Saving Md.'s 'Sites and Sights'

"We aren't anti-growth," said Elizabeth Buxton, executive director of Scenic Maryland. "But it is important to protect areas that are scenic."

That concern extends far beyond the sites that made it onto this year's "Last Chance" list. In western Howard County, preservationists contend that county officials have already allowed too much growth around Doughoregan Manor, an estate still owned by the direct descendants of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence.

A 30-year easement that has protected the manor property from development expires next year. History lovers, county officials, developers and the property's owners are engaged in a high-stakes battle over the future of the estate and its rural setting.

In places including Annapolis, Rockville and Ellicott City, urban preservationists have concerns about saving old cityscapes from modernization efforts they say would destroy their character. The famed architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable summed it up best, said Teresa Lachin, an architectural historian with the preservation group Peerless Rockville.

"There is no art as impermanent as architecture," Huxtable wrote. ". . . The monuments of our civilization stand, usually, on negotiable real estate; their value goes down as land value goes up."

Buxton warned that unless communities and counties continue to bolster land-use regulations and employ tools such as conservation easements and development rights transfers, unbridled growth "is going to destroy our scenic areas. And once they are gone, they are gone."

The organization has suggestions on protecting sites and images of its seven "Last Chance" places on its Web site, http://www.scenicmaryland.org .

In addition to the three in the region, the list includes Baltimore's Victorian-era Charles Street commercial district; Chincoteague Bay, on the eastern shore of Worcester County; Bucktown Village in Dorchester County, known as the birthplace of Harriet Tubman; and a portion of Route 40 in Allegany County that has changed little since the 1930s.