June 2005 Issue by Urbanite LLC

june 2005

B A L T I M O R E

issue no. 12

when can we swim in the harbor?

moving on up the new waterfront

instahouse

your dreamhome delivered

double talk

john glassie on john glassie

summer in a straw blends with benefits

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

What can you learn from his buildings? If you're a kid, quite a lot. In one of his building designs, the main entrance resembles a stack of brightly

Excitement is brewing at the harbor’s edge…

colored building blocks. But Peter Winebrenner isn't kidding around. "We may not always take ourselves seriously, but we take what we do seriously," he smiles. "We realize that our buildings will have an impact on a lot of people for a lot of years." Winebrenner is the regional director for the new Brewers Hill office of BSA&A, a noted architectural firm that specializes in the design of schools. To date, the firm has completed over $450 million in educational projects. But the real focus of their work, says Winebrenner, lies

With the new huge neon sign of a winking ‘Mr. Boh” on the harbor’s skyline, you can’t miss it. Under his watchful eye, a new community is taking shape—one that

in wowing their toughest critics–kids. "With schools, it's important to

combines the best

remember that their primary users will be the kids themselves," he notes.

traditions of old Baltimore’s “land of

"If we can create a memorable building that students

pleasant living” with the newest cutting-edge amenities.

want to call their own, it becomes a tool for learning –and we have done our job properly."

That’s Brewers Hill—an exceptional mixed-use community

Pictured above: BSA&A

where you can work and shop. Rising out of the historic National Brewery complex, this extraordinary redevelopment totals more than 750,000 square

For some of her patients, just a friendly voice is the best medicine.

feet and covers 25 acres bordering the water’s edge in Canton. That

Kaitlyn Jones remembers the day when the

said, Brewers Hill

elderly patient in her clinic suddenly burst into

offers you enormous opportunities for growth—with your

tears. "You are the only one who ever takes the time to listen to

choice of flex, retail, and office space, as well as 100 apart-

me," the woman sobbed, " and that's why I'm getting better." Jones

ments and loft-style residences. And, with its central location

and her team staff the Elder Health Suite at Brewer's Hill, a state of the art

just minutes from downtown Baltimore and I-95, you’re never

facility managed by Elder Health, a regional leader in health care plans and

far from, well, anywhere. Even the environmentally “green,”

services for seniors. As the Health Suite's Nurse Practitioner, Jones

energy-efficient building design at Brewer’s Hill is unique, the

oversees a steady stream of older patients-and a range of needs that

first of its kind in the state.

sometimes require more than just medical care. "We're dealing with people that have no support system at home, so we end up being that," she says. By providing access to medical specialists, field nurses, and social workers, Jones makes sure that none of her patients "fall through the cracks."

Tap into a new way to work. For more information on Office Leasing – please contact Katie Hearn – 443-573-4358.

Her extra efforts have not gone unnoticed; as one patient said to her recently, "You're like family to me." Pictured above: Elder Health

www.brewershill.net

urbanite june 05

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

The radio station that plays music. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

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AT T E N D A N I N F O R M AT I O N S E S S I O N Washington, DC

Rockville, MD

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Tuesday, June 7

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Saturday, June 11

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urbanite june 05

O R G A N I Z AT I O N D E V E L O P M E N T

S T R AT E G I C H U M A N R E S O U R C E S

R E A L E S TAT E

MARKETING

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5/9/05

A historic gem

4:40 PM

Page 1

a historic gem newly cut and polished

The old Clipper Mill is in good hands today. Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse is transforming the historic site into a lively community of craftspeople, homes and

One & Two Bedroom Condos in a Historic, Wooded Enclave Between Hampden & Woodberry.

410-243-1292

shops. Light Rail stops at the front gate,

www.ClipperMillLiving.com

and it’s just a few minutes to downtown.

2007 Clipper Park Road, Baltimore, Maryland 21211

The best news? You can live here – in the beautiful, loft-style, one and two-bedroom Millrace Condos. What a beautiful setting for your new home!

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Directions: I-83 S to Cold Spring Ln. (9A) Go East on Cold Spring Ln. Right on Falls Road. Right on Union Avenue to a Right on Clipper Park Road.

STRUEVER BROS. ECCLES & ROUSE

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

urBanite

Urbanite Issue 12 June 2005 Publisher Tracy Ward Durkin Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com

BA LT IMOR E

General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com

If you gave me several million years, there would be nothing that did not grow in beauty if it were surrounded by water. —Jan Erik Vold, Norwegian poet

“Is Baltimore a waterfront city?” When I posed this question to a friend on a balmy summer evening, we were looking at the city from the café atop the American Visionary Art Museum. The harbor lay in front of us, reflecting Domino Sugar’s iconic red neon. Beyond, the brick and glass skyline from Harbor East to Canton tumbled down to meet the water. My friend probably wondered if I had consumed too much wine or was simply jetlagged. I’d just returned from Barcelona, and the juxtaposition of the two port towns had inspired my question. She shifted her gaze from me to the vista. Then she studied the construction on Key Highway where the new Ritz‑Carlton condos will likely block this waterfront view. “No,” she replied, “No, it’s not.” Literally speaking, of course, Baltimore is on the water. We look at the water, we taxi across it, and yet the water itself is not a truly essential element of our lives. We never consider actually swimming in it. In the past year I asked several people around town the same question I asked my friend, and almost all gave the same answer. In spite of daily proximity to water, in spite of a long maritime history and the aquatic symbols of Baltimore—crabs, Clippers, the port—some don’t feel that water is a part of their city experience. Apparently this isn’t a new sentiment. In The Amiable Baltimoreans (1951), author Francis F. Bierne noted, “The average Baltimorean may recall vaguely having read somewhere that this is one of

photo by Marshall Clarke

the five major ports of the Atlantic Seaboard. If so, it made little impression.” Barcelona’s port has the same mix of commerce, residences and tourism as Baltimore’s. Their water used to be foul; swimming in it was life-threatening. But the Spanish city reclaimed not just the real estate around the port, but the water itself. Its residents realized their coastline is not just for viewing, not just a backdrop. It is an integral part of the city. They began to see water as something spiritual and pre‑ cious in itself, a community treasure, and far more than a mere medium for commerce and tourism. That perceptual shift is the key, and we are seeing it in some U.S. cities, too, such as Seattle and Chicago. Perhaps that new perception is taking hold here. Neighborhood reclamation of streams that flow through the city, like Gwynns Fall and Jones Falls, began with the essential realization that the water is important. Whether it’s a wandering stream or the mighty Patapsco, cleaning up formerly industrial waterways is difficult and expensive, but it is absolutely possible if we embrace the vision and have the will. We are blessed with access to water. Now, can we believe that the water belongs to us? Can we imagine a harbor with life in—not just around—our water? So I return again to the question. Is Baltimore, in the fullest sense, a waterfront city? And what wonders would follow if it were?

—Elizabeth A. Evitts

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Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth A. Evitts Elizabeth@urbanitebaltimore.com Senior Editor Lizzie Skurnick Lizzie@urbanitebaltimore.com Guest Editor James Piper Bond Art Direction Castro/Arts LLC Designer Ida Woldemichael Copy Editor Angela Davids/Alter Communications Advertising Director Jeff Stintz Jeff@urbanitebaltimore.com Office Manager Bellee Gossett Bellee@urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial Assistant Robbie Whelan Robbie@urbanitebaltimore.com Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-467-7802 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial Inquiries: Send queries to the editor-in-chief (no phone calls, please) including SASE. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Future Themes July: Independence August: Literature September: Architecture and Design October: Health November: Spirituality December: Preservation Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2005 by Urbanite LLC. All Rights Reserved. This publication is FREE and is distributed widely through out Baltimore City. If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at: 410-243-2050.

contributors

contents 11 corkboard

photo by Marshall Clarke

James Piper Bond This month’s guest editor, James Piper Bond, is president and CEO of the Living Classrooms Foundation, a nonprofit that empowers youth to succeed academically by providing hands-on education and job skills training programs in maritime. A true waterman himself, Bond’s passion for the outdoors is contagious. His work with Baltimore’s youth earned him the Urban League’s Whitney Moore Young Jr. Award for outstanding community involvement in 1997 and the Baltimore Business Journal has named Bond one of Baltimore’s “Most Influential” residents.

12 have you heard… 15 food: smoothie operator molly o’donnell

17 neighborhood: windsor hills jason tinney

20 home: mod to order robbie whelan

photo by Alain Laforet

Isabelle Gournay A native of France, Isabelle Gournay is an associate professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland. She received a professional degree in architecture from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and a doctorate in art history from Yale University. Gournay is currently the lead researcher (with colleague Mary Corbin Sies, a University of Maryland professor of American Studies) for a study of the Modern Movement in Maryland sponsored by the Maryland Historical Trust.

23 encounter: chairmen of the board john barry

24 baltimore observed: modern maryland isabelle gournay

26 on the waterfront anne haddad

photo by Jerry Bauer

Elizabeth Spires Elizabeth Spires is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Now The Green Blade Rises (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002). She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and The New Criterion. A professor of English at Goucher College, she lives in Baltimore with her husband, novelist Madison Smartt Bell.

28 swan dive

30 city for sale

joan jacobson

34 hidden water laura whildin

35 a dream of water

photo by J. Brough Schamp

Tom Waldron Baltimorean Tom Waldron is the author of Pride of the Sea, which details the loss of the schooner Pride of Baltimore in 1986. Now a freelance writer, Waldron had worked for 17 years as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun covering state politics and government, serving five years as the statehouse bureau chief. He loves to swim, but prefers Rehoboth Beach to the Inner Harbor.

elizabeth spires

36 a bicycle built for one

photo by Marshall Clarke

john glassie

39 sustainable city: conscientious consumption

Robbie Whelan A proud Pittsburgh native, Robbie Whelan also has deep roots in Baltimore: His father was born and raised in Charm City, and his grandmother served as chairwoman of the Baltimore City Little League Baseball Association. A history major at Johns Hopkins, Whelan edits the arts section of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter and writes music reviews for Baltimore’s City Paper. This summer, Whelan leaves his position as editorial assistant at Urbanite for internships at Time Out New York and Blender magazines.

tom waldron

lizzie skurnick

41 out there: submersive art joan jacobson

cover: photo detail courtesy of The Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland

43 in review 45 resources

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june 05

2005–06

King Lear

By William Shakespeare

The Heiress

By Ruth and Augustus Goetz

Once on This Island Book and Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens Music by Stephen Flaherty

American Premiere!

The Murder of Isaac By Motti Lerner

Hay Fever by Noël Coward

Crumbs from the Table of Joy By Lynn Nottage

Subscribe online! 6 plays starting @ $60

Stephen Markle and Peter Francis James in Othello (1993–94)

www.centerstage.org or 410.332.0033

urbanite june 05

what you’re saying

water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.”

—Mark Twain, author

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: President Can’t Swim.” House Beautiful Thanks very much for your great May issue high‑ lighting the many important architecture and design opportunities in Baltimore. We are fortunate to have a great stock of varied historical buildings, and communities with plenty of space for new, high‑ quality developments throughout the city. There truly is a house and a neighborhood in Baltimore for everyone. Editor‑in‑Chief Elizabeth A. Evitts noted that New York author and critic Roberta Brandes Gratz spoke here recently as part of the American Institute of Architecture Baltimore 2005 Spring Lecture Series, and lauded our rich urban fabric, which does make us distinctive. Throughout the year, AIABaltimore offers a wide range of public programs. Watch for our second annual Baltimore Architecture Week beginning October 15, or check us out at www.aiabalt.com. —Karen Lewand is the executive director of AIABaltimore.

Go West, Hon Man I live in Waverly, in the 700 block of East 36th Street. In order to drive, bicycle, or walk from my house to Hampden’s West 36th Street, you have to know how to maneuver around or through the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus. At least a couple of times a year, I discover someone parked in the middle of my street looking totally perplexed. Almost immediately I sense the problem: He or she is looking for Hampden’s West 36th Street. It happened again last June 12, which, unbeknownst to me, was the day of the 2004 HonFest. I was leaving my house on my bike to mail a package at the Waverly post office when I saw a Chevy Suburban parked in the middle of my street. I asked what the problem was and, of course, got the expected answer: “Where are we? Where’s West 36th Street?” As I was giving them the required convoluted directions, I suddenly had an “aha” moment. If my bike would fit into their SUV, I could personally guide them to West 36th Street and mail my package (containing euthanized cicadas for my 4‑year‑old grandson in New York) at the Hampden post office. They liked the idea and, feeling a little tinge of guilt over the prospect of being seen in an SUV, I loaded my bike into the back and off we went.

My new friends were Sue of Crofton, Gerry of Odenton, and Kathy and Carol of Severna Park. How they landed on East 36th Street is another story. I guided them to Hampden via the “scenic route,” San Martin Drive, from which I pointed out the Space Telescope Science Institute (home of the Hubble Telescope) and Olin Hall (the earth and planetary sciences building). Along the way, they surprised me with the news that they were going to HonFest. Well, I thought, what a great way to get to my first HonFest! After we spent five minutes solving the Hon‑ Fest parking riddle, I joined the ladies for my first ever festival immersion. What a crowd, what great Hons—and they were everywhere you turned! Unfor‑ tunately, all too soon our accidental adventure had to end, as I needed to get to the Hampden post office before it closed. We exchanged sweet farewells and promised to meet again at this year’s HonFest at the corner of Roland Avenue and West 36th Street. —Herman Heyn, aka Baltimore’s Street Corner Astronomer, contributed this piece in honor of HonFest 2005 (June 11).

—Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. president

“Society, my dear, is like salt water—good to swim in but hard to swallow.” —Arthur Stringer, poet and novelist, from The Silver Poppy

“When you drink the water, remember the spring.” —Chinese proverb

“By means of water, we give life to everything.” —The Koran, 21:30

“More energy is encapsulated in every drop of good spring water than an average-sized power station is presently able to produce.” —Viktor Schauberger, Austrian scientist and philosopher

Taking Care of Business I just read Urbanite cover to cover on the train, and wanted to let you know that I thought it was excel‑ lent—congrats on running a tight, stylish magazine. The article on the Hispanic community in Fells Point was interesting. One aspect of that story that might be worth exploring someday is the growing Hispanic business community. The Baltimore His‑ panic Chamber of Commerce (www.baltimorehcc. org) is very active, and includes owners of successful tech companies—the sort of businesses that bust the image of the Hispanic day laborer waiting for work on Fleet Street. —David Thompson lives in Otterbein and works in Washington, D.C., as an attorney with Bingham McCutchen LLP. Urbanite encourages its readers to write—and it does not have to be all about us. We want to hear what you’re saying. Send your letters, including name, address, and daytime phone, to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com. Mail may be edited for length and clarity.

“I can’t conceive of being promised a world

in which there are no problems, and I don’t want my grandchildren to have the feeling that’s what I’m trying to give them. That would be a bore.” —Abel Wolman, Baltimore scientist who developed the standard chlorine treatment of drinking water used throughout the world

“There is but one entrance by sea into this country, and that is at the mouth of a very goodly bay, 18 or 20 miles broad … Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places known, for large and pleasant navigable rivers, heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation...” —Captain John Smith, the ﬁrst European explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

C I N E M A

A R T

’ S B A L T I M O R E

THE CHARLES

LOFT condominiums at 22 South Howard St.

LOFTS

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RLES STREET 1711 NORTH CHA

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· Only 17 available - from the high 200’s · 14 ft.+ ceilings - Spring 2006 delivery · RombroLofts.com for floor plans and details

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THE NEWLY POLISHED KIRK STIEFF BUILDING SHINES BRIGHT IN BALTIMORE CITY’S HAMPDEN NEIGHBORHOOD

office direct: 410.522.6315 mobile: 410.262.2747

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STRUEVER BROS. ECCLES & ROUSE, INC. WWW. SBER.COM

& Antiques in the Heart of Canton Shop the work of talented artists from all over Maryland at the

FRIDAY, JUNE 3

Mambo Combo, Baltimore’s best party band

FRIDAY, JULY 1

Lloyd Dobler Effect, a twist to modern rock

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5

Kelly Bell Band, named Best Band in Baltimore

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

The Crawdaddies, Cajun/Zydeco

Canton Art & Antique Market The 3rd Sunday of every month thru November Next show: June 19, 2005 • 10am - 4pm –Rain or Shine– FREE ADMISSION www.cantoncommunity.org

2400 Boston Street • Canton www.thecancompany.com

410-558-CANC FREE PARKING

DEVELOPED AND MANAGED BY

urbanite june 05

corkboard

e Tour Garden & Hom ed tour of the id gu Take a selfteenth centur y mansions, nine s d elegant garden brownstones, an as od ho or e neighb of this venerabl rvoir g, Historic Rese in m oo Bl part of . ur n & Home To Hill’s 2005 Garde lable at the ai av Maps will be of e at the corner registration tabl et. re St r oi rv se Re d Park Avenue an

You Poor Monster Hear Michael Kun read from his latest novel, a Borders Original Voices pick that follows the trail of a hapless lawyer through Charm City.

photo by Amy Toboco

Illustr ation by Ba rbara Dale

Clayton Fine Books 317 North Charles Street June 18 2 p.m. 410-752-6800 www.michaelkun.com

HonFest 2005 Hampden’s 12th annual celebration of beehives, cats-eye glasses, and blue eye shadow includes bands, brew, pit beef, shopping, SPAM bowling, and the kicker: the crowning of “Baltimore’s Best Hon.” 36th Street, the Avenue in Hampden June 11 11 a.m.–8 p.m. 410-243-6800 www.honfest.net

June 11 11 a.m.–4 p.m. June 12 1 p.m.–4 p.m. $10 410-383-8538 ill.net w w w.reservoirh

Global Eating This month kicks off Baltim ore’s summer-long series of ethnic festivals with the Polish Fes tival, St. Nicholas Greek Folk Fes tival, LatinoFest, and African Am erican Heritage Festival. These we ekend events celebrate the food and culture of our diverse commu nity. Your one-stop shop for sch edules: the Baltimore Office of Pro motion and the Arts. Starting June 4 410-752-8632 ww w.bop.org

photos by Rick Diamond

Begins and ends at Carroll Park, June 12, 7:30 a.m. registration (required on-site or online), $30 adults (pre-registration $25); $10 ages 14 to 18; $5 13 and under, 410-366-7086 www.tourduparks.org

photo by Russ Moss

Tour du Parks Discover Baltimore’s flora from your bike seat during the 3rd Annual Tour du Parks. Wind through 30 miles of sixteen major Baltimore idylls, including the less-explored Leakin, Hanlon, and Herring Run Parks. Or, take a 15-mile ride along the Gwynns Falls Trail. Rides take place rain or shine, followed by a festival in Carroll Park from noon until 2 p.m.

photo by Gary Letteron

Cirque du Soleil al troupe of The madcap, fantastic rs returns ste wi e-t ap sh energetic rekai (Romany to Baltimore with Va “tribute to the a in for “whatever”) lows a young fol t tha ul” nomadic so mmit of a wanderer from the su of a magical s pth volcano to the de forest. Harbor Point South Caroline West of Fells Point on Street May 19–June 19 . Tuesdays–Fridays 8 p.m . p.m 8 d an . p.m 4 ys Saturda . p.m 5 d an Sundays 1 p.m. kets 1-800-678-5440 for tic m l.co lei so ww w.cirquedu

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june 05

have you heard. . .

To n

L aw

s on

Fashion…

The Maryland Center for Arts and Technology, a nonprofit that trains youth and adults in technology for careers in the financial and healthcare fields, has moved from the keyboard to the runway with a new high-fashion emporium, the U Boutique. In partner‑ ship with the Saks Fifth Avenue Company Store, the Professional Black Men’s and Women’s Associa‑

tions, the Women of Maryland Art Place, and others, MCAT students will exclusively manage the store, which features well-known designer brands priced only up to $20—including Gucci, Armani, and Fer‑ ragamo. Gives a new meaning to “thrift,” doesn’t it? 221 West Saratoga Street; 410-234-4490, ext. 104.

Swap and Shop…

r tes

y o f Fr

ee c yc le

ties, too). There are a few rules: All items must be “free, legal, and appropriate for all ages,” members are responsible for picking up items, a member may post no more than two “Wanted” requests per week, and there can be no pets, software, coupons, or tickets offered. (Children, presumably, are off-limits too). http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleBal‑ timore.

cou

Need to get rid of last decade’s lawnmower? On the lookout for last season’s skis? Go online and search Freecycle Baltimore, a veritable eBay of items that are all gratis. Once you join the Freecyle Yahoo! group (you’ll need to register with Yahoo! first), you can either post your giveaways or search the loads of goods available from some 5,000 members, all in Baltimore City (there are groups for outlying coun‑

Rose

e-Cards…

urbanite june 05

Washington Hill’s 1448 Gallery is the showcase for Artists’ Housing, a not-for-profit cooperative that provides affordable living spaces for artists of all kinds. For four years, the gallery has offered a regular schedule of shows for the work of the fifteen participating artists. Now, their art is available in

e-mail form. These striking digital postcards have been created from twenty-three of the gallery’s art‑ works, and their easy e-missives are great incentive for recipients to head over and view the gallery for themselves. 1448 East Baltimore Street; 410-3271554; www.1448.org/postcards.

Publishing…

Pa g

oda

P re s

area, a book of portraits of modern-day Jewish Balti‑ more, a project with Living Classrooms’ Crossroads School on Frederick Douglass and Isaac Meyer, and new projects with local, established writers. As an independent publisher, Wilhelm envisions a system where CityLit Project “does the teaching and Pagoda Press does the publishing.” 120 S. Curley Street; 410327-0404. www.citylitproject.org.

Baltimore is well known as a writer’s town, but it’s been pretty short on small presses … until now. Gregg Wilhelm, who founded the organization City‑ Lit to “foster a community that values literature,” has launched the not-for-profit imprint Pagoda Press, conceived to “counter forces that jeopardize the written word.” Wilhelm, who plans to publish two to three books a year, is currently considering a first novel and short-story collection set in the

a lt e

rm a

Café…

oto

A small basement in Charles Village seems a rather unlikely place to enjoy yogurt made from an Icelan‑ dic recipe, but since the opening of Carma’s Café in November, customers have been lining up to enjoy this and other far-flung delicacies, including the N’awlins classic muffaletta, Black Bottoms—a wick‑ edly chocolate Down South dessert—and a selection of caffeine libations made with a custom seven-bean blend. Partners Carma Halterman and Michael Lynch can be found behind the counter daily “mak‑ ing art, one cup at a time,” while an impressive spread of breakfast and lunch items issues from the

tiny kitchen: oatmeal topped with cream, Stone Mill Bakery goods, fresh salads, grilled panini, and “Fu‑ sions,” a health-conscious alternative to smoothies. The café’s versions of Skyr, a dairy product Lynch found visiting relatives in Iceland, is served with gra‑ nola or fruit compote. With sage-trimmed windows, tile-topped tables and soft music floating from a cor‑ ner stereo, low-key Carma’s is a welcome addition to the neighborhood. 3120 Saint Paul Street, entrance on 32nd Street between Charles and Saint Paul; 410243-5200; www.carmascafe.com.

Salon…

m in

free and alcohol-free Notré Maison, a kid-friendly haven for artists to perform and collaborate and pa‑ trons to hang out and enjoy the local arts scene in a homey surround. 18 West 25th Street; 410-235-4773; www.notremaison25th.com.

Ja c

Those weary of the club scene may want to head over to Notré Maison, a bi-level teahouse that hosts weekly poetic sits, open mics, and chat, movie, and chess nights. Owner Jacqui Cummings renovated an abandoned shell of a building to create the smoke-

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june 05

W I N E O N W E D N E S DAY S Every Wednesday, 4 pm to close, all bottles & glasses of wine are half price. What are you waiting for?

GERTRUDE’S A RESTAURANT AT THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART 410.889.3399 WWW.GERTRUDESBALTIMORE.COM

the harvest table is now accepting new corporate catering clients for breakfast, lunch meetings and afterwork functions. call and see what all the fuss is about! 1000 Hull Street

•

Baltimore, MD 21230

Telphone: 410-837-0073 Fax: 410-837-0078 web: www.myharvesttable.com

Evenings of Wine & Cheese Join Whole Foods Market, Harbor East and Bin 604 for our exciting new series; Evenings of Wine & Cheese . Over the course of the series we will explore pairings of wine & cheese from all over the World.

6/7 Pinot Noir 6/21 Rhone Valley 7/5 Aromatic Whites 7/19 Big Bad Reds $15 per person, tickets can be purchased at Bin 604 or by calling 410-576-0444.

Operating Hours Monday: Friday: 7am - 5pm (breakfast till 11am, lunch till 5pm) Saturday: 9am - 2pm “best saturday brunch in town”

Find YOUR Place in the City . . .

Harbor East

1001 Fleet Street Baltimore, MD 410.528.1640 monday -saturday 8am-10pm sunday 8am-9pm

Close to where you live work or play,

Owned and Operated by NRT, Inc.

Whole Foods Market, Harbor East

312 Wyndhurst Avenue Baltimore 410-433-7800

urbanite june 05

is the natural choice for delicious foods. Wi l l i a m Ca r ro l l

410-978-3093

food

by molly o’donnell

photography by marshall clarke

Blends with Benefits Barley Grass Improves stamina, sexual energy, and clarity of thought. A detoxifier, barley grass is milder (though more bitter) than wheatgrass.

Bee Pollen Contains all the essential amino acids and is a com‑ plete protein. It’s also a low‑calorie (90 per ounce), no‑cholesterol means of getting necessary vitamins A through E, K, and Rutin (a bioflavonoid obtained from various plants and used as an antioxidant).

Cranberry Extract Helps maintain urinary tract health.

Flaxseed Oil

smoothie operator

Mixed drinks with a mission

The essential fatty acids found in flaxseed help maintain cell membrane fluidity and optimal cell function.

Ginger Keeps cholesterol levels healthy and prevents the oxidation of LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol.

Ginseng The swelter season is upon us again, which is a good excuse to try a new way to stay refreshed and hy‑ drated—juice drinks and smoothies. In the past year, Mobtown has seen a number of new juice bar and smoothie stops open for business. Belvedere Square has Earth’s Essence, a stand serving freshly blended fruit beverages and vegetable juices. And Midtown Yoga’s not just a place to cultivate inner peace, but also to grab a wide assortment of revitalizing bever‑ ages at its new rehydration bar. For a simple summertime beverage, most smaller venues and juice/smoothie stands should suffice and are an economical choice. However, if atmosphere and health tips are what you’re look‑ ing for in a juice bar, there are places to satisfy a deep yearning for knowledge and taste. The Liquid Earth, Fells Point’s long‑established watering hole and vegetarian restaurant, is just such a place. The friendly juicers there attend to customers who have an extensive list of choices, from the “Facelifter” (honeydew melon, ginger, mint, grapefruit, and or‑ ange) to the “Oxymoron” (milk, banana, strawberry, chocolate, and two shots of espresso). Barkeep and owner Antonette Lippy says, “Most people like the ‘Ginger Cold Snap Cure’ as a juice.” It’s easy to transport juicing lessons home with you. All that’s needed to begin experimenting in your own kitchen is an inexpensive juicer or blender and a bit of ingenuity. You can splurge on fancy juic‑ ers, like the ones offered by Goodnature, but unless you’re a fanatic, perfectly mouthwatering beverages can be made with a standard juicer. Also, as long as you peel and de‑seed your fruit beforehand, most blenders produced today are powerful enough to handle tougher and pulpier fruit, such as oranges. Juice and smoothie recipes can be as simple as the all‑fruit drink consisting of 1 peeled kiwi, 1/4

cantaloupe, and 1 ripe banana. Or they can have as complicated a personality as the character concoct‑ ing them; for example, the mango grape cabbage infusion smoothie, which is made by juicing fresh cabbage and red champagne grapes, blending (not juicing—which is pureeing into a complete liquid as opposed to allowing the fruit to retain more pulpy meatiness) mango, and mixing the three. While the idea of drinking greens may not sound appealing to some, the advantage is that there is less sugar in vegetable juice than fruit juice, and you can get nutrients from veggies that you might not normally eat in an appetizing cocktail. By in‑ cluding apples, stevia (a natural, sugar‑free sweeten‑ er) or pure vanilla extract in your homemade juice, you can add delightful flavor, making drinks tastier without increasing calorie content. There are also plenty of resources for those tak‑ ing up the art of juicing at home, for example, The Juicing Bible (by Pat Crocker and Susan Eagles) and The Juicing Book (by Stephen Blauer). Prescriptions for Nutritional Healing (by Phyllis A. Balch) is a thor‑ ough guidebook for the specific benefits of adding pure juices to your diet. Although the rewards of drinking juices and smoothies are numerous, naturopathic doctors note that people suffering from sugar‑ or kidney‑related health problems, or who are pregnant or nursing, should avoid overindulging in too many juice‑based beverages. Otherwise, juicing can be an easy and delightful way to help your body and treat your taste buds.

Combats the effects of stress, boosts energy, and may help to treat impotence.

Soy Powder Boosts the protein and fiber content in a low‑fiber diet, facilitates weight loss, and lessens menopausal effects. The FDA also recently approved health claims about the role of soy protein in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease.

Spirulina Scientists at the Osaka Institute of Public Health in Japan and the University of California, Davis, conducted studies proving that spirulina (an edible algae cultivated safely under controlled conditions) strengthens the immune system, supports cardio‑ vascular health, and reduces cancer risk.

Wheatgrass Whether consumed as a robust boost to your sum‑ mertime tonic or on its own, wheatgrass is good for improving the strength and appearance of skin and hair, fighting infection, and lowering blood pressure. It also acts as an appetite suppressant and is easy to grow at home.

—Freelance writer Molly O’Donnell reports on a wide range of topics, from urban waterfowl to cinematic metaphor. This is her ﬁrst article for Urbanite. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

urbanite june 05

neighborhood

b y j a s o n t i n n e y

photography by mitro hood

Into the Woods City meets country

in a secluded spot along Gwynns Falls

Prospect Circle, one of the oldest streets in the neighborhood. Inset: Couple Warren Nelson and Gloria Webster have lived in Windsor Hills since the 1990s.

The hills are thick and hang down their rugged arms of rocks. Their fingers move through leaves and touch the stream that slides, rushes, and wades. In the quiet, branches snap as deer trip through the trees and the stone ruins of an old mill. Water moves over pebbles as a heron cranes its neck and flies. These are postcards from the wilderness, and it’s somewhat hard to believe that, with a good arm, one could hurl one of the stream-worn stones west‑ ward and crack the windshield of a car caught in the clustered stranglehold of I-695’s rush hour. And so the small wooded community of Windsor Hills sits upon its rocky perch, leans back in its easy chair, and lets Baltimore City move all around it. “Country City Country,” Warren Nelson says as he stands on the spacious porch that wraps around the bluish-gray Victorian house at the corner of Tal‑ bot and Queen Anne Roads. His wife of almost seven years, Gloria Webster, purchased the 100-year-old house in 1993, and Nelson has lived there since 1997. “You don’t remember that song?” he asks. He sways and smiles as the sun goes down. (Their porch is famous in the neighborhood for its view of the sun‑ set.) “Country City Country,” he repeats. “Part of it’s

kinda slow, then part of it’s kinda fast.” For Nelson, that pretty much sums up Windsor Hills. Just north of Gwynns Falls and Leakin Park, and overlooking the Gwynns Falls Valley, Windsor Hills is a neighborhood of approximately 900 homes jutting out from large rocks. An array of Victorians, A-frames, Colonials, Cape Cods, and rowhomes (even a log house and a geodesic dome) seems to lit‑ erally grow out of the hills. The twisting roads curve through an area diverse in both its citizens and its surroundings: Windsor Hills, a 110-year-old suburb in the city and an urban outpost in the wilderness, has people of varying races and socioeconomic back‑ grounds living together in what may be Baltimore’s best-kept secret. As one resident, Martin Dyer, com‑ mented in the 1979 Windsor Hills newsletter, News and Views, “We are, in short, a community in the best sense of the word.” “It’s kind of a utopia of neighborhoods—what a community is supposed to be like,” says Webster, an administrative officer for the Baltimore City De‑ partment of Social Services. “And I would say this is probably the first sense of community I’ve ever had.”

Just like the neighborhood’s Windsor Hills Conservation Trail, a mile-long wooded path that runs along the Gwynns Falls stream, the diversity covers much ground. Tolerance of race, religion and nationality has long been cultivated and encouraged through citizens and organizations, starting with the Windsor Hills Neighborhood Association, a group dating back to the early 1900s. “It’s something we’re proud of,” says Judy Bush‑ ong, a past president of the Windsor Hills Neigh‑ borhood Association. “We think that adds to the richness of the neighborhood.” But, she qualifies, “It’s something I don’t think about … we’re all just people, and we really enjoy being with each other.” The first house in Windsor Hills was built by Howard H. Tunis, an engineer and son of Edwin L. Tunis. It was Edwin L., an Eastern Shore lumber‑ man, who pioneered and developed what is now modern-day Windsor Hills. Known appropriately as “The Cliffs,” his Talbot Road house was completed in 1895. By the 1920s, much of Windsor Hills’ develop‑ ment was finished, although several more houses were added to the north and east along Duvall Av‑ enue after World War II. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

Just off Duvall is a small street called Haverford Road, which is where Mildred Forehand, originally from Charlotte, South Carolina, has lived for fifty years. Her tulips are up, guarding the small beautifi‑ cation trail she established last year through a grant from the city. Trash hasn’t been a problem since Forehand started planting her flowers. Forehand worries, though, about how to get younger and newer residents involved with the neighborhood. During the time of Windsor Hills’ centennial, in 1995, Forehand was president of the neighborhood association. She’s still an active mem‑ ber. “What we’re trying to do now,” she says, “is mo‑ tivate the newcomers.” And as a retired Baltimore City schoolteacher, Forehand knows that a community does not thrive on the individual alone. “Even though you think the neighborhood isn’t doing what’s in your best inter‑ est, rest assured, it is doing what’s in the best inter‑ est of the neighborhood,” she says. When Mildred moved to Haverford Road in 1955, Windsor Hills was at a pivotal moment. Blacks had begun to move into the neighborhood and whites had begun to move out, paving the way for the unscrupulous real estate practice of “blockbust‑ ing.” Speculators would prey on the “fear and panic” of white homeowners by buying their homes at rock-bottom prices, and then sell them to blacks at inflated prices. “When I was in elementary school, it was clear that the borderline between the black and white communities was on the march and headed this way,” says David Hollander, a third-generation Hol‑ lander (of four) to live in Windsor Hills. “So there was this slow migration out.”

Mildred Forehand, a resident for 50 years, established a beautification trail next to her house last year.

David Hollander is the third of four generations of Hollanders to live in Windsor Hills.

But Hollander’s grandfather, Sidney Sr., and fa‑ ther, Sidney Jr., banded with like-minded neighbors to promote integration and neighborhood stability. Hollander sums up their operating principle: “Just because blacks are moving in doesn’t mean you have to move out.” Hollander also cites Windsor Hills’ natural beauty as a motivator for keeping the community in place. “Where can I move where I can get that?” he says, pointing down toward the trail from his home on Talbot Road. Echoing the voices of the past, he adds, “Hell, I’m going to stay.” Sister Mary Ferdinand Tunis no longer lives in Windsor Hills, but still pays dues to the Windsor Hills Neighborhood Association and is an honorary board member. At 85, the spry, sharp daughter of Howard H. Tunis still travels to the neighborhood for meetings and events from a retirement commu‑ nity for religious women near Towson. As the living bridge to Windsor Hills’ past, she saw Windsor Hills

evolve and integrate firsthand. And although the faces have changed, she says, the landscape has not. “I used to say, ‘I know the streets of Windsor Hills like the back of my hand,’” she says, “and I look at the back of my hand and it’s changed in fifty years, but Windsor Hills’ streets haven’t, really.” Tunis sees the integration of Windsor Hill’s neighbors as a gift to the community: “Integration is part of its inheritance.”

Lower Prospect Circle. Inset: Sister Mary Ferdinand Tunis, whose grandfather founded and developed Windsor Hills

urbanite june 05

—Jason Tinney, a frequent contributor to Urbanite, wrote about Baltimore’s Urban Weed Warriors in the May issue.

Have a story on undiscovered urban terrain to share? Write us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com.

A Who’s Who of

Windsor Hills Since its beginnings, Windsor Hills has been the address of prominent people—including Baltimore City mayors Kurt Schmoke and Howard Jackson, poet laureate Lucille Clifton, and even Baltimore Colt Lenny Moore. Here’s a brief list of some of the other notables who have lived in and visited Windsor Hills. The father-son team Edwin L. Tunis and Howard H. Tunis built the first houses and developed Windsor Hills in the late 1800s. Sister Mary Ferdinand Tunis, daughter of Howard and granddaughter of Edwin, is now 85. Even though she no longer lives in Windsor Hills, she still makes regular visits to the neighborhood and is an active member of the Windsor Hills Neighborhood Association. In the southern portion of Windsor Hills,

The Gwynns Falls stream, alongside the Windsor Hills Conservation Trail. Clifton Avenue runs above.

in Leakin Park, is the “Crimea Mansion,” the nineteenth century “country home” of Thomas Winans, the Baltimore railroad designer who spearheaded the construction of the TransSiberian Railroad. In 1910, Simon Frank built what is reputed to be the first California-style ranch house in Baltimore. It was a gift to his California-born wife. After Mr. Frank’s death, Mrs. Frank married a banker named Julian Stein. His cousin,

We listen to our clients. After all, it’s their business.

writer Gertrude Stein, was a frequent visitor to Windsor Hills. Four generations of Hollanders have lived

BALTIMORE

COLUMBIA

TOWSON

WASHINGTON

ALEXANDRIA

in Windsor Hills. Sidney Hollander Sr., a Jewish pharmacist and philanthropist, was one of the early voices to speak out against discrimination. He and his son, Sidney Jr., were on the front lines of Windsor Hills’ racial integration during the 1950s.

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Singer Marion Anderson and poet Langston Hughes were among many prominent African-Americans to be entertained at the Hollander home over the years. “I shook hands

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with Marion Anderson,” says David Hollander, son of Sidney Jr. “Come to think of it, it was one of the high points of my life.”

—J.T. www.wtplaw.com

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

home

by robbie whelan

Mod to Order Is B altimore built for pre-fab?

urbanite june 05

labor involved because the house comes premade and requires only assembly, public funding can be spent more efficiently. This has caused friction be‑ tween trade unions and the modular industry, but Hallahan says that there have been a few Baltimore success stories, namely in Franklin Square and

courtesy of the Office of Mobile Design

The days when “pre-fab” or “modular” housing meant a vinyl-sided, cookie-cutter box ordered from the Sears catalog are over. A handful of ambitious architects in America and abroad are designing fac‑ tory-built houses—some as cheap $30,000—that the young and chic are snapping up like Philippe Starck juicers. Modernist design and daring materi‑ als allow modern pre-fab to complement both urban and rural landscapes, and soon, say experts, a home designed on a website will be delivered as easily as a pizza with extra cheese. But pre-fab is not only for cutting-edge modern‑ ists. Increasingly, cities are considering it for areas where both low-income and market-rate housing are needed. Architect Jennifer Siegal’s L.A.-based firm, Office of Mobile Design, builds the “Swellhouse,” which she says makes use of “very high design.” The Swellhouse usually costs about $220 per square foot at an average of 3,000 square feet per unit, roughly half of the price per square foot (about $400) of a high-design stick-built house in the L.A. area, Sie‑ gal says. Siegal has found that the design is more popular in cities than in the suburbs. “It has to do with the speed of erection time,” says Siegal. “Our customers know exactly what they’re getting and what it’s going to cost. There’s such a huge over‑ priced housing market in L.A., so people see it as an alternative to buying something, tearing it down and starting all over again … For the same price as a tear-down or a fixer-upper, we sell the home of dreams.” Fred Hallahan, a Baltimore-based consultant who has been providing marketing services on modular homes since 1986, says that this new wave toward “high design” may be one of the reasons that pre-fab has not caught on yet with the manufactur‑ ers of modular homes. “Modular builders who are pragmatic or conservative think that if they bring in an architect, the architect will make the design too esoteric or too extreme,” he says. Modular’s big advantage may be in its ability to help drive down costs, especially in the construction of publicly funded homes. “The housing industry, including modular housing, is generally nonunion labor,” says Hallahan. “But when you come into a city and you’re using public funding, you have to pay the prevailing wages in most instances.” With less

Sandtown. In both neighborhoods in the early 1990s, the city gutted the insides of houses on several city blocks that needed to be renewed, leaving the Form‑ stone and brick façades and replacing the insides with factory-built units. The company that provided the modular units for these renovation projects was Frederick, Mary‑ land-based North American Housing, a company specializing in “system-built” modular construc‑ tion, which are factory-built structures planned and assembled using computerized design programs. Vice President for Sales and Marketing Brian Mc‑ Guinness says that for the past decade, a boom in demand for single-family detached houses has kept his company’s business away from crowded cities like Baltimore, but that factory-built units are still an option for housing in the city. “The future of urban revitalization is one of controlling costs and energy efficiency,” he says, “and keeping the building time down is also very important.” An entire pre-fab house or a modular interior unit can be assembled in as little as one day, as compared to the months it takes to put in stickbuilt homes or do large-scale interior renovations. Modular housing has already been embraced in Scandinavia and the UK, so why hasn’t pre-fab caught on in U.S. cities? McGuinness thinks that it is an issue of education—neither the public nor the big contractors see pre-fab as an option when it comes to building urban homes. “We’re right on the thresh‑ old,” he says. “We need big organizations to get be‑ hind this idea, and then it will really catch on.” With so many architects developing challeng‑ ing, innovative pre-fab projects, the trend may eventually spread from the designer on down to the builder, allowing cities to take advantage of the economic and aesthetic benefits. There may come a day when city blocks won’t need to be revitalized brick-by-brick. p.45 45 p. —Robbie Whelan is an editorial assistant at Urbanite.

Architectural renderings of L.A. architect Jennifer Siegal’s pre-fab, “high-design” Swellhouse

Know of a successful city pre-fab project? Tell us about it at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com

courtesy of Urban Space Management

We won’t be throwing a pill into a glass of water and watching it expand into a three-story modernist home any time soon, but there are some futuristic, pre-fab projects in development that may give us Instahouses faster than we think.

Australia’s Year for the Built Environment 2004. The house is easily assembled, surprisingly sturdy, and comes with a waterproof roof. It’s also spawned an even more temporary sibling, The Paper House. www.housesofthefuture.com. au/hof_houses04.html; www.thepaperhouse.net. In London, two Swedish engineers (Håkan and Annika Olsson) have been hoisting pre-fab penthouses with cranes onto the rooftops of the city, most notably that of the Albert Court, a century-old structure in Knightsbridge. Their company, First Penthouse, caters to the set that can afford to pay £4 million (about $7.6 million) and up for their flats, but it’s a small price to pay—at least, for some—for the view. www.firstpenthouse.co.uk.

The Hooch, a deluxe treehouse

Living in a cardboard box is a fate most folks prefer to escape, but Col James of Stutchbury and Pape, a firm based in Sydney, Australia, is using recycled materials and a balmy climate to its advantage. The Cardboard House, a “relocatable temporary cardboard structure,” was voted one of the six “Houses of The Future” in

courtesy of kOnyk

The UK’s Urban Space Management’s Container City

Baltimore is a port city, right? And what do port cities have in abundance? Lots of shipping containers. Over the last decade, companies like Jones, Partners: Architecture in El Segundo, California, and LOT-EK in New York City and designers such as Australian architect Sean Godsell have started to see the abandoned aluminum and steel containers as the building blocks for affordable housing. Shipping containers are strong, durable, well-suited for housing complexes, and, of course, both easily transported and watertight. www.lot-ek.com; www.jonespartners.com.

photo by Jo Scheer

Dreamhomes in an Instant

kOnyk’s up!house

Brooklyn-based kOnyk architecture entered its up!house into the 2004 Dwell Home international design competition, sponsored by Dwell magazine. The up!house is based on the idea of a new car with options: It has a moon roof, power windows, and a sleek vehicular design. Held aloft by a double-cantilever system, the up!house is the domestic equivalent of a sleek Lamborghini, complete with that “new house smell.” www.thedwellhome.com/design_konyk.html.

Designer Jo Scheer has written extensively on building techniques that utilize bamboo, but it wasn’t until he got his head into the clouds that the Hooch, a “private, romantic, and unique self-sufficient treehouse” was born. Now, he builds way-aboveground rental units for vacationers in Puerto Rico—and the Hooch, light enough to perch on only one point of a tree, is the latest thing in vacation housing. www.tropical-treehouse.com. IKEA, mother of all mass-produced, some-assemblyrequired items for the home, now has the houses to hold them, too. BoKlok (the name translates as “Live Smart”) is a flat-pack arrangement that, thank heavens, uses paid professionals rather than the trademark IKEA S-screw for assembly. The BoKlok, which is currently offered only in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and the UK, will have, like IKEA’s other offerings, a “Scandinavian feel,” but, unlike a few Lak tables, a pack of tealights, and a pint of lingonberries, requires more than an SUV to haul it away. www.boklok.com. —R.W.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

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encounter

by john barry

photograph by marshall clarke

Chairmen of the Board A s i t - d o w n with B al ti m o r e ’s c he ss kings

According to grandmasters Aleks Wojtkiewicz and Pawel Blehm, chess pros have lives akin to those of champion figure skaters: they start young. My own career ended at age 10, when I nearly cut off my thumb trying to carve a rook out of a cork. For decades, I steered clear of chess pieces, but when I heard that Baltimore is home to a champion chess team, an old flame was rekindled: I sought out 42year-old Wojtkiewicz and 25-year-old Blehm, both Polish grandmasters. If the stereotypical chess player is a borderline nutcase in the Bobby Fischer mode, these guys don’t fit the bill. Scruffy, chain-smoking Wojtkiewicz (known as Wojo) looks like he’s just returned from a bar crawl in Highlandtown. Currently one of the top twenty players in the United States, he recently won his sixth Grand Prix—the game’s equivalent of the World Series. Blehm (chess handle: The Polish Magician) is more fresh-faced. The Krakow-born world-class chess player has been the star offensive player of the highly ranked University of Maryland Baltimore County chess team for two years. As I sit drinking beers with them in a nonde‑ script Catonsville watering hole, Blehm and Wojt‑ kiewicz give me glimpses of their life stories. Blehm’s father taught him the moves when he was 6. By 16, he was an international master; at 18, he went pro. By 21, United States chess powerhouses like the University of Texas at Dallas and UMBC were hunt‑ ing him down in Krakow. If you accept money as a football recruit, your college career is over. But by the time Blehm moved to Baltimore, he had already earned plenty from chess. At UMBC, he’s in virtual retirement, with a healthy annual $15,000 stipend and full tuition paid. Wojtkiewicz’s path to chess stardom took a lit‑ tle longer. Born in Latvia when it was part of the So‑ viet Union, he became a chess master at 15, but his rise to grandmaster was delayed by a year spent in a Russian gulag. In the late ’80s, as a member of a hu‑ man rights organization in Latvia, he refused to join the Soviet Army. I almost ask what it was like freez‑ ing his ass off in a windswept taiga, but I can guess the answer. And Wojtkiewicz wants to move beyond discussing this part of his life and return to chess. “[The Soviets] gave me amnesty after the meeting of President Reagan and Gorbachev,” he says. “I went to Poland and started to play again when I was 24.” And now they’re both in Baltimore, thanks in part to the recruiting efforts of UMBC. For those

Grandmasters Pawel Blehm, left, and Aleks Wojtkiewicz

bemoaning the fate of the Terps, the University of Maryland actually did make it to the Final Four— that is, its chess team did. In April, at this year’s Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Tournament (the Super Bowl of college chess), they rolled over Miami-Dade College, Stanford University, and the University of Texas at Dallas. “There was one event where we had cheerleaders,” Blehm says wistfully. “It was very nice, I must say.” I’m starting a little late in the game to make it to grandmaster, but Wojtkiewicz is willing to offer me a lecture on the basics. “There are three modes of chess,” Wojtkiewicz explains. “Strategic, psychologi‑ cal, and artistic.” In a beautiful chess game, he says, both players are doing the right thing. When one side makes a sudden tactical move, it can get spec‑ tacular. “It’s like in life,” Wojtkiewicz says. “When you send a small detachment of special forces to enter the opponent’s camp, then you take it all.” “They say that people with a certain IQ level can reach the international master level,” adds Wojtkie‑ wicz. “But to be a grandmaster, you need something from the gods.” There’s a brief, uncomfortable si‑ lence. Then I order another beer to console myself. I don’t really see that many people playing chess out in the parks in Baltimore, so I ask where the ac‑ tion is. An outdoor scene was once situated on Sol‑ dier’s Field, across from City Hall, but now it’s fenced in while it’s being dug out for a new park space. Bal‑ timore’s serious chess aficionados currently converge around the Fells Point Chess Club, at 1717 Aliceanna Street. There, Wojtkiewicz conducts seminars on

Monday nights for a healthy-sized audience. Thanks to the Internet, he says, the legion of chess players is growing. And he’s encouraged by a recent lecture by Anatoli Karpov at UMBC, where sixty young Bal‑ timoreans showed up to engage the one-time world chess champion in simultaneous games. When he isn’t teaching chess, Wojtkiewicz keeps up a grueling schedule of tournaments and paid appearances. He’s just come in from New York, and he’s about to head off to a major tournament in Minnesota, where the top prize is $50,000. “I’m playing somewhere else almost every week,” he says. “In five years, I’ve been to every state except Maine and Alaska. And I’ve been to every continent in the world except Africa, where they don’t have that many chess competitions.” “Wait,” says Blehm, “There was that tourna‑ ment in Egypt, remember?” “Right,” says Wojtkiewicz. “I forgot.” Chess has earned Blehm and Wojtkiewicz scholarships, tens of thousands of dollars yearly in prizes, and a free ticket around the world. I look at my thumb and think, If only it hadn’t been for that damn cork.   —John Barry, a frequent theater reviewer for Baltimore’s City Paper, teaches in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars program.

Know an exceptional Baltimorean? Write us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

b y i s a b e l l e g o u r n a y

photo by Isabelle Gournay

photo courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library

baltimore observed

photo courtesy of Visual Image Resources at the University of Maryland Library

MARYLAND’S MODERN MOVEMEN T

R E C O G N I Z I N G B A LT I M O R E ’ S R E C E N T A R C H I T E C T U R A L PA S T Clockwise from the top: The Enoch Pratt Free Library on Pennsylvania Avenue designed by Smith and Veale was the first modernist public library in Maryland; Walter Gropius, founder of the International Style of architecture, designed Baltimore’s Temple Oheb Shalom; International architect Pietro Belluschi designed the Church of the Redeemer on North Charles Street; The serene, unobstructed modern design of the Kaufman House on Park Heights Avenue was created by architects Wilson and Christie in 1956.

The term “mid-century modernism” often evokes images of swank Miami hotels and Palm Springs vacation homes. In Baltimore City and its suburbs, the design legacy of the baby boom era may not be so glamorous, but it is far from insignificant. While the modernist vision of design and architecture sometimes took the form of controversial—and often detrimental—movements toward slum clear‑

urbanite june 05

ance and urban renewal, there is also a gentler brand of modernism that still permeates our daily lives. Baltimore (one of the stops in French modern‑ ist Le Corbusier’s celebrated lecture tour of 1935) and its northern suburbs claim their fair share of significant designs by stars of the modern move‑ ment. Frank Lloyd Wright led the pack with his 1940s Usonian house on Cross Country Boulevard.

Percival Goodman, America’s preeminent synagogue designer, created the sanctuary at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, directly across from Park Heights Avenue’s Temple Oheb Shalom, the only synagogue built by Walter Gropius. Mies van der Rohe designed the glass tower that is One Charles Center, now on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Highfield House on Charles Street (twins of this

elegant apartment block were built just outside Montreal). Hooper House II near Lake Roland is recognized as one of the best residential works by Marcel Breuer, the Bauhaus trained architect and designer of the iconic Wassily Chair. While these big-name architects were transient shooting stars in the city’s firmament, Pietro Belluschi’s long-time involvement here included consultancies for Mondawmin Mall and Goucher College. Belluschi was known for his ability to synthesize the International Style with regional sensitivity. At the Church of the Redeemer on Charles Street and at Goucher’s Dorsey Center, Belluschi blended traditional fieldstone and wood to echo the massing and texture of neighboring struc‑ tures. Belluschi’s regional style, initially forged in the Pacific Northwest, was not unlike that of Finland’s Alvar Aalto: It offered a site-specific design, which was well suited to the stream valleys and pastoral landscape north of Baltimore. Such unostentatious, everyday modernism fast took root in this city’s burgeoning suburbs and was tied to middle class aspirations for self-governance and casual comfort. It centered on the detached single-family home. While the suburbs of Washington, D.C., offer fine modernist tract housing, Baltimore homebuild‑ ers’ mass-produced work is, for the most part, pe‑ destrian and stodgy. Baltimore’s custom-designed modernist homes, on the other hand, surpass those

of the nation’s capital in quantity and stylistic diver‑ sity. (They range from glass box to woodsy cabin.) Early examples include developer James Rouse’s home, designed by Alexander Smith Cochran, and the recently sold Pikesville home that Percival Good‑ man designed in close cooperation with owner-artist Amalie Rothschild. Even the limited-budget projects were works of art complete with ingenious built-in cabinetry (including tool sheds supporting airy car‑ ports), flagstone patios and grounds suited to the local landscape. These child-friendly and hospitable residences garnered well-deserved media attention. The second example of baby boom modernism was the ubiquitous elementary school at the heart of each subdivision. While the inner city contained multistory, factory-like schools, new, richer residen‑ tial districts showcased single-level structures with crisp canopies for drop-offs and vast playgrounds. Northwood Elementary in Loch Raven is a notable hybrid of these urban and suburban types. Efficient and well-built Hampton Elementary was designed by architects Smith and Veale, part of an adventurous—and undeservedly forgotten—pool of local proponents of modernism. Religious sponsorship of modernism was a fas‑ cinating trend in post-war Baltimore, giving rise to impressive synagogue/school complexes that rivaled one another in stylistic originality. The Archdiocese of Baltimore funded outstanding educational buildings,

while Catholic Charities-sponsored hospitals, such as the St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, combined design elegance with state-of-the-art services. After 1965, the baby boom and “Populuxe” era were superseded by a period of intense political, social and racial unrest. Although the new era produced a few memorable landmarks—Peterson and Brickbauer’s Sun-Life Building and John Johansen’s Mechanic Theater—the schools and libraries built around 1970, quasi-windowless and topped by heavy cornices, lacked civility and elegance. Commercial examples of everyday modernism, such as drive-in banks, have been the most vulnerable to the vagaries of time. A particularly un‑ fortunate story is the drastic transformation of Hutzler’s spectacular Towson department store. Budget crises, crime and blight led the Enoch Pratt library system to close several modernist branches. Few buildings are immune to the threat of adverse transformation or demolition. Fortunately, the tear-down epidemic, so widespread in places like New Canaan, Connecticut, and even Montgomery County, Maryland, has yet to reach Baltimore. Mc‑ Mansions may not replace the gracious modernist homes nestled in wooded lots here (as they have in Montgomery County), but clearly it is time to stop taking Baltimore’s recent past for granted and launch a comprehensive effort to document and preserve this heritage. n

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On the Waterfront

Guest Editor James Piper Bond shows the next generation how to save the harbor 26

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Maybe you don’t know how to measure dissolved oxygen, as sixth-graders Brittany Munos and Jwaun Whittington did during a dockside lesson in their after-school program. But do you at least know why someone ought to do that regularly in the Chesapeake Bay? And even if oysters don’t do anything for you, do you know what they do for your water? This new literacy is one that redefines citizenship. To really hold your head high as a Marylander, it isn’t enough to be able to read and write the names of the candidates on the ballot. You should also be able to assess their positions on, say, the ecological and economic health of the Inner Harbor. At the Crossroads School, a public charter middle school run by Living Classrooms, maritime literacy fits right in as one of the proverbial basics, as a unit in science. This natural fit for a school on the waterfront—at the end of Caroline Street in Fells Point—raises the question of whether most grown-ups who live in a state with so much shoreline ought to go back to school on this topic. “Adults are not really in the classrooms listening to this,” Brittany said. “Every day, I go home and tell my mom about everything I learned in school.” Let’s hope the same is true for all the students in the fourteen other city public schools that include a Living Classrooms unit specifically designed to answer the questions: “What is stormwater runoff pollution and how can we prevent it?” James Townes, one of the sixth-graders at the Crossroads School, also takes his lessons home to family and friends. He’s told them how the trash they drop on the street in his East Baltimore neighborhood will slide into a storm drain and eventually down to the harbor, where he will see it after any rainy day. “They said they would stop littering,” James said. The sight of all that garbage floating around in the water unsettles him. “’Cause I want to eat the crabs, and I don’t want people to come to Baltimore and say ‘Baltimore is a dirty state,’” he added. “City!” came the immediate correction from fellow sixth-grader Najee Rollins. “Okay. I don’t want them to come and say, ‘Maryland is a dirty state,’” James said. James and the twelve other sixth-graders from the after-school Turning the Corner Achievement Program had boarded a skipjack hoping to sail out onto the harbor for a two-hour lesson to complement the work they’ve been doing with science teacher Casie Regan. Regan has them exploring the balance between the environment and business. They’re also in a unit called “Can the Oyster Save the Bay?” But with the wind at 30 knots that afternoon, it was too dangerous to take the kids out on the water. They were, however, still having a lesson onboard skipjack Minnie V., one of the historic boats that Living Classrooms has restored. While Minnie V.’s First Mate Jessica Siegler corralled half the kids to examine an oyster, Director of Shipboard Education Lisa Jones had the other half conducting tests for salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen. continued on page 40

Above ( from left): Najee Rollins, James Piper Bond, Jared Smith, and James Townes

Opposite ( from left): Jenise Helms, Gabrielle Gandara, Susana Carranza and Gabrielle Wilson Above: Najee Rollins and Jwuan Whittington w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

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Could our harbor become a haven for recreation?

The Baltimore waterfront is 52 miles long, a mostly golden ribbon curling around 7 square miles of water. Million-dollar condos rise along the dark water, kayakers cross it to work in rehabbed warehouses, and weekend sailors sip martinis at bars overlooking the fantastic, mesmerizing maritime landscape. But there is one thing missing from the picture. Nobody is actually going in the water. Swimming in the Baltimore harbor is simply not done. Our economic goldmine, it seems, is toxic. Feel free to take a picture of the sailboats, and enjoy that water taxi ride, but, please, do not go in the stuff. The Baltimore harbor has been trashed, polluted, and fouled by sewage for so long that the notion of using it for swimming remains remote to most of us. But, perhaps it does not have to be like that. What would we have to do to clean up the harbor water enough to allow swimming? “It would take a lot of money and a lot of time,” says Beth McGee, Maryland senior scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. To be slightly more precise, it would require at least $1 billion in capital improvements and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars more in enforcement, education, and other clean-up activities. Under the most optimistic scenario, it would take a decade. But it was just a few years ago that city leaders seriously considered making a harbor cleanup a priority. Working with Washington, D.C., to land the 2012 Olympic games, the city proposed holding the Olympic triathlon in Baltimore, with the swimming leg to be held in the Inner Harbor. “We wanted to clean up the Inner Harbor so that it would be swimmable,” says Clarence Bishop, the chief of staff to Mayor Martin O’Malley, and a one-time senior vice president for the regional Olympics organization. This group did not make specific plans for a cleanup, but did ask environmental scientists if the Inner Harbor triathlon scenario was feasible, Bishop says. The answer was, yes, that by 2012 the harbor could, at least in theory, be clean enough for swimming. “It was a blue-sky idea, but we were operating on the theory that if you were going to have the Olympics, anything is possible,” Bishop says. Indeed, anything is possible, even cleaning up the harbor.

“It could happen if we set priorities,” says Phil Lee, a waterfront engineer who is working as a volunteer on a major cleanup project in the harbor. But, first, just how bad is the water? “I heard you have to get your stomach pumped immediately after you go in the harbor,” offered one city employee who helps market Baltimore. The truth is not quite so dramatic. The Baltimore police informally urge anyone who falls into the harbor to take a hot shower—and use plenty of soap. And drinking any of the water would be a bad idea. There are three main problems. First, there’s the sewage.

Can we embrace the primal need to be in the water, not just beside it? Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 to clean up the nation’s waterways, including the Baltimore harbor. In the more than three decades since, the city has never been in compliance, due in large part to the city’s aging sewer lines—more than 3,000 miles in all—that were first installed in the early years of the twentieth century. Connecting the pipe segments are more than a million seals that can leak sewage, which often drains into streams or storm sewers. During a heavy rain, the system is designed to divert raw sewage into the storm water system, which, of course, empties out into the harbor. Under pressure from the federal government, the city of Baltimore signed a consent decree in 2002 requiring the city to make nearly a billion dollars’ worth of improvements in its sewer system over the next decade. Water and sewer continued on page 38

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Some 4,000 new marina slips have been added to accomodate recreational boaters.

A public promenade winds around the harbor from Canton to Key Highway, allowing citizens access to the water.

Residents of South Baltimore worry that new residential construction along Key Highway will compromise sitelines of the water.

Canton Crossing, a multimillion dollar condo-office project, is one of many new developments coming to Baltimore’s “Gold Coast.”

The waterfront promenade in Canton

Beyond the flurry of new development, the domes of St. Casimir’s Church gleam in the distance.

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City for Sale The battle over our waterfront

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Early Sunday morning, while the happy-hour crowd sleeps off a collective hangover, a giant pile driver slams deep into bedrock along the Canton waterfront, breaking ground on grimy Clinton Street for the latest multimillion dollar condo-office project with a view as stunning as its price tag. The great thud of progress echoes off the wall of Tindeco Wharf a block away, drowning out the ducks quacking among the hundreds of sailboats and yachts moored off the banks of a New Baltimore that is as disorienting as a crab house with valet parking. Suddenly, a new sound overpowers the pile driver. The pealing of St. Casimir’s church bells sings forth from the golden Polish domes that have gleamed for a century from O’Donnell Square. They sound a comforting theme from the Old Baltimore, like the long-gone smell of cinnamon from the McCormick plant or the working man’s free panoramic water view from Boston Street, Key Highway or Thames Street. For years St. Casimir’s was a grand welcome to boats entering the harbor, towering over the little rowhouses of Southeast Baltimore. Today, from the water, you can only glimpse the old Polish Catholic church between the condos and townhouses going up as fast as a tract of Ryland homes in Howard County. Meet the New Baltimore, where there really is a crab house with valet parking, since Bo Brooks relocated from its working-class roots in Northeast Baltimore to the Canton coastline. In just 20 years, our shore has transformed from a scruffy, industrial port with a smattering of tourist attractions into a luxury living waterfront, envied by New Yorkers and Washingtonians who once dismissed us as a backwater. How well is the redeveloped waterfront blending with the quaint architecture and stubbornly independent culture of a people who will walk a long way for the right to eat a bottom-feeding crustacean? And how much of the Old Baltimore must be transformed into a New Baltimore to oblige developers and luxury-seeking homeowners? Welcome to New Baltimore On industrial Clinton Street, awash with new infrastructure for businessman Ed Hale’s ambitious Canton Crossing, there sits a reminder of Old Baltimore, a little red rowhouse with painted window screens of ducks and a lighthouse. Dwarfed by the nearby construction, it resembles a quaint prop left over from an abandoned movie set. Nearby is the construction site for The Moorings at Canton— four-story townhouses (starting at $600,000) with doors opening onto a little polluted cove. The acres of boats bobbing outside are from as far away as Corning, New York, and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Not just little boats, but tall, sleek

Old meets new: Historic Federal Hill abuts the rising wave of waterfront residential development.

sailboats and fat, three-story yachts with more square footage than a Highlandtown rowhouse. In fact, as of the last city count in 2003, there were 4,000 more marina slips (existing and proposed) than the city had 20 years ago. Then there is the gated community on a pier over the water. A wide electronic gate bars the parking garage beneath the townhouses that look as if they’re floating. They are part of a new, handsome eighty-three-unit townhouse development on the 2300 block of Boston Street called North Shore at Canton. Think of it: a gated community only a block from the Sip & Bite diner, Baltimore’s legendary greasy spoon. The city’s planning department has a map with a dot showing each of the 14,000 city house sales last year. They total $1.4 billion in sales. The darker the blue dot, the more expensive the house. The area around the harbor is so saturated with dark blue dots that they form a mass. And the map doesn’t include condominiums. That map shows the potential for a tax infusion unseen in modern times. Those eighty-three townhouses near the Sip & Bite have a total assessed value of $44 million, according to calculations from the city’s planning department. That translates into a possible tax windfall for the city (not counting the five years of discounts that buyers of new homes get on property taxes) of $1 million, enough to finance a small city public school for a year. If you’re from Old Baltimore and your mouth is still agape, consider this: $1 million in tax revenue is what the city gets from some of its finest neighborhoods. That’s the entire neighborhood, not just one block. Two examples: West Baltimore’s picturesque Hunting Ridge with 461 houses and Northeast Baltimore’s well-manicured Mayfield with 416 houses. Who are the newcomers willing to pay six and seven figures for a piece of Baltimore’s waterfront? In 1990, New York entrepreneur Louis J. Pearlman did something many Old Baltimoreans thought was complete lunacy. He paid $1 million for a penthouse on top of the twenty-seven-story Harborview in Federal Hill. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

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As he mingled with hundreds of people sipping champagne outside Harborview’s gala opening, Pearlman said he liked the idea of having his own elevator and needed a place for his 45-foot yacht with its two staterooms and Jacuzzi, he told a reporter for the Evening Sun. And he said the price of only $1 million was a great deal, about a third of what he’d pay in New York City. Fifteen years later, Pearlman’s investment in Baltimore proved lucrative, not lunatic. He sold the penthouse last year for a price he said he can’t quite recall. But, “I made more than 50% profit,” he says. And even though he never lived in Baltimore, he said he loved the “phenomenal” harbor and often stayed there with houseguests, including the Backstreet Boys, who he produced through his Transcontinental Studios. Fifteen years ago Pearlman may have been considered a risk taker for spending $1 million on a home at the Harbor. Today, it’s become a standard. Phong Mai grew up in Arbutus, graduated from Johns Hopkins University, then moved to Northern Virginia, opening a database consulting firm. On a recent spring weekend he and his wife drove to the Inner Harbor on a whim. They were so “blown away with how far it’s gone” that they are seriously considering buying a house being built on a pier off Key Highway for more than $1 million. Pier Homes at Harborview would be a second home for them, but Mai says it would be worth it for a view of the water that can’t be found in Washington, D.C. O Say Can You See? A City on the Rise Mining the potential value of Baltimore’s waterfront was an emerging idea back in the 1980s when Carolyn Boitnott was president of the Butchers Hill Association. As Canton and Fells Point were slowly gentrifying there was a troublesome flurry of bills in the city council to allow new development along the waterfront, which was now being dubbed the “Gold Coast.” Boitnott and other leaders were alarmed at the thought of tall buildings dwarfing their rowhouse communities and blocking their water views. After meeting with a city official to review plans, “We all came out of there and said, ‘Oh my god, we have to stick together.’” And so they did. They formed the Waterfront Coalition, made up of community groups from Canton to Little Italy. They fought towers from being built, historic wharfs from being razed, and urged the city to build waterfront parks and maintain public access to the water.

Four-story townhomes at The Moorings at Canton start in the $600,000s.

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The coalition also supported a plan to build the one thing that would keep the waterfront open to everyone. Wouldn’t it be fabulous, developers like Ted Rouse and community leaders agreed, to build a public promenade for a 7-mile stretch from Canton to Federal Hill. Charm City was, in fact, ahead of its time. “Baltimore can say with pride that it was out front,” says Dick Rigby, codirector of the Waterfront Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that helps cities design their waterfronts. Now, Rigby says, when people in other cities discuss good ideas for urban waterfront development, they say, “Oh, like Baltimore.” Steve Bunker was a Fells Point community leader and businessman who worked with Boitnott to preserve the waterfront and “fight for access of working-class people so they didn’t get gentrified out,” said Bunker, who now lives in Maine. In the early days, “People said you can’t fight City Hall,” recalls Bunker. But he and Boitnott—and dozens of others—proved the naysayers wrong. “Of course, it’s going to change, but you can have a say in how it changes,” says Bunker. “We certainly held it back,” he says, recalling how the coalition stopped a twenty-eight-story building from being built in Fells Point. Boitnott agrees. When asked if she thinks there is a wall blocking the Boston Street waterfront, she says, “I hate to call it a wall, because there could be a worse wall.” Many activists believe the same could not be said for the high-rise buildings at Inner Harbor East, that are in clear view across the harbor from Federal Hill, a neighborhood that covets low building heights as passionately as it guards its parking spaces. Federal Hill’s own waterfront makeover is equally as stunning as Canton’s transformation. And the metamorphosis has had a particularly profound effect on one observer. At a recent meeting over the city’s plans to convert industrial Key Highway into a thoroughfare as cosmopolitan as a Parisian boulevard, the skeptical gray-haired man stood up to introduce himself. “My name is George and I’ve lived in South Baltimore for a long time,” he said. It didn’t matter that he didn’t give his last name. Most likely, the 200 people in the high school auditorium know him as George W. Della Jr., the state senator from the 46th district for the last twenty-two years. His district covers the entire waterfront—from Canton’s Clinton Street to Fells Point, to the Inner Harbor and around to the Museum of Industry. To record the changes along the water, the senator’s office has plotted a map with shiny multicolored stars showing the 640 liquor licenses in his district (out of 1,370 city-wide). There are so many bars on the waterfront, the map looks like a crude picture of fireworks bursting over the harbor. The night of the Key Highway plan unveiling, city planners proposed a transformation of the once-industrial Key Highway with new parks, public access piers, and tall, narrow buildings with new luxury homes and shops. Della was wary. He didn’t want any new development to hurt businesses in nearby South Baltimore and he didn’t want to see a repeat of past mistakes, accusing developers of “skirting the law” and the city of “walking around with blinders on.” Della knows from experience that the city never penalized developers who blocked promised view corridors that were written into the Key Highway Urban Renewal Plan. The meeting took a turn for the worse when a long-time resident sitting in front of Della broke through the evening’s decorum.

Abel Wolman American Geophysical Union, courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives

“I want water for people to drink and water for people to wash, and children that survive. Too many people are still dying,” Abel Wolman said in a 1983 speech to the World Health Organization. Wolman, a Baltimore resident all his life, revolutionized drinking-water treatment and sewage

Map courtesy of Baltimore City Department of Planning

systems throughout Maryland and the world. His work resulted in the elimination of the threat of typhoid fever in the United States, the expansion of sewers and safe sewage treatment, and the employment of a chlorination treatment that is still used to make drinking water safe today. Wolman’s career began as a sanitary engineer for the Maryland Department of Public Health, but during his lifetime, he worked in almost every department that involved water, sewage, or public works, and served as chair of both the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the School of Sanitary Engineering simultaneously. During the Great Depression, the Baltimore Sun noted that he’d held more government jobs than any single person in the state, but failed to mention that he’d been paid for only Blue is the new green: The darker the blue dot, the higher the home sale.

one of them: chief engineer of state. After Wolman and chemist Linn Enslow perfected a method for adding the appropriate amount of chlorine to water for purification in 1919, Wolman secured funds under

“I like Key Highway the way it is,” she shouted. “Why do we have to give it to developers? Take your plan and stuff it.” Della’s views are considerably more tempered toward the New Baltimore. He just wants to make sure working-class homeowners aren’t forced out by escalating property taxes—and Della has sponsored circuit-breaker laws to control tax increases on rising assessments. In an interview before the Federal Hill meeting, Della—who grew up near Federal Hill Park—reminisced about the Old Baltimore and how it’s been transformed from a working‑class industrial town. “It’s wonderful to see all this. I have no idea where it’s going to end up. Every square inch of real property is going to be developed and redeveloped and changed into something new,” he said. “You have to ask yourself, is it ever going to stop?” —Joan Jacobson, a regular Urbanite contributor, wrote about development in Cherry Hill for the March issue.

the New Deal to update Maryland sewage systems, and then embarked on a nationwide campaign to convince the public to install water treatment and wastewater systems in their communities, pointing out that the spread of typhoid “came not from pathogens, but from shocking negligence.” Internationally, Wolman aided fifty other nations in water reforms, including Israel, India, Ceylon, Thailand, and countries in Latin America and Africa. Ultimately, Abel Wolman’s ability to recognize the needs of individual communities made possible one of the largest public health successes of the century. As Wolman himself wrote, “In change lies the future hope of real public health progress. Fortunately, experience teaches us that change does occur.”

—Laura Whildin

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Remaining surface streams in Baltimore City Former surface streams now running belowground in storm drains

Wh e r e

Map courtesy of Parks and People Foundation based on current information provided by Baltimore City Department of Public Works. Copyright Parks and People Foundation.

Hidden Water

Even on the sunniest and driest of days, water surges through the storm drains beneath Baltimore. Underground pipes contain an intricate system of rivers that once flowed aboveground—not, like Atlantis, a city lost underwater, but water lost beneath our city. In the 1700s, Baltimore was practically awash. The land where Penn Station now sits consisted of a swamp. Wide-flowing rivers traversed the surrounding area: Harris Creek flowed through Canton, Chatsworth Run poured into the Middle Branch, and the Jones Falls continued from Penn Station to the Harbor, where I-83 now stands. Both Fells Point and Federal Hill were water coves. But constant flooding and waterborne disease slowed the growth of neighborhoods. Clearing the way for development, engineers placed storm drains directly into streamlines, siphoning them into underground pipes that flowed to the harbor. Today, many Baltimore streams still run in the same underground storm drain systems. Guy W. Hager, director of Great Parks, Clean Streams and Green Communities at Baltimore’s Parks and People Foundation, says buried streams cause a host of negative ecological consequences. Without rivers to naturally irrigate plants, city land managers must use fresh water to hydrate foliage, while rainwater and groundwater, with no place to accumulate, flow straight to the harbor. “That’s not the best way,” says Hager. Without rivers, he adds, indigenous plants die while plants foreign to local ecosystems grow, and fish are completely wiped out.

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Once a covered stream is “daylighted,” the living system is restored. Aquatic insects return, the sun helps clean pollutants, and the river naturally irrigates surrounding land. Daylighting can also have commercial benefits. Hager points out streams increase surrounding land value. “Everybody is looking for water access and water views,” he says. In places like Seattle, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, citizens and watershed experts are advocating for streams to be excavated from under parks, roads, and even houses. Now, Baltimore is getting in on the act. Next summer, the Department of Public Works plans to daylight Stony Run, a stream flowing beneath Northern Parkway and Wyndhurst Avenue, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will clear a 50-foot section of tributary in Maiden’s Choice, the present site of the Loudon Park Cemetery. A lot can be gained Bill Stack, chief of water qualwhen citizens realize ity management for the Baltimore that what flows City Department of Public Works, hopes for larger projects down the beneath their feet isn’t line. “Imagine unburying a stream a sewer but a buried as large as the lower Jones Falls, river headed out to the which runs under the Jones Falls Chesapeake. expressway,” he says. But, warns Keith Bowers, president of Biohabitats, a Timoniumbased ecological restoration company, stream daylighting isn’t always the best solution. “You have to look at cost/benefit,” he says. “For the amount of money you might spend to daylight a stream, it might be better to enhance [aboveground] streams. … You might be able to restore twice as much stream for the same amount of money.” Jennifer Zielinski, the watershed engineer at the nonprofit Center for Watershed Protection in Ellicott City, thinks people don’t understand the difficulties involved in daylighting. “You need a lot more area than you think you would to have a corridor along the stream.” Unburying a stream, Zielinski says, only works when it is part of a comprehensive restoration plan. Otherwise, clients are disappointed “when it doesn’t look like they are walking out in a forest somewhere,” she says. But, Hager argues, a lot can be gained when citizens realize that what flows beneath their feet isn’t a sewer but rather a buried river, headed out to the Chesapeake. The more people know about the world underneath the streets, the more buried streams we can unearth and bring back to life. —Laura Whildin is a master’s degree candidate in the science writing program at The Johns Hopkins University.

A Dream of Water —We stood on a point surrounded on three sides by water. Like an old looking glass, the bay wavered in the sun. A wind came up, too strong for the day, blowing west to east, breaking the bay into ten thousand pieces that all flowed out, like running silver, leaving a mudflat. In an eyeblink, grass and trees sprang up to make a green-gold meadow where children played who took no notice of our gaze, as if we were the apparitions, they flesh and blood, and I thought, Never will I see this happen again. I saw the moment passing as all moments pass, but when I turned to you, the scene in your eyes, too, it all changed back: the ocean rushing in to cover up the meadow, the children gone, your eyes brimming with the water of years held back too long. Though all had vanished, I felt strange joy. Above, gulls circled and laughed, circled and laughed, the waves a series of small endless events, lapping at thousands of smooth white stones on the shore, the shining grey years of our lives before us.

—Elizabeth Spires originally printed in Now the Green Blade Rises (W.W. Norton, 2002)

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Johns Hopkins alum and journalist John Glassie, who took more than 1,000 photographs of bicycles locked to poles for his book entitled, um, Bicycles Locked to Poles, has interviewed such luminaries as author Jhumpa Lahiri, director Francis Ford Coppola and KISS frontman Gene Simmons—presumably when he wasn’t trolling his New York City neighborhood looking for lonely Schwinns. Since he’s got the credentials, we thought we’d ask Glassie to score some face time with himself to discuss his forthcoming collection coming out this month from McSweeney’s Books.

Self-portrait of the artist(s)

A Bicycle Built for One

Snap-happy John Glassie turns the mic on himself B y

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Photographs from Bicycles Locked to Poles

urbanite june 05

Q. Very nice to see you again. A. It’s always a pleasure. Honestly, I really can’t help but just stare at you. Q. I know! But we’ll have time for that later. Let me see if I can provide some context for this. You’re a writer. We’re a writer. We’ve written for some decent places like The Believer, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Salon. Should we men‑ tion more? A. That’s good enough. Or how about The Ganzfeld? Q. Fantastic! But no one knows what that is. I guess they can Google it. The point is that we’re a writ‑ er but now we have this book of photographs, Bicycles Locked to Poles, coming out from Mc‑ Sweeney’s, plus a gallery show. A. At Jen Bekman, a gallery in New York. That’s www.jenbekman.com. Q. Indeed. And as the title suggests, they’re all photos of bicycles in a captive state on the streets of our East Village neighborhood in New York. And I must say that they’ve been shot with a wry approach that seems to combine genuine

sympathy with inventory‑taking. Frequently bent, broken and made otherwise dysfunctional, the bikes in their altered forms take on graphi‑ cal as well as anthropomorphic life. I want to ask— A. Sorry to interrupt, but that was very nicely said. Q. Thank you. Allow me to say in response that your nice compliment shows us to be almost exquisitely perceptive. A. You were going to ask why we started taking these photographs in the first place. Sometime early in 2001, we noticed a magenta arrow spray painted on the sidewalk on our block—one of those electrical or water utility markings—point‑ ing directly at the sadly bent, Dali-esque wheel of a bicycle locked to a pole. We walked by that scene every day for months until one day the bike was gone. And it just occurred to us to start documenting these bikes. Q. Do you think we should be honest and admit that taking hundreds of pictures of bicycles locked to poles was also a form of procrastina‑ tion, that we’d been at work on a novel for years, going quite broke and getting eviction notices and selling CDs to buy sandwiches and what not, and that we were trying to finish the novel, but also that we were afraid of finishing it … A. And that in a sense we were right to be afraid, because it turned out that our agent couldn’t sell it to any of the major publishing houses. Q. And also that instead of publishing a novel we found out we were going to have a baby out of wedlock! A. Then it turned out that the baby was beautiful! Q. And that the bike photographs were beautiful!

A. And that life was! That when we thought about it, we realized that in a sense, all this time, we ourselves had been a kind of … bicycle locked to a pole, too! But that we had locked ourselves there! And that now we felt untethered and liber‑ ated and free! Q. I love you! A. I love you so much I can’t stand it. Plus, the beauty of all this honesty is that it makes us seem so, I don’t know, human. Q. Exactly! But hold on—we need to talk about Baltimore, for which we have a soft spot, owing to our undergraduate days as a humanities clone on the Homewood Campus of Hopkins. A. I think about walking over to Greenmount Ave‑ nue and buying thrift-shop suit jackets, drinking in Mount Vernon, seeing films at the Charles—in those days, the ’80s, they started with a clip of John Waters smoking, saying how tough it was not to smoke during foreign movies, but not to do it anyway—and then going across the street to the Club Chuck. Q. I heard it was haunted. We somehow missed out on that. But looking back on it, wouldn’t you say that our appreciation for the life of the street, for the city, now manifested in Bicycles Locked to Poles, really had its basis in our Balti‑ more days? A. I absolutely would. No lie. You’re an appealingly nostalgic fellow. Q. And you, my dear, dear friend, are a deliciously sensitive creature for noticing. A. And now we will be back in Baltimore this month for an event at Atomic Books. Q. I believe I can speak for both of us when I say we really look forward to it. n

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fees have gone up significantly for city residents in the last few years to help pay for the overhaul and work is ongoing. The results could be dramatic, but will take years. Second, the harbor holds the residue of decades of industrial activity, tons of potentially harmful chemicals resting in the sediment beneath the water. For the Chesapeake Bay, it’s a blessing that many of these chemicals remain buried in our harbor, limiting the environmental degradation elsewhere. Of course, that’s not much comfort to those interested in improving the harbor water. The harbor could be dredged, removing much of the contaminated sediment. There are no firm estimates for how much that would cost, but it would be expensive. A project to dredge hundreds of tons of sediment laced with chemical contaminants known as PCBs from the Hudson River in New York State will cost at least a half-billion dollars. And disposing of the Baltimore harbor’s polluted gunk would pose a major challenge. Another option is to leave the sediment undisturbed, but ensure that future runoff is less contaminated. Over time, this cleaner sediment will create a natural barrier, minimizing the release of chemicals into the water. That approach, while less expensive, would require stricter enforcement of industrial pollution laws, and a broad education campaign to get residents throughout the watershed to avoid, for example, using excessive fertilizer on their lawns or dumping old automobile oil in the storm drains. Finally, there’s the trash. Walk along the Canton waterfront or out on the marina docks among the expensive pleasure craft and you will find a colorful assortment of garbage—potato chip bags, empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, countless cigarette butts, and a seemingly timeless collec-

tion of Styrofoam in various stages of disintegration. Lurking just underneath the surface are semi-buoyant hypodermic needles, discarded by junkies into gutters and sewers. Dr. John J. Dowling, a retired public health officer from Long Island who moved with his wife into a condominium in Canton in 2001, could scarcely believe the amount of trash that accumulated on the shore, particularly after a big rain. “I remember thinking, ‘What can we do to get rid of that stuff?’ It’s an eyesore and a nuisance,” Dowling says. People in Baltimore, he figures, are too disconnected from the harbor and simply do not realize—or care—that the trash they throw into the gutter inevitably ends up in the water. Working with Lee, a longtime community activist, Dowling is head of the Baltimore Harbor Watershed Association, a group of environmental activists and harbor residents. One of the association’s key goals is to have the city install giant nets across the openings of some two dozen outfalls— including streams and storm sewers—that flow into the Inner Harbor, depositing tons of trash. The nets would strain out trash, and crews using cranes and dump trucks would empty them every couple of weeks. It would be a multimilliondollar project, but one that could dramatically improve the visual appeal of the water. Swimming in Baltimore’s water used to be common. Old-timers recall diving off Fells Point piers. Sandy beaches and public bathhouses in Middle Branch were hugely popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And across the harbor, into the 1920s, the Maryland Swimming Club in Dundalk did a fine business where the marine terminal now operates. Swimming came and went in other cities as well. But some have done something about it. In New York City, the rivers are once again clean enough to allow for swimming, including a series

of races and distance events sponsored by the Manhattan Island Foundation. The water is safe, although the foundation does warn swimmers that “there may be random jetsam and flotsam in the waterways.” Swimming is common at beaches in Boston Harbor, which has been the focus of a major cleanup effort since 1985. Improvement in the water quality in Boston and New York did not take place by accident. In both cases, committed advocacy groups forced the issue and won support from key politicians, who delivered government funding. Could Baltimore follow the lead of Boston, New York, and other cities, such as Tacoma, Washington, attempting to clean up their harbors? Clearly, it won’t happen here unless the people insist on it. The hardest task might be convincing Baltimoreans to readjust their conception of the harbor. Can we embrace the primal need to be in the water, not just beside it? Imagine the possibilities if the water were someday clean enough for swimmers. Why couldn’t we redesign the harbor bulkhead near Rash Field to create a swimming area, complete with slides and swings? How about creating a sandy beach for families on the Middle Branch, complete with lifeguards and hot dog stands? Or contemplate the buzzing social scene that would emerge at a new Canton Beach, with a salsa band providing the soundtrack from a waterfront bandstand? We can dream, but others will not wait. Once the weather heats up, there will be a few brave souls—mostly kids—who will dive into the harbor, perhaps in Canton or Locust Point, oblivious to the potential dangers (or the fact that harbor swimming is officially prohibited by the City). Joe Stewart, a Waverly resident who has made four annual swims across the mouth of the Patapsco River to raise money for environmental groups, wanted to move last year’s event closer to Baltimore to have it end at Fort McHenry. He gave up the idea after receiving a strongly worded memo from state environmental officials about the health risks. But Stewart still looks longingly at the urban swimming going on in New York and elsewhere. “There’s no reason that wouldn’t happen here if we gave it high enough priority,” he says.

Want Baltimore to become a swimming city? Should we make water clean-up a priority? Let us know at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com.

urbanite june 05

courtesy of Splaff

conscientious consumption Let your fingers do the shopping

courtesy of Ecoganik

Shell Belted Jersey Wide-Legged Pant These brick-colored cotton slacks are slick enough for the work‑ place but comfy enough for everyday. With a wide, colorful shell belt at the hip. $129. www. ecoganik.com.

Lollipop Bench The lollipop bench is a modernist standard, but Danko Persing’s version uses ply-bent construction, which not only contours the seat for more com‑ fortable lounging, but uses one-eighth the lumber of conventionally made wood furnishings. $1,850. www.peterdanko.com.

courtesy of Kee-Ka

courtesy of Shoes With Souls

Turquoise Lace Front Voile Top Ecoganik’s crinkly blue top is perfect paired with a skirt or pants, and is light enough for easy fashion on hot summer nights. $89. www.ecoganik.com.

Bike Tube Wallet Your old bike’s cracked inner tubes are given a new lease on life with Splaff ’s four-slot, two-billfold wal‑ let, the “urban terrain” accessory for the future. If only money could be recycled this easily. Call 619221-9199 for locations. $24.95. www.splaff.com.

Eco Sneaks Shoes With Souls uses 100% recycled rubber for the footwear’s sole, and hemp—of which one acre can produce as much usable fiber as four acres of trees— for the cool retro topside. For men and women, in denim and black. $36. www.shoeswithsouls.com. courtesy of Votaic Systems

courtesy of Ecoganik

Bio-ethics and fashion come together at online stores where high design is infused with environmental consciousness. These luxurious lines run the gamut from wallets and shirts to furniture and candles, and rather than trudging to a mall built over wetlands, you can visit web boutiques that, in the camper’s credo, leave only footprints.

courtesy of Danko Persing

b y l i z z i e s k u r n i c k

Voltaic Solar Backpack There’s no longer a need to seek out a Starbucks to recharge your iPod or cell phone when you’re on the go. Voltaic Systems’ knapsack has three lightweight solar panels capable of generating up to 4 watts of power—and it’s still got room for those low-tech books and pens you keep hauling around. $229. www.voltaicsystems.com.

Organic Bib and Burp Set Kee-Ka’s cotton shields are made entirely of un‑ bleached cotton, and come in Cupcake, Honey Bunny, Peanut, or Sweat Pea design. $22. www.keeka.com. courtesy of Madisyn Taylor

sustainable city

Soy Votive Candles Unlike its petroleum counterpart, soy burns without soot, and these mini-votives have the added advan‑ tage of taking their scents from pure-grade aroma‑ therapy oils instead of artificial fragrances. Packaged with a matching matchbook, these Madisyn Taylor candles come in lavender, lemongrass, bergamot, sweet orange, grapefruit, and tangerine. $28. www. madisyntaylor.com. —Lizzie Skurnick is Urbanite’s senior editor.

courtesy of Ecoganik

Khaki Trench This light summer coat is a softer version of the classic trench, made entirely with organic cotton. $215. www.eco‑ ganik.com.

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One of the first things Siegler told them is that the type of boat they’re on was built specifically for dredging oysters. She showed them a chart display‑ ing the decline in the population of these natural water purifiers. “This boat was built ninety-nine years ago, so it didn’t have an engine,” Siegler said. “It could have had an engine later, but there was a law that you couldn’t dredge for oysters with an engine on—it would just be too easy and we’d have no oysters left.” So she pointed several yards away to a pushboat that is designed to motor the skipjack when necessary, and then be pulled in while dredging for oysters. The kids gathered in closer as she began to pry open an oyster, whose shell was bonded to at least one other oyster. “Oysters need a hard place to settle down and grow,” Siegler told them. That hard place might be another oyster shell. “They cluster to form what?” she asked. “An oyster reef,” one of the students called out. In addition to the oysters she was holding in a rubber-gloved hand, Siegler pulled out an instrument that looks something like a caliper, but the opening doesn’t adjust. It is fixed at 3 inches to quickly determine whether an oyster is large enough to be harvested. “How fast do oysters grow?” Siegler asked. “One inch a year,” said 4/1/05 Brittany. 5:58 PM Page 1 GG_SSGS Ad Urbanite

Living Classrooms Foundation President and CEO James Piper Bond pointed out the irony that this skipjack, once built to bring oysters out of the water, is now used to put them back in, specifically into an oyster sanctuary down the bay. Over the last ten years, programs in Living Classrooms have replenished the bay with a total of two million oysters and spat—the name for an immature oyster that has not yet formed a hard shell. The students moved to the next station, just as ready to answer Jones’ questions as they were with Siegler, with no prompting needed from Regan. “They’re making me so proud,” Regan said. “What does salinity mean?” Jones asked. “The mixture of salt and fresh water,” Brittany answered. “What do you think the wind does for the wa‑ ter?” Jones asked her group, noting the windy day and the whitecaps. “Wind is air, and air has oxygen,” answered Jwaun. Pulling out charts showing a comparison between drought years and those with more rainfall, Jones illustrated the effect on oxygen levels in the water, which are vital for aquatic life. Siegler pulled out some of these creatures gath‑ ered earlier in the day by another class, and kept in a cooler. There were white perch, as well as some emerald-green seaweed—not often found in the Inner Harbor—and a blue crab. Unlike the cooked version most of the kids have seen, this beautiful swimmer still had the

INGENUITY AS A MATTER OF PRACTICE.

eponymous blue coloring along its front claws. Bond encouraged Siegler to let the kids pass around the crustacean, but first he gave them a lesson in how to hold one. “If you hold it, you can’t freak out and drop it,” he warned them. “You’ve got to hold him just how I show you, so he won’t pinch.” Before leaving the skipjack, the teachers, Bond, and the kids discussed which is “more” important— the ecological health of the harbor, or development of business and industry? “You all think we ought to have both, but what can you all do [to make that happen]?” Bond asked them. “Don’t throw trash on the ground,” one of them said. “Send a letter to the mayor,” another one offered. “Yes, you can write letters to the leaders and sign petitions,” Bond said. “It comes down to the will of the people. As you get older, you will be the leaders. You will be the decision-makers.” “I think most adults are aware the water is like it is, but they’re just not doing anything about it,” said Brittany. “Maybe they think they can’t do anything about it, or they can do something about it and they just don’t want to.”

—Anne Haddad, a regular Urbanite contributor, wrote about filmmaker Doug Sadler in the April issue.

At Shapiro Sher Guinot & Sandler, we build legal bridges you can trust. Our clients' progress is our passion and our attorneys partner with business leaders to forge sound, innovative solutions spanning obstacles large and small, present and future. In all areas of business law, litigation, bankruptcy, and international trade, we provide robust representation focused on every client's unique needs and ambitions.

VISION. INGENUITY. SKILL. WE’LL GET YOU THERE.

Baltimore | 410.385.0202 Washington | 202.331.0200 www.shapirosher.com

urbanite june 05

out there

by joan jacobson

SUBMERSIVE ART

Artists as far‑flung as Israel, Haiti, and the Missis‑ sippi Gulf Coast have brought their creative juices to Baltimore for the American Visionary Art Museum’s newest exhibit, Holy H2O: Fluid Universe, which, in the words of museum founder and director Rebecca Hoffberger, focuses on the “environmental, biologi‑ cal, political, spiritual, and playful aspects of water.” Hoffberger dedicated the exhibit to one of her heroes, the late Baltimorean Abel Wolman, who was an international pioneer in clean urban water and sewer systems. A tribute to Wolman mounted on a wall by the museum’s entrance introduces the ex‑ hibit with the sanitary engineer’s own words on wa‑ ter: “Armies have fought over it. Civilizations have dwindled after losing it. People have died from it. Health workers have blessed it. And monarchs and priests have worshipped it.” And artists, clearly, have been stirred by it. AVAM gathered 150 works by forty artists for the exhibit, which runs through September 4. Wilmington, Delaware, artist Nancy Josephson, a spiritual follower of Vodou and an artcar artist, created La Siren, which, according to the museum notes, “embodies the ocean’s dual qualities of great strength and serenity.” Her larger‑than‑life mermaid shines a deep lagoon blue from waist to fins and shimmers with gold beads and rhinestones from the waist up. Nearby, a small fountain drips from a statue’s ocean blue fingernails into a small pond, and the walls, inlaid with sequins and beads, glim‑ mer like a nocturnal ocean.

1950’s Coney Island comes to life in Tom Duncan’s Dedicated to Coney Island, an intricate and whimsical mechanical model of the amusement park. A hot air balloon moves while the Wonder Wheel (a Ferris wheel) turns. Visitors can manipulate hun‑ dreds of figures, from circus elephants to swimmers tanning on the beach, with a panel of switches. Also interactive is Colombian artist Carlos Zapata’s wood‑carved, mechanical Pumpkin Lady, which has a tiny woman holding oars in a boat craft‑ ed in half a butternut squash on top of a man’s head. When you push the button, the man’s tongue sticks out, his eyes roll, and the woman begins to row. Zapata’s more serious Kidnapping Industries shows two men carrying a rusted boat on their backs. In‑ side are doll‑house‑sized figures—one shackled, an‑ other eating watermelon, while a third sweeps with a tiny broom. Down the hall are the brilliantly colored reli‑ gious paintings of Israeli artist Baruch Nachshon. Splitting the Sea of Reeds shows the parting of the Red Sea with a procession of men carrying unleav‑ ened matzos across the divide. In another, Jews cast their sins into the water for Yom Kippur, the tradi‑ tional Day of Atonement. In each painting, jubilant, colorful fish seem almost to be smiling. Bodies of water, unsurprisingly, are a peren‑ nial theme: Haiti’s Madsen Mompremier depicts an underwater wedding with King Neptune presiding, while Christopher Moses paints a mermaid ascend‑ ing from a stormy sea, looking like a force to be

photo by Dan Myers

Underwater at the American Visionary Art Museum

Artist Tom Duncan’s fanciful recreation of Coney Island

reckoned with. Three large panels comprising Mis‑ sissippi Gulf Coast artist Steve Shepard’s The Cosmic Sturgeon feature a devilish Richard Nixon standing in a swamp, flashing his infamous victory sign under the words, “Richard Nixon burning.” Then there are the many, many fish of Mr. Imagination, aka Gregory Warmack. Mr. Imagina‑ tion collected hundreds of bottlecaps—mostly from beer bottles—to wire together his vivid version of aquatic life. Most adventurous is his self‑portrait as a giant lizard, complete with a reptilian body, a man’s bearded face, and a lizard’s crown made of black raspberry soda bottlecaps. Viewers with a thirst for more water‑themed art can visit the permanent collection on the first floor for the replica of the doomed luxury liner Lusitania, which artist Wayne Kusy painstakingly constructed out of 194,000 toothpicks. —Joan Jacobson writes frequently for Urbanite.

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june 05

urbanite june 05

in review

courtesy of Riverhead Books

Book Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down (New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, 2005)

courtesy of 3rd Floor

It’s New Year’s Eve. On the roof of Topper’s House, a popular destination for suicidal Londoners, Martin and Maureen are tussling over a ladder to scale the barrier erected by the building’s owners to reduce the edifice’s mortality rate. A former TV talk-show host, Martin, in his words, has pissed his life away,

Gallery 3rd Floor: A Portable Artspace “It’s not enough to make good art. There has to be somewhere to put it,” say Katie Rubright and Heidi Cunningham, co-editors and publishers of 3rd Floor:

having pled guilty to having sex with an underage girl. Meanwhile, Maureen’s teenage son is so severely handicapped he fails to recognize her. They’re soon joined by Jess, a heartbroken teenager, and JJ, a failed American rock star. “I could feel the weight of everything then,” says Jess. “I knew I’d hit the street in no time. I’d beat the world record for falling off a tower block.” But the foursome doesn’t wind up on the side‑ walk. After talking each other down from the roof, they pledge to meet over the coming months and try to keep each other alive. Through their clumsy, yet effective, attempts, they share a series of touching, hilarious misadventures, none of which quite match‑ es the marvelous tragicomedy of the opening scene. Few authors without Hornby’s considerable gift for characterization and dialogue would risk tack‑ ling such sensitive subject matter with such drollery. This gift has ensured the seamless transformation of three previous books—About a Boy, High Fidelity, and Fever Pitch—into successful screenplays. A Long Way Down also begs for adaptation—after a few pages, the movie will be cast in your head. Hornby lets each character tell his or her ver‑ sion of the story, and Martin and Maureen’s voices are the most successful; Jess and JJ’s less so. Despite

our affection for all of them, Maureen monopolizes our empathy. Given that she dedicates every waking moment of her life to her son’s care at the expense of her career, friends, and lovers, her despair seems unavoidable. When Jess, tactless yet astute, offers to kill Matty on Maureen’s behalf, Maureen crumples, admitting that “… all I wanted in the world, the only thing that would make me want to live, was for Matty to die.” A person who is serious about committing suicide, the book reveals, doesn’t waste time argu‑ ing over ladders. “I didn’t feel like a dying man,” JJ explains. “I felt like a man who every now and again wanted to die, and there’s a difference.” Through their unlikely bond, the characters learn that “want‑ ing to die seems like it might be a part of being alive,” and achieve a kind of redemption. If Hornby had plunged deeper into the sources of suicidal depression, rather than dangled his feet over the edge, perhaps A Long Way Down would be an even better book. Yet Hornby is an optimist, and optimistic writers tend to be nicer people to spend time with than pessimistic ones—whatever their subject matter.

A Portable Artspace, a brand-new quarterly publica‑ tion. After starting an alternative art space in their home, Rubright and Cunningham decided it would be more interesting to bring the work to viewers instead of inviting them over to see them. Their new moveable art space, a compelling four-color maga‑ zine, is published in Baltimore and distributed to a national audience. Reading 3rd Floor is like attending an opening at a hot new gallery without the cheap wine or the crowds. A loosely themed “group show” that pairs painting and photography with more experimental media like video, installation, and performance art, the first issue of the magazine offers a wide variety of colorful images from national artists. Those who miss the social aspect of the gallery opening can go to www.3rdfloorproject.org, where readers voice opinions in an ongoing critique and can participate in a discussion about the work. Although few Baltimore artists are represented in this inaugural installment, Cunningham says several are lined up for the second issue, and she encourages any and all artists to apply. Future sub‑ missions will be based around themed topics and

will continue to showcase artists of all types from across the country. The format of the magazine is simple: lots of color images, lots of variety. Purposely omitted are articles, reviews, and interviews, in order to focus on the images. While not overtly political, 3rd Floor seeks to provide an “alternative” selection of con‑ temporary work, to include artists who are typically disenfranchised, and to inspire those who are “in‑ dependent, part-time and non-professional.” Even the artist bios are placed away from the images, in the very front of the magazine, so a reader must flip back and forth to investigate the artists, after they decide which work they like most. According to Cunningham, the arrangement of image and text is specifically designed “to democratize art and to fo‑ cus on the work—not the artist’s resume.” 3rd Floor is distributed through independent booksellers located in urban centers like San Fran‑ cisco, Chicago, and New York, and is available lo‑ cally at the Sound Garden, Atomic Books, and Red Emmas, and at Revolution Records in D.C.

—Susan McCallum-Smith

—Cara Ober

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m

june 05

Even at 2,100 degrees, the art he makes attracts quite an audience.

Creating a community takes art… The art of seeing amazing

Following an artistic tradition that stretches back literally thousands of

possibilities where others

years, Anthony Corradetti blows molten glass into art-and then reaches for

don’t—and being

his paintbrushes. As the owner of the Corradetti Glass Studio and Gallery,

absolutely hands-on in

Corradetti is renowned for his unique approach to creating art glass. After a

crafting every detail.

glass form has been created, he applies layers of luster paint to its surfaces, each of which are fired in turn. The result is what Corradetti calls "a three-

That’s what you’ll dis-

dimensional painting." Collectors call it amazing; his work currently resides

cover at Clipper Mill—

in the White House Collection of Crafts, The Smithsonian Institute, and the

a new community that’s

Corning Museum. Having recently moved his operations to Clipper Mill, Corradetti is upbeat about the new possibilities for his space, which will allow him to conduct glassblowing classes and workshops as well. "The whole spirit of the place is great," he says. "It's really hot." Pictured above: Corradetti Glass Studio and Gallery

uniquely defined by the artisans and artists who have worked here for more than 150 years. From its start as the Union Machine Shops, once the largest machine manufacturing plant in the nation, to its later role as an artist’s colony, Clipper Mill has always been a place of innovation and activity. Now along the Jones Falls, it is being reinvented as a vibrant mixed-use community—one that you can call home or work, or both. Within its 17 acres bordering massive Druid Hill Park, Clipper Mill will offer cutting-edge choices balanced with environmentally sustainable design—and your pick of homes, apartments,

It took a flash flood to frame a new opportunity for growth. Nancy Graboski may not have expected

condominiums, office space, and live/work artist studios. With its central location and own light rail stop, you’re never far from, well, anywhere. There’s an art to

the two feet of water that burst into her

creating a com-

business last July, but she responded in

munity—and

a flash. "Our instincts just kicked in," she recalls. As the owner of the

you’ll find it

Beveled Edge, known for its fine custom framing and art restoration services,

where it all started,

she managed to save all of her customers' artwork. But the flood forced her to relocate both her retail space and gallery-and her production facility, where specialty frames are painstakingly made by hand. But it turned out to be a move for the better. Graboski's new production facility in Clipper Mill now

at Clipper Mill. To see it for yourself, call Katie Hearn 443-573-4358 for office space and for residential space contact Chris Scandiffio at 410-243-1292.

gives her just the space she needs. "The beauty of the new space is that we are able to make very large pieces there," she notes, "which is an important feature in our service to customers." Moving into the space last New Year's Eve, she was greeted by impromptu fireworks. "It was meant to be," she smiles. Pictured above: Nancy Graboski of Beveled Edge

Clipper Mill In Baltimore’s historic Jones Falls Valley

www.clippermill.net

urbanite june 05

Food: Smoothie Operator From p. 15

Further reading: Dwell magazine www.dwellmag.com San Francisco-based shelter magazine that covers pre-fab in depth and sponsors the Dwellhouse design competition.

Earth’s Essence Belvedere Square Located on the corner of York Road and Northern Parkway, Homeland

Prefab. Bryan Burkhart and Allison Arieff. Layton, Utah: Gibbs and Smith, 2002. A beautiful coffee-table book coauthored by Allison Arieff, the editor of Dwell magazine.

Midtown Yoga Center 107 E. Preston Street, Midtown www.midtownyoga.org

Prefab Modern. Jill Herbers. New York: Harper Design, 2004. Examines modernist design trends in modular housing.

Resources

Juice Phoria Cross Street Market 1065 S. Charles Street, Federal Hill 410-727-3311 The Smoothie King 812 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson 410-296-1240

Encounter: Chairmen of the Board From p. 23

The Liquid Earth 1626 Aliceanna Street, Fells Point 410-276-6606

Fells Point Chess 1717 Aliceanna Street 410-327-9191 www.fellspointchess.com Baltimore’s only chess shop and game parlor specializing in equipment and services for chess players.

Goodnature Products Inc. 800-875-3381 www.goodnature.com Specializes in juicing equipment.

Baltimore Observed: Maryland’s Modern Movement From p. 24

Home: Mod to Order From p. 20 www.fabprefab.com The ultimate online guide to modernist pre-fab housing, this website explores the myriad possibilities of factory-built.

National Register of Historic Places www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com This government organization helps preserve buildings, neighborhoods, and structures all across the country. Further reading: Towards a New Architecture. Le Corbusier.

Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1986, (originally London: Rodker, 1931) Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press (revised edition), 2005 The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Walter Gropius. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965 Feature: City for Sale From p. 30 George W. Della Jr. State Senator, District 46–Baltimore City 801 Light Street Baltimore, MD 21230 410-244-8400 george.della@senate.state.md.us Waterfront Coalition 10 S. Wolfe Street 410-522-4991

does stream daylighting. Parks & People Foundation 410-448-5663 www.parksandpeople.org info@parksandpeople.org A Bicycle Built for One From p. 36 McSweeney’s Internet Tendency An offshoot of Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, a literary magazine edited by Dave Eggers. www.mcsweeneys.net The Ganzfeld www.theganzfeld.com We Googled it for you… An annual book of design, picture stories, illustration, and comics. Feature: Swan Dive From p. 28 Chesapeake Bay Foundation 410-268-8816 www.cbf.org Organizers of the Save the Bay campaign.

Feature: Hidden Water From p. 34

Baltimore Harbor Watershed Association 410-563-7300 www.baltimorewaters.org Works to end pollution in the Bay by improving drainage systems.

Center for Watershed Protection 410-461-8323 www.cwp.org Jen Zielinski watershed engineer Biohabitats 410-337-3659 www.biohabitats.com An ecological restoration company that

Clean Water Act www.epa.gov/region5/water/cwa.htm Passed in 1972, the EPA bill calls for the cleanup of the nation’s waterways.

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june 05

urbanite marketplace

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june 05

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