(rshsdepot) Beauty and history have been locked up to rot

[lner4472_@_bcpl.net]

From: Alexander D. Mitchell IV



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Beauty and history have been locked up to rot 
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Nineteenth-century Camden Station, deteriorating in the shadow of Oriole Park, has been shunted to the sidetrack.

By Edward Gunts
Sun Architecture Critic

March 31, 2002

When Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, one prominent feature remained off limits to the general public.

Camden Station, the historic train depot that gave its name to Baltimore's downtown sports district, had been restored to its original exterior appearance, complete with a three-tiered clock tower and 80-foot-tall side cupolas. But officials at the Maryland Stadium Authority had no money to fix up the interior and left the doors locked, saying they'd need a private investor to finish the restoration.

Ten years have now passed since Oriole Park made its debut, triggering a wave of baseball-only, back-to-the city ballparks. But nothing much has changed for Camden Station, which will still be locked when crowds arrive tomorrow for Opening Day.

Neither the Do It Now leadership of former Gov. William Donald Schaefer nor the Smart Growth strategizing of Gov. Parris Glendening has produced the right combination of public and private funding needed to unlock the doors of Camden Station and make it more than an empty shell. Camden Station remains the most beautiful and valuable vacant building in downtown Baltimore - and in many ways the most embarrassing.

Exterior spruced up 



In fairness to the state officials who presided over Oriole Park's construction, the original plan for Camden Yards didn't even call for the train station's exterior to be restored with state funds. Public money was allocated to build a ballpark for the Orioles and a second stadium for major league football, not to restore a train station on Camden Street.

As Oriole Park took shape in 1991, however, leaders of the stadium authority realized that it wouldn't look good to have a dilapidated train station next to the main entrance.

"It was boarded up. The cupolas were gone. The sight that you would see as you came to Camden Yards would be of this abandoned building," recalled Herbert Belgrad, chairman of the stadium authority from 1986 to 1995. "We didn't want that to be the first view of Camden Yards."

The stadium authority hired the architectural firm of Cho Wilks and Benn, now Cho Benn Holback + Associates, to prepare restoration plans for the state-owned train station. The agency's goal was to stabilize the exterior and spruce it up in time for Opening Day. Once the season was under way, officials figured, they could decide on a use for the building and identify a private developer.

The three-story building was clearly worth preserving. Built starting in 1853 but not completed until 1865, it was the principal terminal of America's first commercial railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, and for years was the city's busiest depot. As designed by John Randolph Neirnsee and J. Crawford Nelson, the station boasted a 185-foot-high clock tower that made it the tallest building in Baltimore and, for a while, the largest train station in the world.

Along with President Street Station, it was one of the points where Union soldiers in 1861 were attacked by Confederate sympathizers, resulting in the first casualties of the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, his funeral train stopped at Camden Station on its journey back to Springfield, Ill. By the early 1990s, the station was used only as a boarding point for passengers of the MARC commuter line. Its interior and exterior were in advanced states of disrepair.

Cho Wilks and Benn proposed an artful restoration that made the station a handsome frontispiece for the new ballpark. Although the stadium authority had no funds in its budget to restore the station, leaders "borrowed" $2.2 million earmarked to build the football stadium, which couldn't get under way until a team materialized.

The restored station was rededicated three weeks before the ballpark opened, with a lamplighter in 19th-century garb illuminating two vintage gas lamps in front of the building. The careful restoration of the station and the street lamps epitomized the attention to detail that made Camden Yards such a success.

Proposals stall 



To help recoup its investment, the stadium authority planned to solicit proposals from developers and rent the building to the group submitting the best bid.

"It was the jewel that everybody was hoping would be a center of activity, day in and day out," said architect George Holback. "It's the birthplace and namesake of the whole complex. The idea was to fill it with uses that gave it life year-round."

There had been no shortage of ideas for reusing the station. In the 1980s, the Oliver T. Carr Co. of Washington wanted to fix it up for office use, along with the B&O Warehouse. In the 1990s, a local group proposed to make it the entryway to a $600 million medical mart. The Orioles expressed strong interest in creating a baseball-oriented attraction, including an Orioles Hall of Fame, a Maryland Sports Hall of Fame and an exhibit dedicated to old ballparks.

In October 1993, the stadium authority gave leaders of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum exclusive rights to plan a multi-exhibit baseball center and museum inside Camden Station - a year-round version of a temporary attraction mounted earlier in the year as a prelude to the All Star Game. Proposed occupants included an expansion of the Babe Ruth Museum on Emory Street; the Baltimore Orioles Museum; the Maryland Baseball Hall of Fame and a newly formed Babe Ruth League Hall of Fame.

The $8 million to $10 million proposal was a modified version of a $4 million plan that the Babe Ruth Museum submitted in 1991. At that time, the stadium authority chose to work exclusively with the group planning the medical mart. When the medical mart failed to materialize, the Babe Ruth Museum revised its proposal and was granted a contract to develop plans for the train station.

The proposal called for the Babe Ruth sports center to occupy roughly two-thirds of the 44,000-square-foot station and for a restaurant to occupy the other third. To design its part of the station, the Babe Ruth Museum hired a team headed by Cambridge Seven Associates, the firm that designed the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Preliminary plans called for part of the station's main corridor to be transformed to look like a 1920s-vintage railroad car in which Babe Ruth and his teammates would have traveled from city to city during the season.

The museum couldn't just move in, however. The state needed to make preliminary improvements to get the building ready, such as installing new mechanical systems and repairing rotted floors. The Babe Ruth Museum needed to raise funds for its expansion and fine-tune its design. The stadium authority needed to identify a restaurateur. That's where the plan bogged down.

After numerous prospects were considered, the leading candidate was the owner of Bo Brooks, a well known local seafood restaurant. But Orioles owner Peter Angelos, a key backer of the Babe Ruth expansion project, didn't like the idea of a seafood restaurant, and any associated odors, inside the station.

Angelos explored opening his own restaurant in the station, including an addition on the south end for the kitchen. But he later turned his attention to building a convention hotel near the ballpark, and didn't follow through with the restaurant plan.

Most recently, representatives from the Comcast cable service were exploring the idea of opening an ESPN-Zone-type sports bar and restaurant inside the station, as a way of promoting its broadcast of Orioles games. After the ballclub decided to launch its own network to broadcast games, that proposal fell by the wayside.

Cost rises, floor falls 



According to director Michael Gibbons, the Babe Ruth Museum remains eager to move ahead with its expansion in the station. Just this month, former Baltimore Colt Johnny Unitas donated his collection of football memorabilia to the museum, and Gibbons sees Camden Station as the perfect place to display it. But he still needs a co-tenant.

The latest problem is rising construction costs. When the stadium authority sought bids from developers in 1991, the estimated cost of preparing the interior for tenants was several million dollars. Today, the estimated cost is closer to $7.5 million, according to Stadium Authority executive director Richard Slosson.

"As time has gone by, that building has deteriorated," Slosson said. "It's in really bad shape. The floor joists are rotted. In some places, there is no floor at all and you can fall right through."

The stadium authority was hoping to receive some money during the current legislative session to begin work inside the station, Slosson said, but planners have learned that funds won't be available from the General Assembly until July 2003 at the earliest because of the state's budget crunch.

Slosson is open to suggestions. He said the stadium authority may be willing to let tenants complete more of the work that the state was planning to do, in return for a rent credit, but so far that hasn't closed the gap. There's also some question whether the state will continue to offer tax credits for historic preservation.

"I think it's the most attractive building in the whole city. I've always thought that," Slosson said. "We would love to find a mechanism to finance the improvements. ... At this point, we just don't have the funds to do any work."

It's a sad state of affairs for the start of the baseball season, and a frustrating situation for city planners.

This week may mark the 10th anniversary of Oriole Park's grand opening. But it's also the 10th anniversary of the non-opening of Camden Station. To those yearning for a more vibrant Baltimore, that's 10 years too many. 

Copyright (c) 2002, The Baltimore Sun 

Link to the article: http://www.sunspot.net/bal-as.camden31mar31.story

Visit http://www.sunspot.net
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #332
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org