Landmark

The number of movie screens within Baltimore is set to practically double, with the planned Nov. 2 opening of a seven-screen theater in Harbor East, the burgeoning neighborhood between the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. The 1,300-seat facility, to be operated by Los Angeles-based Landmark Theatres, will be part of a 35,000-square-foot commercial and residential complex at Aliceanna and President streets. Its opening will increase the number of theater screens within the city's borders to 15, including five at the Charles, two at the Rotunda Cinematheque and the single-screen Senator.

Alarmed by the Senator Theatre's close call with the auction block last month, Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation voted unanimously yesterday to establish an immediate six-month moratorium on architectural changes to the Senator's exterior and to recommend to the City Council that the 67-year-old Art Deco building be designated a landmark. The commission voted also to write a letter to the City Council urging it to support the Senator's continued existence as a first-run movie theater.

John M. Johansen has painful memories of a time when TV personalities Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas paid $6.8 million to purchase a house he designed in Connecticut, only to tear it down. "It was like a death in the family," he laments. Now the retired architect wants to avert another death - this time a theater he designed for downtown Baltimore. Parking lot operators have purchased the dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Charles Center for $6 million and teamed with a developer who wants to build housing, stores and maybe a hotel on the site.

On April 27, 1910, E. Tucker & Co. was incorporated. For 38 years, the general store was a landmark and institution for the residents of Forest Hill and the surrounding area. In June 1914 the frame building, with a raised board sidewalk and front porch, burned down. A new store was built within a few months and a store building is still standing today at the spot on Rock Spring Road. On Nov. 15, 1948, E. Tucker & Co. was purchased by Maurice Klein. The acquisition ended one era in Forest Hill history but launched another.

Saying that historic properties give Baltimore's business district character, the Downtown Partnership is calling for the city to offer more incentives to owners to protect their buildings from demolition and to start talks about landmark status earlier, according to the nonprofit corporation's report released yesterday. The study, commissioned last year with financial support from the Abell Foundation, offers preliminary suggestions to guide elected leaders, planning officials and preservation activists.

After a year that dealt Baltimore's preservationists some painful hits, the city is stepping up its effort to protect historic properties - and sites that include a noted African-American church, a South Baltimore park and an old brewery are poised to become "city landmarks." Though the owner of the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre has put off landmark consideration for that downtown site until next month, Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation will consider granting protected status tomorrow to five new locations, after creating only 17 landmarks over the past decade.

Get up and get funky.Landmark plans call for Baltimore's 300-foot Bromo Selt-zer clock tower to be converted to 12 panoramified apartments, city housing officials said this past week. Among other amenities, future residents would be able to watch the Orioles' bullpen collapse without paying to see it happen.Perhaps this novel redevelopment notion for the clock tower -- Baltimore's downtown lighthouse -- will open the field for similar projects. Why should a city's landmarks be structures merely to leer at, or to list in architecture guides?

Landmark shoppingGot a piece of furniture or an antique mirror or some old jewelry you'd like to sell? Or are you in the market for just those things? Friends Bonnie Grosso and Karen Goldscher have a solution for you: They've just opened a consignment shop in the Landmark Shopping Center in Reisterstown.They'll handle furniture (from antique to contemporary), artwork, glassware, lighting, china, silver, rugs, country items and a few oddities (such as a full-size mechanical clown) -- but no appliances or clothing.

It may be shaped like a horseshoe, but Baltimore's venerable Memorial Stadium appears to have run out of luck. After reviewing three proposals, the city this month awarded development rights to a team that wants to raze the stadium to make way for a retirement community called Stadium Place. As a result, tomorrow may be the last Memorial Day that the city-owned landmark -- one of Baltimore's most prominent memorials to war veterans -- will be standing on 33rd Street.The decision may be a victory for community residents who see nothing particularly lucky about having a vacant stadium in their back yard.

One of the last original sections of the old Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie is scheduled for demolition any day now, with the opening of the Harundale Plaza in its place slated for the fall.Once the razing is complete, the Value City store will be the last standing reminder of a 40-year-old retail landmark -- the first enclosed shopping mall on the East Coast."We tore down close to 300,000 square feet of buildings," said Dicky C. Darrell, director of retail for Columbia-based Manekin Corp, which is spending about $20 million to convert Harundale Mall into a retail strip center.

FRANK BATTEN SR., 82 News executive created Weather Channel Frank Batten Sr., who built a communications empire that spanned newspapers and cable television and created The Weather Channel, died Thursday in Norfolk, Va., after a prolonged illness. Mr. Batten was the retired chairman of privately held Landmark Communications and a former chairman of the board of the Associated Press. A visionary executive who earned a reputation for spotting media trends, Mr. Batten was at the forefront of development of cable television in the 1960s.

A last-minute bankruptcy filing has saved Nixon's Farm, a Howard County landmark known for social and political gatherings, from a foreclosure auction originally scheduled for today. The Chapter 11 filing in U.S. District Court on Tuesday will allow Randall Nixon to continue operating the 128-acre West Friendship farm his family has owned since 1956, said James A. Vidmar, the Annapolis lawyer representing Nixon and his mother, Mildred. "This just gives us breathing room to get some plan in place to protect this valuable property," Vidmar said.

Baltimore is set to designate President Street Station, an 1850s train depot with chapters in the histories of both the Underground Railroad and the Civil War, as a city landmark. But the city's plan to also seek a long-term tenant to revitalize the vacant building has a group of history buffs fearful that the building's past will get swallowed up in any future use. This summer, the Planning Department expects to issue a request for proposals on how to reuse what is believed to be the oldest surviving urban train station in the country.

Look around Baltimore and you will see a compendium of architectural styles and historic structures. From the dome of the Basilica and the Washington Monument tower to the elegant main building of the Maryland Institute College of Art and the magnificent Marburg Pavilion at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore is home to hundreds of landmark buildings that document its nearly 300-year history. Yet despite this rich architectural legacy, many Baltimore landmarks have survived the passage of time almost by accident; it wasn't until the late 1960s that serious efforts to preserve historic city structures got underway.

The former home of the company that invented the Ouija board, the estate of Calvert School's first headmaster and one of the city's last Masonic temples are among 12 buildings that have joined Baltimore's official landmark list. Marking May as "Preservation Month," Mayor Sheila Dixon held a news conference Wednesday morning at which she signed legislation adding the buildings to the landmark list and opened an exhibit about them in the North Gallery of City Hall. The additions bring to 153 the number of buildings that have individual city landmark designation, a status that helps protect them from demolition or defacement.

Monday's scheduled foreclosure auction of the Senator Theatre has been canceled, as city officials work on plans to acquire the 70-year-old North Baltimore landmark. C. Larry Hofmeister, an attorney representing mortgage holder 1st Mariner Bank, said Tuesday that there are no plans to reschedule the auction at this time. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon announced Saturday that the city, which is the guarantor on $600,000 of the Senator's $950,000 mortgage, would seek to purchase the mortgage from 1st Mariner.

The Senator Theatre's doors have closed, but its historic character is in line for an update. In less than a month, Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation will consider the interior of the Art Deco movie house for possible landmark status. Since the Senator's exterior - its marquee and such - received the landmark designation in 2007, the authority of CHAP has expanded to include review of building interiors. With the theater's ownership in doubt now, it would seem premature for the panel to take this up. But a historic designation for what lies beyond the Senator's ticket booth could ensure its continued use as a movie palace and its contributions to the Belvedere business area.

The Senator Theatre, which shut its doors Sunday and faces foreclosure next month, would continue operating as a movie theater and arts venue, but not as a first-run movie house, under a plan outlined by owner Tom Kiefaber on the theater's Web site. The "Reorganization and Transitional Operations Plan" calls for the theater to continue operating as Kiefaber seeks a private investor or a nonprofit group willing to purchase the theater and keep it running. Under either scenario, Kiefaber would no longer own and operate the theater that has been in his family for seven decades.

Even while the fate of Baltimore's Senator Theatre is still being negotiated, more than a dozen area bands and musicians will take to the stage of the 70-year-old landmark this weekend to raise money for its continued operation. "The Senator Sessions: Concerts to Support a Baltimore Landmark" kicks off tonight and will run through the weekend. Tonight, "Save the Senator: A Baltimore Revue" will begin at 9 and include music from the Payola Reserve, Wye Oak, the John Hardy Boys, U.S. Royalty and Nathan Bell.

Hoping to contend for a national championship, No. 4 Duke got exactly what it needed in a close victory last night over Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. The Blue Devils led by 16 points and appeared ready to pull away, but then the Hokies charged back, trimming the deficit to three in the final minutes before Duke held on for a 57-52 win. It was the Blue Devils' 13th victory in a row - and one they are sure to hear plenty about going forward. "You have to finish strong," Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie said.