Sandtown

Baltimore is preparing to tear down more than 800 vacant rowhouses as part of a vast, multimillion-dollar undertaking to revitalize impoverished sections of the inner city.In the most wide-scale rowhouse demolition in over two decades, the city and nonprofit development groups plan to level entire blocks of deserted, deteriorating properties in East and West Baltimore.The first will be torn down in the West Baltimore community of Sandtown-Winchester, possibly as early as summer, pending approval by the Maryland Historical Trust.

The Carter campaign rolled into Sandtown in West Baltimore yesterday, seeking not votes but volunteers to help house the poor.Residents waved from rowhouse windows as former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, walked past boarded-up properties on North Gilmor Street that they will help rebuild in June as volunteers for Habitat for Humanity. The nonprofit, self-help group plans to rehab 100 houses in the blighted Sandtown neighborhood over the next five years."This is the last time you'll see me on this street with a necktie or dress shoes," the 67-year-old Mr. Carter told a friendly crowd on an empty corner lot."

The vacant lot off North Fulton Avenue in Sandtown-Winchester was like many in the city -- a dumping ground for discarded bricks, concrete, paper and wire. A neighborhood junkyard. That was before community activists in the West Baltimore neighborhood hatched an idea: Why not, they asked, convert the eyesore into a park, a place where young and old could barbecue, celebrate birthdays or simply enjoy a rare patch of green? Yesterday, that vision took shape as about 100 volunteers set about to transform the lot into the Bruce Street Park, named after the alley that runs alongside the property.

People dream of leaving here, of escaping the police sirens and the eviction notices and the hopelessness that lives in Sandtown.Yet five years ago Allan Tibbels moved in, uprooted his wife and two daughters from their rancher in Columbia, and made a home in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.He brought something with him: a desire to find homes for others. On this brilliantly sunny morning in June, that implausible dream is coming to life.Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have arrived for a blitz building session that by week's end will mean 10 renovated homes in the area.

Jimmy Carter hammered in the morning, and he hammered in the evening.And if he didn't hammer out justice and love in Sandtown yesterday, he at least put down a subfloor, studded some walls and built part of a deck at a once-vacant rowhouse that will become home to a woman and her three daughters.The former Democratic president and his wife, Rosalynn, came to West Baltimore wearing jeans and carrying a bag of carpenter's tools to work for a day on a Sandtown Habitat for Humanity project to rehab 10 vacant houses this week.

Over the span of two hours late Monday, Baltimore police investigated three shootings, according to the department's Twitter account: •Police reported about 9:30 p.m. that a male was shot at the intersection of East Preston and North Aisquith streets in Oliver. •Another shooting was reported about 10 p.m.: a male in the 4800 block of Liberty Heights Avenue in Gwynn Oak. •About 11:40 p.m., police reported that a man was shot in the 1600 block of Delano Court in Sandtown-Winchester.

She was Miss Sadie to most, a soft-spoken 78-year-old woman from the South who watched the rise and fall of her beloved neighborhood from the back porch of her house on North Gilmor Street. It was here in West Baltimore's Sandtown neighborhood that Sadie Mack ruled over a boisterous house full of seven children, living alone after her husband's death three years ago, save for the frequent visits of her children, 20 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. It was also here that an unknown assailant entered her apartment and strangled her last week, police said.

James W. Rouse pioneered the enclosed shopping mall, built Columbia, one of the nation's largest new towns, and found ways to revitalize decaying downtowns with such developments Baltimore's Harborplace.But the 81-year-old developer says he's now doing "by far the most important work" of his life: Trying to create affordable housing and functional neighborhoods for the poor.The Enterprise Foundation, a nonprofit agency to provide affordable housing, founded by Mr. Rouse and his wife, Patty, in 1982, aims to establish a national model by transforming West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood.

On a block in Sandtown-Winchester cooled by a canopy of sycamores, Mary Day-Smith fills brick planters with pansies, marigolds, coleus, petunias, salvia and begonias. Mary, 10, has grown very attached to the flowers and vegetable plants that have transformed her West Baltimore neighborhood into a verdant oasis. "It's like our own children; that's how fun it is to plant flowers," says Mary, who is working with other kids under the guidance of neighbors Justine Bonner and Barbara Love. Soon, the kids will follow another elder, Rudolph Boston, around the corner to a large community garden plot where he will show them how to sow peanuts.

The Rev. Mark R. Gornik has always stood out on the streets of Sandtown-Winchester.He is white and has freckles. He was raised in the affluent suburb of Ruxton and graduated from Towson High School. He favors wire-rimmed glasses and conservative ties. At 34, he looks a bit like a young George Bush.Nine years ago, as a young Presbyterian seminarian, Mr. Gornik moved to Sandtown, a nearly all-black West Baltimore neighborhood. It was among the city's poorest and most drug-riddled, a place where the streets were littered with broken glass and broken lives.