May 2009 Archives

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.

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.