Paul Street

ST. PAUL ST. The large white letters are a proclamation. The huge green sign on which they are printed swings on a wire across the street. It looks as if it's announcing a circus.There's a parking lot. Here are houses turned into commercial and medical offices. ST. PAUL ST.But not my St. Paul Street. My St. Paul Street had its name imprinted beneath the soft light in the glass globe atop the corner lamppost. It was a street of dreams.The houses were three stories high -- distinctive in that each was a duplicate of the other.

Roads at Mount Vernon Place in and around this weekend's FlowerMart event will be closed from Thursday at 3 p.m. to Saturday at 11 p.m., FlowerMart officials said on their website. The event is held at Mount Vernon Place, at the Washington Monument, and at the four adjoining blocks in each direction. Traffic will be closed on all four sides of the Washington Monument. Madison Street and Monument Street (both westbound) will be closed where they intersect St. Paul Street and Cathedral Street (both southbound)

SIGHS OF RELIEF certainly seemed appropriate after the decision Tuesday that the Enoch Pratt Free Library may close its St. Paul Street branch. Although -- after eight hours of testimony in Baltimore City Circuit Court -- louder expressions, even by librarians, might have been excused.Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan was patient. But his ruling was based on what was apparent before the plaintiffs began their long argument. Pratt administrators have the authority to make decisions about buildings, equipment, books and personnel based on their budget.

I showed up at the door of a Greenway home I've admired for years. Charles B. Reeves — who goes by "Sprat" — greeted me with his enthusiastic welcome: "Delighted. " For the next 90 minutes I tried to take notes about his version of the history of North Baltimore's Guilford. "I was born in 1923. Huzzah!" said the neighborhood patriarch. I posed a few questions about Guilford's centennial, an event that is being celebrated Sunday with a house and garden tour. Who else but this retired Venable attorney, fox hunter and Austrian skier could tell me where the bodies were buried?

Two months short of its 101st birthday, the small public library on St. Paul Street that Enoch Pratt himself saw being built was closed yesterday afternoon, to the dismay of 50 Charles Villagers adorned with black armbands who gathered to mourn theoccasion."

A stretch of Charles Street that was damaged and closed after a 90-year-old water main broke beneath it and sent torrents of water downhill two weeks ago was reopened Wednesday night, according to Baltimore's Department of Public Works. The stretch reopened - "just in time for holiday travel," the city said - about 8:20 p.m., after being closed between W. North Avenue and W. 21st Street in the city's Charles North neighborhood Nov. 7. All sidewalks, road surfaces and utilities on the street damaged by the break are also fixed, the department said.

I WAS GROWING more than a little depressed about my view of old Baltimore this week. For starters, two blocks of St. Paul Street not far from my home were bound up in police tape because of a shooting near Lafayette Avenue. Earlier that morning I left my house to find three Northern District police officers emerging from my side yard. They were chasing down a tip that a prowler was afoot in the neighborhood -- this several weeks after the arrest of the neighborhood burglar, apprehended three doors north of my front door.

YOUR INTREPID one may be wrong, but we've always thought that you make a right turn from the right lane and a left turn from the left lane. Correct?So why do motorists who travel in the lane next to the right lane or in the lane next to the left lane on St. Paul Street feel it perfectly legit to turn from those lanes at North Avenue?We realize that it's easier to make a turn when you're farther from the curb, but, fellow motorists, cars do travel in the right and left lanes.Jackie Cummings, who lives in Charles Village and works downtown, brought the matter to our attention.

I showed up at the door of a Greenway home I've admired for years. Charles B. Reeves — who goes by "Sprat" — greeted me with his enthusiastic welcome: "Delighted. " For the next 90 minutes I tried to take notes about his version of the history of North Baltimore's Guilford. "I was born in 1923. Huzzah!" said the neighborhood patriarch. I posed a few questions about Guilford's centennial, an event that is being celebrated Sunday with a house and garden tour. Who else but this retired Venable attorney, fox hunter and Austrian skier could tell me where the bodies were buried?

Stepping into 2100 St. Paul St. is like stepping back into Victorian Baltimore, redrawn by man with a passion for restoring self-playing organs and exceptionally large clocks. It's a tinkerer's treasure that ticks. Durward R. Center, 55, has spent three decades restoring the house and adding three tower clocks - two visible from 21st Street and one on the St. Paul Street side. The 220-pound clock weights, the size of gallon paint cans, hang in odd places such as in the stairwell from the third floor down to the first.

Dr. Franz Xavier Groll, a retired physician who lived and practiced on Eager Street in downtown Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, died of pulmonary thrombosis April 2 at Keswick Multi-Care Center. He was 95. Born in Aalen in Germany, he was the son of a forest manager who was also a gamekeeper. He grew up at the time of Adolf Hitler's rise and was a member of the German Youth Movement. He studied medicine at the Ruprecht-Karl University of Heidelberg and served in the German army as a combat physician attached to a Panzer division.

The Obama administration is expected to propose new rules today that would slash the amount of sulfur in gasoline, one of the most significant steps the administration can take this term toward cutting air pollution, people with knowledge of the announcement said. The new rules would bring the rest of the country's sulfur standards in line with California's gasoline program. The oil industry has warned of resulting price increases and has been joined by members of Congress from oil states in criticizing the standards as onerous with few health benefits in return.

A stretch of Charles Street that was damaged and closed after a 90-year-old water main broke beneath it and sent torrents of water downhill two weeks ago was reopened Wednesday night, according to Baltimore's Department of Public Works. The stretch reopened - "just in time for holiday travel," the city said - about 8:20 p.m., after being closed between W. North Avenue and W. 21st Street in the city's Charles North neighborhood Nov. 7. All sidewalks, road surfaces and utilities on the street damaged by the break are also fixed, the department said.

The following parking restrictions will be implemented on Saturday, October 15, 2011: ∙ Linwood Avenue from Eastern Avenue to Fayette Street 12:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. ∙ Eastern Avenue (north side) from Linwood to Patterson Park Avenues 12:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. ∙ Boston Street (north side) from Aliceanna Street to Lakewood Avenue 2:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. ∙ Lancaster Street from President Street to Central Avenue 4:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. ∙ 33rd Street from Hillen Road to Guilford Avenue 4:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. ∙ Eutaw Street (west side)

The problem: "No Stopping" signs restrict parking during morning and evening rush hours for a section of one block of St. Paul Street in Mount Vernon. The back story: This week, Watchdog solves a Mount Vernon mystery, but it turns out the answer was less mysterious than expected. The west side of St. Paul Street used to have "No Stopping" signs that restricted parking during the morning and evening rush. Most of those signs were eventually removed as part of negotiations with the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association about the location of a new homeless shelter on Fallsway.

The pickup truck being sought by police in the hit-and-run death of a Johns Hopkins University student was found parked on a Northwest Baltimore street, and police continue to seek its driver, a city police spokesman said Sunday. Agent Donny Moses, the spokesman, said the white Ford F-250 with Maryland tag 94W412 was found legally parked in the 3800 block of Egerton Road in Ashburton about midnight Saturday after residents there recognized the truck from news accounts of the student's death and called police.

FIRE* Hampstead: Hampstead responded to investigate the report of a fire alarm sounding on St. Paul Street at 10:16 p.m. Tuesday. They were out 48 minutes.

On October 23, 2007 Jeanette Memorial Services will be held at a later date. Memorials may be made to Lovely Lane UMC, 2200 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. www.ElineFuneralHome.com

My curiosity led me to walk a few blocks from my front door and ask just what was happening at the old Federal Land Bank building on St. Paul Street. This elegant 1923 limestone structure, vacant for years, was obviously being thoroughly renovated, but there was no posted notice giving details or a completion date. I knew of no media hype about it, either. I found an opening in a construction fence at 24th Street, sidestepped piles of bathroom tiles and other construction materials and supply bins, and asked the workers.

A huge water main break caused extensive flooding in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore early yesterday. Several residences and businesses lost water service or had low pressure, and a city official said it could be two days before the area returns to normal. The rupture, which occurred about 4 a.m. in the middle of the 100 block of E. Madison St., at Hargrove Alley, turned city streets into fast-rushing streams carrying sand, mud, rocks and chunks of asphalt. The city's Office of Emergency Management set up a command post to coordinate work by the city Department of Public Works, the Fire Department and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. as city officials expressed concern about the condition of electrical lines, natural gas pipes and a potential collapse of the street, said Kurt Kocher, a public works spokesman.