Staircase

NEW YORK -- 47th Street Photo, a store famous for gruff salesmen and great prices, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday citing a tough lender and a tough economy but vowed to keep selling.The store, named after its location in the midst of the city's diamond district, was founded in 1969 and deftly made the transition from expensive professional cameras to user-friendly automatics, to stereos, computers, answering machines, calculators, televisions, camcorders and an unending array of gadgets.

It began as a reverent love affair. For Guy Thomas, it would be five long years of surreptitious detours and wishful sighs before he could call the shapely Queen Anne Victorian in Reservoir Hill his own. Adorned with castle-like turrets and curvy balconies, the house juts out like a proud queen reigning over a rowhouse-dotted Baltimore skyline. A white-trimmed porch embraces the front of the house, which is centered on a seven-bend staircase sweeping through four floors that include 11 bedrooms and 10 1/2 baths.

NEW YORK -- 47th Street Photo, a store famous for gruff salesmen and great prices, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.The store, named after its location in the midst of the city's diamond district, was founded in 1969 and deftly made the transition from expensive professional cameras to user-friendly automatics, to stereos, computers, answering machines, calculators, televisions, camcorders and an unending array of gadgets.Until recently housed in a dingy second-floor location, the store's legendarily good prices were a magnet for customers from around the world who would squeeze up a narrow staircase to stand in crowds five rows deep, sandwiched between scuffed counters and half-filled cases.

Baltimore has its share of lively nightspots, but only a handful where the vibe is so mod, so surreal, that you're transported the minute you pass the velvet rope and hit the door. Club one at 300 E. Saratoga St fits the bill in more ways than, well, one. It's the kind of place clearly driven by the pleasure principle. The decor is fabulous, the staff and security courteous, and the DJs so hot, they keep things shaking like a quake with house, hip-hop and trip-hop. Then there's the clientele: a mix of ethnicities, folks in their 20s to 40s and plenty of "beautiful people."

In 1877, in the city of Holy Faith - Santa Fe capital of the U.S. territory of New Mexico, the Sisters of Loretto unveiled a miracle.They had come here some 20 years before at the behest of the energetic young Bishop Jean Baptist Lamy to establish a school for girls; and they had done so. But when their school's chapel was near completion, a flaw in the design became evident: There was no space for a staircase to the choir loft.So the nuns prayed to St. Joseph, patron saint of carpenters, in a nine-day novena.

Few eras in American history stir imaginations or passions as the memory of the antebellum South does. This period, epitomized by the white-columned manor house at the center of plantation life, has been idealized and castigated for the graciousness and arrogance, the gentility and cruelty which it represented.Visitors to Virginia don't need to rely on imagination alone to envision life on these legendary estates, but can tour "Plantation Country," which boasts some of the oldest and grandest plantation homes in the South.

One of the oldest surviving buildings in Ellicott City is passing into new hands. Academy Financial, a Towson-based financial planning firm, will soon move into the George Ellicott House, built in 1789 by a son of one of the founders of the town then known as Ellicott Mills. "It's such a beautiful historical building," said Michael Ward, a partner in the firm. "They're not making any more of them. They're one of a kind." The three-story stone house, one of many that once lined the banks of the Patapsco River in what is now Baltimore County, is remarkable in part because it exists at all. Another stone home built next door for George Ellicott's brother, Jonathan, was destroyed by flooding from Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972.

From 1901 until 1998, the Margaret J. Bennett House was a quaint and distinctly Victorian institution near the heart of Baltimore's Mount Vernon cultural district - a boarding house for single young women who needed a safe place to live while they attended college or worked downtown. After closing because of financial problems, the elegant apartment building at 14 E. Franklin St. reopened yesterday with a different focus: as federally funded housing for 29 recovering drug addicts and women with mental illnesses.

Long ago, Patti and Tag Cutchis knew they had the perfect floor plan in hand for their dream home. However, it took them eight years to find the right property on which to build.But once the couple -- he is a biomedical and electrical engineer, she sells computer software -- located their 3-acre site in Howard County's Highland Oaks development, the building process -- from breaking ground to moving in -- took about seven months. Their cedar house was constructed by McLean, Va., builder Patton and Rucks on land that originally was part of a 33-acre retreat for a Washington family.

What a bunch of rule-breakers those Seton High girls are. Back at the school Saturday, they tromped up and down the once off-limits golden stairs. They ate muffins and drank lemonade in the chapel. And then - in the hallways where talking was forbidden and students had to walk single-file between classes - Mary Sue Frankowski broke into song. "We are the girls of Seton High / You hear so much about," Frankowski sang, stomping her feet to keep time as others joined in the ruckus. "The people stop and stare at us / Whenever we go out."