April 18, 200 1
By Carl Schoettler
The Baltimore Sun, Staff Writer

The plump sassy cardinal that is Beulah Smith's first work of art went on view yesterday at the Marlborough Apartments, where until the 1940s Etta and Claribel Cone displayed one of the world's great collections of modern 
paintings.

Smith's stitchery - a cardinal chirping embroidery notes - may never go to 
the Baltimore Museum of Art like the Cone Collection, which reopens this 
weekend in newly renovated galleries. But it's certainly a charming bird.

"That's my favorite bird, the cardinal, especially the red ones. And the 
red one is the male. I like red," says Smith, who is 84 and has lived 18 
years at the Marlborough - not quite half as long as Etta Cone, who died 
in 1949. Claribel died 20 years earlier.

Beulah Smith stitched her cardinal as part of the Marlborough Art Project, 
which brought together Maryland Institute, College of Art students and 
Marlborough residents to explore the building's history, its residents' 
past and present, notably the Cones, and their connection to the larger 
community.

The Marlborough, on Eutaw Place, has undergone several transformations 
since the Cones' time, some of them quite unhappy for the building. The 
handsome Beaux Arts exterior remains elegant. But the interior was gutted 
in the 1970s, and the lobby, ballroom, dining room, lovely woodwork and 
architectural details were obliterated and the Marlborough emerged as 
low-income housing. Once again, at the end of the 1990s, a church-based 
group redesigned the interior as housing for the elderly. The apartments 
now seem warm and comfortable and utilitarian.

George Ciscle, a founder of the Contemporary Museum and curator in 
residence at MICA, directed the project.

"I designed a course through the Maryland Institute," Ciscle says. "This 
course was for a group of students to work with me and the architect and 
an artist in residence named Maria Teresa Fernandez to come up with an 
actual plan and to decide how could we connect with these residents."

The students did research at the Pratt Library, Maryland Historical 
Society and other places, conducted oral histories, visited apartments and 
found that many of the residents collected things like porcelains and 
etchings. Some also did their own artwork.

So the students designed an arts workshop for residents to produce works 
to express their own history. About 20 residents participated. There was a 
reception last night to open the exhibit of their work in the Marlborough 
community room - nice, though perhaps not quite as gala as the museum 
party under way at the BMA last night.

And if Smith's cardinal never gets hung at the BMA, she did create a work 
of art there, a handsome fabric collage with three flowers at the bottom 
and a blue-figured panel, not unlike the patterned backgrounds in a 
Matisse still-life. She and about a dozen other residents visited the 
museum for the first time with the project.

They went through the Cone Collection and then made their own collages in 
the afternoon.

"They gave us the paper and stuff to work with and long tables," Smith 
says. "And we just worked on it ourselves."

But she didn't really care for the art in the Cone Collection.

Her tastes run more to realism than abstraction. She has nice 
reproductions on her apartment wall of a couple of seascapes, a bucolic 
country scene faintly Kinkaidesque and a view of Mount Fujiyama.

Smith was probably the most experienced seamstress in the Marlborough 
Project. She worked about 18 years in the clothing industry as a sewing 
machine operator, and she's been a dressmaker.

Perhaps the most inventive needlework is in the work of Willie Suggs, 
whose stitchery seems as inspired as a trumpet improvisation in a jazz 
solo. He did in fact call one stitch-work riff "Jazz."

"Yeah, I liked it," he says. "It keeps your mind clear."

At the BMA, Suggs, 79, made a very handsome, well-composed collage of 
cloth squares with a tree of hearts just off-center. "Yeah, I worked a 
little bit out there," he says.

And he did like the Cone Collection works: "I enjoyed it. Some people 
didn't. But I did. I sat there, and I really enjoyed it."

But the wall hangings in his room are less abstract. They include a 
drawing of Jesus, a molded conquistador, his certificate of baptism, which 
occurred a couple months ago, and his honorable discharge from the Navy.

He had never heard of the Cone sisters before the project. He was unaware 
he lived on their floor. And he wasn't too impressed, either.

But Suggs has always been impressed with the Marlborough.

"I lived on Madison Avenue, and I used to work at the Druid Hill garage, 
and I delivered cars here," Suggs says. "At the side door, downstairs. 
That's when big shots living here then, lawyers, doctors living here 
then."

But in segregated Baltimore, during the Cone era, the only African 
Americans living at the Marlborough were servants.

"Anybody told me I would be living here, I wouldn't believe it," Willie 
Suggs says. "No. I just wouldn't. It's one of those things. When I moved 
here, I said, 'Well, I ain't going to move no more. I'm through moving.' "

Developers held an all-day forum with officials, planners, public and the owner to gain consensus on redevelopment.

By Christopher Merrill

Inquirer Suburban Staff

PHOENIXVILLE - When Phoenix Iron & Steel Co. shut down in 1987, many of this town's residents lost more than their jobs. Their identity began to slip away as well.

Although some people may lament the proposed residential and retail development of the old steel-mill site, others accept that the revitalization of downtown is tied to the development of this now-desolate stretch of land just off Main Street.

The property's owner, Phoenix Property Group, is hoping to head off an identity crisis by including residents in the planning process for the site.

Newly elected Borough Council member Anthony DiGirolomo said he believes the memory of the mill has been holding back progress. "Once we realize the mill isn't going to come back," he said, "we can move on,"

In the spring, Phoenix Property presented the borough's Planning Commission with a detailed plan for the site, now cleared of all but a few rusted remnants of industrial infrastructure. The plan focuses on restaurants and retailers, residential and office space, with efforts to develop the waterfront along French Creek.

To streamline the approval process, the company called for a "design charrette." The concept: Get everyone in the same room at the same time and on the same page.

So last week, developers, planners and architects; local, county and state officials; and members of the public convened at Columbia Station for the all-day forum.

With a charrette, said Bruce Mowday, a consultant with the nonprofit growth-management group Chester County 2020 Trust, "you get everyone with a stake, from the borough, the planners, elected officials, the public and the owner, involved in the process." Then there are few surprises when the ribbons are cut.

Although agencies such as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Federal Emergency Management Agency will have to sign off on the plan's environmental issues, their approval also considers civic acceptance.

For that reason, 157th District State Rep. Carol Rubley (R., Chester), who attended the forum, praised the developers' efforts to keep the public informed.

"So often with any kind of land-use proposal, people start to react viscerally," she said. "They don't often step back and look at the whole project."

And when residents are left out of the loop, she said, misunderstanding spreads: "Sometimes that can detour the entire process."

Klaus Philipsen, lead designer for Phoenix Property, and his Baltimore architecture firm, ArchPlan Inc., have experience with former industrial sites. "The steel site is a wonderful example of where smart-growth ideas can be applied," Philipsen said. "There are many mixed-use opportunities across the country, but only a very few have the trappings you have here."

Of primary importance, he said, is the site's location in rapidly growing Chester County. Furthermore, it is downtown, along a proposed Reading-to-Philadelphia SEPTA route, and is a former industrial-use site.

All this bodes well for successful reuse of a site that he called "basically a black hole in the center of town."

Philipsen said the charrette concept is intended to level the playing field between developers with political connections and the public. "It used to be that you come in and hit the other guy over the head with a hammer. . . . It's not about whoever has the biggest hammer [anymore]."

Although developers are still concerned about making money, he said, they are realizing that successful fruition hinges on consensus. ". . . Anyone can derail anything these days," he said. "It ends up in court and things come to a screeching halt."

This is a prospect that Walter Logan, president of Phoenix Property, would just as soon avoid. "By involving the public in the early stages, it has a tendency to cut down some of the criticisms that can come up later on," he said.

Logan expects his group to present a modified proposal to the borough Planning Commission at its February meeting, and hopes to break ground in 2001.

Architecture

June 17, 2008

Paris has one. Copenhagen has one. San Francisco just opened one.

Should Baltimore have a design center? That's the question local architects and planners are asking as they seek ways to improve the quality of architectural design and urban planning in the city.

The Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects will sponsor a free public forum from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. June 26 to give participants a chance to discuss what a design center could do for Baltimore and see how much local interest there is in creating one. The forum will be at the Load of Fun studios, 120 W. North Ave., in the Charles North arts and entertainment district.

Klaus Philipsen, a local architect and co-chairman of the Urban Design Committee of Baltimore's AIA chapter, said the idea of a local design center has been discussed on and off for years. It came up again recently during brainstorming sessions for ways to revitalize the Charles North district.

The idea, he said, is to create a place where people can learn about and discuss design issues in a forum that's not possible at present.

Baltimore has many different organizations whose members care about architecture and urban design issues, including the American Institute of Architects, Neighborhood Design Center, Urban Land Institute, Baltimore Architecture Foundation, Citizens Planning and Housing Association, the local chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Baltimore Heritage, Preservation Maryland and even virtual communities such as the EnvisionBaltimore listserv, he said. Design issues also are explored, he noted, by college students at Morgan State University, the University of Maryland, College Park and Maryland Institute College of Art, among other campuses.

But even with all this activity, there is no central location where people can educate themselves about a pending design issue or planning effort, or see design exhibits the way they can in Chicago or New York.

"What we don't have is a place where ... you know that design is discussed and you can see what is happening in Baltimore," Philipsen said.

The purpose of the meeting next week is to find out who might want to pursue the idea. No specific location has been identified for a Baltimore design center, he said.

"It's a litmus test to see if there is interest and, if so, what should be in it" and where it might be, he said of the meeting. "Everything is on the table right now."

Some design centers are primarily commercial settings where designers and clients select furniture, fixtures and textiles, but that isn't primarily what is envisioned, said Craig Purcell, another local architect who has been involved in the preliminary discussions. He said he envisions a design center as "a place for exploration and communication and exchange of ideas."

He said it would be an urban laboratory where students from different colleges might share facilities, and where people could learn about the latest redevelopment plans for the State Office Center or the East Baltimore renewal area or Charles North.

Depending on who runs it, he said, elements likely would include an extensive design library, galleries, academic studios and meeting rooms. Once it becomes established, he said, it could anchor a larger design district that could include commercial space for designers and showrooms for companies serving the building industry.

Part of the discussion, Purcell said, also will involve identifying who might take the lead in funding and operating a local design center. It could be professionals, educators, community groups or some combination of the three.

In recent years, several groups have worked to raise funds and create a design and history center inside the former Peale Museum on Holliday Street, a city-owned building a block from City Hall, but they have not obtained a lease from the city.

Ann Stacy, who recently became executive director of the nonprofit Baltimore Architecture Foundation, said she would still like to see the Peale Museum become the home for the architecture foundation and others. But she said she plans to attend the June 26 meeting to see what people have in mind.

Purcell said he believes a design center ultimately would be a place where the next generation of Baltimore architects and planners could come together and help map the city's future. Ideally, he said, "this is about taking Baltimore forward and raising the caliber of design."

ed.gunts@baltsun.com