Unclogging the Patapsco

(Baltimore Sun) - Since Tropical Storm Agnes ended its working life abruptly in 1972, Union Dam has stood in the Patapsco River as a broken monument to a bygone industrial era, but it's also an obstacle to migrating fish, a swimming hazard and a potential threat to a large sewer pipe.
Its remaining time can now probably be measured in months. Fueled by federal stimulus money, efforts of state and federal officials and river advocates are expected to be realized in the coming weeks with a demolition crew rumbling into Patapsco Valley State Park on the Baltimore- Howard County line to begin dismantling the 209-foot-long concrete hulk. Continued

Photo: Union Dam (B&O RR Photo Tours)

Andrew Ellicott

(Wikipedia) - Andrew Ellicott (January 24, 1754 – August 28, 1820) was a U.S. surveyor who helped map many of the territories west of the Appalachians, surveyed the boundaries of the District of Columbia, continued and completed Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's work on the plan for Washington, D.C., and served as a teacher in survey methods for Meriwether Lewis. Continued

Castle in a Kit

(Baltimore Sun) - ... In 1920, Todd Taylor's great-grandfather ordered a kit house for his hilltop property. "It was pulled up Church Road on a wagon - by a mule," said Todd Taylor, deputy state's attorney for Howard County. When built, it had seven rooms, four of them upstairs bedrooms, and a bathroom. Continued

Photo: Sears Archives

Making history personal

(Baltimore Sun) - Bob Velke spent several years searching for live people during the day and dead people at night. Eventually, he quit his job as a researcher for a private investigator tracking down white-collar criminals, but he never stopped digging up information on the deceased.
The former criminologist now runs a genealogical software company from offices on Red Branch Road in Columbia. For more than 15 years, Velke has helped others unearth their roots, though, ironcially, it has left him little time to work on his own. "Every family's got a genealogist," the Columbia resident said. Continued

Photo: Genealogy Sheets, Lyntha Scott Eiler

Preserving black history in an updated space

(Baltimore Sun) - When retired teacher Wylene Burch started the Howard County Center of African American Culture in 1987, her vision was to preserve the stories of black county residents from the past and present.
Now Burch, along with a team of staff members and volunteers, will continue to fulfill that mission with the renovation and reopening of the Columbia museum, which is made up of a library and thousands of donated artifacts from black families around the county.
"Our main purpose is preserving the history of Howard County," said Burch, the museum's executive director. Continued

Rebuilding the Enchanted Forest

(Baltimore Snacker) - ... Almost any born and bred Baltimorean 30 years old and above will remember The Enchanted Forest, that kitschy local amusement park that fell on hard times around the late 80's and finally closed down for good, after some transformations, in 1997. Many of the attractions that people remember, however, were left neglected from 1990 on, and have been sitting, decaying, ever since. Continued

Photo: The Baltimore Snacker

"I take up my pen": Letters from the Civil War

"This online exhibition is adapted from an exhibition of original Civil War soldiers’ letters currently on display at the new Museum and Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park, which opened in April 2008. The letters are drawn from the Gilder Lehrman Collection (on deposit at the New-York Historical Society), which contains more than 12,000 Civil War soldiers’ letters, most of them never before seen by the public." Continued

Photo: Union soldiers writing letters home from Camp Essex, Maryland, in 1861. Courtesy Center for Civil War Photography.

Howard County group still awaiting guide to Route 40 development

(Examiner) - Four years after a group of twenty residents and community leaders made recommendations for the improvement of the Route 40 corridor, Howard County planners have not released a design manual based on those suggestions.
A design manual, which would be codified by the County Council, would help guide development along the Ellicott City stretch.
“We urge you ... to ask the Department of Planning and Zoning before the end of the year to produce a design manual,” Grace Kubofcik, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Howard County, told the council at a recent hearing. Continued

Image: U.S. Route 40 entry at Wikipedia

James Rouse

(Wikipedia) - James Wilson Rouse (April 26, 1914 - April 9, 1996) was a pioneering American real estate developer, civic activist, and later, free enterprise-based philanthropist.
He was born in Easton, Maryland. He attended college and law school during the Great Depression; after graduating in 1937 he worked for the Federal Housing Administration and in 1939 he was a partner at a mortgage banking firm called the "Moss-Rouse Company", which would eventually become the Rouse Company.
After World War II he became involved in Baltimore, Maryland's efforts to rehabilitate its slums. This led to his participation in Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Housing Task Force starting in 1953. He introduced (or at least helped popularize) the term "urban renewal" to describe the series of recommendations made by that task force.
In 1958, Rouse built Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland, the first enclosed shopping center east of the Mississippi River. Continued

Photo by Jeff Kubina

1968 Baltimore riots speed white flight to suburbs

BALTIMORE (Sara Michael, Examiner) - As a 29-year-old pharmacy manager, Theodore Sophocleus ignored calls from his bosses to close the Read’s drugstore at Light and Cross streets as riots raged across the city.
If he closed, his workers told him, looters would rob and destroy the store. “They were concerned the devastation was working its way into South Baltimore,” Sophocleus said, 40 years after Baltimore’s race riots. Link

Photo: Baltimore News American via Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth, University of Baltimore.

Small lot preservation saves nearly 50 acres

(Sara Michael, Examiner) - A push to save small open space lots from development in Howard County has netted nearly 50 acres for preservation and with another 90 acres in the pipeline. “It’s much better than we were hoping for,” said Meg Schumacher, executive director of the Howard County Conservancy.
... Preserving these small lots from development aims to curb so-called bad infill development, which is squeezing new houses into existing neighborhoods. Neighbors often lament the burden on infrastructure and destruction of open space resulting from such development. Continued

Chronicling Route 40

(Matthew Santoni, Baltimore Examiner) - Boom times may return to Route 40 north of Baltimore. But the crumbling relics — the former Magnolia diner that’s now the office for a junkyard, the Keyser Motel so often cordoned off by yellow crime-scene tape, the old Flying Clipper restaurant that became a liquor store — may be among the casualties of progress.
As developers eye the run-down car lots, rent-by-the-hour motels and porno palaces along Route 40 as ripe for redevelopment opportunities, photographer Michael Lijewski rushes to document the area’s hidden history before it disappears.
“It’s a place that most people consider worthless, but the history there ranges from the obvious vintage motels and motor courts to the Colonial era,” says Lijewski, creator of the local history blog Falmanac. “Route 40 is our Route 66.” Continued

Canon EOS 30D & EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens

Historic family cemeteries risk overgrowth and destruction

(Examiner) ... Land owners often buried family members on their land rather than pay for the town cemetery, said Barbara Sieg, who helped found the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites Inc. The land is later divided and sold, and often the name of the owner is lost along the way.
State laws prohibit developers from building on top of a graveyard. However, plots are destroyed and hundreds disappear every year because of loopholes, Sieg said. Continued.

Canon EOS 5D, EF 28-135 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens

Wealthy agonize over swanky estate

While Doughoregan Manor is indisputably historic, there's something about this story that doesn't sit well with me. I think it's the fact that while the public will be negatively impacted by the owner's efforts to restore the place, either by funding an easement or by encouraging more development, the public won't get much in return. The estate remains private. It isn't a museum, visitors aren't allowed. The owners don't care for the public, which is within their rights, so why should the public care about them?
"If we're going to give something to them to help preserve their land, I'd rather give them a preservation easement than give them the right to develop more houses. They're both handouts," Cochran said.
If handouts are in order, maybe a concession or two is in order as well? How about opening up the place to the public for a few weekends a year? Throw us peasants a bone whydoncha? Doesn't seem too much to ask. After all, we are holding the purse strings.

Smithers, release the hounds.