Rowhouse

Beds of well-tended, hot-pink petunias brighten the Southeast Baltimore sidewalk across the street from a rowhouse where no one lives, with chipping red paint and a sheet of wood covering its doorway. North Port Street in McElderry Park, where two city police officers were shot Monday evening, is like so many places in Baltimore - a mix of old brick rowhouses with cheap rents and gleaming rehabbed homes selling for six figures, where the working-class residents who have lived there for decades share a block with their newer, more affluent neighbors.

Henry Hager, the husband of former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager, is entitled to a $296 property tax discount on his South Baltimore rowhouse for the current tax year, the state Department of Assessments and Taxation says. An article Tuesday in The Baltimore Sun questioned the validity of Hager's homestead credit for the year that began July 1. The credit program is supposed to be available only to owner-occupants, and Hager has rented out the house since August - nearly the entire tax year.

Authorities have identified a woman who died Tuesday night after a fire broke out in her rowhouse in the Mill Hill section of Southwest Baltimore. Barbara Green, 48, was the city's 24th fire fatality this year; the city recorded 19 fire deaths during the same period last year, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a department spokesman. Reported about 8 p.m. in the 2500 block of Dulaney St., the fire was confined to a burning mattress in a second-floor bedroom of an end-of-group dwelling and was quickly extinguished.

It's been about a year and a half since former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager and her husband, Henry, reportedly left their South Baltimore rowhouse for new digs in Manhattan. But Henry Hager still owns the Baltimore place — and the couple still enjoys a property tax break that's supposed to be available only to owner-occupants. The Hagers' tax credit this year is small: a $296.40 discount on a tax bill approaching $9,000. Still, why would they get any break as absentee owners?

A woman believed to be about 50 years old died Tuesday night at an area hospital after a fire broke out in the bedroom of her rowhouse in the Mill Hill section of Southwest Baltimore, said a city Fire Department spokesman. Her name was withheld pending notification of family members, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, the spokesman. She was the city's 24th fire fatality this year, compared with 19 for the same time last year, Cartwright said. Reported at 7:59 p.m. in the 2500 block of Dulaney St., the fire was confined to a burning mattress in a second-floor bedroom of an end-of-group dwelling and was quickly extinguished.

A single-alarm fire late Wednesday killed four people, whose bodies were found in separate rooms inside an East Baltimore rowhouse. Their identities, genders and relationships were not immediately available, but at least one was elderly, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. Cartwright said the incident is the city's first fatal fire this year and that its cause is under investigation. One person was found in a second-floor front room, another in the rear of the house, and the third and fourth in other sections of the house in the 1600 block of E. Oliver St. Reported at 11:10 p.m., the blaze filled much of the dwelling with smoke before firefighters were able to beat back flames.

Here's what happened when two mountain bikes were taken from the garage in South Baltimore of a former president's daughter: A police officer responded, but so did a detective, a sergeant, a lieutenant, a major and a lieutenant colonel. The police commissioner — who had earlier criticized his own cops for not informing command when a television sports personality was attacked — was quickly called. But a carful of police brass wasn't the only thing that Jenna Bush Hager and her husband got when at least one burglar broke into their garage in back of their South Charles Street rowhouse on Friday.

Three people were injured when the awnings of adjoining rowhouses crumbled in Northwest Baltimore on Friday, one in s string of collapses across the region as the weight of massive snowfalls exacted a toll on vulnerable buildings. An antique store in downtown Ellicott City suffered damage, and barns in Anne Arundel and Harford counties fell, killing some animals. On Oakford Road in Baltimore, Marlow Hill, 66, surveyed the twisted metal on the steps of his home and pointed to the blood left when his wife, daughter and brother-in-law were trapped beneath the awnings.

Does familiarity breed contempt or community?If you live in a rowhouse, you know that the answer is a little bit of both. The Sun would like to hear your tales of rowhouse living. Does your neighbor refuse to take his privacy fence down even though it doesn't conform to code? Does your other neighbor's stove vent pump recycled steak fumes into your house?Or do you live in harmony with your neighbors, using the same color trim on your adjoining abodes, mowing each other's lawns and merging postage-stamp backyards into an urban oasis?

Ann Roberts' East Baltimore rowhouse is older than she is, but not by much. Her narrow brick home on East Preston Street has been around, she said, "for a hundred years-plus." Roberts is 90 years old. She is still able to negotiate the stairs in her four-story home and takes pride in keeping her residence in shape. "This is a tough house," she said as she launched into a story of how some years ago it had withstood being hit by a tractor-trailer. "These boys, 16 and 14, stole the truck, were chased by the police, then lost control and came right in the living room."

As I try to recall the moment when my concern really set in, I remember walking into a dark, narrow hallway inside the front door of a brick rowhouse in Pigtown. My real estate agent, Clay Tucker, scanned the walls for the light switch. When he found it, I almost wished he hadn't. We passed by the dingy white, peeling walls to the winding staircase for the second-floor, $975-a-month apartment. I scanned the no-frills place and compared the space to my house in South Carolina. Our mortgage is $1,040 a month for a three bedroom, one-and-a-half bath ranch house on a quarter acre with granite countertops, a fenced-in yard dotted with big shade trees and a car port.

When a Baltimore couple combined two Federal Hill rowhouses into a double-wide home a few years ago, the state's tax assessors made a mistake: Instead of factoring in the values of two addresses, they set the new home's value as if it were still just a single rowhouse. As a result of the state's mistake, which officials acknolwedge, the city issued annual tax bills the past three years that were thousands of dollars lower than they should have been. On Friday, after the state recalculated the value going back to 2009, Marci De Vries learned just how much in back taxes she and her husband will owe on the South Hanover Street property: $7,585.

Often when an old home is in the final stages of an interior renovation, the grandeur of new molding, flooring and light fixtures stands out like a masterfully worked canvas awaiting the addition of the primary subject. Such is the story unfolding behind the new windows of the Alice and Mike Gosse's circa 1920 East Baltimore rowhouse, where the scarcity of furniture draws full attention to the quality of the detailed work completed. Just inside the front door, off a narrow hall, the entire first floor is open, extending little more than 15 feet wide and 65 feet long to the back wall of the home.

A Baltimore police officer who sources say had the gun used in the accidental fatal shooting of a 13-year-old girl has been suspended and is now part of a criminal investigation in which two children already have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. The sources have said the .22 caliber long rifle that killed Monae Turnage inside her Darley Avenue rowhouse was found in the officer's personal vehicle. That revelation adds to an already horrific police account of the children dragging her body out of a rowhouse and hiding it under trash bags in a back yard until the victim's brother found it 19 hours later.

A 38-year-old man pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing his former girlfriend's new boyfriend in a Southwest Baltimore rowhouse, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison, with all but 45 years suspended. Dwayne Thompson, of the 500 block of Bloom St. in West Baltimore, was convicted Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court of first-degree murder and a handgun violation. The Baltimore State's Attorney's Office said he shot 28-year-old Alvin B. Moore III several times in the chest, back and left arm. The shooting occurred about 11 a.m. on May 30, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend 2010, inside a rowhouse in the 2100 block of Ramsay St. It was one of three killings that day in Southwest Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge neighborhood, and one of eight shooting deaths across the city over the three-day holiday.

A Baltimore firefighter was injured Sunday evening battling a blaze in a vacant, two-story rowhouse at 304 E. 24th St. in north Baltimore's Barclay neighborhood. According to the Baltimore Firefighters Union, the fire was reported around 8:08 p.m. and consumed most of the structure's second floor. The firefighter was injured after he fell through a hole in the first floor of the building into the basement, according to a city fire department spokesman and union representatives.

Mary Hines spent three decades in the city school system, first as a teacher, then as a principal. Even after she retired in 1981, she didn't stop instructing others, spending her final years heading up adult Bible study classes at her church. "She had a passion for education," said the Rev. Albert L. Davis Sr., her minister at Eastern United Methodist Church in East Baltimore. Hines, 84, died Thursday morning in the rowhouse she had lived in much of her life when a fire swept through the front rooms.

A Baltimore firefighter was injured Sunday evening battling a blaze in a vacant, two-story rowhouse at 304 E. 24th St. in north Baltimore's Barclay neighborhood. According to the Baltimore Firefighters Union, the fire was reported around 8:08 p.m. and consumed most of the structure's second floor. The firefighter was injured after he fell through a hole in the first floor of the building into the basement, according to a city fire department spokesman and union representatives.

Patrick Dahlgren is busy. The Baltimore native is helping to launch a beer-themed restaurant near Harbor East and is about to revamp his own restaurant in Federal Hill. "I've always been around good food," Dahlgren said. "I grew up running around Sisson's. " Dahlgren's stepfather is Hugh Sisson, who established Baltimore's first microbrewery in Federal Hill back in 1989 and went on to found Clipper City Brewing Co., producers of Heavy Seas beers. Dahlgren is part of the team behind the eagerly awaited Heavy Seas Alehouse, scheduled for a Feb. 15 opening in the Old Holland Tack Factory.

A woman and child were injured Friday morning in a house fire in Northeast Baltimore, authorities said. The fire broke out at a two-story rowhome around 4 a.m. on the 3100 block of Ravenwood Ave., city fire department spokesman Kevin Cartwright said. The fire was under control around 4:48 a.m., he said. There was heavy smoke and fire on the home's first floor. The child was taken to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center for evaluation, he said. The woman was taken to the burn center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center to be treated for smoke inhalation and burns.