The Maryland Historical Society's plans for a $10 million expansion are ruffling some feathers because of the impact on 1920s-era storefronts in the 600 block of North Howard Street. The society wants to raze them for a parking lot; preservationists want them retained.We half suspect this a bogus disagreement and that the focal point of the issue is not the Historical Society's plans but the future ambience of the city's one-time retail boulevard. If that is the case, the preservationists will have many difficult battles ahead.

After six years of trying to figure out how to best improve Baltimore City, the Schmoke administration has borrowed pages from William Donald Schaefer's experience and decided to try stepped-up downtown redevelopment. Lots of attention is being paid to the fringes of the Inner Harbor. But that is not City Hall's only focus. Howard Street, too, is getting renewed interest.From 1858 until the 1970s, Howard Street was Baltimore's most prestigious retail hub. All the major department stores were there.

AT THIS TIME last year, many Baltimore residents felt little reason to celebrate. A racially divisive mayoral election had failed to seek solutions to pressing problems. The real-estate market was glutted and almost anyone who could seemed to be looking for a way to bail out.A year later, things still are not great. But there is renewed optimism that Baltimore somehow can overcome its ills. Houses are selling again, new offices are being built, big supermarkets opened. There is even a possibility that at long last something will happen along Howard Street, the city's one-time retail hub that nearly died after being abandoned by the department stores in the 1970s.

The vacant Hecht Co. store at Howard and Lexington streets will be the next headquarters for the Baltimore Police Department.In announcing the decision yesterday, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said he was guided by the department's needs, cost factors and the city's economic development agenda."

So many dreams have been dreamt about revitalizing HowardStreet over the past two decades that just thinking about them is likely to produce a nightmare. Now, the Schmoke administration has quietly started its own drive to resuscitate this once-prestigious retail hub.Unlike the previous multi-million-dollar plans, the latest effort is starting in a decidedly modest fashion. ''Let's do it in chewable chunks,'' says Honora Freeman, president of the Baltimore Development Corp.If everything goes according to plans, the public may soon get a sense that the Howard Street area of largely vacant storefronts is returning to life as a corridor of eclectic art and cultural uses.

The door at 831 N. Howard St. swings open to one of Baltimore's more charming salesrooms. But Friday, when I stopped by the place known as the Imperial Half Bushel, it was a dispiriting and depressing sight. The 19th-century walnut and oak showcases were empty. Gone were the silver forks and spoons made by Baltimore silversmiths. The water pitchers, the cups, the napkin holders had disappeared. Sometime between Sept. 17 and Sept. 20, thieves looted $100,000 worth of silver from this little shop located on a stretch known as Antiques Row. Fred and Nancy Duggan and their son, Patrick, opened their silver business in 1976.

Harford County sheriff's deputies and Maryland State Police report: Aberdeen Stephanie Johnson, 30, of the first block of Pritchard Avenue, was arrested Wednesday on two warrants in cases in which she was charged with fourth-degree burglary, second-degree assault, animal abuse and abandonment of animal. Marc Philippe Steele, 44, of the first block of Liberty Street, was charged Wednesday with being a fugitive from Pennsylvania. A caller in the 1400 block of Old Philadelphia Road reported Saturday vandals broke a window.

Curt Raymond Schaefer, an architectural designer who was an advocate for the rejuvenation of aging Baltimore landmarks, died Sunday of complications from the flu at his Mount Vernon Place home. He was 51. Mr. Schaefer worked with design teams on the preservation of the Druid Hill Park Conservatory, the Lab School on the old Goucher College campus and the Enoch Pratt Free Library 's Canton and Edmondson Village branches. "I see my role as restoring and bringing back to use the historic buildings on the west side of downtown Baltimore," he told a Baltimore Sun reporter in 2008.

My object is to mystify and entertain. I wouldn't deceive you for the world. — Howard Thurston If Central Casting were looking for an archetypical prestidigitator, it could do no better than George Goebel, the veteran Baltimore magician and Houdini expert who also owns A.T. Jones & Sons, the Howard Street costume shop. "In our day, magicians looked like magicians. Today, they wear jeans and other outfits," Goebel said in an interview the other day. "A magician should wear a full dress suit, pique vest, turban and have a beard.

In the aftermath of an August derailment in the Howard Street Tunnel, CSX Transportation and Baltimore have jointly announced a series of actions to improve safety in the more than 100-year-old structure, including improved communications, stepped-up inspections and an accelerated track replacement program. The agreement reflects an increasingly cooperative relationship between the freight railroad and City Hall and stands in stark contrast to the finger-pointing and recriminations that marked the response to the near-catastrophic 2001 fire in the tunnel.

IT WAS THE afternoon of Labor Day and I found myself in the elevator of what is now the Value City department store at the Westview Mall. I glanced around. There was that pink color, the shade Hutzler Bros. used to paint the walls of its department stores. This spot was, of course, a former Hutzler operation now occupied by a different store.This time of the year, I especially think of Howard Street. It was here that you met your friends, bought your bedsheets and saw Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady."