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A look back at B. F. Gilbert
Takoma Park's first mayor, founder, and leader
Copyright © November 1997 Takoma Voice |
by Todd Post
On November 4th, Takoma Park will elect a new mayor, the 19th in its history. Ed Sharp, stepping down after three terms, will hand over the executive gavel to either Kathy Porter or Rudy Arredondo, the two declared candidates. Whichever one wins the job, she or he will signal a new era in Takoma Park. Kathy Porter, if elected, would be the first woman mayor of Takoma Park; Rudy Arredondo would be the first Hispanic. In a community that prides itself on its progressive politics, diversity has existed everywhere except in the mayor's chair.
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B. F. Gilbert |
Obviously, Takoma Park has changed a great deal since its first mayor (and its founder), Benjamin Franklin Gilbert, was elected in 1890. Porter or Arrendondo will assume office in a city with a population of nearly 17,000 residents; Gilbert's Takoma Park at the end of the 19th century numbered no more than 250. It was a homogenous community in those days, unlike today's multicultural Takoma Park, and it would be no exaggeration to say that in 1890 everyone in town knew everyone else.
While it probably is not instructive to compare Gilbert's term in office to any of our most recent mayors, or his platform to that of either candidate, we might distract ourselves for a bit of good, clean fun by looking back at what Gilbert, the town's first real leader, had hoped Takoma Park would become. A century later, he probably would not recognize the Takoma Park we've inherited, except for the handful of street names he gave us - Laurel, Heather, Elm, and Cedar to name just a few - and the scarce remains of Victorian homes from his day that are still standing.
Back in 1890, if anybody was the odds-on favorite to be the first mayor of Takoma Park it was B.F.Gilbert. He was as sure a bet to be mayor as George Washington was a century earlier to be the first President of the United States. As Washington was to the nation, Gilbert most deservedly should be called the father of Takoma Park. Unlike Washington, however, Gilbert bought rather than fought for his children's patrimony. Gilbert founded Takoma Park in 1883, and by 1890 owned almost all of it, roughly 1000 acres. A real estate developer for most of his adult life, he dreamed of building Takoma Park into both a fashionable suburb for Washington bureaucrats and a sylvan resort community where Washington's wealthiest families could escape the unhealthy summer air in the capital. "Malaria is unknown in Takoma Park" was one of Gilbert's best known slogans.
To entice the bureaucrats to buy in Takoma Park, he made lots available for 5 cents a square foot, compared to the going rate of 50 cents a square foot in D.C. - a terrific deal no matter what century you're looking to purchase land. There was a train running through town, plenty of beautiful forest, no malaria of course, and good clean water to drink. But putting up a homestead in Takoma Park at the end of the 19th century, you had to be willing also to build a little character. Imagine a place no electricity, no piped-in water or paved roads yet and there you are. Takoma Park's earliest residents proudly thought of themselves as "pioneers."
Like our elected leaders of late, Gilbert was intent on preserving Takoma Park's splendid wooded reserves. Despite being a developer, he loved nature, lived for walks in the woods, especially along the Sligo. I don't know what he would think about the town's current tree ordinance, but were he alive today he would definitely be livid at the condition of Sligo Creek.
In Gilbert's time, Sligo's water was considered some of the purest drinking water in the world. It was what he loved most about the land and was the strongest reason why he believed he could interest others in moving here. D.C.'s drinking water then, like now, was poisonous. That Sligo's waters are presently undrinkable, its banks eroded, that now even the fish cannot survive there, would break his heart.
Writing about the Sligo, Gilbert mused, "Wandering along the beautiful shaded roads and paths that skirt the stream, charmed now by rocky heights, now by immense boulders against which the waters rush and foam or leap away in miniature cascades, one can easily imagine oneself in the heart of the mountains, away from civilization and care, in glorious contemplation of Nature and her handiwork."
In 1892, beginning his second term as mayor, he oversaw the building of the majestic 140-room North Takoma Hotel, located where the Takoma Park branch of Montgomery College now stands, the first of two grand hotels that Gilbert was directly involved in. The second, the Glen Sligo Hotel, as part of the Wildwood Resort, opened in 1900 near Heather and Elm Avenues, overlooking the creek.
Wildwood, more so than the earlier hotel, was the realization of Gilbert's plan to establish Takoma Park as a resort community. Wildwood included bowling alleys, a roller coaster, pavilions (makes me wonder whether he would have favored the American Dream Mall). Management problems were said to be the cause of Wildwood's demise in 1907 - incidentally, the same year as Gilbert's - while the unofficial story was that it was shut down because it had turned into a brothel.
Gilbert's political career ended abruptly with the economic panic of 1893. He had overextended himself and was unable to convert his real estate holdings into cash to pay off his creditors. He was forced to sell his own house and move into the North Takoma Hotel, where he lived out the rest of his life. Whether out of despair or because of he could no longer afford to be distracted from his financial troubles, in 1894 he did not seek reelection.
He was felled by a stroke in 1901 and spent the rest of his life an invalid, cared for by his daughter, Margaret Gilbert Jamison, who wrote this about her father: "Although he made a great deal of money in early and middle life, he was essentially an idealist rather than a cold, calculating money grabber. He devoted a great deal more of his time and energy to persuading people with children to buy a lot and build a home in a pleasant place like Takoma Park than he did in trying to persuade wealthier people to invest their money in his subdivisions. When the town of Takoma Park was incorporated and a town charter procured for it, he was especially interested in those provisions that would affect the personal welfare of the inhabitants, such as a provision to the effect that the new [Takoma] spring should never be closed." From what I've read about Gilbert, I am certain he was, as his daughter stated, an idealist. He sought to preserve the beauty of Takoma Park and also use its beauty as the major source of the town's economy. He lived in an age when those were not necessarily mutually exclusive values.
Gilbert loved Takoma Park for what it was, not simply because he owned most of it, and while mayor he sought to live up to his position as leader of the Takoma "pioneers." Crushed by debt and disease, he may not have been as forward-looking at the end of his life as when he was a younger man, but it is our good fortune that his creativity was strong and plentiful while mayor. Let us hope that the next mayor will share some of Gilbert's idealism and hence be a leader to this generation of Takoma Park pioneers.
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