Images of Vintage Silver Spring
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Photo: Dave Stovall |
Book signing:
Historic Silver Spring
by Jerry A. McCoy
January 15, 2006, noon to 2 PM
Strosniders Hardware Store
815 Wayne Avenue, SS
301-565-9150
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Since 1997 yours truly has been a co-editor of the Vintage Silver Spring Calendar, published by the Friends of the Silver Spring Library. Each year proceeds from the calendar fund important programs and acquisitions not covered by the library's annual budget.
This year, in collaboration with the current release of Historic Silver Spring (Jerry A. McCoy and the Silver Spring Historical Society, Arcadia Publishing, 2005), the theme of historic "Main Street" Georgia Avenue was chosen for the calendar. Some of the following Then photographs appear in the calendar and are paired with their Again counterparts (which do not).
A walk up/down Georgia Avenue, or the Washington and Brookeville Turnpike as it was known, allows the stroller to experience a virtual time capsule of Silver Spring's history. The majority of the buildings fronting Georgia Avenue were constructed during the first half of the 20th century and incredibly the majority of them have survived and are commercially utilized. This rich tapestry of buildings and their stories are already feeling redevelopment pressures overflowing from the recently redeveloped commercial core bordered by Georgia Avenue, Colesville Road, Fenton Street, and Wayne Avenue. Continued education emphasizing the importance of these historic Georgia Avenue structures and their ongoing adaptive reuse enables current and future residents and visitors to fully experience the earliest "pioneers" of our community's commercial past.
The Vintage Silver Spring Calendar is available for $9.00 from the Silver Spring Library, 8901 Colesville Road, 240-773-9420.
Scroll below for a sample of images from this great collection of vintage Silver Spring images. Contemporary photos are all courtesy of Jerry A. McCoy.
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Courtesy District of Columbia Public Library, Washingtoniana Division. |
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↑Northwood High School's Barbara Chamberlin was chosen as Miss Silver Spring 1963 in a competition sponsored by the Silver Spring Junior Chamber of Commerce. Here she poses with the newly installed "Welcome to Silver Spring" sign that was located on the northeast corner of Georgia Avenue and Blair Road in Jesup Blair Park. This photograph appeared in the Evening Star, July 24, 1963. An enlarged version of this photo (along with other vintage views of Silver Spring) hangs in the Wayne Avenue lobby of the new Courtyard Marriott. |
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Photo by John Horan and Gene Abbott. Courtesy District of Columbia Public Library, Washingtoniana Division. |
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↑This photo looking north on Georgia Avenue at Ellsworth Drive appeared in the Washington Star Pictorial Magazine article, "Silver Spring Solves Parking and Business Problems By Making It Easy for a Motorist to Stop and Buy," September 24, 1950. In 1946, E. Brooke Lee spearheaded a plan for the county government to create off-street parking to lure customers to Silver Spring's business section. The facades of the 1938 Silver Spring Shopping Center have been restored and adaptively reused to house new businesses. The recreated maroon-colored panel of the original S.S. Kresge Co. store awaiting the name of a new tenant.
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←In 1918 the State of Maryland sold the then four year-old Silver Spring Armory to the Silver Spring Volunteer Fire Dept. for $5,500. |
Photographed by Willard R. Ross, June 21, 1917. Courtesy SSHS. |
 Organized on May 15, 1915, the fire department shared the structure with Company K, 1st Maryland Infantry, until 1927 when the latter relocated to its new home on Wayne Avenue. The Silver Spring Volunteer Fire Dept. #1 has fully occupied 8131 Georgia Avenue since that time. The fire station's original Gothic Revival façade was replaced with a Colonial Revival one in 1932. This month Engine #1 will relocate after 91 years to its new fire station across the street at 8110 Georgia Avenue, located next door to the National Register-listed 1945 Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station. Future use of the original fire station is unknown.
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Courtesy Eunice Ramsey/SSHS |
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↑Tastee Diner, located at 8516 Georgia Avenue, isa classic example of commercial Art Deco/Moderne machine age architecture. Prefabricated in 1946 by Jerry O'Mahoney, Inc. of Elizabeth, NJ, the diner was relocated in 2000 to make way for construction of the world headquarters of Discovery Communications, Inc. The buildings to the left of Tastee Diner were razed in the mid-1970s to widen Wayne Avenue. This early-1970s photo is by Executive Photo Service. Tastee Diner, one of only four pre-1950 diners remaining in operation in Maryland, can be found at 8601 Cameron Street. The former diner site is occupied by the Discovery Communications' plaza.
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