Maryland Historical Trust

ISSUE: The Maryland Stadium Authority last week recommended demolishing or moving a 19th-century home in downtown Annapolis to make way for an estimated $20 million National Sailing Hall of Fame. Its long-awaited report said that trying to incorporate the modest house, one of the original pieces of the waterfront streetscape and now used as office space for the Department of Natural Resources Police, would be "too challenging." Lee Tawney, executive director of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, said his group is consulting with the Maryland Historical Trust on the best way to move forward on plans to develop the site, while respecting its historic nature.

Ruth Gaither, 77, smiled as she stared quietly at the one-room schoolhouse -- so timeworn that its wooden construction was sun-bleached and splintered.Sitting in a metal chair in front of the vacant Sykesville Colored School House on Friday, Gaither recalled her years in first through fifth grades at one of Carroll County's segregated schools, a landmark that is the latest addition to the Save Maryland's Treasures program."We had a potbelly stove and carried water up from a well," the thin, retired Sykesville cook said.

County code protects historic structures, allows redevelopmentThe Baltimore County Historical Trust Inc. (BCHT) is writing to correct misunderstandings regarding the demolition of the Thomas Fortune House ("Preservation shouldn't be burden to property owners," letters, Nov. 1).The Thomas Fortune House was placed on the Maryland Historical Trust's inventory 20 years ago. Mr. Fortune, a quarryman, is credited with procuring the marble for the Washington Monument in our nation's capital.His house was the most prominent home in the Texas area of the county, once a thriving mining community.

In the annals of Annapolis history, some of the most contentious battles, involving multiple public hearings and droves of residents packed into City Hall, have been waged over the smallest causes -- signage, a gate installation, hanging flower baskets.Inside the state capital's historic district, all modifications to buildings and property, no matter how minute, must be approved by the Historic Preservation Commission.The HPC crew of seven members and a city staffer are ardent preservationists, well-schooled in the difference, for example, between Flemish bond and English bond brick-laying -- it's all in the way the bricks are alternated -- and are intent on applying such knowledge to preserve the charm of Colonial Annapolis.

After more than a year of meetings and discussion, a Baltimore County committee is about to recommend changes in the county law protecting historic properties -- a law that preservationists have criticized as too lax and property owners have said is too cumbersome.The group, appointed by County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, will propose a system in which any property with historic, cultural or architectural significance would be placed in one of three categories with varying levels of protection.

FREDERICK -- Ever since this city set out to preserve its 18th century architectural heritage, folks have grumbled about the strict rules that govern everything from shop signs to roof shingles in the historic brick downtown.Some residents resent what they see as bureaucratic nitpicking. More than one homeowner has installed forbidden vinyl-framed windows at night. A restaurateur even tacked up a sign: "Beautify Frederick -- Abolish the Historic District Commission."Yet now, after all the complaints about historical correctness, some say the volunteer commission charged with safeguarding Frederick's past has not been tough enough.

HISTORIC DISTRICTS in Maryland have created $40.3 million in wages and 1,600 jobs over the past 20 years, and they have higher property values than nonhistoric districts, according to a study commissioned by the Maryland Association of Historic Districts.The study, titled "Economic and Fiscal Impact of Local Historic Districts in Maryland," examined public investment, private investment, property values and tourism over a 20-year period in six jurisdictions: Annapolis, Berlin, Chestertown, Frederick, Laurel and Baltimore's Mount Vernon area.

ROCKVILLE -- Eileen McGuckian looks out her office window and sees brown concrete. Huge vertical slabs of it.Luckily she can't see in the other direction. Beige brick, and a gruesome hodgepodge of metal and stone.This is the heart of Montgomery County government, a monument, critics say, to building techniques perfected by Josef Stalin.But McGuckian, ever the optimist, sees architecture and history where others see a terrific opportunity for the wrecking ball.For her vision, the Maryland Historical Trust will honor her and Peerless Rockville, the organization she helped found, with its 1999 Preservation Service Award at ceremonies tonight in Easton.

Saving history might become easier in Baltimore County, a place that preservationists complain is afflicted by indifferent officials and cumbersome landmark protection laws.The County Council approved a bill to toughen penalties for destroying a historic structure without a permit. Two other proposed bills would provide tax incentives and establish clearer guidelines for preserving landmarks.The efforts were applauded by preservationists, who lost a battle recently to save a 145-year-old stone house in Cockeysville.

Most people today expect their remains to be grouped, in graveyards or columbariums, but also at separate, marked sites; not so, in American Indian times. Local custom called for two stages: shallow burial (or exposure), until the skeleton alone remained, and then communal burial among the disconnected bones of other persons. The word is ossuary.Over the decades, in Maryland, some three dozen Indian bonepits have turned up, and been carbon-dated at roughly 1400 to 1700 A.D. Mostly in tidewater areas, they contained as few as three persons, as many as 600. Anthropologists and archeologists prize ossuaries for their additions to today's meager knowledge of Algonkian Indian thought and culture.

Rising in Carroll and Howard counties, the Patapsco becomes a real river when its two watery tentacles blend together at Marriottsville, and then gently roll some 50 miles southeastward until disgorging itself into tidal Chesapeake Bay waters at Baltimore. Its journey carries it through the historic Patapsco Valley that, beginning in Colonial days, was transformed into something of an industrial cradle when mill towns and villages began rising along its banks. Change began arriving when the National Road - the nation's first interstate road, which has been compared in historical significance to Rome's Appian Way - crossed the Patapsco Valley on its way westward in the late 1790s.

When Nora O'Brien hosts guests at the secluded Victorian farmhouse she has painstakingly restored, friends have been known to carp about the deafening chorus of summertime tree frogs. "I've had dinner parties where people say, 'Can't you make them shut up?' " said the 49-year-old landscape company owner and mother of three. But she and dozens of other families across the state are willing to put up with such inconveniences. For them, living rent-free inside a Maryland state park outweighs getting chased by skunks, startled by snakes or clearing horse droppings from unpaved driveways that double as public riding trails.

ISSUE: -- The Maryland Stadium Authority recently recommended demolishing or moving a 19th-century home in downtown Annapolis to make way for an estimated $20 million National Sailing Hall of Fame. Its long-awaited report said that trying to incorporate the modest house, one of the original pieces of the waterfront streetscape and now used as office space for the Department of Natural Resources Police, would be too challenging. Lee Tawney, executive director of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, said his group is consulting with the Maryland Historical Trust on the best way to move forward on plans to develop the site, while respecting its historic nature.

ISSUE: The Maryland Stadium Authority last week recommended demolishing or moving a 19th-century home in downtown Annapolis to make way for an estimated $20 million National Sailing Hall of Fame. Its long-awaited report said that trying to incorporate the modest house, one of the original pieces of the waterfront streetscape and now used as office space for the Department of Natural Resources Police, would be "too challenging." Lee Tawney, executive director of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, said his group is consulting with the Maryland Historical Trust on the best way to move forward on plans to develop the site, while respecting its historic nature.

ISSUE: The Maryland Stadium Authority last week recommended demolishing or moving a 19th-century home in downtown Annapolis to make way for an estimated $20 million National Sailing Hall of Fame. Its long-awaited report said that trying to incorporate the modest house, one of the original pieces of the waterfront streetscape and now used as office space for the Department of Natural Resources Police, would be "too challenging." Lee Tawney, executive director of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, said his group is consulting with the Maryland Historical Trust on the best way to move forward on plans to develop the site, while respecting its historic nature.

Opening the planned National Sailing Hall of Fame in a city nicknamed "America's Sailing Capital" should be smooth sailing. But the state's recommendation yesterday to demolish or move a 19th-century home on the Annapolis waterfront to make way for the estimated $20 million facility sets up a potential battle between two groups closely identified with the Colonial capital: sailors and historic preservationists. The recommendation, released yesterday in a report commissioned by the Maryland Stadium Authority, said trying to incorporate the modest home, one of the original pieces of the waterfront streetscape and now used as office space for the Department of Natural Resources Police, would be "too challenging."

Anne Arundel County is home to more than 90 sites on the National Register of Historic Places, including farmhouses, Colonial mansions and lighthouses. Some properties have been recognized for their architecture. Others have been included because of their connection to important people or events in local, state or American history. In downtown Annapolis and other sites, architecture and history are often interwoven. "Every property has its own story to tell," said Peter Kurtze, National Register administrator at the Maryland Historical Trust, the state's Historic Preservation Office.

The Maryland Historical Trust and the Archeological Society of Maryland present its 16th archaeological workshop at Community Place in Crownsville. Native American culture and history were a large part of programs at theworkshop, held Saturday.

Proceeds from the sale of a 19th-century home in Darlington will enrich the Maryland Historical Trust by nearly $500,000. The trust, the state's preservation agency, has owned the 14-acre property known as Gray Gables since Isabel Scriven bequeathed it in 1999. The bequest included an endowment of nearly $300,000 to help pay for maintaining the home and grounds. "The terms of the will provided we find an income-producing use for the property or sell it after making sure it would be preserved in perpetuity," said Rodney Little, director of the Maryland Historical Trust.

Fund treatment, not prison cells The Sun's recent article on the lack of long-term, in-patient drug treatment slots for court-referred defendants raises some profound questions about where Maryland will get the millions it needs to fund an effective drug treatment strategy ("Md. faulted for lack of drug treatment," Oct. 24). Of the almost 5,000 drug prisoners in the state, 70 percent are estimated to have a drug addiction problem, which often causes them to cycle in and out of the system for petty drug offenses.