Lafayette Square

Vernon Roy Sheffey, retired director of the Lafayette Square Multi-Service Center, died Nov. 17 of congestive heart failure at his Woodmoor home. He was 75.Born in Baltimore, he grew up on Riggs Avenue in the Sandtown-Winchester community. After graduating from Frederick Douglass High School in 1942, he en- rolled at Morgan State College (now Morgan State University) but in 1943 enlisted in the Army. After military service in Seattle, he received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Morgan in 1949.

Gilbert du Motier, the Revolutionary War hero who received the most tumultuous welcome ever in Baltimore's history, is better known by his title of the Marquis de Lafayette.Today, he is remembered in Baltimore for Fayette Street, Lafayette Avenue and Lafayette Square, all named for him.He made his first visit to the city in 1781, when he camped on what are today's Cathedral grounds with his troops, who were marching south. During a banquet given by Mrs. Davis Poe, he appeared distant and preoccupied.

A deteriorating building, thousands of dollars in delinquent bills and a cut in funding from city and United Way officials is forcing the Lafayette Square Community Center to close its doors Thursday.The center has been an institution in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester community, one of the city's most economically depressed areas. It opened nearly 50 years ago in a dilapidated building at the corner of Lanvale Street and Fremont Avenue.Later, Vernon Roy Sheffey, the center's director from 1965 to 1989, ran a fund-raising campaign that led to a new, $1.5 million, 30,000-square-foot facility which opened at the corner of Lafayette Avenue and Gilmor Street in 1974.

Gladys Marie Johnson, a registered nurse who helped establish health clinics at senior citizen housing complexes in Baltimore, died of cancer Tuesday at Randallstown Eldercare, where she had lived for two years.She was 90 and had been a longtime resident of West Baltimore.Mrs. Johnson spent nearly half a century in nursing as a supervisor, administrator and volunteer in local hospitals and retirement homes.As health-services coordinator for what was then Baltimore's Lafayette Square Multi-Service Center, she helped establish some of the first health clinics for senior citizens in housing complexes for the elderly.

Scratch the surface of housing developer L. Paul Bryant and he says you'll find a social worker -- his former profession."I never really stopped being a social worker," said Bryant. " I looked at what was happening in this city and I said, 'It's up to me to help turn things around.' "To that end, Bryant announced yesterday the third and last phase of a scattered-site housing project for West Baltimore being completed by his company, Baldwin Development Corp.With several nearly renovated houses in the 800 block of Fremont Ave. as a backdrop, Bryant said that block and the 900 and 1000 blocks of nearby Arlington Ave. will have 54 new or renovated units of housing in 18 months.

TWO YEARS AGO, St. James Episcopal Church was nearly destroyed by fire on Father's Day.This month, it is being hailed as a symbol of spiritual and physical renewal, after a nearly $2 million restoration that brought it back to life.The English Gothic Revival landmark, the first of five churches built on Baltimore's Lafayette Square, has been singled out for two prestigious awards for its redesign and restoration.The Maryland Historical Trust chose the building to receive one of two "project awards" in its annual preservation awards program.

A contingent of community representatives complained yesterday that residents of Baltimore's federal empowerment zone are not having enough say in how $100 million in federal funds is being spent.The four representatives faulted the board overseeing the revitalization effort for not consulting the community-based Advisory Council before making recent decisions to emphasize economic development over social programs and to allocate money to six neighborhood "village centers" on the basis of population rather than in a lump sum, as originally intended.

Now that President Clinton has made the difficult decision to close Pennsylvania Avenue to traffic for security reasons, authorities should make the best of what could be a great opportunity. Washington is a city of spectacular open spaces, like the Capitol grounds, the Ellipse behind the White House and the Mall connecting the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial. A plaza in front of the White House, linking it with Lafayette Square across the street, could be one of the grandest of all.There's plenty of precedent and experience in Washington for turning eyesores into pleasing vistas.

In the 1500 block of Argyle Ave., the walls and roofs of several rowhouses have collapsed, weeds shoot from cracks in buckling sidewalks and vandals have smashed windows or sprayed graffiti on boarded-up holes.William and Margaret Domneys can't wait to move in.The Baltimore couple is among the urban pioneers staking their futures on a deteriorating and mostly vacant inner-city block on the rebound. The Domneys' dream of finally owning a home has come true thanks to a partnership between Baltimore officials and developers on a mission to rehabilitate whole neighborhoods.

Baltimore City Council President Mary Pat Clarke and Councilman Lawrence A. Bell, D-4th, are threatening to set aside part of the Enoch Pratt Free Library's proposed budget to resurrect library service in Lafayette Square four years after the Pratt abandoned the poor, West Baltimore neighborhood.Mr. Bell, who represents Lafayette Square, said he will introduce an amendment this week to Pratt allocations in the city budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The strategy has strong support from Mrs. Clarke.

The home once owned by pioneering Rep. Parren J. Mitchell goes to auction this week amid hopes the mansion's Victorian charm can somehow outweigh a neighborhood coping with vacant houses and a litany of urban ills. With its soaring gilt mirrors and filigreed plaster ceiling medallions, the house at 828 N. Carrollton Ave. is one of the grandest addresses overlooking Lafayette Square. "I bought the house with my heart," confessed Lily T. Tsui, a Potomac resident who purchased the house "on impulse" but never lived in it. "I just looked at it and fell in love with it. When you go inside, it takes your breath away.

The nonprofit corporation overseeing Baltimore's multimillion-dollar federally funded empowerment zone revitalization effort has suspended funding to one of its five community-based village centers and says there is "the possibility of fraud" in the center's alleged misspending of $70,000. Empower Baltimore Management Corp. suspended all funding in late June to the Harlem Park/Lafayette Square Village Center after an internal review found missing documents in the administration of a program to help find jobs for unemployed residents and an allegedly improper payment of $7,000 to the group's chair, officials said.

THE ENOCH Pratt's Central Library is presenting a six-week retrospective on West Baltimore's Lafayette Square in its main hall. The Maryland Historical Trust is recommending that a large swath of the west side that surrounds the square be put on the National Register of Historic Places. Environmental researchers are mapping the area as part of a project on urban watersheds. Arlene Fisher, a longtime resident and community activist who lives a half-block from the square, is not averse to the attention but says that more than notice is required to restore the area with a rich past and needy present.

Although many older Baltimore neighborhoods have made comebacks recently in terms of sales prices and livability, Lafayette Square in West Baltimore hasn't yet made the list. A group of preservationists has been working to change that situation by mounting a photographic exhibit that celebrates the area's architectural character. Lafayette Square: Recognize, Respect, Restore is the title of the show, which includes more than 50 large-format photographs by James Rosenthal and supplemental information from the Historic American Buildings Survey and Goucher College historic preservation student Angela Shaeffer.

Baltimore's newest judge has no hubcaps on her car. It's not that Althea Handy, 45, is looking to save a few bucks. It's that the newly appointed Circuit Court judge sees replacing them as an exercise in futility because thieves likely would strike again when she parks her green 1992 Camry in her West Baltimore neighborhood. "I've replaced them three times," said Handy, 45, who has bars on the windows of her Lafayette Square condominium and sometimes hears gunshots at night. "Once, I think I bought them back from the thief."

Walter Thomas, 92, bar owner, activist Walter Thomas, a retired bar owner and community activist, died of cancer Sunday at St. Agnes HealthCare. He was 92 and lived in the Lafayette Square section of West Baltimore. Born in Lynchburg, S.C., where he attended public schools, Mr. Thomas moved to Baltimore as a young man and worked as a waiter at the old Emerson Hotel at Calvert and Baltimore streets. Family members said he was known in the neighborhood as "Bow Tie" Thomas because of his favorite ties.

The long abandoned Sellers Mansion at the southeast corner of Lafayette Square looks like the model for a Charles Addams cartoon or a movie set for a Hitchcock thriller. But there is hope for the old mansion, the first house to be built in Lafayette Square in 1869. Judson B. Wood, president of the St. James Development Corp., which owns the Sellers Mansion, said recently that the historic house (a designate to the National Register of Historic Places) will most likely be converted to senior citizen apartments to augment the St. James Terrace Apartments next door.

THIS IS a cry for help: West Baltimore's Lafayette Square - once one of the city's most glorious spots - is threatened. The number of vacant buildings is growing. Among them is a mansion a builder renovated for his family. It is now abandoned and open to the elements. This deterioration must be stopped. This downward spiral is heartbreaking. It cancels out recent investments by St. James Episcopal Church in the neighborhood. That congregation is just one of several prominent churches ringing the square, whose notable recent residents have included former Rep. Parren J. Mitchell.

A deteriorating building, thousands of dollars in delinquent bills and a cut in funding from city and United Way officials is forcing the Lafayette Square Community Center to close its doors Thursday.The center has been an institution in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester community, one of the city's most economically depressed areas. It opened nearly 50 years ago in a dilapidated building at the corner of Lanvale Street and Fremont Avenue.Later, Vernon Roy Sheffey, the center's director from 1965 to 1989, ran a fund-raising campaign that led to a new, $1.5 million, 30,000-square-foot facility which opened at the corner of Lafayette Avenue and Gilmor Street in 1974.

Vernon Roy Sheffey, retired director of the Lafayette Square Multi-Service Center, died Nov. 17 of congestive heart failure at his Woodmoor home. He was 75.Born in Baltimore, he grew up on Riggs Avenue in the Sandtown-Winchester community. After graduating from Frederick Douglass High School in 1942, he en- rolled at Morgan State College (now Morgan State University) but in 1943 enlisted in the Army. After military service in Seattle, he received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Morgan in 1949.