Silver Spring's "Main Street," Part One

Over the next several months, this column will be de voted to images and histories of structures located on Silver Spring's "Main Street," Georgia Avenue.

With the wildly successful revitalization of the area of downtown Silver Spring bordered by Georgia and Wayne avenues, Cedar Street and Colesville Road, redevelopment pressures are already being felt to replace early to mid 20th century commercial structures located on Georgia Avenue extending south from the current redevelopment to the District line.

Downtown Silver Spring is incredibly fortunate to have a commercial artery along which is located a progression of structures that literally represent the growth and history of our community. These one and two-story buildings served as Silver Spring's original Central Business District.

One such structure is 8126 Georgia Avenue, occupied today by the Dor-Ne Corset Shoppe (PHOTO 1). Located on the building's façade is a cornerstone that reads, "JOHN H. HUNTER/ ESTABLISHED/1896" (PHOTO 2).

This cornerstone has long been one of Silver Spring's "history mysteries," ­--the structure upon which it is affixed was built in 1924, not 1896. But more on this later. John H. Hunter was born in Lay Hill in 1879 and was a member of one of Montgomery County's oldest families. He and his brother, Thomas, came to Silver Spring in 1913 and together opened Hunter Bros. Hardware, a farm-implements and hardware business that had been previously operated by James H. Cissel.

The wood-frame structure was located onthe west side of the Washington & Brookeville Turnpike (Georgia Avenue), just north of the original 1878 Baltimore and Ohio railroad station. The Hunter brothers were business partners until 1920 when John became the sole owner. A circa-1924 view of Hunter Bros. (PHOTO 3) shows the business standing alone, accompanied only by a massive pin oak, estimated to be 150 years old at the time the photograph was taken.

In an interview published in 1952 in The Maryland News , John Hunter recalled that when he and his brother moved to Silver Spring, the town was "the most lonesome spot between Glenmont and the city of Washington."

Hunter operated the store until his retirement in 1945, when he sold the business to Lawrence B. Maloney Sr. (1903-1955), an International Harvester branch manager from Richmond, Virginia. A group photograph (PHOTO 4), probably taken prior to Hunter's departure, shows Hunter standing near the center doorway. To the left of Hunter stands his daughter, Gertrude McRorie. At far right is Maloney. Can anyone identify the other employees?

Like most early-20th century Silver Spring business "pioneers," Hunter was involved in the establishment of many of our community's earliest institutions. He was a charter member of the Silver Spring Volunteer Fire Department (1915) to one of the original directors and eventually vice president of the Suburban Trust Co. (successor to the Silver Spring National Bank, established 1910).

During his 34 years of operating the hardware store, Hunter fired but one employee. "It hurt me more than it did him," he was quoted as saying in a March 4, 1946 Washington Post article that covered a testimonial dinner held in his honor.

Ten years later, Hunter was honored for having driven more than one million miles "without an accident, a traffic ticket, or even an argument with a policeman," as reported in his April 2, 1960 Washington Post obituary.

Under Maloney's ownership, physical expansion of 8126 Georgia Avenue began quickly. The first addition to the property was in April 1946, when Maloney constructed a Quonset at the rear of the property. Maloney's was the exclusive dealer in Montgomery County for International Harvester, and the Quonset hut served as a repair shop for the manufacturer's trucks and tractors. The extant hut, heavily remodeled in the late 1990s, was constructed in 20 days and measured 120 feet long with a 40-foot clear span.

In 1949, Maloney's, Inc. was further enlarged when a new "modernistic front," an all- glass display window, was added to the front elevation of the 1924 structure. A March 6, 1952 Hardware Age profile stated that the business had been "...modernized inside and out to heighten buy-appeal through greater eye-appeal." Bisecting the roof was a two- and-a-half-story black pylon bearing the International Harvester logo and "MALONEY'S INC." The original 1924 structure's brick façade, with its two picture windows flanking the door frame topped by a lunette window, became an interior wall. In what can only be theorized as Maloney's respect for Hunter, the building's original cornerstone was removed and placed in the base of the pylon facing Georgia Avenue.

These same picture windows doubled as "canvases" for students of the Montgomery Blair High School, who painted ghosts and goblins on them for Halloween in 1953 (PHOTO 5).

The Maloneys sold the store in 1963, and the business took back the Hunter name. In the collection of the Silver Spring Historical Society is a hand-written receipt from 1975 on Hunter Hardware & Supply Co. Inc. letterhead, and an electrical light switch with its Maloney's label still attached--49 cents. Hunter's went out of business in 1984 and by the early 1990s, the building housed a video store.

In 2001, the structure that began selling hardware became a purveyor of underwear, when Zina Leshchiner opened Dor-Ne Corset Shop. Dor-Ne was previously located at 925 F Street, NW, and has been a Washington institution since 1932.

As for the conundrum of the cornerstone predating the building's construction by nearly three decades, the 1946 Post article might have the answer.

The story revealed that 16-year-old John H. Hunter started his career as a farm-implement salesman on June 1, 1896 at $20 a month, and that each weekend he pedaled his bicycle from Washington (where he worked for Orndorff & Truxton Hardware, located at 203 7th Street, NW) to his home in Lay Hill. When Hunter opened his store at 8126 Georgia Avenue, 28 years after starting his career selling hardware, he probably wanted to make sure that the Silver Spring community understood that he was not new to the business.

If you can share with the Silver Spring Historical   Society any photographs, memorabilia, or anecdotes of Hunter's Hardware or Maloney's Hardware, please contact SSHS at P.O. Box 1160, Silver Spring, MD 20910-1160, call 301-565-2519, or email sshistory@yahoo.com. The society's web site is www.sshistory.org. Future historians will thank you!