Landmark

A minority of lawmakers convinced the House of Delegates Wednesday to delay voting on a landmark plan to invest about $1 billion in building and replacing Baltimore schools. About 40 delegates, mostly Republicans, asked for another day to examine the proposal that was unveiled Tuesday and relies on spending $20 million a year in state lottery cash to help the city and its schools borrow up to $1.1 billion. It's fundamentally different from the solution pushed by schools officials to create a block grant system.

As the clock ticked down Sunday, the morning clouds disappeared, as if they were in on the months-long planning that went into the destruction of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s final natural-gas holding silo. Then, as if someone were turning on Christmas lights, the rings of the cylinder blinked with 420 explosive charges. It took a moment for the noise - like thunder after lightning pierces the sky - for the rat-ta-tat-tat to reach the observers on the roof of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute across the Jones Falls Expressway.

The sight of a few ladders outside the Senator Theatre did not prepare me for the scope of the restoration project that is transforming this Govans-Belvedere Square landmark, a Baltimore treasure being taken apart and reassembled. There will be three newly constructed boutique theaters, too, making a four-screen complex. The $3.5 million infusion of much-needed capital improvements comes not a minute too soon. The 1939 movie house is a favorite address of many film fans, but let's face it: The beloved Senator was shabby.

Carroll Martin Radebaugh, a horticulturalist who was an owner of a well-known Towson nursery and greenhouse, died of cancer Wednesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 92 and had lived for many years at his family's Burke Avenue compound. Born in Baltimore County, he was the son of George Walker and Anna Jeannette Martin Radebaugh, who cultivated vegetables in outdoor frames in the mid-1920s and started Radebaugh Florists and Greenhouse. He was a 1937 graduate of Towson High School, where he also competed in varsity basketball, soccer and baseball.

The whimsical building entered into local legend as the gingerbread home of Hansel and Gretel. The Sheppard Pratt gatehouse is so firmly established as a beloved Baltimore landmark that you almost expect merry gnomes to appear at its slender windows. It's not hard to envision an eccentric witch or two here. There's even a little stream nearby for a troll. What exactly happened behind the walls of this semi-mysterious abode in the woods alongside a busy Charles Street adjacent to the Woodbrook, Murray Hill and Greater Towson neighborhoods?

See a photo gallery of Baltimore City landmarks . Exterior landmark list (arranged in chronological order of legislation) 1. CITY HALL 100 N. HOLLIDAY St. 1867-1875, GEORGE A. FREDERICK ORDINANCE 71-974 01/11/71 2. OTTERBEIN CHURCH 112 W. CONWAY ST. 1785-1786, JACOB SMALL, SR. ORDINANCE 71-974 01/11/71 3. MCKIM FREE SCHOOL 1120 E. BALTIMORE ST. 1833, WILLIAM HOWARD & WILLIAM SMALL ORDINANCE 71-974 01/11/71...

Burleigh Cottage, an historic Howard County house whose origins go back to the late 1700s, sold in October for $1.1 million. The house at 10250 Burleigh Cottage Lane in Ellicott City started out as a log cabin used as a hunting retreat. Additions were made to the cabin over the years, and the house is now 3,579 square feet. "The log cabin part of the house is still the original. It's got the original floors, the original fireplaces," said Concetta Corriere with Remax 100, who represented the seller.

Walter Gilliam, who rose from a being a sandwich maker and dishwasher to become a chef at the old Haussner's Restaurant in a career than spanned more than 50 years, died Monday of complications from a stroke at his East Baltimore home. He was 91. "Walter was a splendid rock through all the years. He was someone to lean on, and he was always there when you needed him," said Francie George, the daughter of William Henry Haussner, a German immigrant and master chef who opened the venerable restaurant in 1926 at Eastern Avenue and Clinton Street, and Frances Wilke Haussner.

Thursday night, we celebrate the season with the lighting of Baltimore's Washington Monument. But unless we take needed action, we are at risk of losing this festive tradition — along with one of our city's most iconic landmarks. Sadly, the monument has fallen into disrepair and is in serious need of attention due to years of exposure to the elements. It has been closed for safety reasons since June 2010. If we fail to meet the challenge of restoring it, the nation's first monument to George Washington will accelerate its perilous decline and could forever go dark.