Latrobe

ORIGINAL NORTHWOOD, the 1930s neighborhood that is applying for listing on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places, has many of the characteristics of tonier Roland Park (started in 1891), Guilford (1912) and Homeland (1924). And why not? It was built by the same development company to cater to wealthier families desiring suburban-style living.Because of its pedigree, Original Northwood, a community of 303 homes and apartments bounded by The Alameda, Loch Raven Boulevard and Cold Spring Lane, shows how the thinking of the Roland Park Co. progressed during a period that preceded the )

He's a musical director and orchestra conductor who has lived in New York and on the West Coast.She's a singer and actress who hails from South Dakota.As theater professionals, they often travel. So when they got married 2 1/2 years ago, Kevin and Karin Farrell decided to buy a house where they could come home for the holidays and put down roots.That's how they came to own one of Baltimore's most historic residences, the Latrobe House on Cathedral Hill."Our business is the theater," Kevin Farrell explained.

The Latrobe Building at Charles and Read streets is one of many historic office structures in Baltimore that has lost most of its tenants in recent years, even though it has been renovated extensively inside and out.The latest blow came this spring, when Cochran Stephenson & Donkervoet, the architectural firm that oversaw $3.5 million worth of renovations there in the 1980s, moved its headquarters to the former B&O Warehouse at Camden Yards. The architects' move left the nine-story building, named after seven-term Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe, practically empty.

Votta's Band. The Stadium Bowling Lanes. Rock-and-Rye whiskey.These are all part of the memories that a lot of Baltimoreans possess and cherish. Here are some that deserve recognition.* John Pente, of High Street in Little Italy, fills in some missing musical notes of an outing on the F.C. Latrobe, the municipal ice-breaking boat that took children on the Thursday trips sponsored by the Free Summer Excursion Society:"As a youngster I would carry my father's trumpet case and board the Latrobe at a small pier about where the World Trade Building stands today.

A group of public housing residents picketed city housing authority offices yesterday, demanding that the agency rescind the transfer of a popular administrator.The 13 residents, from Latrobe Homes in East Baltimore, want former manager Robin Mack reinstated at the 701-unit low-rise complex at 900 E. Madison St. Ms. Mack was transferred March 1 to the Broadway senior citizen high-rise in a management swap that sent Broadway manager Henry Johnson to Latrobe.Carrying picket signs and chanting, "What do we want?

Sam Downey is the man with the answers. The Baltimore County gentleman knows the saga of the steamer F.C. Latrobe, Chesterwood on Bear Creek and the life and times of the Free Summer Excursion Society."

The real information highway opened officially 150 years ago today when Samuel F. B. Morse, sent the famous telegraph message ''What hath God wrought?'' from the U.S. Capitol over the wires strung along the B&O Railroad's Washington Branch to his associate Alfred Vail at Baltimore's Mt. Clare Station. For the first time, the message could outrun the messenger.Nowadays, faxes and phone calls routinely travel over the same CSX railroad right-of-way between the cities via fiber optics cables, but in Morse's time, the idea of instantaneous communication was so outlandish as to be unbelievable.

On Tuesday, the morning after Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced he would clean out the wreckage of his demoralized housing department, I went to Abbott Court in the Latrobe Projects to wonder why everything's gone to hell.The mayor's big announcement came with remarkable speed, as these things go at City Hall. All it took was the threat of a rent strike at Lexington Terrace over revolting living conditions, and the news that $42 million in federal grants had somehow been overlooked by his housing people, and the sudden realization of an 18 percent vacancy rate in the city's high-rise public housing buildings at a time when there are somehow more than 15,000 families on waiting lists.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Obviously, Arnold Palmer never forgot where he came from since he still wears a Latrobe Country Club cap. More importantly, he has fulfilled, and even exceeded, the ponderous role imposed upon him as an emissary of what golf is supposed to be in the matter of both gentility and performance.The applause builds to a crescendo as he is called to the first tee, and then the noise explodes with all the impact of thunder rolling down the mountainside.Palmer, in acknowledgment, tentatively raises a muscular arm, burned to a walnut brown from a lifetime in the sun, and all seems right for those around him.It's his way of responding to the clamor of the crowd.

Baltimore, where the favorite thing to eat is an animal tha crawls sideways.* Sign seen in southwest Baltimore: "Steamed Females, $8 Dozen. Tricks."* I keep getting postcards from a guy named Ray. The first postcards came from Dallas and Hawaii. The most recent one came from Rock Hall, on the Eastern Shore, and it was posted with a Buffalo Bill Cody stamp. "Hi Dan," it said. "Took a ride on the 'Chessy' Flier to Rock Hall. Great Seafood. Ray." My question: Ray who? Ray Charles? Ray Dypski?

Barbara C. Latrobe, who had worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital for two decades and was a longtime volunteer, died Wednesday from complications of Alzheimer's disease at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 82. Barbara Caffee, the daughter of a businessman and homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Edgevale Road in Roland Park. She was a 1944 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and earned a bachelor's degree from Goucher College in 1949. Mrs. Latrobe was employed briefly at the Baltimore City Department of Social Services, before going to work in the late 1950s at the Johns Hopkins Moore Clinic.

A 28-year-old Baltimore man pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to three counts of using a gun to commit a murder in aid of racketeering and one count of distributing cocaine and heroin, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. As a result of the plea agreement, prosecutors said that the attorney general's office has decided not seek the death penalty for Harry Burton, known as "Big Harry." He was indicted in the case in April 2007. The trial for a co-defendant, Allen Gill of Baltimore, began with jury selection yesterday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office said.

The smell of filth filled the small apartment. The couches were overturned, along with a washing machine, and the floors were streaked with grime. A bra lay on the floor in front of Shirley Gilbert's refrigerator. The underwear wasn't hers. Neither, she says, was the mess that drug dealers and junkies left for her to clean up in her one-bedroom apartment in the Latrobe public housing community in East Baltimore. "It's not safe here," Gilbert said. "They come in and do what they want to do. They bust the window.

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 238 THE VICTIM Police said investigators still do not know the name of the man whose body was found about 12:15 a.m. yesterday in the 1700 block of Latrobe St. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 217 homicides as of Oct. 13, 2006. ONLINE: Details and locations of this year's city homicides are at baltimoresun.com/homicidemap

Older Catholics from the area might remember the winged figures that once flanked the marble altar at the Baltimore Basilica. The pair stood sentinel through the celebration of the Eucharist for more than a century of Sundays before they were removed in the 1940s. Now, after decades in storage, the angels are returning to America's oldest cathedral. At a pair of workshops in Hampden, local craftsmen are peeling off 17 layers of paint from the figures, repairing cracks in the original basswood and resculpting missing parts to restore them to their 19th-century appearance.

From the beginning, light illuminates the biblical narrative. As an image and a symbol, it signals the presence of God, throughout the world and within man. And so it would be that yesterday, the interior of the nearly restored Basilica of the Assumption was aglow with sunlight, the old cathedral's new linen-white palette reflecting the simplicity of Benjamin Henry Latrobe's neoclassic design. The intent of the $32 million renovation was to restore the nation's first Roman Catholic cathedral to its 19th-century origins, and it mostly reflects that vision.

When the great dome of Benjamin Henry Latrobe's cathedral first rose over the Baltimore skyline two centuries ago, it loomed as a bold symbol of a new liberty. The British had suppressed Roman Catholicism in the American colonies, forcing the faithful to worship in secret. But now a church building that rivaled Latrobe's U.S. Capitol in size and sophistication, a cathedral on a hill for a Catholic diocese that encompassed the entire young nation, proclaimed a new era for religious freedom.

THE IDEA WAS TO PEEL AWAY LAYERS of history, to strip off non-original details and get back to the essence of the building envisioned by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Going back in time, architecturally, was the overriding concept behind the $32 million restoration and modernization of Baltimore's Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was built starting in 1806 and dedicated in 1821. It was the reason the 1940s-era stained-glass windows were removed. It was the impetus for re-creating 24 skylights in the dome -- to "restore the light" in the cathedral as Latrobe meant for it to be seen.

On September 22, 2003 KATHARINE EARECKSON beloved wife of the late Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe III; devoted mother of Ferdinand C. Latrobe IV, John H. B. Latrobe and his wife Connie M. Latrobe, Katharine E. Latrobe, Charles C. Latrobe and his wife Linda P. Latrobe; dear sister of Frederick Leif Eareckson and his wife Jean Lee Eareckson; sister-in-law of John Latrobe of Ft. Lauderdale, FL and Mrs. Clayton F. Ruebensaal of Greens Farms, CT. Also survived by...

Katharine Eareckson Latrobe, a homemaker and resident of Lutherville for nearly half a century, died Monday of congestive heart failure at the Wesley Home in Baltimore. She was 83. Katharine Dudley Eareckson was born and raised in Baltimore and was a 1938 graduate of Western High School. Her Eareckson ancestors emigrated from Sweden in 1645. In 1938, she married Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe III, who headed a construction company and was a descendant of seven-term Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand C. Latrobe.