Takoma Archives

The saga of Takoma Theatre in three acts

2010-02-12T20:44:32Z

Photo by Julie Wiatt

On July 2, 1923, the corner of Fourth and Butternut was jammed with people eagerly awaiting the official opening of Takoma Theatre, and its inaugural showing of "The Ne'er Do Well." High above the crowd, the simple neon sign spelled out "TAKOMA."

Act One: Heyday

Motion picture fever had come to America early in 1906 when nickelodeons introduced the wonders of moving pictures. Within 17 years the District boasted 47 theaters with the most grand and opulent palaces centered along F Street NW.

In Takoma Park, the local Episcopal church began showing Friday night movies in 1920, which later moved to the Presbyterian Church on Tulip Avenue. Wilmer Pratt, the ex-mayor, was determined to bring a real movie house to Takoma Park. Even the horrendous collapse of the snow-laden roof of the 1700-seat Knickerbocker Theater in Kalorama, caused by January 1922 blizzard, failed to deter the Takoma residents from wanting a theater of their own.

Pratt helped found the Takoma Theater Company, which contracted with a young up-and-coming architect named John Jacob Zink to design a neighborhood theater. For the location they chose Fourth Street, inside the District. It cost $60,000 to construct.

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Courtesy Takoma Theatre Arts Project

Cover of the four-page weekly program for the week of November 3, 1924. Note the use of "Theatre" rather than "Theater."

Zink designed Takoma Theatre as a Classical Revival two-story brown brick building with a storefront shop on each side of the entrance and office space above. It was an elegant addition to the commercial strip on Fourth Street, where the trolley car line intersected with the Takoma train station. The building's interior also reflected the grand touches of the movie palaces downtown, especially the huge oval light well in the ceiling that shed a soft purple light on the 762 seats below.

Courtesy Takoma Theatre Arts Project

In addition to the inspiring venue, Takoma Theatre moviegoers were treated to several advances over the next several years. The introduction of "controlled weather" offered a "cool" option during hot, muggy summers and proved an incentive to customers, while larger screens and Technicolor made the experience more enjoyable. But the biggest leap was sound. Movies first talked in 1926, and on February 2, 1929, Takoma Theatre became one of the earliest neighborhood cinemas in the region to offer this new innovation. Ticket prices rose a nickel to 30 cents for adults and 20 cents for children.

Dorothy Barnes, Historic Takoma's resident historian, offers a peek at the 1930s experience. She remembers walking with her girlfriend from Elm Avenue to the Theatre every Sunday afternoon for the newest first-run show and a newsreel roundup of the week's events. Saturdays were reserved for children's cartoons. Mid-week shows were double-features of second run films. Their outing included a stop at Wiley's ice cream shop located in the same building.

Courtesy Takoma Theatre Arts Project

In the days before television, movie theaters like Takoma offered a constantly changing lineup of films, as evidenced by this ad for July 1928.

Act Two: Decline

As people began moving to the outer suburbs after World War II, the movie distributors shifted first run movies to the shopping center screens. Gradually, the long established movie palaces downtown began to decline. By the 1970s all but one of the District theaters were showing X-rated movies in order to survive.

Takoma Theatre was no exception, and the owners found themselves momentarily famous when they chose to run a double feature of Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones in September 1974 at the same time that the Maryland appeals court was banning Deep Throat as obscene. Sitting in the District, the Theatre was safe from Maryland regulations, but not safe from local residents. Angry anti-pornographists broke in, destroyed the screen and projector, and unwound the movie reels before throwing the film on the roof.

Courtesy Historic Takoma

In 1978, KB Distributors was threatening to close the theater permanently. Local residents, led by Sammie Abbott, rallied to save it, organizing the first Takoma Park Folk Festival as a fundraiser. Meanwhile, several others decided to take things into their own hands. Loretta Neumann, Sara Green and her husband Richard Holzsager, among others, formed the Neighborhood Films Association and sublet the space on Friday and Saturdays. For nine months they offered double features of classics and family favorites, for $2.50 admission. The East Indian community took over on Sundays with their own movies.

As Green and Neumann will admit, they entered the movie business with some naivety. "We didn't understand that you made all your money on food," Green recalls, "and we let KB retain the right to the concessions." Nor did they get first runs. "There was intense competition for those rights and it was too expensive for us," Green explains. Instead, they envisioned something along the lines of Circle Theater, with good classic films (like Robin Hood with Errol Flynn) which only cost $50 to rent for the weekend.

William Wolowitz, the building owner at the time, was sympathetic to the group's vision, but he was not involved in the theater operations. An itinerant inventor he held several patents, including ones for transparent coating on credit cards, an ID card imprinter and a self-correcting cassette for typewriter ribbons. He ran his typewriter company out of the building and used the second floor of the theater to manufacture cassette ribbons. When KB's lease expired, Neumann worked out a deal with Wolowitz to take over theater operations, but he died suddenly of a heart attack while shoveling the sidewalk after a snowstorm. "His heirs weren't interested," Neumann says, and the theater closed.

Meanwhile, Takoma Park was seeking Historic District status in both Maryland and the District. The theater was one of five public buildings specified in the nomination. When the DC Historic District was established in 1980, it offered preservation protection to the theater as well as to the rest of the neighborhood.

Act Three: Rebirth as Live Theater

This situation held until 1983, when playwright Martin McGinty (father of TV anchor Derrick McGinty) decided to buy the building as a venue for his plays. He paid $325,000 cash and moved in. After expanding the stage to accommodate live performance, slightly reducing the seating, he began producing plays. The audiences were sparse and McGinty was discouraged by the reception.

Some neighborhood productions took the stage sporadically until 2002, when a group of actors formed Takoma Theatre Arts Project hoping to open the theater on a regular basis. Loretta Neumann again was one of those involved, still pursuing her vision of a community role for the theater. They had some success staging local productions, dance recitals, and other performances. But their efforts to raise grant money for renovation stalled when they were unable to negotiate a long-term lease with McGinty, and the project folded.

Courtesy Takoma Theatre Arts Project

Under McGinty's stewardship the building has remained largely intact, although he describes a host of problems including roof leaks, wall and ceiling damage, outdated heating and cooling, and generally outdated conditions. Convinced by his own experience with audiences that the venue could not succeed as a theater, he began making plans to demolish the building and replace it with office space or apartments. Doing so, however, required permission from the Historic Preservation Review Board.

In May of 2007 the preservation board denied his request. As McGinty observed at the time, "I finally realized the preservation office has a great bias against destroying historic buildings - the older they are, they're going to be against it no matter what. It doesn't matter how it affects the owner." He did not like any of the board's recommendations: (1) sell the building to a theater group, (2) partner with a community group, or (3) renovate it as a theater.

The lines thus drawn remain in place to the current day. Like many other property owners across the country, McGinty finds his interests at odds with a community desire to protect a historical legacy, in this case still led by Loretta Neumann, one of the theater's staunchest defenders.. Most recently, Neumann organized the Takoma Theatre Conservancy, a non-profit organization to oppose demolition and raise money to turn the space into a cultural arts and education center.

January 2010 marked the most recent round in McGinty's efforts to appeal the demolition ban. He faced the preservationists at a hearing in a downtown government office in front of the "Mayor's Agent." McGinty admitted in his written submission that he didn't expect to win, concluding, "If you do not approve my building plans, then I will ask that the city arrange to purchase my property at the assessed value [either $1.5 million or $3 million]."

The Mayor's Agent has yet to rule on his appeal and the ongoing drama has no final conclusion. For the time being the "TAKOMA" above the Theatre roof remains the iconic landmark of the neighborhood.

Life with the Daniels Family of Sherman Avenue

2009-06-01T19:19:38Z

by Diana Kohn

photos by Julie Wiatt

A few happy tears were shed when Kay Daniels-Cohen was announced as one of the Azalea Award winners in April. Since last summer she has battled breast cancer even as she kept to an unflagging schedule of volunteerism--doing the nitty-gritty to reopen the Piney Branch pool, leading the campaign to start a new winter basketball league, resurrecting the SS Carroll Neighborhood Association, decorating McGinty's for an inaugural ball and pitching in whenever anyone asked.

]]> The Azalea ceremony got more emotional when her baby brother, Buddy, surprised her with a handmade award--a sparkplug mounted in a box frame--for being, as he said, "the spark that makes everyone want to go out and do something for others."

Kay and Buddy grew up in a special Takoma Park family, the children of Opal Daniels--the first woman to have a local park named in her honor--and her husband Henry C. Daniels.

They arrived with their four-year-old daughter Kay in 1946 and took up residence at 19 Sherman.

Kay picks up the story:

While my father worked for the Department of Agriculture, my mom first taught at Georgetown Prep but it wasn't her style. Then she taught at an integrated nursery school in DC. I was probably the only white child there. We learned later that she was blacklisted during the McCarthy era for working in that school.

Opal and Henry Daniels raised their two children at 19 Sherman Avenue. Buddy and Kay continue to live in the family house.

Mom was born in a one-stoplight town in Texas but graduated from Baylor University in 1930 when she was 18 years old. For six years she was a school teacher and coached the women's champion state basketball team a couple years running, at a one-room schoolhouse in the middle of an oil field.

My dad met her in Austin at the University of Texas when she came for her master's degree; he was already there working on his. In the 1930s, especially in Austin, it was very socialist. They went to school with Howard Fast who was blacklisted in Hollywood years later.

They got married in 1939 and my dad ran a migrant labor camp in Robstown, Texas. That's where they lived. The migrant labor camps were self-supporting towns and the housing was clean and sanitary.

By 1942 he was responsible for logistics and moving the migratory workers around the country for the Department of Agriculture Farm Security because our young men were going off to war, and there was no one else to pick the crops. After the war they sent him to DC, and we followed.

Mom stopped teaching when I started kindergarten at Takoma Park Elementary, the old school- the one they tore down. I was there for six grades.

Opal Daniels Park honors the legacy of Opal Daniels. It can be entered from either Carroll Ave (between Lincoln and Sherman) or from Hancock Avenue.

Her work became volunteer work. She spent lots of time at school, working in the cafeteria once or twice a week. We always had a spring festival with pony rides, and PTA magazine drives and both my mom and dad were involved.

In the first grade, I wanted to be a Brownie, and the only way I could get into Girl Scouts is if she agreed to be a intermediate Girl Scout leader, so that's what she did. I became a Brownie and worked my way up and she took her girls through junior high to high school. Bud was born in the middle of that while I was in fourth grade. She stayed with it, and was a Girl Scout leader for at least forty years.

I was in 8th grade in Takoma Park Junior High when the school was integrated. Buddy was just starting kindergarten at Takoma Park Elementary. It was a very smooth, no big deal. we all just started school in September.

When Buddy became a Cub Scout, mom was Den Mother. The troop was integrated because the school was. But when it was time to move up, they wouldn't let his Cub Scout troop into the all-white Boy Scout troop. So Buddy didn't continue with Boy Scouts.

Buddy Daniels and his sister Kay Daniels-Cohen at the 2009 Azalea Awards.

Of course, in Texas discrimination wasn't against black people, it was against Mexicans, Hispanic people. Because mom and dad had grown up poor and seen people taken advantage or abused, both of them would defend what they felt were people's rights.

I remember when I was in the sixth grade, one of the Girl Scouts in our troop was Japanese. We'd been on a camping trip and the parents and girls were sitting down in a restaurant in a little group. And they wouldn't serve her because she was Japanese. My dad got up and we all walked out. He was crystal clear about why he was walking out--it wasn't a quiet walk-out.

I got into everything because of the Girl Scouts. There isn't anything that I can't trace back to Scouts. We went to Camp Letts every summer and Easter vacations. Girls didn't do sports. I did camping, a lot of boys stuff, because of Girl Scouts. Mother always made sure we took lessons in the swimming pool, either in DC or over at Columbia Union College.

When I decided I needed a job the summer before college, I started calling swimming pools and ended up as a lifeguard. That's how I funded my college. I lived at home and earned enough money in summer time to pay tuition and books.

In college, I ran for legislator as a commuter and an independent. In those days you had to be in a fraternity or a sorority. I ran as a towney and got more votes than anybody in history and eventually ended up as secretary of the student government association.

Opal Daniels Girl Scout Troop in 1954.

I majored in physical education --Buddy and I both got involved in physical education --because of my mother.

My dad had helped form the Mine Workers Health and Welfare Retirement Fund. At first he coordinated taking disabled miners (mostly paraplegics) by train out to Kaiser in California for treatment.

Then they started their own medical care program and built their own clinics and 10 hospitals. It was socialized medicine.

When the young whippersnappers in the union dissolved the medical section in 1975, a huge body of knowledge and experience was blown away.

Mom never drove; she had a terrible automobile accident in a rainstorm in Texas when she was seven months pregnant with me and from that mment on she never drove again. Dad drove her everywhere. I always said he was the wind beneath her wings. Two brilliant minds - I remember them fighting over the crossword puzzles every Sunday: who go it first, who did it in ink, or in pencil.

In the mid-1950's Belle Ziegler moved onto Sherman Ave. My mom got involved with the city Recreation Department because they were neighbors. Under Belle, the Rec Department took over the Fourth of July parade, which was a big deal, the 5K run, the baseball tournament. You couldn't live on Sherman Ave. without getting involved in helping on Halloween and Easter and Christmas. My mother made all the Easter bunny costumes for the Easter egg hunt.

A couple years later mom was appointed to the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Board. When a developer wanted to build townhouses on the land behind our house, she and the neighborhood fought it and kept fighting for 25 years. She wanted the county to buy the land and make it a park. We played there anyway. Belle used to cut the grass so the kids could play ball.

Finally the county bought the land in 1988 and turned it into a park. Mom had died of cancer in the spring of 1988 and we wanted to name the park after her. Parks aren't usually given people's names, just geographic locations. So Buddy and I went around the neighborhood and got 400 signatures to name it after her. And the Planning Board did, because for years they had worked with her.

People ask me, where are you going to retire to? That's a silly question, are you crazy! I moved away after I graduated college, but came back here after Kent State in 1970. I'm going to retire to Takoma Park. This is my life, this is where I learned everything important in my life.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair of Historic Takoma, an all-volunteer non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the heritage of Takoma Park MD and DC. For more information on the history of this community and the progress on the renovation of the organization' new headquarters, visit www.historictakoma.org. To view the collection of previous Takoma Archives, visit www.takoma.com.

Remembering civil war heroes

2009-05-31T22:52:17Z

National Park Service Ranger Ron Howard is a Civil War buff. On May 24, Memorial Day 2009, his job was to tell the story of Battlefield Cemetery to those gathered to honor the soldiers buried there. The 41 graves hold the remains of Union soldiers who died defending Ft. Stevens (and by extension, the Federal Capital) from the invading confederates under the command of General Jubal Early on that hot July 1864.

Ron Howard has spent 10 years researching the men buried there. He knows them all by name. He speaks emotionally of the 19-year-old soldier who was lying wounded in a hospital bed before being recalled to the front lines and sacrificing his life for the Union cause. By amazing coincidence Ranger Howard was able to locate a medallion belonging to the soldier as it was up for sale on the Internet. That medallion, a precusor of the modern dog-tags soldiers wear for identification, is now one of his prized possessions.

On Saturday July 11, the National Park Service will celebrate Ft. Stevens Day, in remembrance of the battle. Ranger Howard will be on hand from 11 AM-4 PM to be a witness to history.

Ft. Stevens is located at 13th Street and Quakenbos NW. Battlefield Cemetery is on Georgia Ave, north of Van Buren St NW.

Call to Arms: Activists defend a community under seige

2009-05-01T20:12:58Z

In many ways, Takoma Park owes its reputation as a liberal bastion of activism to the period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when its citizens protested loudly and vociferously to save the town from destruction in the name of progress. Much like the anti-war movement then occupying the national headlines, they employed the same tactics: marches, petitions, sit-ins, and found the same sense of cameraderie and empowerment gained from shared struggle.

Takoma Park's origins are linked with the railroad, but by the 1960s automobiles were the primary mode of transportation and were threatening to engulf the community.

Both Piney Branch Road and New Hampshire Avenue had been extended in the 1930s, pushing out from the heart of Washington DC. But these were on the outer edges of town and didn't much alter the lay of the land. Takoma Park slumbered on its tree-lined streets of aging family homes until construction of the Capital Beltway forced it to confront the issue of development.

]]> The impetus was the 1956 Capital Highways Act that funded a freeway encircling DC. The ink was barely dry on the design plans before Maryland (and Virginia) State Highway folks conceived of a grandiose scheme to run several additional freeways like spokes linking the Beltway to the National Mall.

In 1964 Takoma Park got wind of the plan--as the story goes, Ed Hutmire learned of the plan for the North Central Freeway while reading the Sunday Post and, alarmed, he called up his good friend, Sam Abbott. Abbott was a long-time labor organizer and knew how to rally the troops in opposition.

The poster above was Sam Abbott's call to action. Is your house safe?

From the first public meeting where 150 people showed up to testify, he began building a coalition of outraged citizens that linked blacks and whites across the DC region in opposition to all things concrete.

Horrific design maps surfaced showing eight lanes of traffic barreling smack through the center of Takoma Park, in complete disregard for the Victorians and bungalows that had long stood there. The Save Takoma Park Committee which formed around Sam Abbott, Etta Mae and Ben Davis, and a host of others, had little trouble finding allies to make a lot of noise. Petitions and flyers (most of them the handiwork of Abbott, a professional graphic-designer) served as that decade's version of the Internet spreading the word.

As if the freeway alone wasn't bad enough, there was a 1963 Master Plan that called for widening East-West Highway (or Philadelphia Avenue, to those of us here). As the major east-west thoroughfare across Montgomery County it made a certain logical sense--until you took into account that in Takoma Park, for instance, it would mean the demolition of 218 houses in order to make room for the extra lanes.

The so-called "Mustard Sheet" transit plan targeted the blocks closest to the Metro for high rise development.

Roads weren't the only threat to homeowners. Montgomery Junior College was looking to expand its campus and the same Master Plan gave the college permission to look toward the block immediately north--Block 69.

While the freeway struggle was in full swing, the college quietly began buying up houses with the intention of removing all 22 houses on the block.

To further complicate matters, a new factor entered the mix--mass transit (soon known as "Metro"). Although many experts favored mass transit over freeways, the road people were not convinced. In 1968, both ideas were lumped together in one grand scheme - double the width of the railroad track to accommodate both Metro and trains and then add three lanes of freeway on either side. The end result was more than 300 feet wide.

The introduction of the Metro led the County to consider what would happen to the land next to the proposed Takoma Metro station. In June of 1971, the Takoma Park Transit Impact Area Plan suggested tearing down the nearest 50 houses to make way for highrise apartments and offices. The hard-to-miss bright yellow fold-out brochure was quickly labeled the "Mustard Sheet." Opposition was so intense at the first meeting of the County Planning Board, that officials abruptly withdrew the plan.

Residents throughout Takoma Park were threatened but those on Block 69 were wedged between the college campus at the railroad's edge and the expected widening of Philadephia Avenue. They reacted in the strongest fashion.

Forty years ago, flyers like this were the direct lines of communication to the citizens. These were the days before xerox machines, so most flyers were produced on hand-cranked mimeograph machines.

When Etta Mae Davis, resident of Block 69 and a leader of the Save Takoma Park Committee, heard bulldozers on the morning of September 23, 1972, she rushed next door to confront the demolition crew. Eight hours later, ten Takoma Park residents were arrested, the only arrests inside the city limits in ten years of resistance.

About this time Dolores Stowell and Maureen Thompson proposed a new tactic--getting the most vulnerable blocks listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This would effectively bar the city and state from using federal funds for any of the construction projects there.

Schools were also at risk. The County Board of Education closed down Silver Spring Elementary School across the street from Block 69 (at Chicago & Philadelphia Avenues). Decades before it had served as the senior high until Montgomery Blair was built. Diminished in importance, its students were shifted for the last time once Piney Branch Elementary was opened.

Then the School Board targeted Takoma Park Elementary and the community fought back, pushing a compromise to construct a replacement building on the adjacent playground.

In 1975 the freeway money was finally transferred to the Metro fund, closing the door on freeway expansion. There were still issues to hammer out over the Metro site, especially the size of the parking structure but moderation prevailed and the station opened in February 1978.

One remaining incident proved the power of community activism. The School Board forced the closure of Takoma Park Junior High. But the years of solidarity helped the community pull off a miracle-- a reprieve that reopened the school after the teachers had been reassigned and the building emptied of furniture and supplies.

Finally the Save Takoma Park Committee could take a few deep breaths. Thanks to the vigilance of the Committee and hundreds who had raised their voices, Takoma Park had weathered the assaults.

But new stresses arise--whether it is the arrival of a CVS Pharmacy, Metro efforts to build townhouses, the continued expansion of the college, or the County Council's push to dismantle the protections of historic preservation status, a new generation of activists needs to ready to step forward.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair of Historic Takoma, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to preserving the heritage of Takoma Park MD and Takoma Park DC.

Historic Takoma is seeking photographs that capture Takoma Park's history for use in producing a photo history with Arcadia Press. If you have photos you would like to share, please contact her at diana@takoma.com.

Sligo Creek: Restoring the Chesapeake Bay eight miles at a time

2009-04-01T19:50:46Z

Friends of Sligo Creek chose to celebrate Earth Day, April 18, with it's semi annual "Sweep the Creek." Volunteers are given plastic bags and gloves and turned loose to collect trash. Every year more people turn out, and become astounded by the piles of trash. But that wasn't the case in the year 2000.

That spring, Sally Gagne, who on the edge of Sligo Creek Park in North Sligo Hills, noted with alarm the increasing invasion of exotic plants into Sligo Creek. Looking for someone to listen, she found a sympathetic ear in John Galli, then chief engineer for the Council of Governments (a collective of all the municipal bodies).

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He encouraged her to contact other concerned activists, and she reluctantly agreed, uncertain how many were out there. Gradually the small cadre expanded and by 2002, they had enough members to form a 5011(c)(3) they called Friends of Sligo Creek.

The structure was simple. They divided Sligo Creek into smaller sections, marked by where roads crossed the creek. "We discovered that people would volunteer if they didn't have to travel far, even a mile." recalls Gigne. Each section was appointed a steward.

Some of the primary movers and shakers in FOSC: (back row, from left: President Bruce Sidwell, Clair Garman, Sally Gagne, Kathy Michels, Ed Murtagh; front row, from left: Ann Hoffnar and Marty Ittner.

Although "Sweep the Creek" was the most visible activity, they began stormwater efforts, removing invasive plants (RIP), and monitoring water quality, all the while earning enough clout to be listened to by the government officials who could actually do something.

Sligo Creek had the good fortune decades ago when a group of powerful folks thought ahead and created Sligo Creek Parkway in 1935 to bar development long before developers were clamoring to move forward.

Although the creek is only 8.5 miles long from its headwaters at Wheaton Regional Park to the point in Prince George's county where it joins the Anacostia River, it is a mass of overlapping jurisdictions - the city of Takoma Park, National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and the Council of Governments, not to mention a welter of federal agencies. Someone had to be on watch at the local level. That turned out to be FOSC.

If it is only eight miles, why does it matter what happens anyway? Where does the water go? Sligo Creek is a tributary of the Anacostia River, which dumps into the Potomac, which finally reaches the Chesapeake Bay.

Marty Ittner received a grant from Historic Foundation to silkscreen an image of the carefree days of Sligo Creek to hang in the community center. Taken from a glass negative in the History Takoma archives, the official unveiling will be at the Azalea Awards on Saturday, April 25.

Covering 64,000 square miles, the Bay watershed is the largest estuary in the U.S. and home to 16 million people. "Estuary" is a fancy word for any place where fresh water mixes with salt water. The Bay is approximately half and half. It covers five states (New York, Pennsylvania, Deleware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virgina) plus the District of Columbia -- talk about overlapping jurisdictions.

In the deep geological past, it was part of the Susquehanna River, which has submerged over time. Scientists think they have a partial explanation: a meteorite collided with the Earth 35 million years ago in the Delmarva region and set up the underlying structure that presaged the Bay. It wasn't of the magnitude of the meteorite that hit the Yucatan and wiped out the dinosaurs, but it was pretty big. Sea drilling in 1983 confirmed what had been only a theory.

No one was around 35 million years ago to record what happened. But the 1600s brought an astute observer to the New World, whose records are the basis for most of our modern-day understanding. -- John Smith of Pocahontas fame. Between 1608 and 1609 he explored every inch of the Bay - that's 11,684 miles of coastline (more than the entire West Coast), drawing precise maps that remained valid for centuries and compiling detailed journal entries of what he saw, much like Lewis & Clark two centuries later. Ironically, he was free to embark on this exploration because he had been ousted from Jamestown.

His detailed maps remained the standard for centuries (the Pilgrims the first of many groups to use them). But they sparked the curiosity of settlers and helped set in motion the dynamic that threatens the Bay today. Modern scientists use Smith's details to set the baseline for future cleanup.

Groups with the longest seniority see themselves as "big picture" folks: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, for instance, was founded 40 years ago to improve water quality by reducing pollution. It pushed to add the Bay to the endangered list, but despite decades of effort, it is still not on the list. Agreements have been negotiated and goals have been set -- repeatedly -- but they are never met.

But even with the massive grassroots effort, it takes a group like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to sue the EPA for not enforcing their own rules. And, not surprising in this new political age, Chuck Fox, the the EPA czar in charge of overseeing the Bay, applauded the move. This seachange in attitude might offer the first real hope for progress.

Meanwhile back in Takoma Park, FOSC and their fellow weed warriors as some call themselves, provide the local eyes-on monitoring so crucial to making progress. In the end, it will take everyone's involvement to make it work.

Ed Murtagh, who heads the Stormwater committee, notes that there are 20,000 homeowners in the Sligo Creek watershed and scientists say it will take the involvement of 10,000 of them to make a difference.

"There's been a huge shift in awareness," he continues, "but more people need to understand that cloudy creek water is not natural." One solution is rain gardens - a way to retain stormwater and give it time to soak in. Toward that end, FOSC recently received two grants to build a network of rain gardens - $1500 from the City of Takoma Park and $8000 from the xx for its organizing efforts.

Regarding new development, FOSC helped push a stricter stormwater permitting bill through the Montgomery county council which is intended to be a model for other states.

And the outreach never stops. "People need to take pride in our parks and streams," Murtagh stressed. Volunteer for this year's "Sweep the Creek" and you will be able to take pride in your own efforts to clean up Sligo Creek.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair at Historic Takoma, Inc. Previous columns can be found online at www.takoma.com. For those interested in Silver Spring history, check out Jerry McCoy's monthly columns in the Silver Spring Voice or at www.silverspringvoice.com

Takoma Park DC Library recaptures the past

2009-03-01T15:28:44Z

by Diana Kohn

Photos by Julie Wiatt

March 2009

When the scaffolding on the Takoma Park DC library comes down this month, the newly renovated interior will match the elegance of the exterior. State-of-the-art technology has been married to the elegant style that recaptures the library's 1911 heritage as a Carnegie library. The grand re-opening will be held on March 21.

On rare occasions, a renovation project turns into a work of art. The Takoma Park DC library, reopening this month, is one such case.

Built in 1911 it was the first branch library in the metropolitan Washington system. Andrew Carnegie himself donated $40,000 for its construction, along with a basic blueprint that was replicated across the country.

The library became a popular gathering spot. Few changes were made to the outside of the building over the decades. Inside, however, much was altered. The interior suffered from several makeovers that obscured the oak woodwork and elegant lines. The front entryway was turned into a barricade.

Workmen put the finishing touches on the interior - hanging lamps and clearing away the last of the debris. The open entranceway is a marked contrast to the old.

As the building aged, the roof leaked, parts of the ceiling collapsed, and the systems failed to keep pace with the technological advances necessary to library services.

Even so it was surprising that the Takoma Park branch would be the first one chosen to undergo a complete renovation. (Georgetown with its devastated Peabody Room is next.),

Last fall, Takoma's books were packed up and placed in storage and a bookmobile was parked on Fourth Street to serve the neighborhod for the duration of the renovation.

The restored woodwork emphasizes the elegant lines notable in a Carnegie library.

Chris Wright stepped in as Project Manager. His passion is history--he dug into the records in an effort to respect the architecture while modernizing the system. He found the original drawings, hired master woodcarver Robert O. Greene to create woodwork and furniture that matches the originals, uncovered a skylight hidden by a painted ceiling, and oversaw the work of Forrester Construction to bring the project in a month ahead of schedule.

The staff is thrilled. Rachel Meit, the children's libarian, said, "we're even more exicted than the neighbors to be back in such a gorgeous space. Chris couldn't have picked better people - they had the vision and the work ethic to get the job done early."

Working in the library pre-renovation was difficult. Meit described trying to focus on programs while being diverted by a leak in the ceiling.

Project Manager Chris Wright was responsible for recreating the appearance of the original Carnegie library.

After months spent in the tight quarters of the basement and bookmobile, they look forward to moving back in. But it has created a camaraderie among the staff. Lindsay Halkola joins Rachel as children's librarian and Heather Petsche is the newly appointed young-adult librarian under the supervision of head librarian Helen Hiltz.

Aside from the elegant new interior, the first thing patrons will notice is the prominance given to new technologies. Every table has computer hookups and the entire building has wi-fi.

The DVD and audiobook collections are front and center. Self-contained audiobooks called Playaways come with their own batteries and earphones that don't require an MP3 player.

One example of the merging of the past and future is the computer tables. According to Wright, the Mission-style tables (and chairs) are based on drawings of the original furniture, but the tables sprout plugs for computer hookups. "We had all the original furniture plans so we were able to mimic the style of the original furniture, even though we didn't have any of the pieces left. It's one of the neat things about being a library. We keep all the drawings."

When Wright chose cork for the floor it was partly based on its value as a "green" material, but also because it was the traditional flooring used in the early 1900s.

Ultimately it is the woodworking that captures the eye. The key is the white oak, explains Greene, who was charged with recreating all the additional woodwork. "It is quartered to show off the beautiful figures in the wood." Once the dark finish had been stripped off the original moldings, the wood grain is shown in all its splendor.

BEFORE: Upon entering the library, you faced a glass box and maze-like path around the information desk. The renovation has stripped it all away. (Photo Courtesy of DC Public Library)

Most impressive is the vestibule replacing the "fortress" that has been removed from the entrance. As Wright tells the story, "The original plans show this amazing vestibule, so we put it back and Greene did a spectacular job building it." The central desk is a replica of the original.

When it came to choosing the color of the wall paint, Wright acknowledges a little help from the Voice. He figured out which of the paint chips were the original color "based on the reference to green paint in your Voice article (April 2008). "

"When asked about the enduring nature of Carnegie library style, Wright remembered a recent visit to California: "I went to the Carnegie library in Noe Valley in San Francisco last year and it's amazing how smiliar it is to this one. Same floor plan, door in the same place, wider adult area, with children's area in back and a fireplace.'

AFTER: The front entrance is now graced with a wooden vestibule and an information desk based on the original drawings uncovered by Chris Wright and faithfully recreated by Robert Greene in quarter-cut oak. The re-discovered skylight has been opened up.

It is worth remembering that the Takoma library was nearly lost in 1965. The powers that be were insisting on the need to tear down the building and replace it with a modern structure several blocks away.

The neighborhood resisted and succeeded in saving the building. Luckily this time around, the library system appreciates the treasure it has.

With the renovation completed, the library will be in great shape to celebrate its centennial in 2011.

Grand Re-opening Celebration

Saturday, March 21: 10a.m. to 3p.m.

The Takoma Park DC staff welcomes the neighborhood to the Grand Re-opening on March 21, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Highlights include storytelling at 10:30 a.m. with Ginnie Cooper, the Chief Librarian, and a second storytime with Rachel Meit at 11:30 a.m. In the afternoon, Chris Wright will discuss the history behind the renovation.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair of Historic Takoma, Inc., which is dedicated to preserving and celebrating the heritage of both Takoma Park MD and DC. More can be found at www.historictakoma.org.

The collection of Takoma Archives columns is available online at www.takoma.com/takoma_archives. For tales of Silver Spring history, check out Jerry McCoy's columns in the Silver Spring Voice, available online at www.silverspringvoice.com/ssthenagain.

Abe Lincoln

2009-02-01T20:26:04Z

February 2009

This month's Takoma Archive was covered by Jerry McCoy in his article "Abe Lincoln in Silver Spring".

Twenty years ago -- a look back at 1988

2009-01-01T18:21:11Z

by Diana Kohn

January 2009

The images of 2008 have been seared into our collective memory and pundits continue to spout analysis. Twenty years ago, in 1988, the Takoma Voice completed one year of publishing as a local community paper. Revisiting the events of that year proves that no matter how much things change, in many ways they hardly change at all.

Silver Spring development: Facing the first test

The County agreed to fund a proposed $23 million parking structure between Ellsworth Avenue and Pershing Drive in Silver Spring. Citizens Referendum on Over-Development gathered 18,000 signatures to force a vote on the question. Takoma Park answered "No" by a resounding 74%. But the measure passed countywide with 54% in favor.

Moore received conditional approval from the Planning Board to turn the Silver Triangle into a mall twice the size of Tyson's Corner Center. It fell through when he failed to secure two "acceptable" department stores to serve as anchors.

But other developers moved forward: "Early next year construction will begin on a new retail project, City Place with 60 shops, half the size of White Flint." Folger Platt had already completed the first of four office buildings to house the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Maryland's unique approach to gun control

On May 23, Maryland enacted the first law in America prohibiting the manufacture and sale of Saturday Night Specials and non-detectable handguns, by creating a handgun register of banned weapons. In the November election, voters re-affirmed the measure, and it remains on the books, making Maryland one of the strongest states on gun control.

Carroll Avenue delays anger City

"A car ride across parts of Takoma Park's Carroll Avenue rivals a drive over the worst back roads of Appalachia."

The worst blocks were between Flower and Garland Avenues where mis-communicatioin between the city and WSSC meant that sewer work was done after the roads were newly-resurfaced.

Bob Berger lamented that "For the time being, Takoma Park appears to have no option but to deal with the WSSC. Their relationship is mandated by an act of the state legislature which put Takoma Park in the WSSC's jurisdiction."

2008: Sounds famliar to drivers who spent much of the year negotiating a chopped-up Carroll Avenue from Old Town to Sligo Creek as sewer lines were once again replaced.

Takoma Park recycles

On August 29, the City of Takoma Park hired Daryl Braithwaite as its first recycling coordinator. She helped push for passage of the 1988 state recycling legislation and helped create the city guidelines. Her appointment came as the City completed its first year of recycling -- which includes only newspapers (700 tons were collected, the equivalent of 2800 cubic yards of landfill space). In those days, the County had no program.

2008: Twenty years later, Braithwaite continues to oversee recycling from her post as head of Public Works. The expanded program now covers mixed paper, glass, metal cans and most plastics except wide-mouthed #1s and polystyrene (#6) packaging. Unlike the County, where collection is done by private contractors, the City uses its own trucks, then turns the collected material over to the County for processing. More details are available on the city's web site: www.takomaparkmd.gov.

Take note

• The Takoma Park Farmers Market was only open May 15-November 20.

• The Women's Health Center, at 7005 Carroll Avenue, celebrated its second anniversary on October 27, 1988.

2008: The center was forced to close and the space remains vacant.

• Peter Franchot lost a tough battle to unseat Republican Congresswoman Connie Morella.

2008, Franchot is State Comptroller and Chris Van Hollen sits in Morella's seat.

• Spring Knolls Cooperative School, founded in 1949, turned 40.

2008: Now located at 8900 Georgia Ave, it remains a local institution at 60 with classes for ages 3-5. Interested parents are invited to tour the school at open houses set for Tuesday, January 27, 2009: (9:30 am-Noon), Wednesday, January 28, 2009: (9:30 am-Noon), and Thursday, January 29, 2009: (9:30 am-Noon or 12:30-3 pm). Call 301-650-0086 for an appointment.

• On Dec. 31, The Takoma Café ceased operations, "causing hundreds of dazed, confused vegetarians to wander the streets aimlessly."

2008: The site at 1 Columbia Avenue has housed several tenants since then, but is currently vacant.)

• The 1988 tuition rates for Montgomery College were $40/hour (not quite a bargain in 2008 at $163/hour). State residents paid a little more ($76 in 1988, $267 today), and non-residents were assessed $104 (versus $344 today).

Revitalizing Takoma Junction

Two years of work has spiffed up the businesses and streetscape. But money has yet to be found to renovate the Sister City Thrift Shop (surrounded by a new pocket park named for azalea genius B.Y. Morrison.

"A new veterinary shop will open soon and plans are in motion to build an office building to house the TPSS Food Co-op on the empty lot adjacent to Turner Electric."

2008: The thrift store eventually lost its walls and became a shelter graced with a mural. The Co-op ended up buying the old Safeway building. This fall the empty lot sprouted a canvas tent which is the temporary home for the fire engines while the station undergoes a two-year transformation.

Where have all the trees gone?

Ed McMahon took note that "The city has not planted a single new street tree in any Takoma Park residential neighborhood since 1985. Not a cent is budgeted for street trees.... Landscaping and street trees are not frills or cosmetics. They are basic city architecture and a major factor which contributes to community pride, quality of life and economic development.

2008: The City Arborist has again raised a hue and cry and is spearheading an effort to rectify the problem.

Takoma Park: Nuclear Free and proud of it

2008-12-01T23:26:11Z

by Diana Kohn

December 2008

Takoma Park's Nuclear Free Zone Ordinance reflected decades of activism including marches like the one pictured above. The public is invited to celebrate the ordinance's 25th anniversary on Wednesday, December 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Community Center.

Twenty five years ago, the Takoma Park city council voted to declare our fair city a Nuclear Free Zone.

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Accepted national policy was something called "Mutally Assured Destruction" (MAD for short), which meant you needed enough bombs that the other side wouldn't dare attack you because they knew you'd have enough weapons to annihilate them too.

It provoked a national movement to freeze weapons production, sparked by celebrities the likes of Benjamin Spock and Harry Belafonte. Petition drives and marches filled the streets across America.

Jay Levy (left) was part of the Nuclear Freeze movement, but as one of Takoma Park's many citizen activists, he decided to focus on the local level. His idea was to draft a city ordinance declaring Takoma Park a nuclear free zone.

"There were 28 or 29 other jurisdictions that had already done so," he recalls. " So I gathered all the ordinances I could find and put the strongest parts together into one. I wanted it to have some teeth, the force of law."

"It was scheduled for action on Monday, December 12, 1983" Jay continues. "Ironically, the night before, ABC ran a grim faux-documentary called 'The Day After,' dramatizing the harrowing aftermath of a nuclear attack. On Monday night the room was packed and the resolution passed easily. Sam Abbott was mayor and I don't know for sure, but he might have planned it that way."

The ordinance:

(1) prohibited the production of nuclear weapons in the City.

(2) required publication of a list of nuclear weapons producers.

(3) prohibited the city from purchasing or leasing products made by a weapons producer or investing in such companies.

(4) provided for a waiver under certain conditions.

(5) established an oversight committee. After 25 years the ordinance is still going strong and the city wears the title of Nuclear Free with a sense of pride.

One of the reasons, according to Reuben Snipper, councilman for Ward 5, is the work that went into creating a process for enforcing the ordinance. He remembers that when he joined the committee in 1985, the first concern was to assemble a list of the banned companies. It was a difficult task in the days before the internet, but eventually they found a ready-made list, which they update to this day.

Next, the committee had to confront an budget and procurement system that did not allow for the advance notice necessary to locate alternate sources. "By the time we knew about a request, it was too late to find an alternative," Snipper explained.

"The departments knew early in the budget process what kind of cars or gadgets they wanted to purchase. But we didn't find out until just before the budget was up for approval," Snipper continued, "So we changed the process to include the committee early on. Not only did it help smooth things out, but it often saved money, because a wider search often turned up a cheaper alternative.

Despite fears that the first waiver would lead to a wave that would sink the ordinance, Levy recalls that there have been only three waivers in 25 years.

One was for police radios. "It was the County that insisted every jurisidiction had to have the same Motorola system," he explained. "So we agreed."

Then there were the police cars from Ford. "As it turned out, Ford was on the banned list when we cut the check, but by the time the cars arrived," he went on,
"they were no longer on the list as having a nuclear involvement.

"Finally," Levy recounted, "we wanted to use energy-efficient light bulbs that required special ballasts, and all the manufacturers were on the list."

Any contract or bid is subject to the same requirements, but over the years contractors have adapted to the city's rules.

Although nuclear war is no longer the first thing on people's minds, the committee would argue that the danger has not really diminished

Granted, much has changed since 1983. The Berlin Wall is gone. The Soviet Union has dissolved and the "cold war" is rarely invoked. But several nations have joined the nuclear club - Israel, South Africa, India and Pakistan, and just last year, North Korea.

An alphabet-soup string of treaties have tried to force a reduction in the number of weapons, with litle success.

The ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty promised to curb defensive missiles but the U.S. withdrew from it in 2000.

The NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) has 183 signers, but divides the world into those with bombs (five) and the rest without. South Korea has already figured out how to use it as a path to acquire bomb materials.

The CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) limited testing but the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it.

Meanwhile the Soviet Union has given way to a motley collection of nation-states and unleased a rash of "loose nukes." Both the U.S. and Russia still hold 5000 missiles on hair-trigger alert.

The ominous threat of global warming has given new birth to nuclear power, and the risk that reactor fuel will end up in bombs.

Levy and Snipper, like many other citizen activists, see this as the continuation of the old anti-nuclear battles that prompted the original ordinance.

For example, the only amendment to the ordinance came in 2005, in the wake of outrage over rail shipments of nuclear waste through the city. The Council asked the committee to expand its mission to advise it on waste transport issues.
Last but not least, the ordinance has carried Takoma Park's fame around the world. Scores of jurisdictions have used our ordinance as a model for their own.

Levy remembers a World Nuclear meeting in Vancouver, where the mayor of Olympia in Washington State took exception to Levy's claim that Takoma Park has the strictest ordinance.

"No, you don't," the mayor insisted, "we have the same law you do, because you gave it to us."

"I have given a Nuclear-Free Takoma T-shirt to the Mayor of Hiroshima," Levy explains, "and I've been to the Mayors for Peace Conference in New York where many applauded us for taking a principled stand and making it work."

Hank Prensky models the famous Nuclear-Free Zone tee shirt.

For all its success and the positive image Takoma Park has outside of Fox News, it's still hard to fill the committee seats. Levy has served as committee chair for the last 12 years but laments that they are operating with five members rather than the full complement of seven.
With this in mind, and with their mandate to inform the citizens, the committee is throwing a 25th anniversary party to elaborate on their accomplishments and the dangers ahead. Join the celebration on Wednesday December 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Community Center council chambers.

The committee has also launched a weblog. Jim Kuhn, a long-time committee member, has taken on the task in conjunction with Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear, one of several activist organizations that call Takoma Park home.

Kuhn sees the pending inaugural of Barack Obama as "a remarkable opportunity for a municpality with a conscience to influence federal policies that impact local neighborhoods. Activism in Takoma Park is a living tradition."

Learn more by visiting the Takoma Park Nuclear Free Weblog at nftpc.blogspot.com
and Beyond Nuclear at www.beyondnuclear.org for more on the twin dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Takoma Park at 125

2008-11-01T19:39:24Z

by Diana Kohn

November 2008

Places, like people, have an official moment when they come into existence. For Takoma Park that moment was November 24, 1883.

On that day a deed was drawn up between B.F. Gilbert and Joseph & Sarah Burr. In exchange for $6,500, Gilbert pur-chased 93 acress of abandoned farmland from the estate of Gottleib Grammar.

Gilbert had no interest in farming. He was a real estate developer who envisioned houses nestled among the close-set trees, offering middle class families an alternative to the unhealthy living conditions that were their only choice in the District.

These 93 acres were the first of 14 parcels of land that would be stitched together to form Takoma Park.

The world has changed so profoundly in the last 125 years that it is hard for us to imagine life in 1883. Queen Victoria, who gave her name to the whole era, still had more than 20 years left as monarch of the British Empire.

Gilbert's first purchase was the Grammar parcel, land once owned by Charles Carroll of Bellevue, brother of Daniel Carroll of Duddington who provided most of the land in Federal City, including the National mall and Capital Hill. Writing in 1890, the Washington Post extolled the "purely rural, untamed chatter of the forest there, in the depths of which the town has been laid out."

Along with no cars, airplanes, air conditioning or television, we would have to get along without yet-to-be-invented Lifesavers, cornflakes, Hershey chocolate bars, and Coca-Cola.

Telephone lines were just now stretching between New York and Chicago. Edison was still investigating tungsten as the secret to creating an electric light bulb.The newly-opened Brooklyn Bridge and the first 10-story skyscraper in Chicago gave glimpses of the future, while Remington was revolutionizing business with its new-fangled typewriter.

Treasure Island, Huck Finn and Sherlock Holmes were delighting readers everywhere while the National League resumed baseball games suspended since 1876. And the railroads agreed to create four time zones.

The American nation was barely 20 years beyond the wrenching turmoil of the Civil War. Chester Arthur had assumed the Presidency in the wake of Garfield's death from a crazed madman's bullet.

The Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which attempted to guarantee all persons equal treatment in "public accomodations" and then declared that American Indians were not citizens.

The Washington Monument was finally nearing completion. It stood alone on the marshy fields that would one day be the Mall. The Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials were decades away. The city proper ended at K Street for all intents and purposes, though Boundary Street (Florida Avenue) marked the furthest reaches of development. It took most of a day to travel from Georgetown to Baltimore by horseback.

The Capital itself was flooded with post-war workers, eager to join the ranks of the government. Clerical jobs were now possible thanks to the Civil Service Reform Bill of 1883. Examinations and a merit system made it fairer. The presence of these workers who deserved healthy living prompted the 42-year-old Gilbert to undertake his radical scheme.

This was not Gilbert's first development project. Born in upstate New York in 1841, he gravitated to the Capital as a young man. Over the previous decades he had tried his hand building rowhouses on K Street, and in a visionary attempt to develop the area now known as Dupont Circle (which failed when his fellow investors got cold feet).

But "suburb" was still a relatively new concept. People lived either crowded together in cities or isolated in the vast rural stretches. Gilbert envisioned a combination - men working in the city while their families grew up in the healthy air of the countryside. He realized that the new Baltimore & Ohio railroad provided a way to link the city job and country home.

Moreover, this would free families from the crowded tenaments and dangers of malaria and unsafe drinking water which plagued the marshy District.

The Grammar tract ran from the intersection of Piney Branch & Blair Rds., NW southeast on Blair to Willow Street, NW, then NE along Willow to Valley Hill in Maryland and west to Chestnut.

He jumped on the train to see what he could find. Six miles north of the Mall, he found the Grammar estate. The parcel included one of the 1791 boundary stones marking the District-Maryland border which divided the parcel in half. It was a distinction that he disregarded, an attitude which continues to this day among some residents.

Gilbert, a stickler for healthy living was attracted by other amenities: a multitude of underground springs not to mention Sligo Creek a mile north promised pure drinking water. A ridge of land (following today's Cedar, Carroll and Ethan Allen) stood 300 feet above the District's marshes and guided him laying out the streets. The tract, though densely wooded, was crisscrossed by Indian and tobacco trails that provided access.

The only thing he didn't like was the name given to the train stop: Brightwood. But that was solved when one of his fellow guests at the DC hotel he called home, made a suggestion. Ida Summy offered "Takoma" - as an Indian word meaning "high up" or "near heaven." He immediately adopted it, adding "Park" to complete the image. Fittingly enough, Ida and her husband soon joined Gilbert in the new community.

His first sale, however, was made on November 24, the same day he took title. Amanda Thomas purchased four lots (within a year she and her husband Isaac would occupy the first completed house in the suburb).

Gilbert offered lots at 5 cents a square foot (versus 50 cents in town), making home ownership a reality of dozens of families. Despite his real estate experience expansion was slow. By the end of the first year 70 souls (counting children) called Takoma Park home. By the end of 1886, there was a population of 100 in a total of 16 houses.

Each year brought more residents, who began to turn their attention to amenities like churches, schools, paved roads, a public water system. By 1890 the town incorporated as a Maryland municipality, with Gilbert elected as first mayor.

His last years were less successful. Buying additional parcels of land, com-bined with unwisely undertaking the construction of a 160-room hotel in North Takoma, left him overextended when nationwide financial panic hit in 1893.

Gilbert never recovered and spent his declining years as an invalid, dying in 1907. But the community he founded was ready to stand on its own.

The independent nature that Takoma Park residents consider their hallmark, was nurtured in the wilderness of early Takoma Park and is Gilbert's most enduring legacy.

Diana Kohn is the Education Chair of Historic Takoma. To commemorate the 125 anniversary of Gilbert's first purchase, Historic Takoma has asked the City Council to declare November 24, 2008, as B.F. Gilbert Day.

Catch more history: Jerry McCoy's "Then and Now" column in the Silver Spring Voice relates the tale of Montgomery Blair's mansion at Falklands. Pass columns of both "Takoma Archives" and "Then and Now" and are available online at takoma.com and silverspringvoice.com.

Evolution of Takoma Park's Volunteer Fire Department

2008-10-18T20:13:13Z

Over the last month, a gigantic half-dome white-canvas tent has sprouted up next to the Takoma Park Fire Station on Carroll Avenue. This signals a new stage in the ongoing drama that will eventually see a new fire station rise in place of the current 81-year-old building.

With the temporary tent-and-trailers station in place, construction is due to begin in mid-October. The official groundbreaking complete with government dignitaries is set for 1:30 p.m. on October 23, but don't be surprised if that timetable is delayed like every other step in this process.

Nonetheless, after 10 years of debate, the long-promised modernized fire station, large enough to accommodate today's ever-longer fire engines, is finally closer to reality.

What Takoma Park gains in up-to-date convenience, however, will be at the expense of losing one of its oldest landmarks. The station was built in 1928 by the Volunteer Fire Department as its first permanent home. The Department itself dates back to the earliest days of the town.

In 1893, a disastrous fire destroyed the three businesses that made up the core of the city's commercial district (where the Takoma metro station now stands). New stores quickly replaced the lost Watkins Hotel, Birch's Store and Hall, and Favorite's Store, but more action was needed. Within a year, the Takoma Park citizens had formed a volunteer fire department - the first in Montgomery County - to serve both Maryland and District residents. Fittingly, the first fire chief was G.L. Favorite, who had lost his store.

1928: First Permanent fire station completed. Built by volunteers on current site at 7201 Carroll Avenue. (Photo courtesy of Historic Takoma)

A Howe Model 4 hand pumper was purchased and stored in the old log cabin built by city founder Benjamin Franklin Gilbert at the junction of Carroll and Laurel (where Video Americain stands today). When the cabin burned down in 1916, a temporary cinder block building was built nearby.

Officially incorporated in 1922, the volunteers began raising money for a real home. They picked the current site, several blocks northeast along Carroll Avenue in the open stretch before the intersection with Ethan Allen. Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department bought the land, and boulders were hauled from Sligo Creek for the façade.

Over the following decades, the building served as the center of Takoma Park activities. City Council meetings were held in the paneled room with a fireplace to the left of the truck bay, as were as innumerable award dinners for Boy Scouts and all manner of civic groups. Dorothy Barnes, the godmother of Historic Takoma, recalls that her father built glass cabinets to hold the European flags collected by returning World War II soldiers. (The flags have since disappeared.) Downstairs was a gym that generations of local youth used for basketball, indoor soccer, volleyball, and rollerskating.

2008: Remodeled in the mid-1980s, the station as it appears on the eve of its extreme makeover. (Photo by Julie Wiatt)

Meanwhile, the city grew up around the station. In 1948, the fire department became a branch of the city government with volunteers serving alongside career firefighters. That remains the case today.

Many career firefighters volunteered in their off-time, but few have been as committed over the years as the Jarboes.

In October 1956, Ted Jarboe joined as a volunteer. Jim followed in December, then three more brothers (Bobby, Bill, John), along with their father (A.J.), his brother (Steve) and Steve's son (Mike) until there were eight Jarboes in all. Jim Jarboe was honored in 2003 for 50 years of service as a firefighter. Currently Volunteer Chief, he is a familiar face at local events, the favorite teacher of babysitting classes, not to mention the keeper of the department archives and organizer of a recent reunion of volunteers, past and present.

2009: Proposed design for the new Takoma Park Fire Station. Once completed the county will own the station and "Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department" will no longer appear over the doors. (Photo courtesy of Historic Takoma)

The original 1928 building went through a renovation in the mid 1980s. Chief Jarboe remembers spending a year bunking in the basement while the building was remodeled. The triple-door entrance was reconfigured as one large door, leaving the left and right sections of the building intact. About the same time, the department was reorganized under county control.

Then ten years ago, the city and county began talking about the need for a major overhaul. One scenario would have moved the Fire Station permanently out of Takoma Park, a proposal which raised an alarm by local residents.

The county finally agreed to pay for replacing the building on site (there isn't any other open space), in exchange for the volunteers and the city ceding title to the land and the building.

That solution faced more hurdles. The space limitations of the site are daunting. There is a steep dropoff directly behind the building with houses and businesses close on either side. The county proposed demolishing two neighboring houses to accommodate needed parking. Again citizens protested.

Finally a creative compromise was reached: only the nearest house would be taken, and the county agreed to purchase the second house at 7133 Carroll, renovate it, and give it to the Hevia family in exchange for demolishing the Hevia house at 7135 Carroll. That demolition and move happened this spring.

Enter the trailers and tent.

The fire station itself will be torn down to make way for the new building. Firefighters and residents will have to live with disruption and traffic jams for the next 18 to 24 months in the name of progress.

As projected now, it will cost the county $11 million (up from $4.1 million) to replace the original station built for $45,000 in 1928. Chief Jarboe notes that current county plans call for retaining as much of the northeast wall and fireplace as possible. If all goes well, the boulders hauled up from Sligo Creek 90 years ago may continue to distinguish our firehouse.

Montgomery Blair High School --where Takoma Park and Silver Spring come together

2008-09-19T13:40:28Z

Ten years ago this fall Montgomery Blair High School students first entered their new building on University Blvd. and Colesville Avenue. They left behind a sprawling but overcrowded campus on Wayne Avenue that had been home since 1935.

Convincing the county to build a new school was a decade-long struggle. It helped that Blair was the one place where Takoma Park and Silver Spring shared a common identity, In the end, that helped win the day.

In the beginning

Blair was not the first local high school, but it is a direct descendant of Takoma Park Silver Spring High School, which opened in 1925 just over the border in Takoma Park.

First High School: Takoma Park Silver Spring (above) opened in 1925 with 86 students. Located on Philadelphia and Chicago Avenues, it was turned into a combination junior-senior high in 1929. When the tenth through twelfth grade transferred to the new Blair High School in fall 1935, it remained a junior high until it was demolished in the 1970s. (photos courtesy of Blair Media Center)

Drawing students from both com-munities into what became a combined junior and senior high, it quickly outgrew the space. By 1935, the tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders had left for a building of their own on Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring. It was "miles from anywhere."

The students voted to name their new school after Montgomery Blair. He was a prestigious Civil War politician who along with his father and brother exerted immense political influence. Not incidentally the Blairs owned most of what became downtown Silver Spring.

The Wayne Avenue school was the sixth county high school (and the first in the lower county). When the 1936 Silverlogue yearbook was published, the frontispiece proclaimed "Montgomery Blair" instead of "Takoma Park Silver Spring."

War years

By 1942, America was headed into World War II. Blair students were among the first to respond to the country's request to organize "Victory Corps." Life magazine's November 9, 1942 issue ran a full page photo of the Blair students both male and female formed in ranks in front of the school.

The Corps spent an hour a day on military drills and took classes that included metal work and airplane riveting.

Arnold Ostrom (class of '45) recalls that the students took over as janitors and cafeteria workers so the adults could go overseas. Many boys left school early so they could enlist, and the rest worried that the war would be over before they could join up.

Blair on Wayne: A bird's eye view of the Wayne Avenue campus gives a sense of how the many additions created a sprawled effect. The front portico is now the entrance to Silver Spring International Middle School, while the rear building houses Sligo Creek Elementary.

Once the war was won, the students of the 1950s turned to more traditional high school concerns. Elizabeth Stickley, librarian from 1935-1970, collected scrapbooks full of articles from the county newspaper. Student writers chronicled academic achievements, homecoming queens, even wedding announcements and of course, sports victories.

These were the glory years for sports. The high water mark was 1955 when both the football team and basketball team went undefeated. Over the next nine years the basketball team went on to five state champions, and the football team had similar success. The most satisfying wins were over arch-rival Bethesda Chevy Chase, with 3000 spectators on hand.

Change

But the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was slowly altering the landscape at Blair. In the fall of 1955, Montgomery County ordered all public schools to admit black students. (Carver, the sole high school for blacks in the county, eventually became the School Board headquarters).

Ten blacks quietly entered the ranks at Blair, three of whom graduated in spring 1956. They increased to 19 of 2759 students in 1962.

Against this background, post-war prosperity was bringing more residents to the area, especially Silver Spring. Blair found itself trying to stay ahead of the burgeoning enrollment. New additions opened on a regular basis: 1949, 1954, 1960, and 1969. The 600 students in 1946 jumped to 1900 by 1956 and 2200 by 1993.

Blair at Four Corners: Blair's distinctive steeple entrance under construction at the intersection of University and Colesville in 1997.

During the Sixties, the new arrivals were often minorities from around the world: Cuba, Vietnam, El Salvador, West Africa. The non-white enrollment tripled between 1968 and 1970. Blair was he first urban high school in the county, according to the Washington Post.

By 1985, Montgomery County was forced to address the imbalance and tried to find ways to draw whites back into Blair.

In June 1985, they took the unpopular action of closing Northwood High School (on University). Few of the white students were willing to switch to Blair.

A new Math-Science-Computer Magnet program debuted at Blair in fall 1985, bringing 80 new students. The Communications Arts Program (CAP) followed two years later.

Too many students

But a bigger problem was looming. Blair was running out of space even to build additions. Portables began to take over nearly all the open ground.

The search for solutions began in 1988. Proposals included adding 33 classrooms underground or seizing the nearby houses by eminent domain and expanding the school outward.

The PTA favored a more radical approach--moving to a new site. Several miles away just beyond the beltway was a 42-acre tract of land that belonged to the Kay family (wealthy but civic minded). They were willing to sell but the county wasn't interested.

A protracted political battle ensued. The county wanted to split up the school it felt was too big. Principal Phil Gainous had a different view. When it was clear that neighboring schools were unwilling to take any minority students, Gainous said, "if they don't want all our kids, they're not going to get any of our kids."

The community agreed. Forming Citizens for a Better Blair, they decided to make a virtue out of diversity.

But when the issue came to a vote in 1963, the county council rejected the notion. In response the community turned to tougher tactics. Voters for a Better Blair focused its political muscle on the county council (who had the final say because they allocated the money). On May 3, 1994, a new vote reversed the decision and approved the new site.

Consruction ensued and despite talk of wetlands and pedestrian bridges, the building was ready for students in the fall of 1998.

More obstacles remained--the building opened overcrowded and enrollment topped 3200 before it got better with the reopening of Northwood in the fall of 2004. But the struggle today has more to do with the challenges of offering enough AP classes while not abandoning the students struggling to meet even basic standards.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair of Historic Takoma. Her previous Takoma Archives columns can be found at takoma.com.

Boundary Stones - guardians of the Federal City

2008-08-19T14:05:50Z

Takoma Park's history is intrinsically linked with the District of Columbia, but that begs the question of how the nation's capital city came to be located along the Potomac River in the first place.

Barely 15 years after the first Fourth of July, President George Washington's plans for creating a new capital were stalled because of a North-South split over where to locate it. Various cities from Germantown, PA, to Alexandria, VA, were vying for the honor but President Washington favored the region along the Potomac (he was also behind the C&O canal).

Enter Thomas Jefferson, who feared the stalemate would split apart the fledging union, and Alexander Hamilton, who as Secretary of the Treasury was frustrated trying to get agreement that the federal government would assume state war debts. Jefferson proposed an ingenious compromise: he would find Southern votes for the debt assumption if Hamilton would find northern votes to designate the Potomac region as the official site for the new capital.

On June 1790, both measures passed Congress. Now all President Washington had to do was convince the landowners to sell their land, hire surveyors to designate the boundaries and commission a design. After months of personal dealings the owners agreed to sell.

It was left to Surveyor General Andrew Ellicott to carve out of the wilderness the agreed upon 10-mile square Federal City.

The plan was to clear 20 feet of land on each side of the boundary and place a half-ton granite marker at one-mile intervals to mark the perimeter of the District of Columbia. Ellicott enlisted the help of the most famed astronomer of the era, Benjamin Banneker, a self-taught African American, who used the stars to align the first stone (East Corner stone at Jones Point in Virginia). But after three months in tents in the wilderness, Banneker, then aged 60, decided it was too much and retired to resume his own writings. Ellicott enlisted his brother Benjamin Ellicott to finish the job which took the rest of 1791 and all of 1792.

Beginning with the East Corner they moved clockwise through Virginia and into Maryland. The granite stone at 6980 Maple Avenue familiar to Takoma Park residents is designated NE#2. Amazingly, all but two of the 40 stones remain after more than 200 years. They represent the oldest federal monuments in the nation. Thanks to the Daughters of the American Revolution, who decided in 1915 to act as guardians of the stones, wrought iron fences were installed to protect each stone.

Given that the stones were laid out in the wilderness well before any ensuing roads were built, it is no surprise that many are a bit out of the way today.

Here's the status of the nearest stones:

North Corner - 1880 block of East-West Highway.

North Corner

The boulder marking the North Corner sits in virtual obscurity at the edge of the woods along East West Highway, just one block west of 16th Street. Only a foot of the stone is visible, across the road from the second entrance to Summit Hills Apartments.

North Portal - 15th at Colesville, Silver Spring

A faux boundary stone marking the "official" northern point of Silver Spring sits in the North Portal traffic circle at the intersection of 16th and Colesville Roads. Note the "MD" clearly visible. The opposite side, obscured by shrubbery, is inscribed "DC." Silver Spring and

"Washington DC" signs also mark the intersection. Eastern Avenue, which traces the boundary line, begins at this spot. If it extended north two more blocks it would intersect with the true North Corner stone on East-West Highway.

NE #1 - 7847 Eastern Avenue, Silver Spring

The original boulder at this site was dislodged during the 1952 construction of the current storefront. A bronze plaque, dated 1960, was installed in the sidewalk in front of the store currently housing Tiramisu Bakery Café.

NE #2 - 6980 Maple Avenue, Takoma Park

If the segment of Eastern Avenue between Cedar Avenue and Carroll Avenue existed, it would intersect Maple Avenue at the spot where this stone sits. The boundary continues from this stone across the street to the cement gutter along the left side of Community Printing and across the front of Takoma Business Center before rejoining Eastern Avenue at Carroll. This diagonal line is why the high rise appears to be slanted as seen from Carroll Ave.

Parts of the original engraving are still visible:

Front: The "79" is really "1792"

left side: remnants of "Jurisdiction of the United States"

Right side: only the "yland" remains of "Maryland"

Learn more:

For the full story of established DC, see

www.geocities.com/bobarnebeck/swamp1800.html

For more on the boundary stones, see:

www.zhurnaly.com/maps/DC_Boundary_Stones.html

www.boundarystones.org

www.dcdar.org/BoundaryStones.htm.

Takoma Junction: the dilemma of revitalization

2008-07-19T14:40:42Z

Part three of a series

For more than 25 years Takoma Junction has eluded all efforts at revitalization. Despite a never-ending round of committees who enthusiastically gather to tackle the problem, little has changed.

Much of the challenge is location. Originally part of General Samuel Sprigg Carroll's family estate, the intersection of Carroll and Ethan Allen only slowly developed commerce in the 1930s.

The fire station as seen in 1929. The construction of a new fire station on site, just getting underway, will prompt renewed discussion of revitalization at the Junction.

The small storefronts that appeared in conjunction with the trolley line passing through on its way to Sligo Creek, remain the primary economic activity. But several blocks of residential houses separate them from the Takoma Old Town commercial center at Carroll and Laurel.

Although city debate over development was sparked by the freeway fight of late 1960s, little thought was given to this intersection until 1981. Then the city decided to take advantage of newly-available federal block grant money to improve its commercial districts.

Takoma Old Town was the first recipient. Finally in March 1983, the city convened a Takoma Junction Revitalization Committee to figure out the best model for the newly-named area along Carroll Avenue between Sherman and Philadelphia.

Eight contractors made proposals, which ended up filed in city hall and the library, but brought only some minimal streetscape improvements. The most tangible result was the Victorian mural on the corner wall of High's Market (now TJs). This was the brainchild of Ed McMahon, who promoted public art as a key to revitalization.

A new go-around in 1995 resulted in the creation of B.Y. Morrison Park with Jim Colwell's "Guardians of theNeighborhood" mural adorning the abandoned gas station (once Sister City Thrift Shop) on the corner. Trees and shrubs were planted, turning the corner into a gorgeous, glorified bus stop.

Then developer Mike Zarpas began entertaining offers from People's Drug and later Rite Aid to build on the open lot at 7100 Carroll Avenue. This 67,000 square foot vacant lot had been identified from the beginning as the spot that "would define the identity of the Junction" in the words of one of the committee reports. (See account on next page of a similar fight over 8 Grant Ave.)

Zarkas' action galvanized neighborhood opposition and the Last Takoma Junction Committee was born. A coalition of neighbors, city officials and businessmen, the committee conducted a public charette and floated the concept of a "village center," with a pedestrian-friendly plaza..

They also envisioned a Community Development Corporation, as a non-profit entity that would support the financial development. The effort faded away, although the committee did help push the city into purchasing the property from Zarpas.

Dan Robinson, the Councilmember currently representing the Junction, still echoes the idea of a non-profit mechanism as the best hope for revitalizing the area. "It is not necessary for economic development to knock down and rebuild bigger - which of course, forces out the current small businesses."

Instead he calls for a commercial land trust. "As a non-profit, they don't have to gather the high rents required by developers to turn a profit. They could encourage a smaller-scale of development. Say, expansion of the Co-op."

Ten years ago Takoma-Silver Spring Co-op moved into the red brick storefront on Ethan Allen that once housed a Safeway store. They have shown interest in expand-ing, but would face tough financial hurdles.

Meanwhile, the neighbors have once again taken up the standard. Under the dynamic leadership of Ellen Zavian, they are trying to define how to make the junction function - that's her committee's name - Make the Junction Function.

"I have been talking with the store owners, encouraging them to clean up their front windows and to improve the streetscape. But we need to do more. The concerts this summer in the Co-op parking lot are just one example of what could be done."

Ironically, the best catalyst for change in years may actually be the long-delayed construction of the new fire station.

The original fire station was built on Carroll at Philadelphia Ave in 1927 to proclaim the elevated status of the city's Volunteer Fire Department. Built entirely by volunteers at a cost of $45,000, the two-story brownstone was home not only to the firefighters, but a public space for the entire community.

Decades worth of banquets, civic meetings, teen dances, even council meetings were held in its large community room. The gym downstairs offered roller skating as well as basketball. Subsequent alterations eliminated this community space and altered the charming façade in order to accommodate larger fire trucks.

Now truck size is again pushing the county to replace the existing building. After 10 years of debate on design, complicated by efforts to save a nearby house from demolition, the first signs of construction appeared this spring.

For the next two years, the City Lot that has been the focus for revitalization schemes, will be occupied by firefighters in trailers and fire trucks in a tent. Given what the traffic is like now, things will be worse before they get better.

But many residents, like Robinson and Zavian, feel this is the best opportunity to hash out once and for all what the future of the Junction should be once the new fire station reopens.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair of Historic Takoma. Parts 1 and 2 of this Takoma Juncion series are available online at takoma.com along with her previous columns.

The nostalgic murals of Takoma Junction

2008-06-19T15:17:48Z

The most prominent landmarks at Takoma Junction these days are the large murals that adorn the three buildings facing the intersection.

Other landmarks are long gone: General Carroll's manor house. which dominated the corner for nearly a 100 years, was demolished in 1960 after years of neglect. The trolley line stopped running years before that.

And the fire station at the outside edge of the Junction awaits a long-delayed knockdown-and-replacement, which will erase its familiar stone facade from the streetscape.

Sandra Philpott's Victorian image of Takoma Park has graced Takoma Junction since 1985. The accompanying portraits (below) have since been painted over.

The storefronts remain much as they have always been since the early 1930s - small businesses modestly providing local residents with groceries, haircuts, electrical repairs, drycleaning, even picture framing. But thanks to these murals the corner has a distinctive character.

That was the intent. In 1984, the neighborhood was struggling with the departure of Barcelona Nuts, the largest industrial establishment in the city.

Ed McMahon served on the committee that launched the revitalization effort. One tactic was christening the intersection as Takoma Junction.

McMahon was also chair of the Public Arts Committee, and he suggested a second tactic: creating what he called a "placemaker," outdoor public art which could help define and reinforce the identity of the area.

He had already had success with murals in Old Takoma and urged a similar approach in the needed revival at the Junction.

There was a perfect canvas in the brick wall of the storefront at the corner of Sherman and Carroll. Sandra Philpott, a local artist who had participated in the Old Town murals, offered a nostalgic collage evoking Takoma's Victorian past and the committee gave the go-ahead.

Phillpott gathered elements from historic photos to create a unique image. The policeman is Sgt. John Barry, the crossing guard at the railroad in the days before the underpass. Honoring the trolley cars that passed through the Junction, she portrayed the beloved "Dinky line" on its way to Sligo Creek. Children and flags and dogs aspoke of the bucolic childhood possible in this railroad suburb six miles from DC.

Then there was the enigmatic elephant, seemingly added from her imagination.

Folks like Roland Dawes in his barber shop half a block away vividly remember the carnivals that brought the elephants to town in his childhood. "They came twice a year and set up a Ferris Wheel in the vacant lot on the corner. There were games of chance, and the elephants."

In addition to the 14 ft by 16 ft mural, Philpott created a set of five "trompe l'oeil" family portraits tucked into each of the boarded-up windows on the side of the building. They represented the diverse set of personalities important to Takoma history, including:

• B.F. Gilbert (the visionary behind Takoma Park),

• Pamela Favorite (early storekeeper),

• Lee Jordan (founder of the Boys and Girls Club),

• Goldie Hawn (actress),

• Anna Maria Ariaza of Guatamela and Ty Eam of Cambodia (recent arrivals who represent Takoma Park's ethnic heritage and diversity).

In the years since Philpott finished her work and moved to Harrisburg, High's Convenience Store has given way to TJ's Market but the mural remains, albeit somewhat worse for wear.

It turns out that Sandra used ordinary house paint and applied it directly to the bricks. Even a recent touchup several years back failed to halt the deterioration.

The portraits faded more quickly than the larger mural and were eventually painted over with other images. Luckily, a plaque commemorating their names remains on the wall near the mural.

The carnivals halted once Shell built a gas station on the empty lot (perhaps 1940) and there was no longer any place to set up.

Ironically, that gas station became the next canvas. Abandoned sometime in the Sixties it was briefly resurrected as the "Sister Cities Thrift Store."

For more than a decade, Takoma Park enjoyed a rich cultural exchange with its Sister City of Jequie, Brazil. Students from each town tregularly switched places. The thrift store was a needed source of funds.

By 1990, however, the cement block building was vacant again. The Revitalization Committee seized the opportunity to create a pocket park on the corner dedicated to B.Y. Morrison, the genius behind azaleas.

McMahon remembered using open space money to fund the project. Public art once again became part of the package.

A new call for projects went out nationwide, and more than 100 proposals were received. But one local artist -- Jim Colwell, a piano restorer by trade -- had a winning idea.

McMahon recalls that Colwell's jazz combo, reflecting the diversity he saw in Takoma Park, was the hands-down favorite of the Arts Committee.

Jim remembers "There was some controversy with the design. I originally had an old man playing the guitar on the left, but I was asked to substitute a Latina. And the central figure was dressed in a lower-cut dress than you see today. Even with the alterations some folks took umbrage.

"When I was installing the finished mural, the owner of Turner Electric would come over every day to rail about how much he hated it. I just keep saying I was the hired help."

Jim Colwell's "Guardians of the Neighborhood" has been a popular addition to Takoma Junction.

Today the exotic caricatures in the mural, known officially as "Guardians of the Neighborhood," define the Junction as much as the Victorian mural across the street.

In an effort to ensure the survival of "Guardians," the city has slated the building for roof repair and replacement of the tiles on the pillars.

Thanks to a grant from the reconstituted Takoma Park Arts and Humanities Commission, John Hume of Sligo Tile Co. will replace the tiles with decorative tiles. Designed to reflect "Tales of Mystery and Wonder." the new tiles will depict Motorcat, Roscoe the Rooster and the elephant of carnival fame among other fanciful images.

The most recent mural is the largest, covering the side wall of the Takoma Park-Silver Spring Co-op. A new arrival at the Junction, the Co-op took over the Truner Electric building (which once housed a Safeway) in 1998.

In 2003, the large blank expanse of brick inspired Co-op enployee Aslia Schwartz to envision a quirky tree motif to help identify the store.

Look carefully at the artwork and you will see how she created a mosaic effect by painting each brick a different shade of brown.

Collectively the three murals have not solved the underlying problem of how to revive the Junction, but they have enhanced the historic context and identity. even as the debate continues about the possible future scenarios for Takoma Junction. More about that debate next month.

Diana Kohn is Education Chair of Historic Takoma.