National Register

Bloomfield Manor will not be among the homes listed on the National Register of Historic Places this year.At a hearing yesterday, officials tabled the nomination of the 18th-century Sykesville residence until February."

Lawyers Hill, an Elkridge neighborhood that used to be a summer retreat for Baltimore City jurists, has been named to the National Register of Historic Places."

For generations, the hexagonal Victorian house on legs has stood in the water as an icon of the Chesapeake Bay, its beacon guiding mariners to safe waters. Though the exterior image of the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse has graced no shortage of tchotchkes, its interior remained fogged in mystery. Until now. Starting today, what experts say is the nation's last intact cottage-style "screw pile" lighthouse still at its original site - it was built over a platform screwed into the sandy bay bottom - is accepting its first visitors.

Selby M. BlackBiography: Age: 59; married with three children; councilman with 14 years' service, chairman of the office building committee; member of the Church of the Brethren and the Lions Club; helps with fire company dinners and fund-raising for the new town office.* Question 1: Whether Union Bridge has its own police force depends on the funding of the Resident Trooper Program. The resident trooper will cost the town a lot less than having its own police force.* Question 2: Yes, I would like to see the town listed on the National Register, in hope of preserving the old part of our town.

Standing amid his $44 million refurbished textile mill, now nearing completion, developer and one-time mayoral candidate David Tufaro observed a bird wading in the Jones Falls nearby. "That's our great blue heron," Tufaro said. Water birds fly up and down the Jones Falls between the two sides of the mill, which straddles the stream. So he insisted that an image of one be included on the rooftop sign that faces Interstate 83, announcing the presence of the commercial-residential complex called Mill No. 1. When residents begin moving into the converted mill early next month, the valley between the Baltimore neighborhoods of Woodberry and Hampden will shift from being a predominantly industrial area to being an extension of the surrounding neighborhoods.

A place on the National Register of Historic Places awaits New Windsor.Carroll's smallest town -- population about 825 -- will join many of its county neighbors on the register, including Union Bridge, Linwood, Sykesville, Taneytown, Uniontown, Westminster and most recently, Lineboro.The Governor's Consulting Committee nominated New Windsor "unanimously and enthusiastically" at a hearing Tuesday in Crownsville and will forward its recommendations to the National Park Service for a final decision.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time in eight years, the income of a typical U.S. household dropped in 1990, and the number of people in poverty rose for the first time in seven years, the Census Bureau reported yesterday.At the same time, the government also estimated that the number of people without health insurance rose by 1.3 million last year."Using all these indicators, economic well-being seems to be worse off," said Dan Weinberg, head of household statistics for the Census Bureau.While the national poverty rate climbed from 12.8 percent to 13.5 percent last year, the bureau estimated, roughly 9.9 percent of Marylanders were living in poverty then.

Carol Hackney, a land preservation activist, has lived on two farms named Cold Saturday Farm in Carroll County -- one is her home on Oakland Road in Eldersburg, and the original was her childhood home a few miles away in Finksburg. Hackney's parents had bought the first Cold Saturday Farm at auction. Her father, H. Hamilton Hackney, was a judge in Baltimore's juvenile court who retired in 1943. He was from Pittsburgh, and her mother, Alice, was from New York City, but they met in Wyoming.

Tuscany-Canterbury, a North Baltimore neighborhood known for its architectural diversity, has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. Much of the credit for the designation goes to Eileen Higham, a psychologist who began to write a book-length history of the community -- the world outside her Tudor-style window -- five years ago. Her research led to the application for historical status. Higham, who has lived with her husband in the neighborhood since 1970, fits the informal profile of the 3,000 residents of this triangular enclave north of the Johns Hopkins University campus, bounded by University Parkway, Charles Street and Linkwood Road: bookish, academic or professional and settled.

THE WEST SIDE of downtown Baltimore appears likely to become Maryland's newest federally designated historic district.After listening to nearly three hours of testimony Tuesday night, Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation voted 4-1 to support the nomination of a 24-block section of downtown to the National Register of Historic Places.As a result of CHAP's action, the nomination will be sent to a state preservation panel, the Governor's Consulting Committee, for consideration.