Landmark

One Waterford story is the village itself -- idyllic, lovely and beloved. Another is about property rights on surrounding land, an issue that hovers over the future of the Virginia town. Both tales are about the boundaries imposed by the village's landmark status.Where can a visitor find the first story, that of the pastoral village?In Marie Anderson's English garden on any ravishing fall day. Her garden is next to the Pink House, the bed-and-breakfast she and her husband restored. Pink in color as well as name, the four-story house stands out among the white, earth-tone and brick homes in the village.

It's time that our unsung landmarks have their day. These are the familiar places we seemingly pass every time we get in a car. But they haven't been granted formal landmark status. Here's an imperfect list.There's the intersection and environs of Belair Road and Erdman Avenue. The Erdman Avenue White Tower and its neighbor, the La Fontaine Bleu, certainly count. Better not forget Al Bruno's Crosstown Liquors and, across the street, the Getty gas station, a 1930s fantasy bungalow masquerading as a filling station.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court indicated yesterday that historic churches designated as landmarks will have to get government approval to change their buildings, even when they claim that this would intrude on their faith.In a brief order, the court set aside a state court ruling that had posed a major constitutional threat to the enforcement of landmark preservation laws across the country, when those laws were used against church property.The Washington state Supreme Court had ruled a year ago that a city violates a church's right to exercise its religion freely when the city designates that church building as a landmark to be preserved, unless city officials approve changes in advance.

The shell of Baltimore's long-dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre would be partially preserved as part of a mixed-use complex containing a 30-story residential and hotel tower and commercial space, if its owners can obtain city approval and financing to carry out their latest plans. Renderings of the proposed development were filed with Baltimore's planning department this summer in preparation for a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. today by the Baltimore Planning Commission. The project is the latest of several hotel and residential towers proposed for construction in downtown Baltimore despite the uncertain real estate market.

Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation has voted to grant landmark protection to four sites, including a noted African-American church, a South Baltimore park that had a role in the War of 1812 and a distinctive old brewery. The preservation panel, however, has delayed action on the most controversial item on its agenda -- landmarking the Scottish Rite Temple of Freemasonry against the wishes of the Masonic organization that owns the North Baltimore building.

Five houses in Fells Point, developed by Frederick Douglass in 1892, will undergo the first step toward becoming Baltimore landmarks tomorrow. The buildings at 516, 518, 520, 522 and 524 Dallas St. were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the early 1980s. The local designation is long overdue, said Kathleen Kotarba, executive director of the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation. The local designation protects the buildings from being destroyed, she said.

Baltimore's Morris A. Mechanic Theatre will not be added to the city's landmark list, even though the city's preservation commission determined more than a year ago that it met the criteria for designation and recommended that it be listed. Baltimore's Planning Commission voted 7-0 yesterday to keep the shuttered theater at 1 W. Baltimore St. off the landmark list, after hearing testimony that its owners didn't want it to be added but do plan to preserve "80 to 90 percent" of its shell as part of a large redevelopment project.

The one-time Maryland residence of former President Richard M. Nixon has been nominated for designation as a Baltimore County historic landmark. The county Landmarks Preservation Commission will meet at 6 p.m. Feb. 14 to consider a request to add Nixon's former residence, an apartment building at 900 Wilson Point Road in Middle River, to its landmark list. The listing was requested by the Baltimore County Historical Trust, on the grounds that the building is a former home of a president and represents a link to the county's wartime and industrial past.

The death of the owner of the 41-year-old Forest Diner on U.S. 40 in Ellicott City has raised concerns about the restaurant's future.William Carl Childress, who bought the diner in 1957, died Saturday of unknown causes as he recovered from a series of seizures that hospitalized him in February.Freida Johnson, manager at the diner, said Childress' family told employees Saturday of his death."This floored me," said Johnson, who has worked at the diner for 39 years. "He was doing real well."This is just an extreme shock for me."

I was rounding the arc on Martin Luther King Boulevard the other evening when the charred and exposed timbers of the First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church came into view. I had been looking for the landmark, but I was astonished when its fractured and wounded silhouette form appeared. Where a roof should have been was sky. Its magnificent and familiar spire was no more.