Chestnut

Former President Jimmy Carter was at the Chestnut Hill Borders Book Shop & Cafe yesterday to sign copies of his autobiography, "Living Faith. " Fliers advised that he would sign only copies of his book bought at a Borders and that photos could be taken of the former president alone. The fliers also noted the parking lot would be closed for security and Secret Service agents would be in the store.

Until recently, few ingredients have been rooted in the winter holidays as firmly as chestnuts. For me, the smell of those hot roasting nuts, nestled into pushcarts over warming trays of kosher salt and soft pretzels, recalls a childhood visit to New York City. Their distinctively musky aroma perfumed the frigid Christmas air, warming us as we waited to enter Radio City Music Hall for the spectacle inside. Later, on a bitter New Year's in Paris, I indulged in this winter street-food delicacy liberally, thawing my fingers as I peeled through handfuls of steaming nuts, filling my belly with the tender meat inside each slitted shell, faintly sweet and satisfyingly starchy.

We can't call Jack Pearson "Mister Chestnut Street" anymore. Maybe he can be Mister Krewstown Road or Mister Route 70 - two Pearson Sporting Goods branches are in Horsham and Cherry Hill. Generations of Philadelphia kids have bought their first baseball gloves at Pearson's. But now, after 53 years in Center City, the Pearson family is leaving. It has nothing to do with crime or city taxes, says Pearson, it's the Parking Authority that's driven out this Philadelphia institution.

Is Philadelphia going to have Republicans smiling or stumbling? On Chestnut Street, chunks of sidewalks are missing, trees need planting and other repairs await on the $15 million street-widening project. Yet, the city Streets Department is still saying that the long-awaited transitway improvement will be finished before the Republican National Convention, July 31 through Aug. 3. "It's going to done by the 21st of July," said Joe Syrnick, a Streets Department engineer.

Their caskets, draped in American flags, lay side by side yesterday beneath the ornate Capitol dome in the tradition of presidents, generals and unknown soldiers felled by war. For a long time, there was quiet. It was a quiet born of the violent gun blasts that, four days earlier, had cut down Capitol Police Officer Jacob Joseph Chestnut and Detective John Michael Gibson just one floor below where their bodies lay. It was a quiet punctuated by occasional sobs and clicks of cameras and by the evenly timed footsteps of white-gloved honor guards.

The double R logo on the otherwise generic door doesn't tell you much unless, of course, you're already in the know. Which is presumably the only way you'd find the Ranstead Room, the new cocktail lounge - a stylized speakeasy entered from Ranstead Street, the back alley that stutters across Center City, a half block north of Chestnut. A single pink lightbulb colors the balcony above. You enter a dim antechamber that feels more like an air lock, and emerge into a dark, sedate room, votives flickering, nudes framed, the music determinedly pre-1964, though pop hits have been scrubbed, for the most part, from the playlist.

Forty-seven down, 53 to go. Sexton Lee Gum watches over the trees for sale at First Unitarian Church, Chestnut and 22d. The church, designed by Frank Furness in 1883, is raising money for renovations.

Doorman Dean Angeline was on duty yesterday as the Omni Hotel at Independence Park became the second luxury hotel to open in the city this week. The 155-room Omni, at 4th and Chestnut streets, follows the Ritz- Carlton, a 290-room hotel that opened at 17th and Chestnut. The $27 million Omni was developed by the Philadelphia-based Kevin F. Donohoe Co. Financing included a $3 million federal Urban Development Action Grant.

An upscale W Hotel is scheduled to break ground next year on a half-acre site that was originally planned for a $420 million Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with luxury condominiums before the lending markets collapsed four years ago. The new hotel would sit on what is now a surface parking lot at 1441 Chestnut St, just behind the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and its condo tower, according to a representative of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., which...

Chris Bornholdt scorched an eighth-inning RBI single to the right-center-field gap, and Springfield (Montco) overtook visiting Chestnut Hill, 5-4, Friday in a nonleague baseball game. Bornholdt finished the game 3 for 4 at the plate with a run scored. Anthony Scafidi added a pair of hits and an RBI, and Doug Bauer pitched the final three innings for the win. In other nonleague action, Mike Piscopo allowed an inherited runner to score before he clamped down and saved La Salle's 5-4 win over visiting St. Augustine (N.J.)

Chestnut Hill wrapped up its Florida road trip with an 8-6 nonleague baseball win Wednesday over North Jersey's Lenape Valley in Fort Pierce, Fla. Sam Feirson went 2 for 3 with a run scored and Dan Hull knocked in three runs and recorded a double. Mike Hayes picked up the win with a pair of perfect innings out of the bullpen and three strikeouts. The Blue Devils finished 6-2 on the trip. In other nonleague action, Kevin Huber went 2 for 3 and drove in a run to lead Interboro past host Ridley, 6-4. Dan Shane had three singles and Jake Gordon and Mike Kacergis each had two RBIs to lift Pennridge at Neshaminy, 9-4. Ches-Mont.

WHEN WAS the last time you ate in Chestnut Hill? With six, count 'em, six new eateries opening along Germantown Avenue in the past year, there's no denying that tasty change is afoot in this leafy Philadelphia neighborhood. The opening of Weaver's Way Food Co-op, the presence of two regular farmers markets, and the plans for Fresh Market in the former Magarity Ford car dealership are more signs that the 11-block stretch between 7600 and 8700 Germantown Avenue is expanding its gastronomic horizons.

Signs of life in Center City construction: Chicago investor John A. Buck and leaders of the union-backed Indure Fund stood under a tent and ceremonially shoveled dirt Thursday to start work on their long-planned 319-apartment tower (plus shops and a parking garage) soon to rise at 2116 Chestnut St. Buck and Indure, a fund backed by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors' Association 's joint labor-management pension fund, each pledged to invest $20 million in the $100 million tower.

For years, Tempesta di Mare has liberated its programs from the masterpiece mentality that often comes with higher-budget organizations. At Sunday's concert at Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, hardly a brand-name composer (excepting Antonio Vivaldi) or a previously known piece was heard. Tempesta di Mare is an old-music group that acts like a new-music group, by pushing the cutting edge back rather than forward. And, as in new-music concerts, expectations must shift: You won't always appreciate everything.

Dr. Edward H. McGehee, 90, who served as director of medicine at Chestnut Hill Hospital and director of family medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, died Sunday, Jan. 29, of heart failure at Bishop White Lodge of Cathedral Village, the retirement community in Roxborough. Richard C. Wender, alumni professor and chair of the department of family and community medicine at Jefferson University, offered this appreciation: "Ed McGehee was the embodiment of the outstanding primary-care clinician: warm, passionate, dedicated, and brilliant.

Drexel University, in partnership with a Texas-based developer, has launched a $97 million student-housing and retail-development plan along Chestnut Street. Set between 32d and 33d Streets, the 19-story tower and two eight-story townhouse-style buildings will offer housing for 869 students and 11 storefronts, including an anchor restaurant and a retail store yet to be named. The design is meant to enhance student life by making the neighborhood increasingly pedestrian-friendly and urban, school officials said.