Some days plumbers and electricians arrived. Construction crews carried in stainless steel sinks. Ovens and ranges showed up. No one noticed the concrete finishers. Then came the moving vans and the pickup trucks.

But word quietly spread that something amazing was working away at Hooper House, a reconditioned 1886 residence that once housed one of Baltimore’s cotton and canvas sailcloth barons.

For years, Hooper House sat at the corner of Saint Paul and 23rd Streets like that big, obsolete antique sideboard or china closet that no one really wanted. Yes, this boldly Victorian house had a substantial presence, with 77 mostly huge windows and 33 rooms, a dumbwaiter and a set of servants’ stairs hidden behind old plasterboard.

While there are grand staircases worthy of a private club, what do you do with this remarkable but problematic residential relic of Baltimore’s 19th century manufacturing elite? It’s so big, and how do you make economic sense of oversized fireplaces and chimneys that could accommodate two Santas?

Then, two years ago, a fire broke out on its upper floors, and though the damage was contained, the water used to fight the blaze created its own set of preservation issues — plaster damage and warped floors.

A developer and creative partner rolled up their sleeves, determined to make the place into a working space with a restaurant and bar. The result of this summer’s transformation is an unexpected knockout.

On a recent morning, dozens of diverse young persons brought their laptops to Mama Koko’s, what might just be Baltimore’s most elegant new eating and cocktail establishment.

The grand old Hooper family parlor has been transformed into a breakfast bar — and later in the day, a full cocktail setting. Customers were having ham and eggs at 9 a.m., but by evening, the scene changes. It’s no longer latte and tea, but rum, citrus and herbs.

“Small businesses wanted to operate in a setting that is singular in the city,” said Matt Oppenheim, a developer who commutes to Baltimore from Washington, D.C. “We are able to offer something unique and special in Old Goucher. We provide a space where clients and customers are going to be inspired.”

Oppenheim’s business partner is Michael Haskins Jr., the proprietor of the fashion clothing brand Currency Studio, who lives nearby in a renovated East 20th Street home in the Barclay community.

“There’s an experience of coming here, walking in the front door, up the steps and seeing this interior,” said Haskins as he gestured toward the high ceilings and unhurried, stylish decor. It’s all reminiscent of a first class ocean liner lounge, or at least the drawing room of some merchant prince and princess.

“We collaborated heavily with Ayo Hogans, an owner of Mama Koko’s, who is a professional fashion stylist,” said Oppenheim.

There’s a new outdoor patio with teakwood tables. And on a cool September morning, what better place to catch up on your emails?

So the question has to be asked, what is Hooper House?

Just inside the front door is a proper office directory, listing its business tenants who occupy the former bedrooms and library on the upper floors. They range from a hair salon, to fashion designers and a candle maker.

Haskins says that despite the business uses, the old house still retains its residential atmosphere within the collection of old Goucher College buildings and 1880s rowhouses in midtown Baltimore.

“It never really feels like it’s booming here. It’s just Baltimore,” Haskins said. “As you move through the city, you can miss what is going on inside this preserved place and the architecture we have preserved. It was important to welcome these businesses — to put the creative class in one place.”

“His body gave out and he died of natural causes,” said his daughter Shelly Himmelrich.

Born in Rejowiec, Poland, he was the son of Max Pechter and Sara Bittner. Beginning in 1939, as a 5-year-old, he and his family fled the Nazi occupation of Poland. They moved east and reached the Russian border on horse and buggy, then rode cattle cars with other refugees. They lived in Siberian and Uzbekistan displaced persons camps before reaching Baltimore in 1949.

His father burned all his personal documents to hide their Orthodox Jewish background.

Mr. Pechter’s mother told the family: “Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be better.” She also advised her son to take care of other people throughout his life and planted the seeds of his philanthropic endeavors.

He attended Talmudical Academy and Forest Park High School, where he met his future wife, Marilyn Bernstein. He studied at the University of Maryland, College Park and served two years in the Army.

“My father dove into real estate, first as a laborer, then a broker and quickly scraping a few dollars from friends and family to become an investor and developer,” his daughter said.

He built homes along Route 40 West, along York Road and in Parkville and White Marsh. He also owned the Timonium and Perry Hall shopping centers and the old Enchanted Forest property in Howard County.

In a 1999 Sun story, Mr. Pechter said he believed the power of hate can be diminished only through education. At that time he was the largest private donor to the then-new Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem.

She said her father was inspired by his parents and his journey to help the less fortunate.

“He truly had a rare kindness in him that was inherited straight from his mother. He did all of the things, and worked a lot professionally and in service to others,” said his daughter Shelly.

Named Tau Epsilon Phi’s 1989 Man of the Year, he was a founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Endowment Fund. He was honored by the Midtown Churches of Baltimore, a group based in the Old Goucher neighborhood, for his work for the homeless.

Mr. Pechter was also honored by the Jewish National Fund in 1995 for a lifetime of work.

He was active in the Associated Jewish Charities and Welfare Fund and the State of Israel Bonds. He also supported the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

He was a Sinai Hospital board member, and a cafe there is named in his parents’ honor.

Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Marilyn Bernstein Pechter; two sons, Martin Pechter, of Boca Raton, and Jeffrey Pechter, of Delray Beach, Florida; two daughters, Shelly Himmelrich, of Delray Beach, and Melissa Pechter, of Housatonic, Massachusetts; a sister, Dora Schwartz, of Florida; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Services were held Aug. 26 at B’nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton.

“With Mary Ann, you didn’t just do things, you did things right,” said Fred Lazarus, MICA’s former president. “She had an incredible eye for detail.”

Born in Hagerstown, she was the daughter of Powell Page Armel, a Fairchild Industries senior tool designer, and Nellie Armel, who worked in aircraft assembly at the same plant.

She was a 1959 graduate of North Hagerstown High School.

After winning a scholarship to MICA, she became head of the drama club and earned a bachelor of fine arts in visual communication.

She met her future husband, Nicholas Lambros, an interior design major, at the school. They lived in a Marriottsville farmhouse before moving to Columbia.

Ms. Lambros joined the administration of MICA in the 1970s. She retired in 2014 as associate vice president of advancement, after holding numerous posts, including director of alumni relations.

“She wore so many hats at MICA. She worked in fundraising and any large event,” her daughter, Tracy Lambros, said.

“She loved organizing special events at MICA — particularly the fund-raising gala Artafare, where donors and art students would create elaborately themed rooms and dinners,” her daughter said.

She was awarded the school’s distinguished alumni award, among other honors.

Fred Lazarus, former MICA president said: “Over my whole tenure, I had the privilege of working closely with her. She was wonderful with people, very engaging. She was a great writer and said things I wish I had said.

“She was not a person who wanted much attention either,” Mr. Lazarus said. “She would let others take the bows.”

Ms. Lambros was a gourmet cook and quickly learned Greek recipes, including her signature dishes, a cheese and onion pie and cheese and tomato tarts.

“No one ever turned down an invitation to her table,” her daughter said.

“She was generous and stylish,” her daughter said. “Creativity was a lifestyle for her, and her sense of style appeared in everything that she touched. She loved art, supported the Baltimore art scene, and collected works by many of her artist friends and colleagues.”

Among the works she owned was a 1972 anti-war sculpture by MICA ceramics professor Douglas Baldwin. Titled “All Volunteer Red Neck Duck Army Following the Yellow Brick Road,” she gave the work to the Missoula (Montana) Art Museum.

She also solved the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles and enjoyed attending theater and art exhibitions.

Survivors include a daughter, Tracy Lambros, of Columbia; two sons, Christopher Lambros, of Timonium, and Jason Lambros, of Sykesville; a sister, Betty Snyder, of San Carlos, California; a brother, Michael Armel, of Hagerstown; and five grandchildren. Her husband, an interior designer, died in 2018.

A celebration of life is being planned for the fall.

Adams, who died in 2011, is the stuff of urban legend. He was the city’s top Black businessman, venture capitalist and orchestrator of the pre-legal lottery. He made millions on the pennies, nickels and dimes of small time wagerers. He kept his mouth shut, shunned publicity and was personally frugal.

The odds for him making it were far from promising. He was the son of a white businessman and his African-American maid. His mother wanted little to do with him.

“Not until adulthood did he learn the surprising truth about both parents, a truth he shared with few others,” writes author Mark R. Cheshire in his 2021 book, “They Call Me Little Willie.”

Adams was raised by his grandparents on their tenant North Carolina tobacco and cotton farm. A savvy grandmother advised Willie to learn arithmetic so their landlords could not bamboozle him out of a share of the farm profits.

Willie embraced school and the blackboard. He was something of a math wiz and could tabulate figures with ease.

Biographer Cheshire describes Adams as having a “monomaniacal focus” and developing “a very favorable taste for the buying power of money” and a “precocious ability to identify money-making opportunities.”

Adams relocated to Baltimore in 1929 to escape the perilous agrarian conditions in North Carolina. He lodged with an uncle in the 1800 block of East Eager Street north of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

He repaired and rebuilt bicycles for the Polish and Czech immigrants living nearby. He also witnessed how Baltimore residents wagered a penny a day, maybe a nickel or dime, on the numbers game, where neighborhood bookies operated a lottery without the legal blessing of the State of Maryland.

His family’s landlady had him read the daily newspaper to her and find a number buried in the tiny type (a stock market close or total among wagers at a race track) of a newspaper, Cheshire writes.

Soon Adams stopped fixing old bikes and sought out his own customers who wanted played their favorite numbers.

It is hard to imagine today how pervasive the numbers game was in Baltimore. By 1951, when Adams was called before a U.S. House Committee, he said that $1,000 a day was normal. (Adams would have plenty of legal scrapes, but amazingly beat them, often by hiring well connected lawyers with substantial legal and political pedigrees.)

By 1931 he picked up the nickname, “Little Willie,” after a night at a movie theater with friends. The film was “Little Caesar” and its star was Edward G. Robinson.

In time East Baltimore could not hold Little Willie and he jumped to the larger and wealthier West Side. He opened and built his own night club and bought rental properties.

When cash ran short, Adams made friends in the Jewish business community — Irvin Kovens and Maurice L. Lipman. Adams never revealed which of these men was his main go-to guy.

He was also fast on his feet. “Back then, whites almost never came into the Black community. So the police didn’t know where to look for me,” Adams said decades after the 1930s.

Cheshire notes that Adams only wanted to be a business operator and make money. He abhorred violence.

He took his profits from one investment and put them into another — from the bar, to the purchase of a Black Chesapeake Bay resort, Carr’s Beach.

Over the years he had a number of business partners, among them sausage maker and City Councilman Henry G. Parks and developer Theo Rogers. He also assisted other Black business owners financially.

In 2021 the William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Gilchrist Center opened near the 36th Street boundary of the old Memorial Stadium property. The hospice, designed for those without caregivers, was financially assisted by the Adams Foundation and Theo Rogers, his partner.

A longtime Baltimore resident, he also composed the score to “Lady Audley’s Secret,” a musical performed at Center Stage and at the Vagabond Players. He was the co-composer of the “The Baltimore Song,” recorded by the Baltimore Men’s Chorus.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Goehring moved to New York City where he worked with other songwriters in the Brill Building, an office structure that contained numerous composer and lyricist offices.

Mr. Goehring told The Sun in 1982 he had personally pitched “Lipstick on Your Collar” to Ms. Francis during a visit her home. He arrived unannounced at her New Jersey residence and demonstrated the song at her personal piano. It became a gold record.

“Lipstick,”  went on to be popularized by Ms. Francis and covered by Terri Dean, Petula Clark, and others. He also wrote “Half Heaven – Half Heartache,” recorded in 1962 by Gene Pitney and “Suppose,” recorded in 1967 by Elvis Presley. He also composed for Dion, the Platters and Barbra Streisand.

He moved to Baltimore and had a home near Lake Montebello in Northeast Baltimore.

In 1966 Mr. Goehring was the composer for Donald Seale’s adaptation of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel, “Lady Audley’s Secret,” which opened at Center Center in 1966.

The Sun’s theater critic, R.H. “Hal” Gardner, wrote “‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ must be regarded as a triumph for Center Stage.” He praised the adaptation of the mid-Victorian novel into a musical comedy and Mr. Goehring’s score for its “Gilbert and Sullivan quality.”

The musical later revived in New York City off-Broadway in 1972 and at the Vagabond Players in Fells Point in 1989.

“George had the sunniest personality. He had the sweetest disposition,” said a friend, Alan Sea, a former Baltimore Magazine editor. “George also played an important role in the gay musical community of the 1980s, when he was the piano accompanist for the Baltimore Men’s Chorus.”

In 1992 Mr. Goehring was shot in the hand by a U.S. postal agent during a botched drug raid at his home. He settled a lawsuit against the Postal Service for $150,000.

“He was treated at the Union Memorial Hospital hand clinic,” said Mr. Sea. “Miraculously, he was playing the piano again after a few weeks.”

Mr. Goehring also operated an antiques store in Waverly. He collected tobacco tins and once scored a collecting coup when he found a tin box that traded on the name of Babe Ruth — a Bambino brand tin.

More recently, Mr. Goehring assembled a revue of his songs, titled “My Life in the Brill Building,” which he performed at multiple Florida venues.

“George loved playing his music and was still entertaining the people in his assisted living home only a few weeks ago,” said Mr. Sea.

His partner — and later husband — Dennis O’Brien, died in 2023.

My grandmother Lily Rose and her sister, my great Aunt Cora, never stopped working. The final weeks of summer energized them. Could it be the past weeks’ salt air and change of scenery at their rented cottage at Dewey Beach or Rehoboth that made them eager to get September fired up?

The end of August meant farmers’ tomatoes were ripe and available, that is, cheap.

This was a cue to make homemade ketchup and store it in old Pepsi-Cola bottles. That ketchup really paired well with scrapple fried in a cast iron skillet.

They cooked from memory but maybe consulted the well battered Lowney’s cook book that rested in the dining room sideboard’s top drawer. It called for a formula: 24 ripe tomatoes, peeled onions, green peppers, salt, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon and mustard. After you’ve mastered the assembly, you cook the ingredients for six hours, “stirring often.” Six hours in the kitchen? Does anyone have the patience to stand in a kitchen for six hours with a spoon? This was normal.

They tortured the old Oriole-brand gas range. Start time was 6 a.m., finish up by noon, make tea for lunch and decide that roast pork might taste good for dinner.

They operated around the days of the week. Get out of the kitchen on a Monday. They bleached, disinfected and scrubbed that day. They made use of their homemade lye soap that day.

Throughout the year neighbors saved their grease in tin cans and gave it to my family. Then, on soap making day, about once a year, the ladies mixed the grease with cans of lye (caustic soda or sodium hydroxide) — stay out of the way of that nasty stuff. They mixed the lye and grease in a basin. It smelled awful, of course. The soap took a couple of days to firm up, then they used a blade to cut it into chunks.

A Tuesday might mean noodle soup (actually a German-style homemade egg spaetzle, dried in sheets over a radiator) with chicken stock or a pot of vegetable soup on the stove before 7 a.m. That was considered a light day, meaning one pot, but not without a tasty homemade dessert. The sweet that night was a homemade Baltimore-style cinnamon cake, made in a single layer pan.

On such a one-pot day, there was another agenda — a trip downtown for shopping.

A taxicab would be called by about 10 a.m. and off they went to Howard Street for serious shopping. There may have been an 11 a.m. conference with Augusta “Gussie” Curry, the fabric buyer at Stewart’s department store, then a lengthy consultation at the dressmaking pattern counter across Howard Street at Hutzler’s.

Buttons? Nothing would do except an energetic walk down Baltimore Street for the Morton Schenk Co. with its dizzying inventory of buttons and zippers stacked box by box on high shelves. It was not self-service and the decision making process could be excruciating.

There might be a side trip to the New York Sewing Machine Co. for parts, say a leather strap for their manual sewing machine that produced the outfits they made.

Wednesday was grocery shopping. They walked in a family caravan from 29th Street and Guilford Avenue to an A&P store on Gorsuch Avenue in Waverly. My mother pushed a baby carriage, which on the return trip served as a wagon to transport the week’s purchases.

Thursday and Friday brought room cleaning. They were proud of their oak parquet floors. They applied heavy paste wax by hand, on all fours, after using steel wool and a solution of a noxious cleaning agent Varnolene. They had an electric waxing buffer suitable for a bowling alley to finish the job.

And while the floors would appear smooth and spit-and-polished, they could also be slippery. A heavyset guest unaware of this condition could do a tail spin on a scatter rug.

The seasons of the year guided their habits. They changed rugs and curtains in winter and summer. One of their more fastidious practices was the lampshade change. There were winter shades, covered in cotton or silk, and summer shades, made of paper.

About 2:30 p.m. Thursday, the doorbell sounded, announcing the seafood delivery for Friday. By 7 a.m. Friday morning, the crabcakes had been made, the oysters padded and the shrimp steamed in vinegar, maybe with a dash of Old Bay. Did I forget the homemade potato salad and slaw?

Saturday was kind of a day off, except that this was also a big cooking day. The rule was either spaghetti with homemade meat sauce, simmered all day perfuming the house — or — roast rib roast of beef, with baked potatoes and tiny canned peas.

After all that was consumed, my grandmother appeared in the kitchen about 8 p.m. to make the following day’s buckwheat cake batter. This called for yeast and the mix had to sit overnight.

If Sunday was a day off, it was news to me. A huge homemade breakfast, perhaps a nap, then a light supper of creamed chicken with mushrooms and the from-scratch baking powder biscuits I still dream about.

Born in Baltimore, he was the son of Josephine Dixon Johnson, a nurse, and Dr. Robert Wilkinson Johnson III, a plastic surgeon.

As a child he was fascinated by the animals he found on his family’s Brooklandville property.

He went on to graduate from Gilman School and earned a mathematics degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also pursued a doctorate in herpetology from the Johns Hopkins University and taught briefly at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Mr. Johnson became a real estate appraiser and worked for the old Colliers Pinkard and AGM Financial Services.

“Bobby was not simply an appraiser, but a professional who brought an extremely unique analytic capability to the way he tackled assignments that distinguished him within the profession,” said Walter D. “Wally” Pinkard, a friend.

A colleague at AGM, Brian LaChapelle, said: “Bob could read an inches-thick appraisal report as if he were a professor. He was a mathematician first but he was also keen on grammar.”

Mr. Johnson became interested in the ecology of the Jones Falls Valley and the streams within it.

“My father often wore paint covered clothing,” said a daughter, Jesse Randol  “He was a passionate naturalist, conservationist and lover of learning.

Mr. Johnson joined the education department at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore and was a co-founder of the Irvine Nature Center in Owings Mills.

“Bobby was a force for nature before it was fashionable,” said Brooks Paternotte, the Irvine Center’s director. “He saw the importance of watersheds and how they were important to the ecosystems and health of community.”

He was a past president of the Jones Falls Watershed Association and worked to create Blue Water Baltimore from other smaller organizations and sat on its board.

“That exercise of merging the organizations into Blue Water Baltimore took patience and was no small feat,” said Alice Volpitta, Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper for Blue Water Baltimore. “Bobby was funny, hilarious and kind. The first time I met him in 2014 Bobby was the first one to make me feel like I was at home again. He made me feel welcome at Blue Water.

“It was his dream to have Blue Water Baltimore exist in the first place,” said Ms. Volpitta.

“My father loved sharing the wonder of the natural world with anyone who would listen, hosting frog catching sessions, night walks and nature hikes identifying local trees and plants by their common and scientific names,” said a daughter, Jesse Randol

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Sept. 14 in the Vollmer Center at Cylburn Arboretum at 4915 Greenspring Avenue.

Survivors include two daughters, Jesse Randol, of Bedford, New York, and Katherine Johnson, of Timonium; three sons, Marshall Johnson, of Philadelphia, Nicholas Johnson, of Brooklandville, and Thomas Johnson, of Baltimore; two brothers, Pearce Johnson, of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Brock Johnson, of Brooklandville; a sister, Jody Johnson, of Brooklandville; and four grandchildren.

Born in the city of Breslau, now Wroclaw, in Poland, she was the daughter of Karl Julius Pfeiffer, a banker, and his wife, Magda, an opera singer.

In a memoir, she recalled that as a 12-year-old she witnessed the Jewish persecution on Kristallnacht: “I saw [Jews] coming out of their buildings and being pushed onto the trucks. … In school we had two Jewish girls. One day they were there and the next day they did not ”] show up.”

She recalled fleeing the invading Russian army with her mother. They went to Salzburg, Austria, and then back to their home to retrieve family heirlooms and clothes.

“Her mother had connections and they could get train tickets because her mother was a well-known opera singer,” said her grandson Matt Hooke. “They had a comfortable lifestyle before Germany collapsed.”

She witnessed the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, when an estimated 25,000 people perished in a firestorm.

In her memoir, Mrs. Hooke said: “No one said a word. Everybody was in shock. People were on fire, screaming, running back and forth and jumping into the Elbe River.”

Her son Jeffrey “Jeff” Hooke said his mother returned to Salzburg and met an American soldier, Robert Hooke Jr., who became a veterinary supply salesman.

She moved to Baltimore in 1948 and they soon married. The couple later divorced. She raised three sons in the Northwood section of Northeast Baltimore as a single mother.

Mrs. Hooke worked 32 years as a medical research assistant for the Oncology Center of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“She witnessed the doctors develop the revolutionary bone marrow transplant cure for leukemia,” her son Jeff said.

Mrs. Hooke also worked a night job for a time at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women in Jessup and worked for a brief period at a hospital in Iowa City, Iowa.

After raising her sons, she became an urban pioneer and bought a $1 homestead house in the Otterbein neighborhood.

Mrs. Hooke later moved to Wyman Park, where she lived on Beech Avenue until age 93. She then moved to Symphony Manor assisted living.

“She knew all her neighbors who were a fraction of her age,” said her grandson Matt Hooke. “She and her dog, Freddie, often took mile-long walks in Stony Run Park.”

Mrs. Hooke sang in the choir of the Towson Presbyterian Church for more than 20 years.

She was interested in classical music and enjoyed her time at the Lyric Opera House and Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Mrs. Hooke traveled throughout Europe, Africa and Asia.

Survivors include two sons, Robert Hooke, of Ruxton, and Jeffrey “Jeff” Hooke, of Chevy Chase; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A son, Alex Hooke, died in 2023.

A memorial service for Mrs. Hooke is being planned at Symphony Manor, an assisted living facility.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he was the son of Virginia Leigh Cook, who ran the family home, and Harold F. Hencken, a mortgage banker. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from University of Arizona and was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

He met his future wife, Florence Gaines, on a ski trip at Wisp Resort in Western Maryland. They married in 1976 and lived in Glyndon.

“Vic was easy to get along with. He was always joking around,” said his wife. “He was a people person. He was a planner and a builder. It wasn’t that he loved construction, it was just that he was so good at it. There was never a dull moment with Vic. He got so much done in a day.”

After graduating college he moved to Baltimore, and in 1980 he founded Hencken & Gaines Inc., a general contracting firm in Hunt Valley. He built shopping centers and restaurants throughout Baltimore and Washington, D.C. His projects included work at the University of Maryland Dental Museum, Boys’ Latin School and Sidwell Friends School in Washington. He retired as the firm’s president in 1997.

He and his wife became active volunteers with the American Red Cross and responded to more than 100 home fires in the Baltimore region.

“We arrived at a fire and found if people needed housing, clothing and food,” said his wife, Florence Gaines Hencken.

The couple also became supervisors of a team that responded to the 2001 World Trade Center attack. They spent three weeks in New York.

“We met families at the lobbies of hotels and wrote checks,” his wife said.

Mr. Hencken and his wife moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, more than 20 years ago.

“He wanted a place where he could ski in the winter and hike in the summer,” his wife said. “We also bought an RV and traveled all over the West.”

While in Colorado, he responded to the Hurricane Katrina disaster and worked at a Salt Lake City army base where victims were being housed temporarily.

They later spent several weeks in New Orleans helping those affected by the storm.

In 2023, the couple returned to the Baltimore area and settled in Catonsville.

“We’ve learned a lot, and it’s been a privilege to lend a hand to those whose lives have been turned upside down by disaster,” his wife said.

Mr. Hencken was a lifetime member of the Sigma Chi fraternity at the University of Arizona and was an honorary trustee of the Jemicy School in Owings Mills.

He served on the boards of the Green Spring Valley Hounds and the Farmers & Merchants Bank in Maryland, and the Walker Fire Department in Arizona. He was board chair of the Northern Colorado Chapter of the American Red Cross.

A celebration of life will be held at 5 p.m. Sept. 7 at the L’Hirondelle Club in Ruxton.

Survivors include his wife of 48 years, Florence “Flo” Gaines Hencken, a financial analyst; two sons, John Cook Hencken II of Catonsville and Andy Gaines Hencken of Germantown; a brother, John “Jock” Cook Hencken of Fort Worth, Texas; and three grandchildren.

It’s been a hot summer and it’s not unusual for a contractor to opt out of undertaking the task of installing central air conditioning in a classic Baltimore rowhouse.

Even when a contractor agrees, the terms might be having the owner move out, gutting the house and then facing a staggering bill.

Charles Village resident David Gray Wright and his wife, Lauren Willford, know the toll. They said yes, it was time for that major upgrade of dreams and time to attend to a repair list, restorations and system upgrades.

They are temporarily residing in a rental down the street as their 1907 porch-front, end-unit rowhome is now in upheaval and reconstruction. Some walls have been removed; there’s routine plaster dust storms and a couple of missing floors.

There’s a $2,000 bill to painstakingly recreate a second-floor exterior door leading to a back porch. All will be historically restored.

They are having the house professionally de-assembled, installing central air and a heat pump, replacing the Thomas Edison-vintage electrical system, upgrading two baths and kitchen and adding a three-season room.

They also love Baltimore and a home that blessedly retained charming woodwork and quirky features, including a knockout, built-in-the-wall wooden ice box. It’s a home built in the Teddy Roosevelt era, entered through a paneled vestibule floored with hexagonal ceramic tiles. The front hall has stained glass windows.

Wright engaged C&H Contractors, a firm whose members know how to take a complicated Baltimore property apart and put it back together. Within the past year C&H did a miraculous restoration of the Ship Caulkers House on Wolfe Street in Fells Point and restored the ballroom in the Clifton Mansion.

This 1907 Guilford Avenue home has plenty going for it. It’s on a corner, has a small side garden, a full rear yard, a garage and a quiet alley that dead ends at the CSX Belt Line railroad. It’s a quiet corner where Charles Village, Harwood and Old Goucher neighborhoods meet.

“I grew up in Homeland and wanted a place that had similar amenities and was as close to downtown as I could get,” said Wright. “I’ve got a garden and trees here, and a garage, and I’m close to The Brewer’s Art and Oriole Park.”

Wright bought the house on March 3, 2003 (3-3-03) for $97,000. He painted its interior and replaced some of the windows and happily resided here 21 years until he and his wife made the big commitment to restore, a decision years in the making.

The estimated cost for the project is four times the purchase price. The work will take another six months, maybe more.

“I’m going to wind up with a house that is more valuable to me than it would be if placed on the real estate market,” he said.

The home now offers a lesson in what building trades could do in 1907.

Topher Murray, one of the C&H restoration specialists, observed that although the original 1907 electric system seems primitive and possibly scary today, it was state of the art at the time.

The restoration of the home has revealed what is called a “knob and tube” electrical system common in building construction. Wires ran through porcelain knobs and tubes.

“Electricity was new then. And I’ve been thinking about the science and the availability of the products, and the system put in this house when it was new is an ingenious solution,” Murray said.

Several badly damaged ceilings had to be repaired for the new air conditioning ducts — the chambers where the air will flow.

In working on the ceilings, the workers found that the actual ceiling height (where the wooden joists are) is considerably higher. This permits the house to gain loft-like storage chambers, but not a full attic.

The renovation also demonstrates the sound construction standards of 1907. There’s a solid brick wall separating the pantry and first-floor bath from the kitchen. Also discovered was a botched construction job in the 1940s that caused a second-floor bath’s floor to sink nearly 2 inches.

So now that the place looks as if a bomb exploded, the owner is actually pleased.

“It’ll be rebuilt to honor the ingenuity and craftsmanship of the past while providing the needed safety,” Wright said. “This house is built like a tank.”