Woman S Industrial

Anne Hawkins' knitting warms twice. Through the broadcasts of Howard Dean's scream and the New Hampshire primary returns, in movie theaters, on road trips and in her Catonsville living room, the 77-year-old woman knits nubby sweaters, soft blankets and stylish scarves to sell at Baltimore's Woman's Industrial Exchange. For the past 12 years, she has signed over every check for her work to charity - most recently the Fuel Fund of Maryland, which helps the poor pay utility bills, and Beacon House, a nonprofit organization for women and children in Washington.

The Dogwood Cafe 333 N. Charles St., 410-962-8560. Hours: 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. Monday-Friday Eating a locally grown lunch from a brown bag has become easier for downtown dwellers now that the Dogwood Cafe has taken over the food operations of the Woman's Industrial Exchange on North Charles Street. It is open only on weekdays and only for lunch. While the restaurant, which officially opened this month, is still adding features, customers can order soup, sandwiches and salads as takeout fare or order food at the counter, then sit at the few tables in the rear of the building.

Olesker column maligns teachers at Northern HighMichael Olesker's Feb. 12 column, "At Northern, few concede being part of the problem," misjudges teachers and misconstrues the meaning of the teachers' rally held at Northern High School on Feb. 10.Dedicated teachers have been working in unacceptable conditions with inadequate supplies and textbooks and spending their own money so that children can have fundamental school supplies.Olesker incorrectly suggests that teachers "undermine" their "sense of heart" and "the attachment to the process that involves children."

Her glass of champagne stood next to a platter laden with chocolate treats and miniature cupcakes as Shari Rolando turned toward the oval stand-alone mirror and surveyed the ivory gown. She swished to her left and then right, stepped away and walked back up, examining the dress with a square neckline and bodice beadwork. "I think I like the other one better," Rolando said to her friend Filipa Goarmon. It was the seventh or eighth gown the Middle River resident tried on yesterday afternoon in a large upstairs room of the Woman's Industrial Exchange, searching for the one that screamed "perfect" for her October wedding in Chicago.

Friends, food and fun all describe the first American Girls Pastimes Party to be held at the Woman's Industrial Exchange Saturday and Sunday. Girls, along with their mothers, grandmothers and even their American Girl dolls, are invited to attend the event, which celebrates the popular pastimes of each character in the American Girls collection. There will be five shows, each lasting about two hours, and the activities include crafts, games, puzzles, shadow plays and refreshments. One of the goals is to help guests learn how girls throughout history spent leisure time.

Growing revenues, projects make future bright for Exchange The board of the Woman's Industrial Exchange thanks The Sun for its coverage of the assistance provided by John Hopkins University graduate students who studied our operations requirement and provided creative ideas for our board to consider ("For shop, an unlikely exchange," March 23). But we would like to correct the article's misleading implication that the exchange is in dire straits. Like other downtown businesses, the exchange was negatively impacted by the decline of the Charles Street shopping corridor and the scarcity of parking and tourist-targeted attractions.

Is that fresh pear or city chartreuse?" asks Jerry Edwards, as he paces about the Woman's Industrial Exchange. It's a few days before the Baltimore landmark's restaurant reopens under Edwards' management and the chef appears rather dazed by a vibrant green color his in-house designer, Travis Lee Moore, selected for what were the restaurant's formerly gray walls. "We were dying when Travis first put it up," Edwards says with a smile. "But we needed a color attack here." Attack is a favorite word of his; infuse is another.

Woman's Industrial Exchange, 333 N. Charles St., (410) 685-4388. Open Mondays to Fridays for breakfast. No credit cards. No-smoking area: yes. Wheelchair access: no.Morning Edition Cafe, Patterson Park Avenue at Fayette Street, (410) 732-5133. Open Thursdays to Sundays for breakfast. MC, V. No-smoking area: yes. Wheelchair access: no.Breakfast is an overlooked meal these days. Too many of us grab a slice of toast as we head out the door, in spite of what our mothers told us about starting the day right.

Wilhelmina Godwin, who wrapped cupcakes and sold baby sweaters until she was 91, died Wednesday of heart failure at Golden Age Nursing Home in Woodbine. The Rodgers Forge resident was 93. A sales clerk, greeter and venerable presence at the Woman's Industrial Exchange for nearly 40 years, Miss Godwin kept a guest book of celebrities who visited the downtown Baltimore tearoom and shop, many of whom she invited via personal notes she delivered to the Mechanic Theatre's stage door. She scanned the city's newspapers for visiting theatrical celebrities and wrote them invitations to lunch at the exchange.

First the restaurant and now the gift shop. The Woman's Industrial Exchange, which has served chicken salad and tomato aspic to generations of Baltimoreans from its North Charles Street storefront, has shuttered its craft shop at the same location with a promise to reopen early next month. "This is a bump in the road," said Helen Weiss, president of the volunteer board that runs the Exchange, which got its start in 1880. "I am confident that we will reopen bigger and better, and brighter and shinier."

Anne Hawkins, who sold sweaters and blankets she knitted and then signed the checks over to charity, died of emphysema Dec. 14 at Charlestown Retirement Community. She was 79. A retired bookkeeper and accountant, she savored liberal Democratic politics and social causes. After moving to Baltimore in 1991, she found she could sell her knitting at the Woman's Industrial Exchange, and she gave the proceeds to charities such as the Salvation Army, the Fuel Fund of Maryland and Beacon House in Washington, D.C. "She didn't suffer fools and hated sloppy sentimentalism," said her husband, John Hawkins, a retired public school math teacher.

Is that fresh pear or city chartreuse?" asks Jerry Edwards, as he paces about the Woman's Industrial Exchange. It's a few days before the Baltimore landmark's restaurant reopens under Edwards' management and the chef appears rather dazed by a vibrant green color his in-house designer, Travis Lee Moore, selected for what were the restaurant's formerly gray walls. "We were dying when Travis first put it up," Edwards says with a smile. "But we needed a color attack here." Attack is a favorite word of his; infuse is another.

Once unthinkable, hip modernity is arriving at a venerable downtown lunch spot: a plasma TV, a chartreuse paint scheme, chipotle mayo and self-service. The Woman's Industrial Exchange's former tearoom, for more than a century a genteel and leisurely midday rendezvous for a petite platter of chicken salad, tomato aspic, deviled egg and lemon tart, reopens Oct. 18 as the Chef's Express. The color scheme is "city chartreuse" and "fresh pear," with an exposed stainless-steel kitchen. The new restaurant's operators promise a plasma TV tuned to food channels.

Lucette Keelty Costa, a homemaker and former board president of the Woman's Industrial Exchange, died of lung disease Sunday at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. She was 85. Born in Baltimore and raised in Ten Hills, Lucette Keelty was a 1938 graduate of Mount de Sales Academy of the Visitation and studied painting at Georgian Court College in Lakewood, N.J. Mrs. Costa volunteered for many years at the Johns Hopkins and Union Memorial hospitals, and was board president of the Woman's Industrial Exchange on Charles Street about 40 years ago. Family members said she persuaded Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. to install a Christmas tree at the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon Place in the 1950s.

Rita Marie Hegarty Knox, a longtime Baltimore resident and former manager of the Woman's Industrial Exchange, died of pneumonia Wednesday at Spa Creek Center in Annapolis. She was 84. A native of Philadelphia, Rita Marie Hegarty graduated from Notre Dame Academy in Philadelphia in 1938. She moved to Baltimore in 1942 when she married Elmer Vincent Knox, a bridge, structural and ornamental ironworker who died in 1981. She moved to Towson four years ago. After raising five children, she returned to school and received an associate's degree in gerontology in 1978 from Baltimore City Community College.

First the restaurant and now the gift shop. The Woman's Industrial Exchange, which has served chicken salad and tomato aspic to generations of Baltimoreans from its North Charles Street storefront, has shuttered its craft shop at the same location with a promise to reopen early next month. "This is a bump in the road," said Helen Weiss, president of the volunteer board that runs the Exchange, which got its start in 1880. "I am confident that we will reopen bigger and better, and brighter and shinier."

With its aura of being displaced from an earlier time, the Abell Room of the 117-year-old Woman's Industrial Exchange seems the ideal place for a talk on family history and genealogy.The Abell Room has the look of being decorated by a turn-of-the-century Baltimore eccentric, with the ceiling unaccountably covered with wallpaper patterned with Eastern song birds, a gallery of photographs of generations of working women and a portrait of an early president watching over it all from above a townhouse mantel.

One of the state secrets of downtown Baltimore can now be exposed.The waitresses and saleswomen at the Woman's Industrial Exchange have released their ages.The most senior member of the perfectly aproned staff is 94. Four are in their 80s. One each is in her 70s, 60s and 50s."We are as famous as the Harvey Girls," said the indomitable Marguerite Schertle, recalling the 1945 Judy Garland movie of women who went west and worked as waitresses. Mrs. Schertle, who brushes off the attention about being the oldest and who may still be the fastest on her feet, has worked the midday lunch trade of the tearoom at Charles and Pleasant streets since the 1950s.

The final lunch patrons arrived hungry, in search of those elusive yeasty rolls, the waitresses attired in aprons with big bows and of course, the tomato aspic they'd known since the days when Charles Street had two-way traffic. They were emphatic that Charles and Pleasant streets' bastion of old-style cooking needs to reopen. Roslyn DuPree, the restaurateur who had operated the Woman's Industrial Exchange's tea room since late 2003, withdrew this week after noting declining patronage.

Jonathon Scott Fuqua, an award-winning children's book author who lives in Baltimore, will discuss his new novel, The Willoughby Spit Wonder, Thursday at a fund-raiser for the Woman's Industrial Exchange. The Willoughby Spit Wonder (Candlewick Press, $15.99), Fuqua's third novel for young readers, is set in 1953 in the Chesapeake region of Virginia. Carter Johnson thinks if he swims across the entire bay through a hurricane, then maybe his dying father will be inspired to beat death as well.