National Register

Residents of Original Northwood are confident they've come up with a lesson in what makes a lovely and livable neighborhood.Standing before the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation recently, they ticked off their reasons why this home-proud Northeast Baltimore community, constructed during the depths of the Depression, should be listed on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places."

For the first time in memory, Carroll officials are considering a plan that would identify and preserve the county's historic and cultural sites, including working farmland and scenic vistas.The Historic Preservation Plan will be presented to the public at 7 p.m. Thursday in the County Office Building, 225 N. Center St., Westminster.The 167-page preservation plan, developed by county planners over the past year, outlines measures that would protect Carroll's natural and cultural resources, minimize residential sprawl and save farmland.

WASHINGTON - The F. Leonard Wailes Law Office at 116-118 E. Main St. in the central business area of Salisbury has been named to the National Register of Historic Places.The law office is one of the last survivors of an October 1886 fire that leveled most of the city's business district.It is architecturally significant for its early 20th-century law office design and incorporates neo-federal elements into an urban townhouse form, according to National Register documents.The office, a two-story, four-bay brick building with a slate roof, was built in 1927 by Salisbury architect W. Twilley Malone.

For New Year, here's a harvest of free or inexpensive booklets for travelers.* "North Carolina Scenic Byways" contains 144 pages, and full-color photos present 44 roads that show off state history, culture and scenery. The book represents "heritage tourism," the highlighting of an area's history.In the Piedmont, for example, the 18-mile Indian Heritage Trail passes the state's oldest historical site, the Town Creek Indian Mound. The longest road, 173 miles through the coastal plain, is designated Lafayette's Tour: It touches several places the general visited in 1825.

CHESTERTOWN -- Lauretum looks like someone slapped together the "Addams Family" mansion and a gingerbread house.It is just that combination of characteristics that won the Chestertown bed-and-breakfast a spot on the National Register of Historic Places."

SMITH CENTER, Kan. -- The buffalo no longer roam and the antelope certainly don't play around here anymore.But in a stand of cottonwoods on the banks of Beaver Creek is the one-room log cabin where Dr. Brewster Higley wrote a song of the West more than a century ago. "Home on the Range" became the favorite of Franklin D. Rooseveltand the state song of Kansas.This dilapidated little cabin shares a distinction with more famous structures and places, such as Mount Vernon, Yellowstone National Park and the grounds of the Battle of Gettysburg.

An official of a federal preservation group cautioned that a Laurel developer's plan to open a country inn at the 157-year-old Woodlawn Farms in Ellicott City could signal an end to the site's designation on the National Register of Historic Places.A warning was issued in response to the Howard County Board of Appeals' unanimous approval Thursday night of a special exception by Woodlawn Farms LLC to open a six-bedroom, two-bathroom country inn and a 70-seat restaurant on the 5-acre site off Route 108. The land is zoned for residential use.Although policy within the National Park Service -- which compiles the National Register of Historic Places -- does not prevent renovations, significant alterations could result in a repeal of the property's designation, said Paul Lusignan, a historian for the register.

The destruction of two of the oldest buildings on Howard Street in Baltimore may be the salvation of many others along the same corridor.At least that's the hope of officers with the Maryland Historical Trust, the state's preservation agency.After months of deliberation, the trust has tentatively agreed to allow the Schmoke administration to demolish two early 19th-century buildings at the northwest corner of Howard and Franklin streets, despite opposition from preservationists, to clear the way for a new home for the Eubie Blake National Museum and Cultural Center.

Carroll County has no shortage of towns in the National Register of Historic Places. Sites in Westminster, Sykesville, Uniontown and Taneytown have been recognized for their historical significance.Now it's Union Bridge's turn.The town's Main Street area is the latest Carroll district to be included in the register, a division of the National Park Service."Union Bridge had not really even been looked at, and it was time," said Ken Short, the county's historic planner. "There are so many great resources there."

Time was when Van Wensil went to the bank, she'd know everybody there. Now the familiar faces are gone -- and so is the small community she once knew as Elkridge."

Time moves at a different pace in Linthicum. A railroad suburb carved out of rolling farmland outside Baltimore a century ago, the leafy community in northern Anne Arundel County has retained an unhurried, small-town feel even as development, highways and a sprawling airport have crowded in on its borders in the decades since. On April 25, state and local dignitaries assembled at the old Linthicum train station to celebrate the neighborhood's designation as a National Historic Place. It was first included in the National Register of Historic Places in 2006, but community leaders decided to hold off on an official celebration until Linthicum marked its centennial this year.

Time moves at a different pace in Linthicum. A railroad suburb carved out of rolling farmland outside Baltimore a century ago, the leafy community in northern Anne Arundel County has retained an unhurried, small-town feel even as development, highways and a sprawling airport have crowded in on its borders in the decades since. Last Friday, state and local dignitaries assembled at the old Linthicum train station to celebrate the neighborhood's designation as a National Historic Place. It was first included in the National Register of Historic Places in 2006, but community leaders decided to hold off on an official celebration until Linthicum marked its centennial this year.

Set in a neighborhood becoming dotted with new homes, the white building that houses the Freetown Improvement Association looks plain and unremarkable. The building, however, used to be a focal point of a small community of black farmers founded by ex-slaves in the mid-1800s. Freetown Elementary was a two-room schoolhouse when it opened in 1925, funded partly by a philanthropist who sought to provide schools to blacks when segregation and discrimination were standard practice. It had no indoor plumbing, so students had to use outhouses.

A long-simmering feud over what to call the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood that sometimes goes by Pigtown, sometimes by Washington Village and other times by a hyphenated hookup of the two, erupted recently in the unlikeliest of spots. This brawl over authenticity, pride and, of course, pigs overwhelmed an otherwise subdued hearing on - of all things - Pigtown's application to the National Register of Historic Places. Name game Do you have a better name for Pigtown? Submit your suggestion at baltimoresun.

It was supposed to be a patch-and-paint job that would take three weeks in 2003. Instead, it was a major restoration that took seven months. But when the plaster dust cleared, what emerged was a gracious, century-old farmhouse in Harwood, now nominated for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance and place in regional history. In 1892, what was then called Richland was commissioned by Robert and Mary Cheston, a couple born into the landed antebellum gentry of southern Anne Arundel County.

Fells Point is one of Baltimore's oldest communities, but it has never officially been recognized as a city historic district. That would change if local preservationists succeed with a new effort to have Fells Point legally designated the city's 31st historic district, under the purview of Baltimore's Commission for Historic and Architectural Preservation. The Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fells Point is in the early stages of compiling lists of property owners and building support for the designation as a way to protect more buildings from demolition or insensitive alteration.

Baltimore preservation officials have endorsed the creation of the largest historic district in the city -- an area of about 175 blocks containing almost 6,000 significant properties. Dubbed Old West Baltimore, the district is made up of five distinct African-American neighborhoods rich with architectural and cultural significance. The district is one of four that received approval Tuesday night by the city's Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

The small gray house blends into the woods north of Westminster so thoroughly as to belie its singular nature: Modern, with a capital "M." Essentially a rectangular glass box set on big stone piers, the house is transformed once inside looking out. "It's an incredible building in and of itself, and when you consider it's set in the middle of this rural county filled with 19th-century farms and barns, it stands out because it is so `other' than what...

HAMPDEN IS SEEKING recognition on the National Register of Historic Places. And why not? Baltimore's eclectic neighborhood of big-hair hons and fantasyland Christmas lights is already a gem of Americana. Surely John Waters' cult flick Pecker counts for something. Nearly 77,000 sites throughout the nation have won National Register designations, qualifying them for federal tax credits and protection. Nominees must be "associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history," decrees the National Park Service.

Before this summer's train fire, not many people in Baltimore knew the 106-year-old Howard Street Tunnel had been underfoot all this time, let alone that it has a spot on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places. As it turns out, the U.S. Park Service's idea of what is significant does not stop at elegant landmarks such as City Hall and creaky old mansions where somebody famous has lived. The tunnel, known for its innovative engineering, is just one of several out-of-the-ordinary entries.