October 2009 Archives

The planned closure of Silver Spring's "Finance Branch" post office, located at 8455 Colesville Road (next door to the McDonalds), has been put on hold until 2013.  This word came from one of the clerks whom I recently asked while mailing some packages.

The United States Postal Service had planned to close or consolidate 677 post offices nationwide.  Of the 13 locations chosen in the "Capital District," nine were in the District of Columbia proper and one each was in Hyattsville, Rockville, Bethesda, and Silver Spring. 

The Bethesda location was quickly removed from the list (no surprise there), but I was sure the Finance Branch...home to the Silver Spring Historical Society's PO Box 1160 since 1999 (when we were forced to vacate the historic 1950 Blair Station post office at 8045 Newell Street in south Silver Spring when that location closed)...would get the axe.

Blair Station post office, 8045 Newell Street.  Photographed 2003 by Jerry A. McCoy.

With the "main" post office just around the corner at 8616 2nd Avenue, the idea a A. having to trudge up the hill and B. having to wait in that location's perpetually long lines ...staffed by surly clerks...did not appeal to me at all (the clerks on Colesville have always been wonderful!).  The decision to save the $132 per year that our small PO box costs and just have the mail delivered to my house was going to be an easy one.

Hopefully by time 2013 rolls around the Paul S. Sarbanes Transit Center, being built diagonally across the street, will be completed.  With its planned offices and hotel and tens of thousands of people that will pass through its portals each day, a post office branch located inside this major transportation hub seems like a no-brainer.

Hovering over Metro's Red Line tracks just south of the Silver Spring station is a new work of public art created by Washington, DC artist G. Byron Peck.  The painting depicts the east-bound Silver Spring Baltimore & Ohio passenger station that stood across the tracks from the main B&O Station, located at 8100 Georgia Avenue.

The east-bound station, a 1970s brick replacement of the 1945 original, was demolished about five year ago for planned construction of the Veridian apartments project.  While the artisitc rendition of the small station is very accurate and pleasing, its size and placement is woefully overwhelmed by the massive apartment complex that it is affixed to.

Viewers will never be able to truly appreciate the artwork or comprehend its details being that it is separated by four sets of tracks and several chain link fences when viewed from the Georgia Avenue side.  For folks that might actually catch a glimpse of it while riding on Metro coming into or leaving the Silver Spring station well, that's all they are going to catch, a fleeting glimpse.

Standing in the doorway of the station is President Harry S Truman, who visited the station on multiple occasions (mostly to pick up his wife Bess and/or daughter Margaret who were returning to Washinton from Independence, Missouri).  I'm not sure who the man standing behind Truman is supposed to be.  His driver, who would bring him over from the White House?  His vice president, Alben W. Barkley?

"Reflected" in windows to the right of the door is the main station, situated across the tracks. Before the 1970s and the arrival of Metro there were only two sets of tracks between these structures and the track bed was much narrower than it is today.

It was unfortunate to have lost this, admittedly, non-historic Montgomery County-owned railroad structure.  It would have been a great building to house the ever-growing Silver Spring Historical Society's archives.

Figuring that I needed to take a more aggressive approach to getting the public interested in preserving Silver Spring's history before the developers knock it all down, I enlisted the help of the below "volunteer" to work at the Silver Spring Historical Society's booth, set up last Saturday at the Fenton Street Market.

Actually, he (she?) belonged to the folks next door who were selling dog treats.  While looking a bit intimidating, the dog was actually quite friendly and never once barked during the entire five hour time that the market was opened (as opposed to my back, which was barking from sitting and standing that long)!

A group of high school students, whom market manager Hannah McCann had enlisted to help vendors set-up, stopped by and started thumbing through a copy of Historic Silver Spring.  They became very enthusiastic as they recognized photos of various places in Silver Spring and couldn't believe how it used to look.

They even proclaimed that I had the 'coolest" booth at the market.  I felt heartenend that perhaps there is a chance that the current generation might take an interest in preserving our community's history.