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By Theodore
Fischer, Sidewalk
Columbia, Md., caught its
share of the Monicagate media flak as the hometown of Lewinsky's
blabbermouth girlfriend, Linda Tripp. Columbia much prefers to stake its
reputation on the Merriweather Post Pavilion and the annual Columbia
Festival of the Arts, running in 1999 from June 18
through June 27. The hot tickets for this year's festival are shows
by Branford Marsalis, the House of Jazz and the Dayton Contemporary Jazz
Company. In all the festival offers 16 nonfree events in five series
(headliner, classical, jazz, theater and dance) at nine different venues
– plus free Lakefest '99 performances for adults and children.
When the music stops, take a look at Columbia, a planned development with
street names like Wicker Basket Court and Snuffbox Terrace, tidy houses,
trim lawns – and exacting housing covenants to make sure everything
stays that way. Columbia was conceived and built by James W. Rouse
(Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Boston's Faneuil Hall) as a "rational
model for the growth of a city, not a better suburb ... for all races and
all ages, not by accident but by design." With 2,500 businesses and a
population of 85,000, Columbia is divided into nine villages, each of
which is subdivided into neighborhoods where people live in
community-fostering cul-de-sacs. Located about midway between Washington
and Baltimore, Columbia also boasts proximity to Baltimore-Washington
International Airport, Annapolis and Fort Meade.
Unlike most suburbs, Columbia has a vibrant core, Town Center, with
office towers, a major shopping mall, restaurants, entertainment, cultural
attractions and a hotel-conference center all within walkable proximity.
Stop first at the Columbia Association Welcome Center in the
headquarters of the Columbia Association, the assessment-financed
nonprofit that keeps Columbia on message, for an introductory slide show,
a detailed street map and reams of useful brochures (including the
"Columbia Lakes Bird Checklist" of more than 200 full- and
part-time avian residents).
The welcome center is on the edge of the 27-acre human-made Lake
Kittamaqundi (an Indian word for meeting place) beside the Tree of
Life (aka the People Tree), a sculpture of 66 abstract human forms
that serves as Columbia's logo. Highlights of the "Columbia Lakefront
Walking Tour" (brochure available at the welcome center) include Sail,
a steel sculpture outside Rouse Co. headquarters; the Twelve Bells
lakeside carillon that chimes on the quarter-hour; and Nomanisan Island
(get it?), an uninhabited speck of Kittamaqundi named by the winner of
a 1980 community contest. On weekends and holidays during the summer, you
can rent boats to tour the lake.
Veer off the path
encircling the lake – a much-traveled jogging trail – for a
self-guided tour of Historic Oakland, an 1811 mansion owned by a
succession of distinguished Maryland families and managed since 1989 by
the Columbia Association. Somewhat incongruously, Oakland houses the African
Art Museum of Maryland, a two-room display of stunning gold
weights with a discriminating, reasonably priced gift shop. Oakland is
next to the Howard County Center of African American Culture, a
small museum that honors local heroes but also takes a close and sometimes
disconcerting look at the lives of ordinary Howard County blacks.
Directions: From the Beltway take Interstate 95 north 16
miles to Exit 41 (Patuxent Parkway, Route 175). Go west and continue as
the road becomes Little Patuxent Parkway. Columbia Town Center is located
at Little Patuxent Parkway and Wincopin Circle.
Details
• Columbia Festival of the
Arts, June 18-27, (410) 715-3089
• Columbia Association Welcome Center, 10221 Wincopin
Circle, (410) 715-3103
• Lake Kittamaqundi boathouse, (410) 730-5834
• Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Rd., (410) 730-4801
• African Art Museum of Maryland, 5430 Vantage Point Rd.,
(301) 596-0051
• Howard County Center of African American Culture, 5434 Vantage
Point Rd., (410) 715-1921
See also: Commercial Columbia |
