Washington Square

After more than six years of planning, a nonprofit development group will break ground Thursday at 10:30 a.m. for Washington Square, a 59-unit housing project on the last major building parcel in Baltimore's Washington Hill community.The event is a sign that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has agreed to allocate more than $1 million in federal funds to help pay for the $4.3 million project.The city Housing Department asked HUD more than a year ago for permission to shift $1,003,223 left over from another development in East Baltimore to help fund the Washington Square project.

Get ready to roll. Baltimore and Washington's fleets of food trucks are squaring off again. Some 40 trucks, 20 from each city, are expected to attend the second Taste of Two Cities event on June 1, which is relocating from Westport Waterfront to Rash Field. Food trucks from Baltimore and Washington will compete in several categories. An overall winner will be presented the Mayor's Cup Trophy by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who performed the same honors at the event's premier edition, when Baltimore's Gypsy Queen was selected the best by a panel of judges.

BettyJean Murphy and Elinor Bacon have been selected to serve as development consultants and construction managers for Washington Square, a $4.3 million, 59-unit affordable housing project in the Washington Hill section of East Baltimore.Their joint venture, the Bacon-Murphy Partnership, was selected over eight other groups considered to manage the project for the Washington Hill Development Corp., a non-profit citizens' group that initiated it.Washington Square involves construction of new and rehabilitated town houses and condominiums for low- and moderate-income residents on four city-owned parcels within the Washington Hill urban renewal area, established in 1971.

I don't recommend bursting into tears on a sidewalk bordering Washington Square in New York. But as far as public spaces go, it appears to be one where the emotionally overwrought can easily blend in. At any given moment of the day or night, the park houses a number of people who seem to be living on the ragged edge. And last Sunday, for a brief moment, I was one of them. This past weekend, my husband and I drove our second child to college. So you'd think we would know the drill and be prepared.

"Washington Square," Agnieszka Holland's adaptation of the Henry James novel, starts out with a long, lovely crane shot that sends a tip-toeing camera from a jewel-like park, through a townhouse window, up a narrow staircase and into a bedchamber. It's an exhilarating beginning, but one that belies what is to come, which is a series of stale, static scenes that capture the details of 19th-century life but endow the characters with about as much energy as wax fruit.This lavishly appointed, well-upholstered and largely lifeless production suffers from that all-too-common ailment of films with earnest aspirations.

It is easy to be dismissive about the current ambitious planning efforts to revitalize the neighborhoods around Johns Hopkins Hospital. Yet revitalization can be done, block by block. An example half a mile south of the hospital proves it.We are referring to Washington Square, a $5 million redevelopment project around East Baltimore and Eden Streets that is transforming several blocks of vacant and crumbling houses into 59 well-designed and attractive townhouses and condo units priced from $50,000 to $92,000.

Put your sculpture in an art gallery and how any people see it in a day? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? Put your sculpture in a public space and thousands of people walk past it every day. But how many actually see it?That question is occasioned by an exhibit called "Near the Turn of a Century: Regional Rinehart Sculpture," now at the Washington office and retail complex called Washington Square. Located at busy Connecticut Avenue and L Street in Northwest, the building has an atrium on the corner with three floors of shops and eating places, a kind of mini-version of the Gallery at Harborplace.

The scene comes midway through "Washington Square": A fresh-faced French singer performs an art song in a Parisian bookstore. She sings of youthful longing, of the desire for recognition and fulfillment. She is also giving voice to the dreams of Marissa Anna Muro, lifetime resident of Highlandtown and 1997 graduate of Peabody Conservatory.Muro, 23, is one of several Baltimoreans with a highly visible on-screen role in this 19th-century drama. After director Agnieszka Holland chose her from a group of local opera students in the spring of 1996, Muro spent a day performing her song on the set in the Peabody Library and two days recording it in Los Angeles.

Baltimore County developer Norman Rockwell, a partner in the $90 million Lighthouse Point condominium complex in Canton, appears to be the latest local builder to run into financial problems related to his real estate holdings.Maryland National Bank has initiated foreclosure proceedings against two partnerships that Mr. Rockwell heads and has hired Atlantic Auctions to sell five of his smaller projects in a series of auctions early next month.The Lighthouse Point property, a nine-acre parcel in the 2700 block of Boston Street, is not involved in the foreclosure proceedings or the auctions.

Lured by the prospect of bargains near Baltimore's "Gold Coast," hundreds of bidders and gawkers descended on Fells Point yesterday to vie for two dozen new town houses that went on the auction block after Maryland National Bank foreclosed on their builder.Winning bids ranged from $75,000 to $98,500 for two- and three-story Washington Square town houses, which were originally priced from $135,000 to $145,000. All 24 were gone in less than an hour.And judging by the mob scene, the auctioneers could have sold five times as many houses if they had them.

ASHBURN, Va. -- Their career paths have collided before. Byron Leftwich's arrival as the first-round draft choice of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2003 came as Mark Brunell's nine-year run as the team's starting quarterback was beginning to unravel because of mounting injuries and haggling over Brunell's contract. Brunell's elbow injury in the third game that year gave the former Marshall University star an opportunity to start, and Leftwich's development over the last 13 games of his rookie season ultimately led to Brunell's trade to the Washington Redskins.

By any criterion - story line, character development, director's vision, cast, set, costumes, and sound and light - Bowie Community Theatre's production of The Heiress is top-notch. During the opening scene, when the maid appears holding a candle to illuminate the Victorian living room, the audience is transported to a mid-19th- century upper-class New York dwelling. The action takes place within this set, an ideal backdrop for Henry James' 1880 novel Washington Square, which became Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 play The Heiress.

NEW YORK - Behind the landmark Judson Memorial Church, which frames the sky south of Washington Square Park through its ornate campanile, there is a quaint, if somewhat dilapidated, block of mustard and red brick houses. Preservationists say two historic treasures reside on this unassuming Greenwich Village swath: a house where Edgar Allan Poe once lived and a town house renovated by McKim, Mead & White. By the end of the summer, the stretch of four-story to six-story buildings on West Third Street between Thompson and Sullivan Streets will most likely be gone.

So you've climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty, shopped at Bergdorf's, seen four Broadway plays and three concerts and meandered through dozens of art galleries. What's left? Plenty, of course. Now may be a good time to try a few activities that perhaps weren't at the top of your "absolutely-must-do" list. Sometimes the best way to experience a city is simply to sit on a bench in a favorite park and people-watch -- or dog-watch. Or, maybe you could calm your city-jangled nerves by visiting a walled herb garden (yes, there is such a thing in New York City)

"Washington Square," Agnieszka Holland's adaptation of the Henry James novel, starts out with a long, lovely crane shot that sends a tip-toeing camera from a jewel-like park, through a townhouse window, up a narrow staircase and into a bedchamber. It's an exhilarating beginning, but one that belies what is to come, which is a series of stale, static scenes that capture the details of 19th-century life but endow the characters with about as much energy as wax fruit.This lavishly appointed, well-upholstered and largely lifeless production suffers from that all-too-common ailment of films with earnest aspirations.

You might think the most difficult part of making a period film is getting everything accurate, from costumes to accents to architecture.Not when you're shooting in Baltimore."

NEW YORK - Behind the landmark Judson Memorial Church, which frames the sky south of Washington Square Park through its ornate campanile, there is a quaint, if somewhat dilapidated, block of mustard and red brick houses. Preservationists say two historic treasures reside on this unassuming Greenwich Village swath: a house where Edgar Allan Poe once lived and a town house renovated by McKim, Mead & White. By the end of the summer, the stretch of four-story to six-story buildings on West Third Street between Thompson and Sullivan Streets will most likely be gone.

COMING SOON TO a neighborhood near you are Clint Eastwood, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney and Maggie Smith. They are among the stars of two major movies to be filmed in Baltimore."

The scene comes midway through "Washington Square": A fresh-faced French singer performs an art song in a Parisian bookstore. She sings of youthful longing, of the desire for recognition and fulfillment. She is also giving voice to the dreams of Marissa Anna Muro, lifetime resident of Highlandtown and 1997 graduate of Peabody Conservatory.Muro, 23, is one of several Baltimoreans with a highly visible on-screen role in this 19th-century drama. After director Agnieszka Holland chose her from a group of local opera students in the spring of 1996, Muro spent a day performing her song on the set in the Peabody Library and two days recording it in Los Angeles.

"Reality and Dreams," by Muriel Spark. Houghton Mifflin. 160 pages. $22.Muriel Spark's comic novel starts well. A man wakes up in a hospital post-op and drifts in and out of dopey sleep while time expands and contracts, and each day a new nurse, different face, sometimes different color, comes in to take his pulse."So does our trade direct our perceptions and our dream, he thought: Tom was a film director. Cut into the scene of the morning with the scene of the evening. The same nurse, but was it the same?"