Mount Royal

The Mount Royal vicinity used to include some of Baltimore's most elite addresses. The chateau-style Winans House, at St. Paul and Preston streets, is just one example of the grand residences that dotted the area in the 1880s. Mount Royal later became a victim of suburbanization and a decline in railroad passenger traffic, which had sustained many of its hotels. Just a decade ago, the area was on the verge of becoming skid row.The good news this spring is that Mount Royal is coming back in a burst of activity that will transform its image during the next couple of years.

Twelve area bands, specializing in styles ranging from reggae to hip-hop, will be playing Artscape 2012, The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts announced Monday. The winnings bands are 7IghQ and Bumpin Uglies (reggae), Brooks Long (blues), Cloud 9 (rock/hip-hop), Condor (rock), Drumfish (modern rock), Reality Band/BJR (neo-soul), Team Flex (hip-hop), This Is the Rescue (rock) and Lion Turf, Stars and The Sea and Turtle Tongue (alternative). The winning bands will perform on the Wells Fargo and Festival stages during the 31 s t Artscape, which runs July 20-22 on and around the intersection of Mount Royal and Charles streets.

Last year was a banner year for Mount Vernon, the neighborhood surrounding the city's premiere square. The Hackerman House was renovated to accommodate the Walters Art Gallery's Asian collection. The Waterloo Place apartments added the choice of spanking new residences to an area where historic town houses dominate. And the Peabody Institute began the conversion of three decrepit town houses in the 600 block of North Charles Street into an elderhostel for senior citizens taking music-related courses.

A recently released independent evaluation of two dozen Baltimore City schools conducted in 2011 suggests that even though the system has introduced important reforms in recent years, too many schools are still struggling to find effective ways to educate children. Yet educators should take heart from two bright spots in the report. Both the Mount Royal Elementary School and the Baltimore School for the Arts got positive ratings for effective teaching, and their example strongly suggests that with the right leadership, instructional methods and support structure, all kids have the potential to excel.

ITS GEOMETRIC shapes -- opaque white by day, translucent at night -- are strikingly enigmatic. There is no mystery, though, about the mission of the Maryland Institute College of Art's new $20 million glass edifice: It will enable students to stretch the limits of computer-created artistry. The Brown Center, dedicated today to Baltimore investment fund manager Eddie C. Brown and his wife, Sylvia, is worth celebrating because it represents far more than an educational advance in digital creativity.

Half of Baltimore seems to post for this weekend's Artscape on Mount Royal Avenue, that old boulevard of generous proportions made all the more tolerable by the temporary traffic ban. I prefer to remember this street before it was laced into the Jones Falls Expressway's web and made into something of a minifreeway. I also miss the double line of sycamore trees, but there's a bumpy section or two of the original brick sidewalks with crabgrass sprouting through the cracks. As you can guess, I am not a big fan of the automobile in the city.

University of Baltimore and Maryland Institute College of Art officials are focusing attention and money on the areas adjacent to Baltimore's Penn Station with a goal of wresting a more attractive and recognizable neighborhood from parking lots and random, underused spaces. They have identified a spine along Mount Royal Avenue, from North Avenue to Calvert Street, as a unifying corridor the two educational institutions can enhance. They are thinking beyond trees and new curbs to apartments and shops, a joint student-community recreation center and, in their distant dreams, a soccer field above the Jones Falls Expressway.

The state Board of Public Works has approved the last piece of funding for Maryland Institute College of Art to renovate the old AAA and Fox buildings at the art school's Mount Royal campus.The board on Wednesday approved $575,882 for conversion of the two buildings to academic use. The money is part of a $2.1 million state matching grant that complements money the institute raised on its own, according to paperwork the state Department of General Services gave the board before the vote.Henry H. Lewis Contractors Inc. of Owings Mills has been awarded a $1.3 million contract to do most of the renovation work.

Angered by plans to shift a handful of students out of Mount Royal Elementary-Middle School this September, parents, teachers and students protested last night to Baltimore City Council President Mary Pat Clarke.Their target: a citywide rezoning plan they say effectively locks out middle school students who don't live in Mount Royal's proposed new middle school boundaries.The proposed rezoning plan, the first in nearly 20 years, could come up for a vote at the city school board's meeting Thursday.

Late July. Traditionally the hottest two weeks of the year, and always a little bit hotter in the city. So how on earth are you going to make it through them?A visit to Artscape may be just the ticket.Baltimore's 10th annual festival of the arts kicks off today at 6 p.m. when the visual arts exhibitions, crafts, literary arts and cultural resource tents open up along Mount Royal Avenue, beginning three days of continuous free entertainment.Tradition is tradition, so you can expect this weekend's temperatures to hover in the mid-90s, and there's a chance of some rain later today.

Baltimore police are searching for a man who torched a speed camera Friday morning on the border of Bolton Hill and Mid-Town Belvedere. Anthony Guglielmi, a city police spokesman, said the incident occurred about 7 a.m. at North Howard Street and Park Avenue. Police had no description of the vandal, but said someone threw or poured an accelerant onto the camera and set it on fire. Adrienne Barnes, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Transportation, said the camera was a mobile device and placed on a stand on the ground; it was not on a pole.

As of 9 a.m., traffic is slow on I-83 southbound near Belfast Road, due to cleanup from an accident involving two vehicles. All lanes have reopened after an earlier accident involving a passenger van and an SUV. Accidents were slowing traffic on southbound York Road at Loveton Circle in Baltimore County and Washington Boulevard at Hammonds Ferry Road in Baltimore. The Hammonds Ferry Road incident involved a pedestrian who was struck.. Emergency roadwork caused all eastbound and westbound lanes to be closed on Route 450 near Rutland Road in Anne Arundel County.

The hulking white duplex at 2108-2110 Mount Royal Terrace - a vacant eyesore for 20 years - is a financial and emotional drain on neighbors, who maintain a five-block stretch of historic homes that overlooks the Jones Falls Expressway and acts as the eastern border of Reservoir Hill. But for two nights this past weekend, residents gathered on the sidewalk in front of the empty house, watching it and imagining what it would be like if someone lived there. The occasion was an exhibit by two students at the nearby Maryland Institute College of Art, who used the 120-year-old home as a movie screen, with videos projected onto the plywood that covers the first-floor windows.

The Mount Royal Tavern closed temporarily Thursday night after it failed an inspection by the Baltimore City Health Department.  The failed inspection was a result of a lack of hot water running in the bathrooms and a fruit fly infestation, according to Brian Schleter, spokesman for the health department. Schleter confirmed the bar's owner addressed both of the issues Friday morning, which included installing a new hot water tank. He says the inspection came after the department received a complaint.

The other morning I did a double take. I was coming south on Maryland Avenue and reached the old Lyric. There, for the first time, I spotted workers installing an exterior corridor to our venerable opera house. It must have been 50 years ago that plans were first discussed about making it easier for performers to get from one side of the stage to the other. The Lyric's stage is not so deep, and with today's elaborate sets, the chorus, tenors and sopranos had to descend into the basement and reascend steps.

The organizers of this weekend's Artscape seem to be fascinated by 1982, the year the outdoor festival made its debut. Let's consider 1982 Baltimore. A double feature of "Poltergeist" and "Star Trek" was playing at the Hippodrome ; Barry Levinson's "Diner" was at the Senator and later at the Pikes. The first Artscape was held in June along Mount Royal Avenue, signaling a momentous year for the neighborhood. The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall would open that September. The Lyric simultaneously underwent a dramatic renovation that gave it an enlarged lobby and a rearranged orchestra seating.

Is there life after Artscape?The record crowds that flocked to Artscape '93 last weekend are proof that Baltimore's Mount Royal Cultural Center can be a popular destination in itself, a people magnet powerful enough to rival the Inner Harbor.But how can the energy and vitality exhibited during this three-day cultural extravaganza be channeled into the area year-round, to strengthen its identity as Baltimore's cultural center?That's the central question facing a battery of city and state planners who have been working for more than a year with property owners, architects and community leaders to identify ways to enhance the cultural district.

Better watch what you say if you're planning a night of boozy revelry at the venerable Mount Royal Tavern , which recently installed a "Cuss Bucket" for those getting a little too loud and creative with their profanity. "It's a bar, and I don't mind a 'hell' or a 'damn' — they're allowed to use them — but when people start yelling the other profanities, that's it," said Ron Carback, who has owned the bar in the 1200 block of W. Mount Royal Ave. with his partner, Chris Kozak, since 1985.

At its last gathering, the ready-to-disband Mount Royal Democratic Club drew one of its biggest crowds in recent years to mark the end of an era Saturday evening at the club's annual holiday bash. Organizers said it was the final hurrah for a club that no longer has a place in an age of community association activism, the Internet and too many other demands on members' time. Several hundred formally dressed people, including current and former members and invited guests, mingled with top elected Democrats over cocktails and pate while a brass quartet entertained in the marble lobby of the MICA building in the 1300 block of Mount Royal Ave. Gov. Martin O'Malley joked that the club's president, former state Sen. Julian L. Lapides, had come up with a great marketing gimmick, advertising the bash each year as the final one, likening it to "the Cher farewell tour.