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New finds help us see old Silver Spring
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Did you know that the greatest
concentration of early to mid
20th century commercial structures located in Montgomery County may be found on a three-quarter mile length of downtown Silver Spring’s original “Main Street,” Georgia Avenue, and that the majority of these buildings are still occupied by a variety of Mom & Pop businesses waiting for you to discover and patronize them? |
Photos: Courtesy SS Historical Society Then: The Silver Spring Historical Society recently acquired a photo of former Silver Spring Post Office (and Recruiting Office) taken in 1942. |
May is National Preservation Month and in observance the Silver Spring Historical Society will be offering a free walking tour of historic Georgia Avenue on Saturday, May 6, from noon to 2:30 p.m. Established by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Preservation Month serves as a showcase for our country’s diverse and unique heritage. This year’s theme is Sustain America–Vision, Economics, and Preservation, with the first week in May being devoted to highlighting “Preservation at Home.”
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Tour participants will begin their journey through downtown Silver Spring’s history by meeting under the Art Deco clock at the 1938 Silver Spring Shopping Center, located at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road (where Panera Bread is located). The group will proceed half a mile (6 blocks) south on Georgia Avenue and end at the restored Colonial Revival 1945 Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station (8100 Georgia Avenue). The station, owned by Montgomery Preservation Inc., will be open for self-guided tours from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. A special event to be held at the station on this date will be an N-gauge model railroad layout operated by the Northern Virginia NTRACK Club. Also featured will be the on-going exhibit, Civil War in Silver Spring.
The B&O Railroad Station, restored in 2000, is the only structure in downtown Silver Spring currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places (although other structures are eligible). It is one of the many historic structures found on Georgia Avenue between Wayne and Eastern avenues; sturdy one to three-story brick buildings, many constructed by Silver Spring’s original “pioneers,” still utilized by businesses similar to those originally established therein or adaptively reused to accommodate current occupants. All offer a human-scaled, low-density, light-filled streetscape whose local businesses provide residents as well as visitors with an alternative to the chain-driven environment found in the recently revitalized section of “Silver Sprung” further north.
One of my favorite structures on Georgia Avenue is the former Colonial Revival 1937 Silver Spring Post Office, located at 8412 Georgia Avenue. Originally established in 1899 and occupying two different structures still standing on Georgia Avenue, the post office was one of 1,100 constructed in the United States between 1934 and 1944. These civic as well as community centers featured murals or sculptures commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture. The Silver Spring Post Office featured in its lobby a 16-foot-long mural titled The Old Tavern by Nicolai Cikovsky. The mural depicted the crossroads of Sligo, Maryland (today’s intersection of Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road) at the end of the Civil War.
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When the post office closed in 1981 and re-located to Second Avenue, the mural was carefully removed, placed in storage and promptly forgotten. The post office’s interior was completely gutted, along with the New Deal-era lobby where the mural was displayed. Disposed of were the postal clerk windows, post office boxes, writing tables, highly stylized lighting fixtures (they looked like miniatures of the planet Saturn) and a plaque honoring the individuals responsible for the post office’s construction. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s name was prominently placed at the top of this plaque.
Although there are no extant photographs showing the plaque, documentation of its existence was established through a full-scale architectural rendering that is housed in the archives of the Silver Spring Historical Society. Long had I wondered what became of it, along with everything else that had stood in the lobby. The most important feature, the mural, had been located in 1994 and at that time I began a three-year effort to raise awareness of its history and importance to the community. The Friends of the Silver Spring Library and other organizations and individuals raised $25,000 to conserve the mural (it was in rough shape) and in 1997 it was ceremoniously unveiled at the Silver Spring Library where it is on view today.
This connection between the Silver Spring Library and the Silver Spring Post Office was the impetus that recently resulted in the acquisition of another important piece of our community’s post office past.
A couple of months ago I received a note in the mail from Carol Legarreta, manager of the Silver Spring Library. A man in Western Maryland had mailed to her a small black and white photograph. The image showed a group of well-dressed men lined up in front of the Silver Spring Post Office. Written on the back was, “Silver Spring Post Office / Recruiting Office in 1942.”
This was new information to me, as I had not known that the draft board during WW II was located in the post office, theorizing instead that draftees went to the 1927 Maryland National Guard Armory, located east of Georgia Avenue on Wayne Avenue. The Armory, a Montgomery County-designated Master Plan for Historic Preservation structure, was demolished in 1998 for construction of a parking garage that was built five years later.
Ms. Legarreta thought that the Silver Spring Historical Society would be an appropriate home for the photos. Little did she, or I, know what other “treasures” that photograph would lead too.
Enclosed with the photo was contact information for the sender who lived in Little Orleans, Maryland. I immediately called Mr. Steve Huebner, identified myself as founder/president of the SSHS, and explained how the Silver Spring Library had sent me the photograph. When Mr. Huebner said, “I also have a plaque if you want it,” I couldn’t believe what I had heard. Without asking I knew exactly what plaque he was referring too.
It turned out that Mr. Huebner had worked at the Silver Spring Post Office from 1958 to 1975.
Advancing to the position of postmaster of Mt. Rainier, Maryland, the plaque was given to him by a fellow post office employee who had obtained it from the Silver Spring post office when it closed in 1981. Retired since 1992, Mr. Huebner and his wife Mary are now the proprietors of the Little Orleans Lodge, a bed and breakfast located within walking distance of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. The lodge is located near mile marker 140.77 on the canal’s 184.5-mile length between Georgetown, DC and Cumberland, MD. The plaque was in his shed, where it hadbeen sitting for over two decades.
“I’ll be out this weekend,” was my response! I knew the exact location of Little Orleans, 108 miles west of Silver Spring, as I had stopped there during a four-day C & O Canal bicycle “ride through” from Cumberland to Georgetown in 2003. My companions and I had replenished our water bottles at the landmark Bill’s Place where I, of course, had no idea that the object of my desire was just up the hill and around the bend.
The plaque, fabricated of cast aluminum, weighs 17 lbs. and measures 21” x 32”.
Mr. Smith also donated to the SSHS a hinged 3 1/2” x 5” front door to PO Box 413 that was in the post office’s lobby. The cast aluminum front features a proud, bas-relief eagle surrounded by radiating lines with the locking mechanism centered in a shield placed over the eagle’s breast. I wondered whose hands had held the many keys that opened and closed this door for forty-four years and what missives did the door guard?
The Silver Spring Historical Society desires to permanently exhibit these items alongside The Old Tavern mural when the later gets relocated and installed in the new Silver Spring Library, to be constructed in the next few years on Wayne Avenue near Fenton Street. Display of these and many other historical artifacts located in our archives will go far in educating the public about Silver Spring’s fascinating heritage.
If you can share with the Silver Spring Historical Society any vintage photographs/memorabilia of the Silver Spring Post Office, please contact SSHS at P.O. Box 1160, Silver Spring, MD 20910-1160, email sshistory@yahoo.com, or call 301-537-1253.
The society’s website is www.sshistory.org. The Huebners and their Little Orleans Lodge may be reached at 301-478-2102. Their website is www.littleorleanslodge.com. Thank you Mr. Huebner for saving pieces of Silver Spring’s history!
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