#fred rasmussen

[retrobaltimore]

When La Plata braved two devastating tornadoes

An aerial view of tornado damage in La Plata, looking northwest, on April 29, 2002. (Karl Merton Ferron, Baltimore Sun files, 2002)

An F5 twister with winds of 261 mph roared into La Plata on April 28, 2002, and left a 64-mile path of destruction across four counties.

When it was over, it entered the record books as the worst tornado in Maryland’s history.

It killed three, flattened buildings and, according to The Baltimore Sun, left a plate of fried chicken undisturbed on a counter in a fast-food restaurant whose walls and roof were gone.

Irene Bowie Wood, a La Plata resident, was 11 years old when on Nov. 9, 1926, an unseasonably warm day, a savage storm raced up the Potomac River and barreled down on the Charles County community a little after 2 p.m.

The La Plata tornado of 1926. (Baltimore Sun files, 1926)

The tornado, which left a path of destruction 18 miles long and 140 yards wide, ripped a schoolhouse from its foundation with 56 students and two teachers inside, and dropped it into a grove of trees 50 feet away.

Seventeen were killed, including Wood’s sister, and 13 classmates. Wood was not in school that afternoon because of a dental appointment.

The dentist’s wife took her to the window and explained that the noise was “from a large airship passing overhead,” Wood told The Sun in 2002.

The storm deposited a piece of the schoolhouse in Upper Marlboro, 25 miles away, and a page from a school ledger landed 36 miles away in Bowie.

Wood was 93 when she died in 2009.

-Fred Rasmussen  ([email protected])

[retrobaltimore]

B&O Museum among '50 Great American Places'

A view of the B&O Railroad Museum's roundhouse from the balcony features the Tom Thumb and an early car in the center of the display. (Ellis J. Malashuk, Baltimore Sun files, 1975)

Brent D. Glass' “50 Great American Places,” which will be published by Simon & Schuster next month, is a guide to the nation's historical sites — some well known, some not.

“Here one will find ample reminders of who we are as a people, and why we are the way we are, as expressed in American art, music, science and technology, medicine,” writes historian and author David McCullough in the book's foreword.

In Maryland, which has any number of possibilities for the book, Glass, director emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, has selected the B&O Railroad Museum.

In his profile, “Railroad University of the United States,” Glass writes that the B&O from its founding in 1827, “established a reputation for innovation.”

In 1830, it placed in service the Tom Thumb, the first American-built steam locomotive, which replaced horse-drawn trains. It was also the first railroad to sell a passenger ticket and publish a timetable.

“The B&O also built the first stone viaduct and the first locomotive and rail car repair shops. The world's first telegraph, invented by Samuel Morse in 1844, ran along the B&O right-of-way,” he writes.

“Located on a forty-acre campus in southwest Baltimore, the museum bills itself accurately as ‘the Birthplace of American Railroading' with significant historic buildings and an amazing collection of locomotives, rolling stock, and equipment,” writes Glass.

-Frederick N. Rasmussen  ([email protected])

[retrobaltimore]

Old hotel, restaurant near Hopkins made hospital food seem preferable

The Sheraton-Baltimore Inn, which opened on Sept. 28, 1960, was the first large hotel/motel built in the downtown area in 29 years. The 150-room hotel/motel was across the street from the Johns Hopkins Hospital. (Ralph Robinson, Baltimore Sun files, Sept. 28, 1960)

East Baltimore Development Inc., the nonprofit steward of an 88-acre tract of land north of Johns Hopkins Hospital, held a groundbreaking ceremony last week for a 194-room Marriott Residence Inn that will be built at Wolfe and Madison streets and is expected to open in 2017.

It isn’t the first hotel to serve those who have patients in the hospital. In 1960, the 150-room Sheraton-Baltimore Inn opened at Broadway and Orleans Street across from Hopkins.

It was the first hotel to be built in the city in decades and was described as a “wayside-inn” type of hostelry.

Its dining room could seat 140 and a cocktail lounge had a capacity for 55, but for years, The Sun’s restaurant critics avoided reviewing the hotel.

When critic John Dorsey did finally visit its dining room in 1975, he reported he was unable to order one if its three steaks, its principal chicken dish or the special of the day or a baked potato because the “restaurant is out of those things,” he was told by a server.

“And this isn’t, remember, some diner on the side of the road in the sticks with a sign outside that says ‘Cabins $3.’ This is a Sheraton Inn,” he wrote.

He wrote that the veal cordon bleu “oozed a watery substance. I managed a bite or two of this horror and then had to give up.”

“I knew it offered mediocre food and depressing surroundings. Why bother to warn its limited but trapped clientele?” wrote Sun critic Elizabeth Large in 1977.

After the restaurant changed its name to the Merry Turtle in the 1970s, she wrote the restaurant has “more style than the name suggests,” but continued to suffer from many of the problems highlighted by Dorsey.

In 1993, a Zagat U.S. Hotel, Resort and Spa Survey billed it as the lowest-rated hotel in Baltimore when it gave it a score that ranged from 11 to 14.

A year later, it was mercifully demolished. The Robert H. and Clarice Smith Building, which is part of the Wilmer Eye Institute, opened on the site in 2011.

--Fred Rasmussen