Found It!

Thanks to my Sunday morning Farmers’ Market partner-in-crime, very dear friend and former blogger, Julie for figuring out where my adored is located.She sleuthed around and found that this is the current home of Pratt Street Brewing Company. It’s located a few blocks from Camden Yards. The building to the left of it is about 20 years old, and in the original images I had of the property, it was empty, perhaps preparing for the building of this structure. And in Julie’s sleuthing, she found that there was indeed a Hardware Fair located across the street from this building. The funny thing is, that around the period when the original image was taken, I was dating a guy who was a bartender at P.J. Crickets, which was the bar that would have been there at that time. And if I remember correctly, there was upstairs dining. But it’s really too much to ask my sieve-like memory to remember if the fabulous shades were hanging.

Hunting up History

It was a rainy weekend, so I was content to stay inside and do some work for the Baltimore Architecture Foundation. Last week, we were all set to leave a meeting there when the skies opened up and we got about 1.5 inches of rain in an hour. So while we were waiting for the rain to end, the other members of the Board and I went through some boxes of archival materials which had been donated to us.

Some of the boxes were filled with 8x10 black and white images of buildings around the city, none of which were marked. So on this rainy afternoon, I set to work identifying the buildings and putting labels on each of the 200+ pictures.I could identify about 2/3 of the buildings just by sight. Another dozen or so took some hunting for clues. And each person who’s looked at the images has provided me with an additional piece or two of information.A number of the pictures were of churches, and some of those had signs like the one above. But in an 8x10 picture, that piece was probably about 3/4 of an inch. So I pulled out my camera and took a picture of the sign on the macro setting. I enlarged it on my computer and in most cases I was able to read it. However, in the 30+ years since these  images were taken, there have been many changes. Churches have moved or are no longer in existence, or building have disappeared altogether. In other pictures, I could figure out the location from the surrounding buildings.

I thought I had an idea of where this lovely little place was, but took a drive downtown to confirm what I thought – that the building being erected in this image is an “air rights” building. The new building occupies the air rights over the older one, so it has more space and keeps a smaller footprint, and an old building is not demolished.

I did have a couple of favourites amongst this group if images…

Furness House has always been one of the top buildings on my love list. Every single thing about this (except the car) just ticks my boxes. I can’t remember if the urns are still along the roofline, so I will have to check next time I am down that way. I’d convert this to a house in a heartbeat. It looks like something you’d find down a narrow lane in London.

I fell madly in love with this building, but I can’t identify it. It appears to be a café of some sort, and there’s a sign right above the center doorway, but since it’s at a right angle to the building, I can’t read it. The other signs on the right side don’t tell much, and there’s a reflection in the windows saying “Hardware Fair” but I can’t locate any information about where that would have been in the early 1980’s.

The thing I loved about this building was the series of drawn shades on the second floor, as well as the cast iron arches above all of the windows and the goose-neck lamps illuminating the front of the café. I think that the person who lived above the café must have been pretty interesting if they made the effort to have Greek Key style shades in all nine of the windows. I also imagine that it was a pretty big space.

I am searching for more clues about the location of this building and am hoping that it’s still extant somewhere in Baltimore. If you’ve got any clues, let me know!

Man on the Moon

On 20 July, 1969, the first man landed on the moon. It’s pretty amazing to think that no one’s been back since 1976.

To celebrate, here’s REM’s Man on the Moon.

Do you believe they put a man on the moon?

Stormy Weather

One of the things about the mid-Atlantic coast where I live is that we get all kinds of weather. After almost a month without rain, except for the derecho a few weeks ago, we are getting hammered with two storms this evening.I was at a board meeting downtown this evening and couldn’t leave the building because it was raining so hard, I’d have been soaked to the skin within seconds. When I got home, I saw numerous videos and pictures of the flooding. The water table is very high here, especially in the neighbourhoods surrounding the harbour, so when we get a lot of rain in a very short period of time, there’s nowhere for it to go.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the harbour…As I sit typing this, Connor’s on the shelf on my desk, right below me. He’s not happy. But the plants will be.

Sartorially Speaking: 1900’s Version

I love the clothes from the Edwardian era. They are so elegant and classic. I think this comes from my love of the movie, Mary Poppins!

When I saw a friend had posted some pictures of Edwardian women on FB, I had to click the link and see them. This series of images unearthed by Kensington and Chelsea Libraries dates as far back as the early 1900’s. They were taken by amateur photographer Edward Linley Sambourne, who was also the chief cartoonist for Punch Magazine.It’s fun to see how contemporary the scenes are, given that they were taken in 1906. Girls strolling down the street, reading a book instead of a smartphone, one pushing her bike along, others walking and talking. I love the quizzical look this gal’s giving the photographer. Most of the women aren’t carrying much, maybe a handbag, but not an umbrella. There are more pictures, this time from Paris, where the women are more elegant and well-dressed, but you’ll have to click here to see them.

There’s an App for That!

As you might have figured out by now, I am interested in the “built environment” meaning buildings of all sorts, whether they be historical mansions or small cozy sheds. And I am always interested to learn about buildings that I see every day as I zoom by in my car.

In cooperation with the Baltimore Architecture Foundation where I serve on the Board, and some other local preservation groups, Baltimore Heritage has just launched a smart phone app called Explore Baltimore Heritage. Dozens of historic buildings around the city are pinned on this application, with a history of the building, some historic photographs, and perhaps a short narration featuring the stentorian tones of historian, Charlie Duff.

I’ve already downloaded and used the application to find out about a sweet little chapel I noticed perched on the edge of a public golf course. It was originally a Quaker meeting house, which didn’t surprise me, that was built in the 1700’s. The chapel was built on a tract of land called “The Ridge” where William Penn and Lord Baltimore first met to resolve their dispute over the boundary line between the colonies.

Another building that I see regularly is the old Marlborough Apartments. This was one of the first apartment buildings in Baltimore where all of the units were wired for electricity. The building also featured a roof-top garden and the view must have been spectacular, as the building is perched on the top of Druid Hill with sweeping 360* views. It was home to the Cone Sisters whose amazing collection of 3,000 paintings by their contemporaries, Matisse and Picasso, are housed at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and are worth an estimated $1 billion.

To download the Explore Baltimore Heritage app for your iphone or droid, click here.

Pumpkin Patch

I had grand plans for a garden at the house, but as soon as I started digging it, I realized someone had put some sort of fabric a few inches beneath the surface and it was hard to dig through. But I managed to find a space along the ghastly chain link fence along my property line to plant some gourds and pumpkins.

I put six plants in and figured that it would be enough to help cover the fence and maybe get a pumpkin or two. It was slow going at first, but then when we got that hot spell last week, the plants really started growing.

I had gourds at one of my other houses, and they took over the garden. Apparently, they can grow up to a foot a day. Funny story… I had gone to Texas for a wedding in early September, and when I came back, the gourds had climbed up by back door and had covered my roof – in one week!

The tendrils reach out and find something to wrap around, and then pull themselves up. I do try and direct them to grow in the direction that I want them to go.Should you care to read a bit more about the “self-winding of helices in plant tendrils”, you can click here. The tendrils tend to wind themselves one way, and then straighten out and start winding the other way. It’s really fascinating. Or maybe I am a dork.

The plants have been blossoming for the past few weeks, and I am trying to decide whether to pull all but one flower off, and let the plant concentrate on growing one pumpkin, or just let the plants do what they want.

Stay tuned for more updates from the pumpkin patch!

I’ll Take This: Priory

One of the things I picked up whilst working in a 12th century castle, was a huge appreciation for how a building is constructed. Especially a building like the one where I worked, much of which had been transported to the south coast of Wales from England and France, early in the 1900’s. I especially loved looking at the magnificent ceilings, thinking about how they were put together without the aid of machinery.

So when I saw this small priory in the Guardian, I immediately felt a familiarity in it.The priory actually has two halls, both of which are similar to St. Donat’s, here.

and the The Priory, here.

This house also features a lot of Tudor-era woodwork, naturally, original to the house.

The place is also filled with original stonework, like this beautiful door.

The downside is that the electrical and plumbing work, as well as the kitchen and bathrooms are almost as old as the house and have to be replaced. Additionally, there’s no central heat. From personal experience, living in the damp UK winter climate with no central heat is not something that you’d want to attempt.

The house is priced at a very reasonable £350,000 and is in Barnstaple, Devon, England. Here.

OKL Madness: More Racquets

Oh, dear. I guess OKL didn’t learn their lesson with the expensive tennis racquets that I wrote about months ago. Now they’ve got two badminton “rackets” for sale for $112 for the pair. That’s more than a 50% savings off of the original $245 price tag. The funniest thing is that the racquet presses for these two badminton racquets are really for tennis  racquets. The are not guards, as it says in the description, they’re presses, so the wood doesn’t warp. These presses are way too large for the significantly smaller badminton racquets.

Farewell, Bush House

If you’re an avid listener to the BBC radio, like I have been for years, you might know that it has always been broadcast from Bush House in London. I remember the first time I saw Bush House, I was so excited:

Meg: Look, Mary Alice, there’s Bush House! OMG, home of the World Service! Home of Radio 4! WOW! {furiously snapping pictures}

Mary Alice: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Anyway…

After broadcasting there since the 1930’s, the BBC’s World Service will sign off a final time from Bush House at 1200 BST on July 12th. I hope that I am able to catch the broadcast, but as it will be about 7:00 EST, I might not.

It’s a beautiful building, the most expensive built at the time and now it will be turned into posh office space.

And its location, in Aldwych in The Strand, makes it especially valuable real estate now. But it’s a building that echoes with such an incredible history of thousands of correspondents reporting from the most remote locations and in myriad languages. As I lay in bed at night, both in the US and the UK, I listen to the correspondents’ names and their locations roll off their tongues and try to pinpoint the spot on the globe in my mind. This is Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, reporting from Nicosia, Cyprus for the BBC. In fact, there’s an advert on BBC Radio with the correspondents and their lyrical names, telling their locations. The building is truly massive, as you can see from the first image, and with its foreign language services for 28 languages from Arabic to Welsh, it is a veritable tower of Babel.As I fall asleep tonight, perhaps I will hear, for one last time, This is the BBC, broadcasting from Bush House, London,Signing Off…