Structure

The fight over construction of a 62-foot-tall bubble over a popular Fells Point bar was settled last night when the city Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals cleared the way for the structure to go up this month.By a 4-1 vote, the board gave owner Damian Bohager the go-ahead to build the "Bohdome" over Bohager's Parrot Island nightclub at Eden and Aliceanna streets.The vote further divided a neighborhood split over the issue.Bohager said he was "ecstatic" about the board's action. "I got what I thought we were allowed to do," he said.

He walked backward -- as did a throng of about 200 others -- happy in the moment and thinking of the past.For Luis Goicochea, the colorful procession that swayed through East Baltimore yesterday afternoon brought back his youth. He thought of home, Peru, which holds a monthlong celebration every October that honors the mysteries of a mural.Yesterday, for the first time, the growing Hispanic community in Baltimore reached back to a centuries-old tradition of Roman Catholics in Peru, putting on a full-scale procession honoring the Lord of the Miracles mural.

In the drug-troubled East Baltimore neighborhood locals call "Zombieland," residents trudge by 2417 E. Biddle St., a condemned rowhouse with a Formstone facade, assuming the boarded-up building is the least of their worries.On weekdays, scores of grade-school children pass the building on their way to and from Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School around the corner. They sometimes play in the dirt and rubble surrounding it. On Sundays, about 100 worshipers skirt the property on their way to service across the street at Bibleway Missionary Baptist Church.

City's Reservoir Hill bounds with charm as it springs to lifeAll of us who live in Reservoir Hill want to thank you for your editorial ("Druid Hill Park's comeback," May 26).It was a most positive piece and filled with encouragement. The many vacant homes here are now being bought and restored to their original luster.We are busy with Project HOPE (Housing and Outreach through Presbyterian Enterprises), a revitalization plan for Reservoir Hill. The Reservoir Hill Improvement Council helps to provide insight into the community and listens to all of our opinions.

Annapolis officials who have spent eight months since a devastating downtown fire fighting to preserve a fire-damaged, historic Main Street building have reluctantly ordered its demolition.In a letter to building owner Ronald B. Hollander yesterday morning, the city criticized him for failing to protect and preserve the two-story brick facade, which "suffered substantial further deterioration" during intense thunderstorms Monday."The structure, as braced, now may possibly cause injury to the public and to nearby property" so it must be razed within 72 hours, the letter stated.

ANYONE WHO lives in an older rowhouse had to shudder at the collapse of a wall recently in Baltimore that left seven people injured.Alas, such a collapse is not a freak accident -- the wonder is it doesn't happen more often. The problem is that rowhouses are connected; from the outside walls of the end units all the way through, the row is one structure. Each unit gets its stability from being part of the row, from being one layer in a rigid horizontal sandwich.Some rowhouses, especially the older ones, are separated by a party wall only a single brick thick -- that's just 4 inches.

State fire investigators are still probing a suspicious fire early Saturday morning at the former St. Mary's College seminary in Ilchester, said Allen L. Ward, deputy chief state fire marshal.The five-story building has been abandoned since the late 1970s, when it was used as a seminary and retreat for priests of the Redemptorist order.The flames -- which devoured the structure -- were raging when firefighters arrived about 5 a.m., Ward said. Ward said investigators should know the cause of the blaze Thursday or Friday.

USAir Group Inc. reported yesterday its second profitable year since 1988, with the $263.4 million in earnings more than doubling the previous year's.But the Arlington, Va.-based company, which is currently negotiating with its unions, continued to hammer away on its inability to compete with low-cost carriers without significant cost cuts."For all the superlatives we can report in our operations and our financial results, there is one number we are reporting that remains very troubling," said USAir Chairman and CEO Stephen M. Wolf.

Practical or frivolous, a simple arch over a garden gate or an elaborate tunnel to nowhere in particular, the arbor has had a role in the garden for centuries. Arbors frame views, define spaces, give a garden a vertical lift and play endless tricks with light and shadows. They add structure to the landscape, merge art and nature, and showcase the gardener's individual style.The forms of arbors are many. They may be flat-topped or arched, rustic or urbane, exotic or thoroughly home-grown, broad enough for a bench or not much wider than a wheelbarrow.

The first weeks of digging stirred up more questions than answers as a team of archaeologists and Westminster workers began the restoration of the 19th-century Fenby Farm lime kilns.Amateur archaeologists can join the dig Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with an Aug. 2 rain date. Squares of earth will be sifted for artifacts, said Bob Bodnar of Emmitsburg, a Walkersville Middle School history teacher who is working at the site."A lot of middle-schoolers from the neighborhood are coming by, and they're interested in coming on volunteer day," he said.

When it comes to what people put on the roofs of their houses, ugly is in the eye of the beholder. Some people love rooftop decks. Some people think they're eyesores that destroy the historic nature of Baltimore's waterfront communities. (And some people love their rooftop decks and hate everybody else's.) But what if the structure you're trying to put on top of your house has a purpose more noble than providing a good place to drink beer and watch the fireworks? That question is dividing Federal Hill over the effort by one homeowner, Marsha Vitow, to install a small wind turbine on top of her rowhouse.

In December 1986, Patricia Schooley and her husband, Dave, were looking to purchase a very old house on 5 to 10 acres somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region. What they found and settled on in less than 10 days is the oldest dated farmhouse in Washington County. The rambling stone structure sits on 120 acres off the back roads of Hagerstown. On a warm midwinter afternoon, peacocks strut alongside Royal Palm turkeys under the watchful eyes of a dozen barn cats and a guard dog. At the end of a long driveway, Old Forge Farm is set amid several outbuildings, including a stone forge and red barns, that form a compound in a semicircle around the main house.

To its opponents, the proposed condominium project on the Bowleys Quarters waterfront would be a monstrosity, a blight on the landscape the size of the playing field at M&T Bank Stadium. Its supporters, many of them of retirement age, enjoy the prospect of moving into the 36-unit building and enjoying the view of Galloway Creek - and leaving the yardwork to others. A public hearing last night on the subject, held by the Baltimore County Planning Board, was a standing-room-only affair and amply illustrated the divergent views of residents of the eastern county peninsula.

Ten years ago, St. Anthanasius Chapel in Curtis Bay appeared destined for the wrecking ball, after the Archdiocese of Baltimore closed it out of concerns that the 1891 building was structurally unsound. But today, the chapel is once again a meeting place for the parish and surrounding community after a new pastor, Father Robert DiMattei, arrived in 2005 and decided it could be restored for continued use. The tiny, Gothic Revival building was renovated inside and out, including its exterior masonry and colored glass windows, and stands as a landmark for the Curtis Bay community.

April is a propulsive force in the north. Snow melts and the flotsam of spring appears: a child's mitten in the mud, a soap bubble ring; the lilac bushes bud, a light haze of green shows in the tops of trees. The cry of the lawn mower is heard. Mating begins, females ruffling their tail feathers, young males biting the alpha male in the rump to drive him off. And soon, suddenly, all of nature will open up, leaf out, burgeon, thrive and prosper. And then in the midst of it comes the anniversary of the massacre at Virginia Tech, with "survivors" talking on NPR about their pain and the healing process and how vulnerable they feel and how their lives have been affected.

Opening the planned National Sailing Hall of Fame in a city nicknamed "America's Sailing Capital" should be smooth sailing. But the state's recommendation yesterday to demolish or move a 19th-century home on the Annapolis waterfront to make way for the estimated $20 million facility sets up a potential battle between two groups closely identified with the Colonial capital: sailors and historic preservationists. The recommendation, released yesterday in a report commissioned by the Maryland Stadium Authority, said trying to incorporate the modest home, one of the original pieces of the waterfront streetscape and now used as office space for the Department of Natural Resources Police, would be "too challenging."

The paint was wet on the studio walls in the old Emerson Drug Co.'s Bromo Seltzer tower this week when I dropped by on a tour of a rapidly changing part of Baltimore's downtown. In the final days of the summer of 2007, I experienced the tremendous energy in the general neighborhood of the Hippodrome, the University of Maryland and Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The Bromo Tower, a Baltimore landmark at Lombard and Eutaw, was just one of the several addresses I've known all my life that are now in the process of transformation.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's call for public hearings to explore the relationship between Constellation Energy Group and its subsidiary, Baltimore Gas and Electric, may strike some as a purely political exercise. After all, it's not as if the genie of deregulation is headed back into the bottle. It's doubtful any new information can be gleaned that will result in the company's breakup or rebates for customers. But BGE's sticker-shocked 1.1 million customers deserve to know more about the utility's relationship with its parent and whether there are steps the Maryland Public Service Commission or General Assembly could take, if not to bring down electricity rates, at least to lessen future rate increases.

As visitors near Duke of Gloucester Street in Annapolis, they can't help but notice the steeple of St. Anne's Episcopal Church. Jutting high above the surrounding buildings, the steeple houses the town clock. But what lies below the clock records time dating back more than 300 years. St. Anne's was one of 30 parishes established in 1692 under the auspices of the Church of England. Test of time Unlike the main structure, the parish has sustained the test of time. With about 1,500 members, St. Anne's is an important part of the early history of Annapolis.

As reported April 10, 1967, in The Sun: A new building was dedicated in Elkridge to replace the 128-year-old First Baptist Church that was destroyed by a two-alarm fire set by an arsonist 19 months ago. Predominantly white church-goers and residents of the Howard County community had rallied to help the Negro congregation of the First Baptist Church build its new structure. A predominantly white Episcopal church offered financial assistance and provided a temporary place for the Baptist congregation to hold services.