Happy Birthday, Acorn Park

Postcard published in 1967 featuring oil painting by Joseph W. Grabenstein. Collection of SSHS.

Memorial Day weekend will mark the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Acorn Park, site of the original "silver" spring after which our community was named. Located at the intersection of East-West Highway and Newell Street, this .12-acre urban park is all that remains of Silver Spring, the estate and summer home of Silver Spring founder Francis Preston Blair, Sr.

Constructed in 1842, the property was acquired by the Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission in 1942. The property was renovated and formally dedicated on May 28, 1955.

This date was also celebrated as the first "Silver Spring Day," so designated by the Montgomery County Council, on May 10, 1955: "Be it resolved by the County Council for Montgomery County, Maryland, that Saturday, May 28, 1955 and the last May in each succeeding year shall be known as 'Silver Spring Day' in commemoration of the restoration on May 28, 1955 of 'The Silver Spring,' dedicated as an ever-flowing tribute to the men and women responsible for the greatness of Silver Spring, Maryland, and its bright future through civic and community service." Never heard of "Silver Spring Day?" Not surprising, considering that this decreed day was all but forgotten by time its one-year anniversary rolled around in 1956. Even our then-hometown newspaper, The Maryland News, failed to mention it!

Maybe we can change that.

On Saturday, May 28, 2005, the Silver Spring Historical Society invites the community to come to Acorn Park at 10:00 a.m. to celebrate the 50th birthday of Acorn Park and perhaps resurrect the lapsed Silver Spring Day, now that our community's "bright future" has finally arrived.

Please attend and reflect on the rich history of our community and its founding. For those who have not heard the story behind our "silver spring," read on.

At Acorn Park's 1955 dedication, Blair Lee III, great great grandson of Francis Preston Blair, Sr., told the story of the spring's discovery this way.

Blair was a newspaper editor from Frankfort, Ky. who came to Washington in 1830 at the bequest of President Andrew Jackson. The president tasked Blair with editing the Washington Globe, established by friends of Jackson to counteract the city's other newspaper, the National Intelligencer, which opposed the Jackson administration. After experiencing "the miasma" of summer of Washington enough times, Blair began planning to build a country house outside the city. One afternoon in 1840, Blair set out on horseback with his daughter, Elizabeth, up Seventh Street Pike--Georgia Avenue.

Elizabeth was astride a horse named Selim and reading a love letter from a young Naval lieutenant named Samuel Phillips Lee, whom she later married. Not paying attention, Elizabeth was brushed off her mount by a tree limb. Selim took off and, when finally located by father and daughter, was discovered to be drinking from a small spring. In the spring's water was mica sand, and when the sun reflected off the water it sparkled like silver...a silver spring.

Papa Blair looked around, liked what he saw, and decided he had found the site for his home in the country. The rest, as they say, is history.

This version is so ensconced in the Lee family history that a silhouette of the event's denouement forms the logo of the family's Lee Development Group. The logo features Blair and Elizabeth standing beside Selim (who perhaps is lapping water from the spring) with all positioned under the sheltering boughs of a presumed oak tree. Walk into the Lee Building at the corner of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue and you will see the logo set into the lobby floor.

As with every story, this one has two sides. Gist Blair, grandson of Francis Preston Blair, Sr., presented a paper on April 17, 1917 to the Columbia Historical Society titled "Annals of Silver Spring," in which he detailed the Blair family's version of the story.

"...while riding Selim one day outside the boundary of the district of Columbia, his [Blair, Sr.'s] horse became frightened and threw his rider and ran away among the thick growth of pines in the valley to the west of the road [Georgia Avenue]...He followed his horse into the woods and found him snared by the reins by a bush which had caught the reins dangling, and near the place was a beautiful spring full of white sand and mica which the gush of water from the earth forced into a small column which sparkled as it rose and fell like silver.He was charmed by the spot and purchased the property."

So was Elizabeth Blair Lee actually there? Unless definitive documentation of the circumstances of this "discovery" exists (preferably in the form of Blair, Sr.'s own testimony), perhaps we will never know. I feel comfortable, however, in giving due credit to perhaps the true founder of Silver Spring: Selim!

Other than the dowdy Selim Road, which parallels the east side of the CSX/Metro tracks between Burlington Avenue and Sligo Avenue, locals would be hard-pressed to find any other acknowledgement of our "founding horse" in downtown Silver Spring. Perhaps a statue is in order, or a least a restaurant. It would be great to hear, "We had a great meal last night at Selim's!"

	Besides probably being the only community whose founding should be credited to a horse, Silver Spring has the distinction of possessing the oldest, if not only, gazebo topped with an upturned acorn. Acorn Park's distinctive gazebo was originally constructed circa 1850 on Blair's Silver Spring estate, but the likely builder of this structure has never been publicly credited...until now.
Silver Spring Then: Photo by Willard R. Ross, June 21, 1917.

Silver Spring Again: Photo by Jerry A. McCoy, April 24, 2005

Several years ago, an elderly woman contacted me and relayed an interesting story. When she was a child in the 1930s, her father would take her to see the Acorn Gazebo, which he said was built by her grandfather, Benjamin C. King.

King was born March 8, 1829 in Chester, Pa. and as a young man moved to Baltimore, where he learned the trade of carpentry. In 1851 he came to Washington where he lived in what was then called "North Takoma, D.C.," the area of Georgia Avenue near the District Line. King spent 30 years as a contractor and builder, and 20 as assistant building inspector of the District of Columbia. He died at his Blair Road home on June 15, 1909.

The positioning of the gazebo near the spring site is understandable, given the fact that Blair was very proud of his spring and enjoyed showing it off to his important visitors. President Abraham Lincoln reputedly sat under it (until also documented, an enticing "suburban legend," if ever there was one!).

In the late 1990s, when the gazebo was renovated, four simple benches were constructed and placed in it. These benches replaced earlier ones that had long ago replaced freestanding twig furniture, which can be seen in early 20th-century photographs of the gazebo.

I have sat numerous times have under the gazebo, contemplating how the visual landscape of Silver Spring must have looked to Blair, Sr. when he sat there over 150 years ago. Many other stories stem in this .12-acre slice of Silver Spring's history. Stop by on May 28 and I'll be happy to share them.