Howard County history buffs will recognize the local sites in the two-photographer exhibit at Slayton House Gallery. Donald W. Reichle and Clarence Carvell tend to focus on the architecture that has endured even as so much else has changed in the contemporary landscape.

Reichle is showing work ranging from black-and-white photographs done in the 1970s and 1980s to color photographs done in 2006 and 2007. He's especially interested in buildings and landscapes that still retain their 19th-century appearance.

One of Reichle's most characteristic shots is of Trinity Episcopal Church, built on Route 1 in Elkridge in 1857. Although this shot maintains a tight focus on the church, county residents will know just how much the surrounding area has changed since this quaint Victorian church was constructed.

Truly frozen in time are the bridges, roads and other landscape features at Antietam battlefield in western Maryland. Those who have walked through this Civil War site will respond to photos that convey the somber beauty of that place.

Other enduring sites around Maryland include Tongue Row and also the B&O Railroad Museum in Ellicott City, the Maryland Statehouse in Annapolis, Belmont mansion in Howard County's Lawyers Hill, and the Bollman Truss Bridge at Savage Mill.

Not everything that's old has survived into the 21st-century, however, as can be sensed from a 1977 photo of the majestic Wye Oak on the Eastern Shore, which fell over in 2002.

Reichle also reminds us that even new things at some point become old. A 1972 black-and-white shot of the People Tree in downtown Columbia hangs on the same wall as some of the really old subjects. New cities mature, of course, and so it seems thematically appropriate that the People Tree and the 500-year-old Wye Oak share wall space.

The second photographer, Clarence Carvell, has black-and-white shots from an ongoing series devoted to Route 40, the so-called National Road. Carvell's selections here include sites in Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. There's one shot in Ellicott City, but mostly he's documenting sites further west.

His photo of Burnside Bridge in Sharpsburg is a thematic link to similar shots done by Reichle in the area around Antietam battlefield. Carvell shoots a number of other venerable bridges, but some of his most evocative work shows architecturally impressive downtown streets in small towns that now look down at the heels since modern highways and suburban sprawl altered the American landscape.

The past is still with us, but it's definitely the past in some of these images. A shot of the LaVale Toll House in western Maryland features this little structure's exquisite architecture, and also makes it clear that tolls have not been collected here for many years. Several shots of an old school in Hagerstown have nostalgic appeal precisely because it's a preserved slice of the past.

Carvell doesn't just shoot ancient structures, because much of the architectural record along this road dates to the mid-20th century. A shot of a Route 40 motel in Columbus, Ohio, keeps a tight focus on its sign, but judging from that sign's appearance you get the feeling it's been around for at least a few decades. The sign also makes it obvious that the motel's owner hopes to attract customers with humor, because the sign reads: "A dog saw a sign that said 'Wet Paint.' So he did."

Donald W. Reichle and Clarence Carvell exhibit through June 21 at the Slayton House Gallery, in Wilde Lake Village Green, in Columbia. Call 410-730-3987.

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