Aberdeen mayor promises continued city help with restoration of historic B&O station

(The Aegis) Aberdeen Mayor Patrick McGrady pledged this week that the city would continue to support the ongoing community project to restore the historic B&O Railroad station off West Bel Air Avenue.
"The City of Aberdeen wants to see it done as much as you do," McGrady told Bob Tarring, who is the head of an ad hoc citizen committee formed to oversee the restoration, as Tarring and his associates gave the mayor and City Council an update Monday.
Tarring, along with Rick Herbig, of the Historical Society of Harford County Board of Trustees, and Jon Livezey, treasurer for the Aberdeen Room Archives and Museum, provided the update during Monday's city council meeting. Continued

Harford officials hope to preserve historic Bel Air house, golf course barn being dismantled

 

(Aegis) Harford County officials and the Historical Society of Harford County are working to move and preserve the historic Joesting-Gorsuch House, which had been slated for demolition to make way for five new houses to be built on the north side of the Winters Run Golf Club property near Bel Air.
The historic red barn next to the house is being dismantled this week, however, as golf club officials and Forest Hill home builder Gemcraft Homes go through the final stages of obtaining county approval to build the new houses on nearly 12 acres off of North Tollgate Road near the club entrance.
The Joesting-Gorsuch House dates to the 1730s, making it one of the oldest standing structures in Harford County. Continued

Charles Carroll

(Wikipedia) - Charles Carroll (March 22, 1723 – March 23, 1783) was an American lawyer and statesman from Annapolis, Maryland. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776 and 1777. ... In 1760 he completed construction of his summer home and estate at Georgia Plantation, west of Baltimore. He named the home [Mount Clare] after his grandmother. In June of 1763 Charles married, to Margaret Tilghman (1742-1817), daughter of Matthew Tilghman of Talbot County. Although the couple had no children who reached maturity, they remained together until his death. She became the mistress of Mount Clare, and earned a reputation for her greenhouse and pinery, where she grew oranges, lemons, and pineapple. Continued

Image: Mount Clare Museum House, Baltimore, Maryland

Aged grist mill awaits scarce federal funds

(Baltimore Sun) PERRYVILLE, Maryland — A 250-year-old grist mill near the mouth of the Susquehanna River has sat mostly vacant since the end of the Civil War, its thick stone walls serving no purpose but the protection of a few old tools.
Though the building is historic — it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places decades ago — it is uncelebrated and receives few visitors. While many old mills are being restored, plans to develop the Cecil County property have stalled.
The lack of interest in the old mill is partly due to its owner: the federal government. Continued

Live in a lighthouse on Chesapeake Bay

(NBC) Wanted: A homeowner with a dedication to history and lighthouses, willing to do a little renovation and, of course, live in a home set three miles offshore.
Unlike other lighthouses, the Wolf Trap Light Station is not firmly anchored to a rocky shore, but set out in Chesapeake Bay. Built in 1894, the Mathews lighthouse is a "caisson-style" lighthouse, which means it was constructed to withstand ice flows and whatever else the Atlantic Ocean throws that way. Continued

Pirates, in Fallston?

(J. Alexis Shriver, Bel Air Times) Who wants to join me in the fascinating (even though it be futile) building up of a playing card house, about an old tradition concerning a pirate?
Every indication points to the contrary, and yet there must be some reason to explain the constant search for hidden treasure which has continued for a hundred years.
Let us take our playing cards and build our fragile house of romance at "Bon Air", the gem of a French mansion built in 1794 by Claudius Francis Frederick de La Porte near the Gunpowder Falls in Harford County, almost adjoining the old Quaker Meeting House at Fallston. Continued

Photo: Historic American Buildings Survey E. H. Pickering, Photographer October 1936 BUILT 1794 BY CAPTAIN DE LA PORTE OF ROCHAMBEAU ARMY - Bon Air, Laurel Brook Road, Fallston, Harford County, MD

Stewartstown Railroad line abandoned by federal board

 

(YDR) A federal board ruled Friday that it has granted the abandonment of the 7.4-mile line of the 127-year-old Stewartstown Railroad.
The estate of George M. Hart had asked the Federal Surface Transportation Board to declare the railroad abandoned. It's a step the estate needed to take so that it can foreclose on the railroad to collect a $350,000 debt the railroad owed to Hart.
The federal board ruled that the record does not show a credible need to keep the line in the national rail transportation system, the ruling states. The Stewartstown Railroad Company is unlikely to restore rail service on the line. Continued

Stanford White

(Wikipedia) Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found to this day in places like Sea Gate, Brooklyn. His design principles embodied the "American Renaissance".
In 1906, White was murdered by millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw over White's affair with Thaw's wife, actress Evelyn Nesbit, leading to a trial which was dubbed at the time "The Trial of the Century." Continued 

 

A damaged landmark brought down in Springfield Township

(YDR) It took several tries, but a portion of Foust distillery's 125-foot-tall smokestack - built in the 1940s but never used - was brought down Tuesday in Springfield Township.
Sometimes, it seems, history doesn't want to be forgotten.
Phil Robinson, one of the partners who owns the land where remnants of the distillery remain, deployed a crew manning a crane and another piece of heavy equipment.
The red-brick smokestack had been struck by lightning twice earlier this month, rendering a fissure that runs from its top to bottom
Continued

Former Crown Cork complex still bustling

(Jacques Kelly) The landmark Eastern Avenue industrial building fooled me. I assumed it was abandoned, and I was wrong. The former Crown Cork and Seal complex in Greektown is a busy workplace for cabinetmakers, musicians, artists and a craft brewer. It's just that nobody puts up a sign on this curiously anonymous post-industrial survivor. The place where food- and beverage-packaging machines once were made remains a bustling village. Continued

Group hopes to restore Peale Museum into history, architecture center

(Baltimore Sun) After being closed to the public for nearly two decades, a new day may be dawning for the Peale Museum on Holliday Street if its planned restoration as the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture comes to fruition.
"I think it has lots of significance to Baltimore. It had been the city's first City Hall, an African-American school and where gas illumination was used by a company that eventually became BGE," said Walter Schamu, a partner in the firm of Schamu, Machowski, Grego Architects, which prepared restoration plans with consulting architect James T. Wollon Jr.
... Rembrandt Peale, the son of Maryland-born artist, naturalist and inventor Charles Willson Peale, commissioned Robert Cary Long to design a home for Peale's Baltimore Museum so he could display for the public his collections of paintings; American Indian and military artifacts; and stuffed birds, animals and fish.
The opening of the museum couldn't have come at a worse time — scarcely a month before the British bombardment of Baltimore on Sept. 13 and 14, 1814. Continued

Historic Ellicott City Wayside Inn up for sale

(Baltimore Sun) The old-but-reliable Westinghouse oven in the historic Wayside Inn, where George Washington surely must have stayed, fills the kitchen with the aroma of freshly baking pastries most mornings, as six-cheese omelets bubble and spatter on the stove.
But the days are numbered for the fancy homemade breakfasts prepared with care by owner David Balderson. The bed-and-breakfast hotel off Route 29, which is believed to date back to 1780 and many locals know as "that stone house with the candles in the windows," is for sale.
In fact, there may no longer be guest bedrooms tidied up and shifts of breakfast served daily by anyone since maintaining the property as a B&B isn't a condition of sale. The handsome Ellicott City inn where the first president of the United States likely slept can also be purchased for use as a private residence. Continued

Shuttered Forest Diner in search of a home

(Baltimore Sun) They peeled the facade off the old Forest Diner on U.S. 40 in Ellicott City, revealing an American classic. Stainless steel, glass, and compact as a caboose, the restaurant's original core from about 1950 sits in a vacant dirt-and-gravel lot behind a chain-link fence.
"I wish it was gone because it looks so sad sitting there," says Barbara Carroll, who worked at the diner as a waitress, then hostess, for 43 years — from 1969 to the end of May, when the last meal was served.
Now, from her spot at the hostess stand at Jilly's Bar & Grill across Baltimore National Pike, she cannot see the place, but she can recount the details from memory: about 20 red stools at the counter, the original six booths. On one wall, two plaques show that the original diner was one of the "Silk City" diners built by the Paterson Vehicle Company in New Jersey. Continued

The Author of the Civil War

(NYTimes) At the height of the holiday shopping season of 1860, a bookseller in Richmond, Va., placed a telling advertisement in The Daily Dispatch promoting a selection of “Elegant Books for Christmas and New Year’s Presents.” Notably, the list of two dozen “choice books, suitable for Holiday Gifts” included five works by the late Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott in “various beautiful bindings.”
Sir Walter Scott not only dominated gift book lists on the eve of the Civil War but also dominated Southern literary taste throughout the conflict. His highly idealized depiction of the age of chivalry allowed Southern readers and writers to find positive meaning in war’s horrors, hardships and innumerable deaths. And his works inspired countless wartime imitators, who drew upon his romantic conception of combat. Continued

Photo: "Glen Ellen" home of Col. Harry Gilmor C.S.A., was modeled after Sir Walter Scott's house. It was located where Loch Raven Reservoir is today, just north of Baltimore. 

Former MA&PA Railroad Ore Valley station to be torn down today

(YDR) The former Ore Valley train station on Springwood Road near Camp Betty Washington Road in York Township will be demolished Saturday morning.
The station was a part of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, more commonly known as the "Ma and Pa railroad," in the early 1900s, which ran from York to Baltimore, according to the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad Preservation Society. Continued

The price of York County history

(YDR) Some homeowners compete for the title of most well-kept yard.
Others vie for the designation of the neighbor who hosts the most well-attended barbecues.
How about having bragging rights for owning a property that's listed on the National Register of Historic Places?
Late last month, Coldwell Banker Select Professionals listed the 5,000-square-foot Emig Mansion in Manchester Township with an asking price of $450,000. The more than 200-year-old mansion, with its eight bathroom and six fireplaces, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Continued

Homewood Museum at JHU spends $100K to restore 1801 outhouse

(Baltimore Sun) The Homewood Museum at Johns Hopkins University has spent more than $100,000 to restore a small, separate brick building with lift-up seats, graffiti on its wood-paneled walls and a crescent moon carved into its steeple-like ventilation stack.
Some people might say it's a lot of money to spend on an old outhouse, even an unusually elegant one built in 1801. But Catherine Rogers Arthur doesn't see it that way.
"It's really a very interesting little building," said Arthur, director and curator of the museum overlooking North Charles Street. "We joke that it was built like a brick (pause) privy." Continued

Condo has waterfront view of history

(Baltimore Sun) In July, Joe Zuccaro will celebrate one year of living in a condo in a historic Fells Point tobacco warehouse that he refers to as "a Renaissance bachelor's pad with a million-dollar view."

"I have always wanted to live in Baltimore," said the Montgomery County native. "I wanted to be somewhere neat and right on the water." Continued 

A Country’s Attic, on Display: ‘House & Home’ Opens at the National Building Museum

(NYTimes) WHAT makes a house a home? The lives lived in it, of course. The relationship between people and their homes, sometimes passionate, sometimes indifferent, confounding or fraught, is the subject of “House & Home,” an exhibition that opened Saturday at the National Building Museum here. Continued

Benjamin Latrobe

(Wikipedia) Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe (May 1, 1764 - September 3, 1820) was a British-born American architect best known for his design of the United States Capitol, as well as his design of Baltimore's cathedral.
Latrobe came to the United States in 1796, settling first in Virginia and then relocating to Philadelphia where he set up his practice. In 1803, he was hired as Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United States, and spent much of the next fourteen years working on projects in Washington, D.C.
Later in his life, Latrobe worked on a waterworks project in New Orleans, where he ended up dying in 1820 from yellow fever. He has been called the "Father of American Architecture." Continued