She hopes history is worth
repeating Pomykala: A new owner with big plans for historic downtown
buildings
says she has the experience to succeed.
By Scott Calvert, Sun Staff
Originally published
January 7, 2002
Anne Pomykala is set. At 63, she presides
over a sumptuous Tudor-style bed-and-breakfast in Green Spring Valley, has
ample time for her large family and could, if she wanted, putter around her
hilltop English garden.
So why are she and her husband, dentist Ronald
Pomykala, taking over the closed Shot Tower and Carroll Mansion on the eastern
fringe of downtown and planning to reopen them as museums? And why do they
think they can succeed where the city failed - at a time when museums are
scrounging for money?
Pomykala, flashing the ready smile of a veteran
hostess, has answers:
She has run a successful inn with history of its
own. She believes a hands-on "living history" approach will lure visitors. She
and her board of directors will pursue donors and hire a skilled museum
operator. She will put in her own money, too, along with some of the profits
from an inn she's planning next to the Carroll Mansion, at 800 E. Lombard
St.
"It is a chance to do a real public service and have a historic
place for a bed-and-breakfast," Pomykala said over coffee in the cherry-paneled
library of Gramercy Mansion. She and her husband bought the 45-acre Stevenson
property at auction in 1985, almost on a lark, and transformed what had become
a dilapidated wreck into an inn with nine guest rooms.
Their newest
challenge sits just 12 miles down the Jones Falls Expressway but a world away
from her neighborhood, where the hotel-size houses tend to have names -
Fernwood, Knollwood and the like. The city Board of Estimates completed a deal
Wednesday to lease the Shot Tower and Carroll Mansion, both 19th-century
landmarks, to the Pomykalas. The board also agreed to sell the couple several
nearby city-owned buildings that are to become an 18-room inn, a restaurant and
offices.
It is a significant undertaking. The museum business is
tricky in normal times, and these aren't normal times. Just ask Bill Cole III,
executive director of the
Baltimore
Museum of Industry. "It's difficult now," he says, "becoming more difficult
to raise funds, mainly tied to the economy and diminishing funding from the
government."
Yet it is not impossible, Cole says, and the stakes are
high. "History is history. Once it goes, you lose it."
Anne Pomykala's
longtime friend, Miriam "Mickey" Reed of Bethesda, attests to her knack for
success, telling a story about the Pomykalas' early days at Gramercy. She grew
mushrooms when the couple first moved there. "Before we knew it, she had Giant
as a client.
"When she gets an idea and sees it could work, she really
produces."
Pomykala grew up in Washington, the daughter of a general
contractor. In 1958 she married Ronald Pomykala, and the young newlyweds moved
to Bethesda, where he still travels six days a week to practice dentistry.
In those days, Anne Pomykala learned management the old-fashioned way. She
raised three boys and three girls born over 12 years. She also looked after the
properties she and her husband began acquiring.
When the children were
older, she nurtured an interest in the past by producing historical videos for
VideoEd Productions in Hyattsville. One project was an oral history of
African-Americans who lived through school integration in Washington in the
1950s. Another showcased the first Girl Scout troop. (A lifetime member,
Pomykala led Scout contingents at four presidential inaugurations.)
The Pomykalas didn't know it, but a turning point for them came in 1985 while
attending an EST self-improvement session. A secluded old mansion in Baltimore
County was for sale, they learned, and the group was thinking of buying it.
Curious to see the place, Ronald Pomykala told his wife, "We're going up
to Baltimore." The 25-room house on Greenspring Valley Road was built between
1902 and 1904 by Alexander Cassatt, Pennsylvania Railroad titan and brother of
impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. The magnate built it as a wedding gift for
his daughter, Eliza.
By the time the Pomykalas laid eyes on the house,
the property had had a second life as home to the Koinonia Foundation, a
private forerunner of the Peace Corps. It was in awful shape, with failing
wells and septic system, a leaky roof and burst pipes in the carriage
house.
"We fell in love with it," Anne Pomykala recalls, despite the
"warts." On the ride home, they decided to join the auction and in May 1985
beat out the only other bidder with a $660,000 offer. Their initial plan was to
make it a private residence, but they wanted to restore it to its former
grandeur. To afford that, they needed income; hence, a home that is also an
inn.
Today she is queen of her manor, casually elegant in a gold
necklace and cardigan. The house is homey, with lots of dark wood and Oriental
rugs, and a dozen fireplaces. On a brief tour she shows off rooms, which run
$75 to $325 a night, and says guests have included "famous people."
Like whom?
She smiles. "Like, we don't say."
A few years ago,
two more distressed properties came to the Pomykalas' attention: the Shot Tower
and Carroll Mansion, which closed after former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke mothballed
the City Life Museums, then $2.5 million in debt.
They decided to bid
on the properties and bested three other suitors. According to the deal with
the city, they will lease the two landmarks for $1 a year and buy the nearby
buildings for $773,000, with $175,000 coming off the price for repairs to the
Shot Tower and mansion.
The Pomykalas have formed the 1840s Corp.,
which plans to open an inn called the 1840s Urban Inn where reconstructed
rowhouses stand east of the Carroll Mansion.
That company would also
rent out the Fava building north of the mansion. Plans call for a restaurant on
the first floor, offices on the second, the African Art Museum of Maryland, now
in Columbia, on the third and event space on the fourth.
A nonprofit
company, Carroll Museums Inc., will run the two museums. Anne Pomykala is
chairwoman of a 10-member board of directors that, though it lacks the most
prominent players in the museum world, collectively boasts a wealth of
Baltimore knowledge.
One is Douglas Carroll of Lutherville. He has
done a number of historical restorations in Baltimore - and is a very distant
relative of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who spent winters in the mansion on
Lombard Street and died there in 1832.
Another member is Vernon
Thompson, assistant secretary at the state Department of Business and Economic
Development. Like others on the board, he credits Pomykala's energy, vision and
eagerness to give up the easy pace at Gramercy.
"This is major," he
said. "She could run that place and have a happy life. She's taken this on as a
major challenge."
The first step will be to open the Carroll Mansion,
maybe in September, with exhibits on the history of the 194-year-old house.
Eventually Pomykala wants it to be a "living history" museum, one where people
- especially kids - aren't forced to stare at dusty old objects from behind a
rope.
She hopes to get hold of reproductions, with help from
volunteers, so visitors could lie on an 1800s-style bed and lug water upstairs
the way slaves once had to do. Costumed actors would re-enact a doctor's visit
to tend to a bedridden Carroll, the longest-surviving signer of the Declaration
of Independence.
The Shot Tower plans are even more ambitious, though
still uncertain. One idea is to install a "birdcage" elevator in the vertical
ammunition factory. The lift would carry visitors up the brick tower - which
stands 215 or 234 feet tall, depending on which plaque one believes - to see
how shot was formed as it plunged earthward.
Both museums would be
connected to others in the area near President Street by a "museum walk."
A key will be to attract corporate and foundation money, and at least one
player in that scene is watching with interest.
"We asked her to come
up with an imaginative plan to attract people," said Robert C. Embry Jr.,
president of the Abell Foundation. "She knows we're willing to talk."
Details remain scant. Pomykala says she does not know what the museums'
admission fees would be. Nor can she reveal the name of the person who has
tentatively agreed to run them.
Everything will fall into place, she
says, "I am confident." She would remind doubters of what she achieved at
Gramercy Mansion.
"People looked at this place and said, 'No way.' We
did it."
Copyright ©
2002, The Baltimore Sun,
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