Silver Spring: Then and Again

Stereoscopic Silver Spring

on June 1, 2009 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

by Jerry McCoy

Recently the Silver Spring Historical Society accessioned through purchase an incredibly rare and important photograph, the earliest known image of the "silver" spring taken over 140 years ago.

Known as a stereo view card, the photograph is actually one of a pair that was taken by a single camera with two lenses. The lenses were spaced about two and a half inches apart, the average distance between a person's eyes. The two black and white photographs are mounted side by side onto a 3 1/4" by 6 3/4" heavy card that is viewed using a device called a stereoscope. This viewer allows the user's eyes to blend the two images into one, which enables the brain to perceive the image in three dimensions.

Continue reading Stereoscopic Silver Spring.

This Place Mattered

Jerry A. McCoy

on May 30, 2009 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I thought I'd do a follow-up to my "This Place Matters" May blog entry with photos of "This Place MATTERED"...due to the fact that these buildings have been demolished or so egregiously altered that in essence they have been demolished.

958 Thayer Avenue, site of a commercial structure designed in 1946 by the Pittsburgh Place Glass Co. Building demolished in 2009. Photo by George French.

Continue reading This Place Mattered.

This Place Matters

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on May 6, 2009 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 2009

by Jerry A. McCoy

May is here and time again for communities across the nation to celebrate National Preservation Month. The theme for this year's campaign, organized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to raise awareness about the power historic preservation plays in protecting the uniqueness and heritage of communities, is "This Place Matters."
Because of the lack of historic preservation in downtown Silver Spring, I'm compelled to alter this theme to "This Place Mattered" due to the continued destruction of our community's earliest buildings as part of ongoing "revitalization."

Jerry A. McCoy proclaiming in 2008 that the 1946 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. designed Roadhouse Oldies facade matters. Unfortunately it didn't matter to enough people. The building was razed in 2009. Photo by Nan E. McCoy.

Last year the National Trust invited the public to submit photographs of folks posed in front of a location meaningful to them in their community while holding a "This Place Matters" sign. I immediately submitted a photo of myself in front of Roadhouse Oldies, a longtime Silver Spring business located at 958 Thayer Avenue. This business was housed in a structure whose rare 1946 façade was designed by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Corp., the only example of this type of prefabricated commercial architecture in Silver Spring and most likely in all of Montgomery County.

Continue reading This Place Matters.

East Silver Spring's forgotten origins

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on April 29, 2009 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 2009

Silver Spring Park

by Jerry McCoy

SLIGO AVENUE 1909 (top left clockwise): Jouvenal (811) and Glover (809) houses; Drayton (737) and Hewitt (735) houses; Burns house (805); Waters house, south side mid 900 block.

One hundred years ago this month the Washington Post ran a news story on p. A3 of its April 4th issue with a four-tiered headline proclaiming "SUBURB GROWING FAST / Silver Spring Park Is Making Rapid Improvement / MANY LOTS ARE BEING SOLD / Home Builders Find Numerous Attractive Features in Popular Maryland Subdivision - Sidewalks and Graded Streets Add to Conveniences - Single Fare Promised by Railway."

"Where's Silver Spring Park?" you are probably thinking.

Continue reading East Silver Spring's forgotten origins .

Frank Hewitt deserves special recognition in Silver Spring

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on March 18, 2009 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 2009

by Jerry McCoy

Dear Mr. Leggett,

Lately there have been discussions in the county regarding whom the currently-under-construction Silver Spring civic building should be named after. The Silver Spring Historical Society would like to suggest Frank L. Hewitt, Sr. (1877-1944), a true Silver Spring "pioneer" whose life-long role as both a Silver Spring and Montgomery County civic leader contributed to the growth and vibrancy of our community today.

Hewitt's story reads like a Horatio Alger story. A young man leaves his Montgomery County home in Brinklow at the dawn of the 20th century and walks the dozen miles to Rockville where he catches a train bound for Silver Spring. Arriving with only 35 cents in his pocket he described the community as no more than "a place by the side of the road," the road being the Seventh Street Pike - today's Georgia Avenue.

Continue reading Frank Hewitt deserves special recognition in Silver Spring.

Abe Lincoln in Silver Spring

Jerry A. McCoy

on February 6, 2009 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 2009

by Jerry A. McCoy

This month communities all over the United States as well as the world will be honoring the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Born in a log cabin on February 12, 1809 near present-day Hodgenville, KY, Lincoln went on to become this nation's 16th president in 1861. Four years later, when an assassin's bullet ended his life in Washington, DC, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton is reported to have uttered, "Now he belongs to the ages."

These four 42-cent U.S. postage stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln will be available at a post office near you on February 10, 2009. Courtesy United States Postal Service.

And that he certainly has for it has been estimated that over 20,000 books have been written about Lincoln - falling in fourth place behind works published about the Virgin Mary, Shakespeare, and Jesus Christ. While documentation of the latter three visiting Silver Spring is lacking, the same cannot be said about Lincoln.

Continue reading Abe Lincoln in Silver Spring.

Driving Mr. Gardiner

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on January 6, 2009 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 2009

by Jerry McCoy

The very idea of this scenario taking place is absurd.
Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., phones her husband's Secret Service detail five days after the inauguration and asks for a driver to come to Number One Observatory Circle to pick up her husband. A lone driver arrives. Vice President Biden tells the driver that he'll not need his services because he wants to take the car out on his own, but that he'll be happy to first drive the agent back to his home.

Fifty-five years ago, back in the 20th Century when the world was different, a similar event occurred when recently inaugurated Vice President Richard M. Nixon chauffeured his driver back to his home in Silver Spring!

Continue reading Driving Mr. Gardiner.

Happy days are here again

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on December 14, 2008 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 2008

by Jerry McCoy

Liquor Dispensary002.jpg

"The crowd besieging the counter," this photograph of customers clamoring to purchase liquor appeared in the December 7, 1933 Washington Post. Note the address "8400" in the center-left background stenciled onto the open door of the liquor dispensary. Courtesy Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library.

Each day hundreds of people walk to and from the Silver Spring Metro station via Bonifant Street. It is a good bet that those who walk on the north side of the street alongside Piratz Tavern, situated at the intersection of Bonifant and Georgia Avenue, have no idea that this corner was the location of one of the biggest parties in Silver Spring ever held in celebration of the end of an era.

Seventy-five years ago a crowd of 1500 people gathered here on December 6, 1933 to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition, which went into effect the day before with the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Located on the corner of Oak Street (today's Bonifant Street) at 8400 Georgia Avenue was the central Montgomery County Liquor Dispensary.

Continue reading Happy days are here again.

Burning down the house

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on November 19, 2008 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 2008

by Jerry McCoy

This past summer marked the 50th anniversary of a redevelopment project that not only destroyed a historic building of local, state, and national importance but forever altered the natural topography of our community. The structure was Montgomery Blair's post-Civil War mansion Falkland, which sat on the crown of a tree-covered 360 ft. hill overlooking downtown Silver Spring.

If you've ever patronized any of the businesses at the Blairs Shopping Center, located at the corner of East-West Highway and Colesville Road, you might find it hard to believe that this was where such an estate stood. On September 7, 1958, at the request of Blair family descendents who wanted to develop the property, the mansion was burned downed by the Silver Spring Volunteer Fire Dept. Prior to the conflagration, hundreds of century-old trees that graced the hill upon which the house stood were cut down. In short order the hill was graded into oblivion and in its place was created a blank slate for construction of a shopping center.

Southwest elevation of Falkland Manor taken circa mid-1950s by Don Fugitt Studio, 914 Thayer Avenue. Collection of SSHS.

Continue reading Burning down the house.

Anniversary of the Avenue of Progress

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on October 1, 2008 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 2008

by Jerry McCoy

I have always liked numbered anniversaries of historic events that end in a zero. With awareness of a tenth, twentieth, or thirtieth anniversary of an event I quickly know what year it took place and usually where I was and what I was doing on the Road of Life. As I get older, tenth anniversaries feel like they happened yesterday and with fortieth anniversary events my recollections get a little hazy as I was only ten-years old.

But for historians, who study and research historic events that took place fifty, one hundred, or even five hundred years ago, it can feel like s(he) was actually in attendance at the event. That is how I felt about the sixtieth anniversary of an event that took place here in downtown Silver Spring last month.

Looking north on the Washington and Brookeville Turnpike (today's Georgia Avenue) where it intersected at grade level with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tracks (today's Metro/CSX). A Washington, Woodside and Forest Glen Railway streetcar heads south to the end of the line at Eastern Avenue. Photographed June 21, 1917 by Willard R. Ross.

Continue reading Anniversary of the Avenue of Progress.