To summarize the debate, the Chevy Chase Conservancy submitted to the Historic Preservation Office a proposal last fall to establish a new historic district in Chevy Chase DC. This drew the attention of the HCCDC Board and over several months the group considered whether and how to respond to the nomination. In addition to reading and discussing the nomination, the Board hosted a presentation by the Chevy Chase Conservancy at its February Board meeting.  In early March a second group, this one opposing the nomination, Living Chevy Chase,  also made a presentation to the Board. At the March Board meeting, HCCDC board members agreed to hold a special meeting on March 27 to decide on the actions to take. 

The statement below explains itself.

For more on HCCDC’s attention to issues of development in Chevy Chase and the racist origins of Chevy Chase DC, please visit other sections of this website.  There is not a fixed date by which the HPRB must act on the proposed district. Informal reports are that it will be at least late summer or fall of 2024 before there is any action.

Historic Chevy Chase DC Does Not Support the Current Nomination to Create a Historic District in Chevy Chase DC 

Historic Chevy Chase DC has celebrated and documented the history of this community for more than 30 years. It is governed by an active and working board of directors whose members deeply care about the look and feel of the neighborhood. There have been nearly 70 board members in its 34-year history.

We base our decision not to support the nomination on decades-long engagement with preservation issues in our Chevy Chase DC neighborhood that began with the founding of our organization in the early 1990s and continues to this day. 

HCCDC organized the first and only other campaign for a historic district from 2004 to 2008. That campaign was based on an inventory of buildings in a broader area and narrower period of significance than the Conservancy’s. Meetings were organized block by block in the affected area in order to explain the rationale for the proposed district as well as to listen to neighbors’ concerns. ANC 3-4/G conducted a survey that resulted in a high rate of response and an overwhelming rejection of the plan by a margin of 77 to 22 percent. We listened to our neighbors, respected their opinions, and decided not to file the application. 

Nothing has changed about the nature of the neighborhood since then or the merits of the historic district. Indeed, we note that the Conservancy’s current nomination seems copied in large measure from the HCCDC 2008 proposal.

HCCDC has learned something valuable from its engagement with the community over the last 15 years. We learned that preservation efforts in this neighborhood do not require formal government action and oversight. We discovered that our neighbors have both the means and the desire to maintain and further develop the eclectic styles that have defined Chevy Chase since 1907. The Conservancy’s application rightly celebrates this eclecticism but fails to understand that this genius lives on in the choices that are made by the people who live here. The neighborhood has developed organically and HCCDC wishes to support and preserve this spirit. Chevy Chase DC does not need to be saved from itself.

As noted, the Conservancy bases its application on the original HCCDC application, however, the rationale for restricting its geographic scope and extending the period of significance is unclear at best. HCCDC is sympathetic to preservation. We have approached preservation in a balanced manner, proposing protection for worthy sites: the Arcade, Chevy Chase Bank, the Avalon Theater. We have taken an active role as well in discussions with the National Park Service with respect to Chevy Chase Circle. HCCDC has helped install over 300 plaques on houses in the neighborhood. Recently we have launched a program restoring neighborhood call boxes with art and text. In short, Chevy Chase DC already is an active community engaged in preservation work. Given this level of interest and engagement, we do not believe a blanket regulatory approach is required in Chevy Chase.

Since the 2008 campaign, HCCDC has led the community in discovering the racist origins of our map. Along with the rest of the country, Chevy Chase DC has become more attentive to the racial dimension of American history. The HCCDC board became much more focused on how this history played out locally. It is undeniably the case that the displacement of African Americans formed a central motif in the formation of this neighborhood, creating a demographic legacy that lives on into the present. HCCDC took its role as community leader seriously in rediscovering and acknowledging this history and its local consequences. This work is also a project of preservation. 

HCCDC is on record supporting the aims of the Small Area Plan exercise undertaken by the DC Office of Planning 2021-2023, i.e., creating a more diverse, vibrant, welcoming community. As a matter of priority HCCDC supports this vision, specifically the inclusion of income-integrated housing. Until we have progress on this project, a more inclusive Chevy Chase is substantially more important than the addition of a 38^th residential historic district. 

We trust that the HPRB will take seriously its mission to act in the interests of the city as a whole in this matter. This is how HCCDC is assessing the nomination and our role. Though our neighborhood’s contribution would be modest, we believe it would send an important signal to other areas west of Rock Creek Park that every neighborhood should be taking part in this effort. In weighing competing priorities, we believe that historic district designation at this time would have the unfortunate effect of appearing to perpetuate the racial, ethnic, and religious exclusivity on the basis of which Chevy Chase was originally conceived and executed. 

The timing and content of the Conservancy’s historic district nomination make it clear that opposition to the civic core redevelopment is at the heart of its mobilization efforts. Accordingly, this is a major test of the priorities underlying the redevelopment of the civic core on Connecticut Avenue. By extending the period of significance to 1964, the nomination would make the Wells Fargo Bank at 5701 Connecticut a Contributing Structure; demolition would be prohibited, and a likely site for redevelopment of the east side of Connecticut Avenue — for mixed use, shops and housing — would be preempted. The timing and scope of the Conservancy’s proposal is at odds with the other widely debated and discussed improvements for the neighborhood. We believe the spirit of progress and renewal demands inclusion of affordable housing as foreseen by the Small Area Plan, supported by ANC 3-4G, and adopted by the DC Council. These improvements would be imperiled by adoption of the Conservancy’s proposals.

In sum, we conclude that a historic district as defined in the Conservancy’s nomination is not warranted or welcomed.

• A historic district in the specific circumstances of Chevy Chase would undermine the pattern of organic, eclectic development that already exists. 
• With HCCDC, preservation efforts already have an active advocate in the neighborhood.
• In balancing priorities, redevelopment of the Connecticut Avenue corridor in Chevy Chase should contribute to resolving the housing crisis with affordable units, a strategic goal of the DC government with which we agree.

The post HCCDC Board of Directors Elects Not to Support Historic District Proposal appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Listen to the June 7 webinar here.

Carl Lankowski, who hosted the event with ANC Commissioner Lisa Gore and the Committee on Race and Social Equity, the descendants were clear that the harms inflicted decades ago still affect them today. How to address this will be the subject of a June 21 virtual conversation Lankowski will hold with Linda Mann of the African American Redress Network, entitled, “What Repair Looks Like.” Register here for the June 21 7 p.m. webinar.

“The descendants of our former neighbors — the Harrises, Motens, Shorters, Johnsons, Hysons, Brooks, among others — were unequivocal when they told us that the loss of land denied them an opportunity to build generational wealth and eroded strong family ties as their community scattered,” Lankowski said. “That discussion was difficult for them and painful for listeners.”

Chevy Chase DC is indeed in the arc of American history with its connection to systemic racism, a reality that is no less important because those individuals who caused the harm are long dead. As Shirley Fisher Turner, a direct descendant of the landowners, noted during the June 7 event, it is hard to argue that current residents are not beneficiaries of those long-ago actions. They are free to enjoy Lafayette-Pointer Park and school, and homeowners financially benefit from the ever-increasing affluence of Chevy Chase DC. Meanwhile, she noted, descendants of those evicted landowners are living the multigenerational effects the land loss inflicted. The harms are both tangible — loss of financial opportunity — and spiritual — loss of family cohesion and the residual effects of being targeted as racially unworthy.

Read the vignettes of seven of the Broad Branch descendants

This nationwide focus on reparations has been prompted by several seminal works, including the New York Times “1619 Project” and Isabel Wilkerson’s recent book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which traces the effects of American slavery and the post-Civil War system of racial discrimination.

It has prompted communities to examine long-buried or ignored racist actions taken decades ago, such as our situation, when Blacks on Broad Branch Road were evicted between 1928-1931 so their land could be used to build a school for white children.

The June 21 webinar is part of  Historic Chevy Chase DC’s Black Broad Branch series. It is meant to complement the June 7 virtual conversation co-sponsored by ANC 3/4G and its Committee on Racial and Social Equity. It also ties into a Jan. 18, 2023, webinar with Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, authors of a biography of George Pointer, whose descendants lived on Broad Branch Road. The book is called Between Freedom and Equality: The History of an African American Family in Washington, DC

The HCCDC Broad Branch Road Project Team that assembled the virtual event June 7 included Lankowski, Charles Cadwell, Cate Atkinson, and videographer Nadia Afrin.

The post Recording Now Available: A Conversation with Descendants of a Displaced Black Community appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

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The Oral Histories Program of HDDCD is an important part of what we do. We will start with telling you about how the community got its start and why it has been important to capture the memories of the early residents. We’ll explain what an oral history is, how we do them, why it’s worth the effort, and some of the treasures you’ll find in them.

First an overview of what we do: Historic Chevy Chase DC is an all-volunteer body dedicated to preserving the architecture and social history of our community. Specifically, we support research, assist historical preservation efforts, invite guest speakers a couple of times each year to shed light on history that intersects with our community, promote an annual historical walking tour of Chevy Chase, publish articles on issues relevant to the area — all in addition to recording and transcribing oral histories of longtime residents.

Chevy Chase was slowly converted from farmland to become one of the nation’s first electric streetcar suburbs. It was the vision of Nevada Senator Francis Newlands and his Chevy Chase Land Company that is responsible for the great bones that make up our slice of Northwest Washington DC — distinctive architecture, lovely willow oaks shading the streets, and a vital commercial thoroughfare known from the start as “The Avenue.”

As you know, Newlands’ planned development straddled the DC-Maryland border. On the DC side, development started in 1907 when the first house went up on Oliver Street, on the very spot of the old 1722-era manor house build by Gen. Joseph Belt. That house had lived through the French and Indian War, The Revolution, The War of 1812, and the Civil War. Despite all that, it was reportedly in pretty good shape when it was dismantled around 1907. In fact, the old bricks were repurposed to build the foundation and chimney of the new house.Those bricks have witnessed a lot of history.

But change came to Chevy Chase, and by the 1930s the DC-side grid was filled in on either side of Connecticut Avenue. By the 1950s, development had gobbled up the woods and cow pastures all the way east to Rock Creek Park. While the street trees were busy growing,  generations graduated from E.V. Brown, then Lafayette, Deal, and Wilson. Many who lived here in the ’40s and ’50s are still here today, and among their memories is a way of life that is already gone.

Oral histories provide a way to capture that memory. By interviewing people and asking them to recall the past, we can create a public record of history unique to one neighborhood or group of people. Oral histories differ from memoirs or biographies in that they give us a way to look at how people lived and experienced events or places — things that, during the time they were experienced might have seemed too commonplace to be worth mentioning. But they are details of daily life ingrained in our past that helped make us who we area. And when they are lost to memory, they are truly gone.

Since 2010 HCCDC has completed more than 31 oral histories of individuals — a few of them are of couples or multiple family members – plus a number of videotaped oral histories involving graduates of Woodrow Wilson High School. They are archived on our website historicchevychasedc.org. By putting these histories on our website, we are giving them a wider audience as well as providing historians with direct access to unique information.

Our subjects are people who have lived or worked in Chevy Chase DC long enough to have experienced history here. There are no special criteria as to whom we select, as each of us brings unique perspectives to the archival record. Generally, oral history interviews take two to three hours, and are usually conducted in the person’s home. We use a simple tape recorder and bring along a camera to snap a picture. A two-hour interview usually takes 10 or more hours to transcribe. We then give the written transcript to the interviewee to go over and we make requested changes. We ask our interviewees to sign a release form that gives us permission to post the now-edited transcription. And they retain the rights to make changes if they see a need to.

While we generally have a list of questions we use as a guide, the interview is informal and casual — we start off by asking names, date and place of birth, and how you wound up in Chevy Chase. Often we peel back further — whose child you were and where your parents came from, what type of upbringing they had. And then we move on from there, asking about early memories  — of your street, schools, neighbors, churches, shops, events, neighborhood folklore, and what changes your have observed over time. We ask about professions and experiences and rights of passage.

Most of the oral histories we’ve collected were done by Joan Janshego and the HCCDC president, Carl Lankowski. Their passion for collecting these stories is obvious and makes for fascinating reading.

Take the history of Dallas Dean, age 70 when her interview was done in 2011. She spoke of having lived her entire life in a stone house at Rittenhouse and Nebraska. Her roots were local — even her great-grandfather was a Washingtonian who made and sold cigars down on E Street in the last 1880s. Her grandfather bought 40 acres of land in Chevy Chase in the early 1900s, when it was still woods. When her father married, he was given a plot of land and he built that stone house in 1938.

If she looked toward 27th Street, Dallas recalled, she saw a cabin where an African American family lived. That was torn down in the ‘40s. She remembers another neighbor, Bill Montgomery, who build a mansion on high ground and called it Knollwood — later, he left the property to the Army and now it’s a continuing care facility for military families. The stone manor house and its burnished wood interior is still used for social events. She also remembers when the Russian Embassy made plans to take over the old 16-acre Bonnie Brae estate on Oregon Avenue — until until Barnaby Woods residents protested. The townhouses on Unicorn Lane are there now.

Or take Barbara Dresner, who had already lived in Chevy Chase nearly 60 years we interviewed her. Barbara moved to Washington from Pennsylvania at age 19, after two years of college, taking a train and finding room and board for $50 a month on 16th Street. She was among the throngs of bright young women recruited in the early war years to handle secretarial work. She could take dictation at 120 words per minute.  She was assigned to the Manhattan Project at the Office of Scientific Research and Development, then housed in the Carnegie building on Broad Branch Road. She intersected daily with brilliant scientists, many of whom she only later realized what vital roles they played in the war, like Dr. Alexander Flemming, who developed penicillin that was being given only to servicemen at the time. She recalls trying to figure out how to write the word in shorthand.

As a secretary, she did anything from guard top-secret codes to serve coffee. One day, while serving  tea to Gen. Eisenhower, she thought to herself, “He really thinks he is something else” and when he later asked her to go to dinner, she shrugged him off despite all those stars on his uniform. A married man in his 50s was not of interest to her. She also recalls the V-J day, when she was asked to open a safe that only she had the combination to. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was there and he, like everyone else, was in shock after the atomic bomb was dropped. She remembers he kept saying we should share the atomic secrets with the world to prevent it from being used again. She spent the next 10 days holed up with Dr. Oppenheimer taking dictation. After the war she married a Jew, who her mother refused to acknowledge at first, and they bought a house in Chevy Chase in 1956 — and 56 years later she was telling us about it all.

Judith Adams was 91 at time of her interview last year. She had moved to Chevy Chase in 1961 when her husband, a California newspaper editor, was recruited to work for the fledgling Peace Corps. She recalls that the neighborhood was full of families who worked for the government or the media. They would have dinner parties where food was not the focus but conversation was. She recalls it as a time when no one locked their back doors and no one hired landscapers — teenagers did all the work to earn pocket money. Kids changed into play clothes after school then ran outside to play, returning home only in time for dinner. People dressed up to go shopping downtown. She saw how the the tumult of the Civil Rights era brought palpable changes to Chevy Chase — crime crept in, summer programs were created to keep teenagers out of trouble, and many abandoned the local schools out of fear and racial disharmony.

Allen Beach was 78 and had spent all but eight years of his life in Chevy Chase at the time he was interviewed. He had vivid memories of Victory gardens, rationing and blackout drills during the 1940s. During those days, kids at Wilson High School rubbed shoulders with Congressmen’s kids and other Washington bigwigs. Allen’s family history is a fascinating tale that you’ll have to read for yourself. His forebears had immigrated to America just 10 years after the Mayflower, but in an odd twist, his grandmother moved back to Germany around the turn of the century, married a German officer, and stayed until their livelihoods were wiped out in the First World War. In 1925, when his mother was only 15, they set sail back to the States. Though impoverished, his mother quickly learned English and graduated from Stanford in 1930. There she met and married Allen’s father, an economist. She eventually became a “computer” at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism — now the Carnegie geophysics lab. His father’s side of the family has an equally vivid life journey.

Ralph Benson, at 73, was born at Georgetown Hospital and moved to Chevy Chase around 1936. He remembered that in the 1940s neighbors bought out a mixed-race couple around Pinehurst Circle because they didn’t want them to live among them. Back then, you could see cows and horses at the northern end of Western Avenue. At age 11 he took his first date to a movie at the Uptown Theater followed by fountain drinks at People’s Drugs on McKinley, but decided that was too expensive and didn’t date again for years.

Bernice Degler was 90 in 2013 when her oral history was done shortly before she died. She had lived on Chevy Chase Parkway for the previous 48 years.She was an African American whose family have moved to Washington during the Great Migration. She graduated from Minor Teachers’ College at a time when only 5% of Americans had college degrees and went on to earn a Master’s in Spanish language and literature from the National University of Mexico. She and her architect husband were an interracial couple when they moved to Chevy Chase in 1966, and she remembers people being curious about her but not unkind. A member of All Souls Unitarian, she worked with the Rev. James Reeb, a white assistant minister who in 1965 went to Selma to march for voter rights and was killed. “Don’t go, don’t go!” she remembers telling him because he had small children. In the early years she stayed at home to raise her kids, a common practice that she said made it hard for the mailman to get down the street because “Everybody had something to say.” She was politically active, ringing doorbells with legendary DC Councilmember Polly Shakelton, champion of Home Rule, and was herself an ANC 3G commissioner in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Sally Epstein was 87 in 2013 and had lived in Chevy Chase for 52 years at the time of her interview. Her life has been spent in pursuit of great art and social justice with organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Experiment in International Living, the Peace Corps and global population control efforts. She has amassed one of the world’s largest private collections of prints by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch — most of you are familiar with The Scream — and many have toured her home to see her treasures. As a younger woman in the 1970s she conducted more than 60 oral histories of people who knew him or were subjects of his work. All of it is bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art, and every year, she says, she has to select three or four prints to send to the Smithsonian. “That’s always hard to decide which of your children you are going to send off permanently into the wider world,” she said. On her father’s side Sally is a Gamble — her grandfather founded the company Procter & Gamble. Her maternal grandmother was a sculptress. While in Paris, her young grandmother wrote a letter back home saying she wanted to apprentice with a sculptor called Rodin, but her parents thought that since he wasn’t married it would be improper for her to do so. So she didn’t.

Did you know we also had a Ph.D astronomer as a neighbor — who also was a woman? And not just any astronomer. Vera Rubin, who had lived with her husband on McKinley Street since 1957, was the expert asked to come down to check the planned Albert Einstein memorial for accuracy. She was the the first woman scientist that the Carnegie Institute of Washington, begun in 1904, ever hired. She recalls a physics teacher in high school who, upon learning that she’d won a scholarship to Vassar, said that as long as she stayed away from science she’d do OK. In her oral history, done in 2011, she talks about the path her Russian grandfather made to New York as a glove maker and and how her grandmother immigrated at age 16 by herself, nearly starving to death because the food on the ship wasn’t kosher. Apples saved her.

And there are many others on our Oral Histories page — there’s not enough time to talk about them all. Jeffrey Gildenhorn, whose 50-year career ignited so many businesses along Connecticut Avenue including the American City Diner — he talks about having to look hard to find someone in 1988 who still knew how to build an authentic diner since that had gone out in the 1950s. There is Mort Needleman, who fondly remembers Chico, the Lafayette tennis instructor who lived quietly in the school basement and eked out a living giving people tennis lessons for 25 cents. When he got sick, the neighborhood banded together to get him medical help. Hundreds attended his mass at Blessed Sacrament. Allie Felder, a resident of Barnaby Woods since 1968, had a Ph.D. in agriculture and rural society. His great grandfather had been a slave, and despite all he had accomplished, he found himself being arrested for loitering in Georgetown one evening after leaving a friends’ house. And Loretta Kiron whose husband was a Holocaust survivor who was deported to Auschwitz. The Nazis had him digging out rocks with his hands and when the Allies came, the Germans marched the inmates to a barn they then set on fire. Her husband managed to get out through a hole made by the explosions, his clothes in flames. He was able to crawl to a forest and got away. He was the only survivor of his family – both parents, two brothers and a sister all killed.

These Chevy Chase residents people are the keepers of our history, so it’s an important job to continue seeking them out.

Let’s turn this over now, and look at these histories from the interviewees perspective. I’ll briefly introduce our panel who will talk about their experience as oral history interviewees: Connie Povich, Tim Hannapel and his aunt, Emily Swartz, and Patty Myler.

Connie Povich was born in a house on the corner of 33rd and Rittenhouse, but has lived in 3 other houses in Chevy Chase. She has memories of going to dinner with her family at the Purple Iris on Rittenhouse — although rumored to be a speakeasy with shady dealings, Connie never saw any of that. She has strong memories of World War II, blackouts every third Wednesday during which her father, a warden, would take flashlights and check houses for light seepage. Students collected newspapers for the war effort and each class had a vegetable garden and took home their produce on Fridays. Mothers wrapped bandages for injured soldiers and people took in boarders since there was a housing shortage.

Connie married David Povich, whose father was a well-known Washington Post sports writer, Shirley Povich.

Both Tim Hannapel and his aunt, Emily Swartz, were involved in the burgeoning Neighborhood Planning Councils’ summer works programs for teens that were started after the ‘68 MLK riots — Tim as a teenage participant and Emily as a director. In an oral history done of them in 2016, they talked about the dearth of programs in the ‘70s and ‘80s for teenagers — there were no athletic programs for teens, few fields to play in, no swimming pools or other diversions. The NPCs were dedicated to building community and giving teenagers something productive to do. They led to a wide variety of projects all over the city such as dance camps, music workshops, horticulture, jobs programs, working with animals at the Zoo, building stuff — all kinds of things. In the Chevy Chase area they included a concert series at Fort Reno Park, an archeological dig at the site of the African American neighborhood of Reno City that was cleared to make way for Deal and Wilson, and the undertaking of noted historical research projects called Footsteps, Origins I, and Origins II.

And lastly, we have Patty Myler, whose family goes back many generations in the Washington area — her father’s side has roots in St. Mary’s County since 1643. Born at the end of the war, she recalls her mother telling of how they’d save their gas money so they could make the summer trek to Rehoboth Beach. There, they had to turn off the outdoor lights and pull down dark shades because of the possibility of enemy subs lurking off the coast. Patty went to Blessed Sacrament for elementary school with 55 kids to a classroom built for 25. To control that many kids, it was required that hands were neatly folded on desks at all times.

But she also has fond memories of Lafayette playground where she played as a child, going home only for dinner and bathroom breaks, just as her children did. As an adult, she was director at the Lafayette playground where she ran a summer camp and a program for preschool children. She hired about 300 young kids in the neighborhood to assist with the kids. Most of them went on to become accomplished adults. Some of them told her that it was the best job they ever had.

The post Oral Histories Capture the Memories About Our Community appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Carl Lankowski and Cate Toups Atkinson

The frenzy and hyperbole that surround a presidential election agitate and mobilize, effects that are magnified in the political hub of Washington DC, where policy, politics and diplomacy constitute its main business. In light of the actual results of the election in Chevy Chase DC and the city as a whole, it is therefore especially remarkable that the usual campaign paraphernalia was largely absent at the presidential level—practically no yard signs in the neighborhood and only one or two for presidential candidates outside polling places.

Chevy Chase DC’s central precincts reported a range of support for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton of 85-90 percent of the vote, just marginally behind her showing in DC as a whole. The absence of the usual signs is attributable probably to at least three sentiments widespread in the community. The first was the perception of the Republican standard-bearer and eventual winner, Donald J. Trump. To many residents of Chevy Chase DC, his bombastic style and many of his utterances seemed too awful to merit anything but astonishment and indignation.

Secondly, the utterly unconventional campaign techniques deployed by the Republican candidate were written off as amateurish. The thought was that even if he could energize a base, he could never get voters to the polls to cast a ballot. The contrast with cautious Hillary Clinton’s methodical and well-financed campaign could not have been more stark. Chevy Chase DC is also home to political operatives who are campaign professionals.

And thirdly, like millions of U.S. citizens across the land, ChevyChasers underestimated the forces animating the nation that made Trump’s populist appeal attractive to working-class people clustered in rust-belt states.

These were the states decisive in his victory: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trends at work from the 1980s came to a head in the once-in-a-century financial and economic crisis of 2008-2012, when millions lost their jobs and their homes while Wall Street was bailed out. Chevy Chasers probably belong to that segment of the population that suffered least from rising inequality and the consequences of the financial meltdown. Warnings such as that by J.D. Vance, who had published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 – a New York Times bestseller – were read sympathetically in the community, but evidently did not alter the opinion of many who deduced Trump’s un-electability from his campaign. Most observers in Northwest DC were probably more focused on the successful crisis response of the Obama administration: the stimulus package, TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), Dodd-Frank financial legislation, and the Affordable Care Act, which extended healthcare coverage to an estimated 20 million citizens who otherwise would not have it. Indeed, many of us contributed to that response. We Chevy Chasers also likely bought into the premise of the Obama administration’s economic strategy, which embraced a liberal, global trade and investment regime that promised a future of incremental progress. Globalization losers in the heartland did not have this luxury. The 2016 election result is the proverbial second shoe that dropped after the crisis. Their response was a cri de coeur for direct aid, and if any were aware of Voltaire’s greatest work, they would probably find candidate Clinton’s approach a Panglossian extension of the Obama years. In sum, on both moral and substantive grounds, Chevy Chase DC likely firmly believed that a populist demagogue could not possibly be elected president.

Therefore, we turned out on Election Day to cast our ballots convinced that the outcome would be favorable and we would be celebrating the election of the first woman president.

Polling supported this supposition, despite the October surprise administered by FBI director Comey nine days ahead of the election. Clinton’s lead waxed and waned, especially large after her compelling performances in the three presidential debates, but narrowing in the days after Comey’s intervention and the continual release of hacked internal correspondence of the Clinton campaign by Wikileaks, which the three main U.S. intelligence agencies attributed to Russian state agents. Clinton did win a plurality of the popular vote by a margin close to three million ballots over Trump, so the headline figures were in that sense accurate. But she lost by a combined total of about 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan and lost the contest in the electoral college. Neighbors like American University professor Alan Lichtman, who predicted a Trump win in June 2016, based not on polls but on economic data and incumbency, were dismissed out of hand.

Excitement and anticipation were palpable on Election Day in Chevy Chase DC. Moms could be overheard chatting with their daughters while walking through the neighborhood about the momentous event that was about to unfold. Chevy Chasers such as one of the authors of this article organized election parties, hoping to crown the exercise of the franchise with a victory celebration. All but one of the guests at this party were Clinton supporters. Their occupations included a university professor, a think-tank director, at least half a dozen federal employees from the departments of State and Commerce and the Smithsonian, a DC school teacher, a small-business advocate, head of a marketing agency, director of an international student exchange network, and more. The hosts’ daughter, a veteran campaign volunteer for Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008 and 2012, drove six hours from Chapel Hill, N.C., to be there for the occasion. Food and drink were laid out. The room was adorned with life-sized cardboard likenesses of Clinton, Obama…and Trump. There were party favors, containers of mints bearing the overscript: “National Embarrassmints” in the case of Trump; and “Hillary for Peppermint” for Clinton.

The party started in an upbeat mood; the expectation was that Clinton would win quickly. After the networks declared Trump the victor in North Carolina and Florida, the mood turned serious. Some party-goers left. Consternation spread among those who remained as the electoral map turned red in states within the vaunted Clinton firewall.

This was a bonfire of the verities. Chevy Chase awoke to a new world. The mood in the neighborhood on Nov. 9 was incredulity. And apprehension. Trump’s personal behavior was as nasty as his policy positions—whether on trade, taxes, borders and immigration, cutting and dispersing the federal workforce, and many more. Nor was there magnanimity in victory, or even civility in many instances in the president-elect’s tweet-storms sometimes gratuitously targeted individuals. The meanness persisted over the entire transition; one minute after he was sworn in, under the baleful influence of self-described economic nationalist Stephen Bannon, Trump delivered perhaps the darkest, meanest inaugural speech in the history of the republic. This was followed by a blizzard of proclamations and executive orders designed to demonstrate the sharpest possible break with the Obama administration.

According to the Washington Post, “It was the worst showing for a Republican presidential candidate in the city in decades.” Against this background, life in this neighborhood was challenged by developments connected to the election result. We explore three of them here.

 Fake News and Comet Ping Pong

The first election-related event that drew national media to Chevy Chase erupted in early November with word that Comet Ping Pong, a locally popular pizzeria on Connecticut Avenue, was the target of fake news articles on Facebook and alt-right websites such as Vigilante Citizen and The New Nationalist. These sites claimed that Clinton and her campaign chief — the “Occult Elite” according to one alt-right headline — were running a child sex ring in the Comet Ping Pong backrooms. As off-base as that seemed to locals, hordes on social media were duped by the story and lobbed hateful, harassing emails and death threats at employees of Comet and nearby businesses.

Even more incredible to locals, on Dec. 4 — weeks after the story had been widely debunked by the police on national television and in newspapers – one would-be cowboy vigilante strode into Comet Ping Pong with a military-style assault rifle and a handgun, which emptied out the place. He said he was there to “self-investigate” and tried to shoot open a locked backroom door to take a look around. A large police response followed and the alleged gunman, 28-year-old Edgar M. Welch of Salisbury, N.C., was arrested, having found no children being tortured on the premises. He faces 35 years in prison on federal and DC charges.

The story, local to us but covered internationally, highlighted the increasing problem of fake stories becoming real news. The Guardian found teenagers pumping out the stuff in Macedonia, and National Public Radio broadcast an exposé of a Democrat in Los Angeles raising two kids off the profits of fabricating stories – he called them “red meat” — for a pro-Trump audience.  The Comet Ping Pong fiasco was traced to hacked emails from Clinton aide John Podesta that were published by WikiLeaks. They include discussions of a Clinton fund-raiser with James Alefantis, Comet’s owner who was once in a relationship with David Brock, a former right-wing-journalist-turned-Clinton supporter. The bulletin board 4Chan, picking up on many references in the emails to “pizza” – a supposed pedophilia term for “girls” — spun out a conspiracy theory that went viral and became known as #pizzagate. It fueled so many vicious hate emails, nasty calls, and threatening Instagram messages that Alefantis hired extra security and desperately appealed to police and the FBI. He asked YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter to remove the articles that he said were generating five tweets every minute, according to a Nov. 20 New York Times story. A GoFundMe appeal for $28,000 to pay for extra security and lost wages was broadcast.

The media firestorm following the fake sex-ring story was international in scope (LexisNexis shows 1,800 stories covering this topic) and painfully personal to Chevy Chasers. They responded as stalwart patrons, showing support by filling the tables at Comet Ping Pong as well as other businesses on the block and posting handmade signs of support. The local Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3/4G passed a resolution on Dec. 12 supporting Comet Ping Pong and other businesses. ANC Chairman Randy Speck condemned the actions of Welch as well as the “national politicians” who failed to “forcefully and immediately repudiate” the falsehood, allowing it to morph into “conspiracy rumors and malicious lies about family-friendly businesses that make significant contributions to the vibrancy and vitality of our community.”

The topic consumed hundreds of Chevy Chase Community Listserv postings, the first of which was on Nov. 22. The writer pointed to that day’s New York Times article about a pizzeria in our neighborhood having “endured waves of internet abuse.” The message recommended neighbors “go order a pizza there and tell them we have their back.” “It sounds like a joke, but it is not,” wrote another Listserv contributor that same day. “The police are aware of the threat, but I think the neighborhood needs to stand up as well. In this political climate, we need to all move from being bystanders to upstanders.” Others called for more police presence, worrying that violence could erupt, which is what happened two weeks later.

As the #pizzagate conspiracy spread, Listserv messages increasingly expressed outrage over the attacks on local businesses. It is rare when the local and national issues in Chevy Chase intersect, and the threads on the Chevy Chase Community Listserv went full-bore into the topic. Besta Pizzaria’s owner worried about being forced into closing his doors, and the Terasol restaurant across the street was inundated by vindictive Facebook posts. The Listserv decried the craziness of it and condemned Trump’s choice for National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn for having tweeted out links to the fake story. “Inciting incidents such as the (vigilante shooter) should disqualify the Lt. General from such a crucial post,” noted one message in early December. Two months later Flynn was ousted anyway after he failed to come clean to about discussions with a Russian diplomat.

One Listserver post appealed for mercy for Welch, described by the media as aimless. “Had his beliefs been true, he would have been a hero … he too is a victim.” But that was not an argument others rushed to defend. Gullible maybe, but no victim, wrote another resident. “This man’s gullibility and vigilantism led him to bring guns into our community and terrorize our neighbors.  He victimized us.” Said another: “Comet has been the victim of a horrific hoax. They were also the victim of a very sick individual who had an assault rifle. This person is, in no way himself a victim, unless we consider that his inability to discern fact from fiction makes him one. He drove hours on his ridiculous pursuit and endangered everyone in that restaurant on a Sunday afternoon. We are fortunate to have Comet and the other businesses that surround it in our neighborhood, and it was wonderful to see so many people patronize those businesses this weekend. No business should have to endure what they have.”

As disturbing a the incident was, the owners of Politics & Prose on the same block as Comet Ping Pong found something positive to say in a Listserve message. “It also revealed something important for those of us who live, work, and shop in our neighborhood: We all experienced an overwhelming sense of solidarity as a community. Yes, several businesses and individuals in particular have been the main targets of the fake stories, but it was our community that responded as a whole.”

Sieg Heil at Maggiano’s Little Italy

The second national spotlight flashed on Chevy Chase on Nov. 18 when Maggiano’s Little Italy on Wisconsin Avenue hosted a private banquet for the alt-right National Policy Institute celebrating its Trump victory. The group, led by supremacist Richard Spencer, had booked at the last minute and under an assumed name after NPI had been canceled by at least one other restaurant, the Hamilton. The party was well underway when about 30 anti-fascism protestors clambered up to the second-floor dining room but were blocked by staff and police. Reporters flocked to the scene and social media started lighting up with retweets from NPI revelers beaming “Sieg Heil” salutes in souvenir photos. This sent the Chevy Chase Community Listserv into spasms of indignation, and coverage of the event ballooned with more than 100 articles carried by local and national outlets.

Maggiano’s initially expressed regret that they did not realize beforehand who was coming but said they would not discriminate in whom they served. Three days later, after being berated by neighbors and social media, Maggiano’s parent company apologized for hosting the group and vowed to send $10,000 in profits from the event to the DC chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.

More than a few Chevy Chase residents are lawyers, which was evident in the legal wrangling in the Listserv over how absolute the protection of free speech should be. But much of it was emotional as well. “I hope people will contact Maggiano’s by Facebook, Twitter, email or phone, and inform them that it is not acceptable for them to host such groups,” urged one resident. “Why not let them compete in the intellectual marketplace,” countered another. “Surely there is nothing to fear from an open debate on the views that they hold. It is precisely because we are a community that values tolerance and diversity that we should have faith in our fellow man’s ability to judge for himself good principles from bad. I don’t like censorship.”

Media of all stripes wrote the story, most noting that NPI has grown bolder in the wake of Trump’s victory, appearing more comfortable in delivering its anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, racist desire for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” Dozens of Chevy Chasers weighed in on the Listserv, suggesting picketing, email campaigns, and a local boycott of the restaurant. Subsequent messages parsed the more subtle legal issues of how to deal with the fact that “hate speech is being normalized in the public domain” and whether meeting space should be granted to groups that advocate harmful acts. “Maggiano’s has the right and in my mind the moral duty not to serve the people in question – just as I have the right, if someone comes into my… studio wearing a swastika or says “Heil Hitler” (or Heil anyone) … to throw them out,” wrote a resident at Brandywine and Connecticut.

“Ideology and speech are not acts. In this country, we do not sanction “thought crimes,” countered one resident of Stephenson Place. Likewise, a resident of 33rd street said the incident at Maggiano’s was shameful only in the sense that its owners ultimately apologized for hosting NPI. “The fact that Maggiano’s is part of a moneyed enterprise does not make me proud that the public extorted from them any sum of money to assuage some imagined offense. We should take pride in protecting democratic principles, including the rights of free assembly and free speech, not in making the other guy relinquish his/her freedoms because we seem to have the power to intimidate …  which is the sort of tyranny that groups like NPI threaten.”

 Rainbow Flags for Pence

The third wave of national news relating to Chevy Chase DC came just before Thanksgiving when residents learned then-Vice President-Elect Mike Pence moved into a house on Tennyson Street, in a precinct in which 85 percent of his new neighbors voted Democratic. Rather than roll out the red carpet, Chevy Chase staked flags – rainbow ones – to remind Pence that his strident anti-gay stance does not fly here. Urban Turf, a DC real estate blog, found the juxtaposition interesting. “While Urban Turf usually tries to avoid political scrums, it was pretty hard to ignore the reception Vice President-elect Mike Pence got from his new neighbors last month,” the publication wrote on Dec. 21.

Joanna Pratt and Stephen Samuels, who live across the street from Pence’s temporary abode, were the first to hang a gay pride rainbow flag in solidarity with the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) community. “When a dozen of our immediate neighbors said they would join us, we knew we were on to something,” they posted on the Listserv. “But little did we realize that our little demonstration would soon go viral, with numerous stories appearing on-line, in the written press, and on broadcast media — locally, nationally, and even internationally.”

Chevy Chase’s million-dollar bungalows with pride flags fluttering made good copy and filled the evening news. A CNN story reportedly received more than 2.2 million views on Facebook. LexisNexis shows more than 250 articles on the topic were published. By mid-January, the couple that started the campaign counted more than 285 rainbow flags in the Chevy Chase/Barnaby Woods vicinity. Also visible were banners and yard signs stating “This Neighborhood Trusts Women,” “Hate Has No Home Here,” and “I Stand with Planned Parenthood.”

Not everyone agreed with the symbolic greeting. Some Listserv posters urged respect for elected officials and pride in being selected as a place a vice president would want to live. “I would hope he and his family could be welcomed or at least left alone, rather than be bombarded with symbols opposing his views,” wrote a frequent Listserv commentator who lives on 31st Street. Another chimed in, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if neighbors would respect the man, the office he has been elected to, and … welcome his family rather than hurt them by displaying rainbow flags … we should put aside political views and welcome him as a human being.”

That kind of talk unleashed a small storm on the Listserv. 

“I’d be happy to be neighborly towards him once he no longer feels people like me should be eradicated from the Earth,” messaged one resident. Another responded with this: “I have to wonder why Pence has chosen to live in the neighborhood … he arrives with his brand of negativity and we have to tolerate his temporary residency. However, we do not have to welcome it.  I do not see anything cool about having a bigot, a misogynist, and a homophobe entering the neighborhood.”

Others questioned how flying a flag that stands for multiculturalism could be construed as harassment. “We’re flying the pride flag because Mr. Pence’s views on homosexuality aren’t just about a policy issue over which people can politely agree. They are no different from racism or sexism … If David Duke moved to our corner of the city, I expect few would suggest” that he be treated neighborly, posted another resident.

Shortly before his Secret Service team pulled up stakes for 1 Observatory Circle, Pence was treated to a “Queer Dance Party,” in which 200 protesters danced, tossed glitter, and waved glow sticks at the intersection of Western and Tennyson, as close to Pence’s house as protestors were allowed. “I love this,” 76-year-old Mary Carmody who lives in the neighborhood and was quoted in the Washington Post. “It’s wonderful to see people on the street like this. We’re lucky we can do this.”

Post-Inaugural Life in Chevy Chase

Inauguration weekend is normally a festive moment in the Nation’s Capital and our locality normally embraces the festivities. Though not nearly as large as the turnout for Barak Obama’s inaugurations in 2009 and 2013, the turnout for President Trump was respectable, numbering in the tens of thousands. But few Chevy Chasers could be seen leaving the neighborhood the morning of Jan. 20 for the event. Indeed, the streets, Connecticut Avenue included, were unusually quiet, almost deserted.

This was in stark contrast to the scene in the neighborhood the next morning, when a steady stream of neighbors made its way to transit routes for the Women’s March on Washington, many participants identifiable by the pink hats with cat ears. The event involved policy, basic duty, and style, alike. A unifying theme was rejection of the Trump campaign’s gratuitous misogyny. The pink hats with “ears” were a reference to one of Trump’s more egregious admissions involving the leveraging of his position of power and celebrity to grope women. Attracting many tens of thousands of participants—some estimated up to 500,000—the demonstration was only one of many dozens around the country and internationally (e.g., Paris, London, Frankfurt) The mood in the neighborhood could not have been more different than it was on Inauguration Day.

The new president signaled a sharp rupture with the previous administration in personnel policy, forcing the immediate resignation of almost all political appointees—ambassadors abroad as well as the top levels of the federal agencies. By the end of Donald Trump’s second week in office, only five of about 20 cabinet positions and virtually none of the nearly 700 second-tier appointments had even been announced,  much less confirmed by the U.S. Senate or at work. Such an abrupt departure refocused the president’s decision-making in the White House staff and the new vice-president. The inexperience showed in the mistakes and miscalculations attaching to the welter of executive orders Trump rolled out in a series of photo-ops in the executive mansion.

In his first week, the president signed an order imposing a sweeping hiring freeze for federal employees, with the stated aim of shrinking the federal workforce. If you were being hired at a federal agency, but did not report to work before Jan. 22, you could not be taken on board.  At the beginning of the second week of the Trump administration, an order was signed banning refugees and travelers from seven countries of the greater Middle East into the United States with immediate effect. Thousands of travelers were stranded abroad. Lawyers assisting some of them were able to obtain a stop order from a federal district judge in Washington State, which was soon upheld by a federal appellate decision.

 Meanwhile, before the new Secretary of State could be confirmed and start working, nearly 1,000 State Department employees, probably including Chevy Chase neighbors, added their signatures to a comprehensive critique of the ban through that agency’s internal dissent channel. In response to a question relating to the memo in the daily press briefing, the White House spokesman said “I think they should either get with the program or they can go.”

 Another executive order reorganized the National Security Council expressly to provide access to the Principals Committee for Trump right-wing strategist, Steve Bannon. Others rolled back Obama-era policies in energy, environment, health-care targeting the Affordable Care Act and abortion.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress weighed in with intimations of policy changes that could have far-reaching effects for all DC citizens, including  Chevy Chasers. Washington DC was created as a federal enclave in part to insulate the federal government from protesters. For roughly two-thirds of its existence, the District was governed by presidential appointees and a committee of Congress. Despite the introduction of home rule by an act of Congress in December 1973, that committee can override local legislation adopted by the DC City Council. During the transition, Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is reported to have plans for canceling or substituting his preferences for those of the City Council in at least three cases: DC laws concerning physician-assisted suicide, marijuana use, and gun control.

[i] Precinct 51 (Lafayette School) gave the Republican ticket 8.61% of its votes, versus 85.75% for the Democrats; turnout was 78.06%. The results were similar in the other two precincts that lie entirely within the generally accepted boundaries of Chevy Chase DC:  Precinct 52 (St. John’s College High School) had 79.39% turnout, with 6.06% for Trump/Pence and 89.01% for Clinton/Kaine; and in Precinct 50 (Chevy Chase Community Center) the turnout was 76.8%, with 8.11% for the Republican ticket and 86.23% for the Democrats.

A small portion of Chevy Chase DC – the area of about 20 blocks between Connecticut Avenue and Reno Road, from Nebraska Avenue to Western Avenue – constitutes a part of Precinct 32 (Wesley Methodist Church).  That precinct as a whole had a similar voting pattern:  77.13% turnout, with 6.49% for Trump/Pence and 88.55% for Clinton/Kaine.

Citywide, turnout was 65.3%, with 90.48% for Clinton and 4.07% for Trump.Aggregating the three precincts that are solely Chevy Chase DC’s, the turnout figure is 77.90%, with 7.97% of the votes going to Trump/Pence and 86.25% to Clinton/Kaine.

Postscript May 2, 2019: The following is a letter by Politics & Prose owners Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine to bookstore customers following an April 27, 2019, protest by a small band of White Nationalists. The group interrupted an author talk with a megaphone, standing in front of author Jonathan M. Metzl and shouting, “This land is our land.” Metzl was discussing his book, “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland.”

 We are deeply grateful that so many people in our community appreciate the important role that bookstores like ours play in creating safe spaces for the exchange of ideas and constructive dialogue about the most challenging issues of the day. Indeed, independent bookstores have long been, and remain, a pillar of civic life and democracy throughout the United States. Today, in troubling times, we believe that bookstores are more essential than ever.

Each year, Politics and Prose hosts more than 1,000 authors speaking about a range of topics and ideas. Our events draw people from across the community who value the opportunity to engage with authors and their fellow citizens. To enhance the discourse, events are structured so that audience members have an opportunity to pose questions and challenge the opinions of authors. Spirited discussions often take place. Our hope is that these exchanges remain civil, respectful, and tolerant of diverse and divergent points of view.

Hate speech is never welcome in any of our stores.

Only a handful of events at Politics and Prose over the years have been interrupted by protesters seeking to disrupt an author or silence his or her ideas. The most recent occurred on April 27—Independent Bookstore Day—when a group of self-described white nationalists entered Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue NW, paraded to the back of the store, shouted a white supremacist message, and left. The event resumed, and the author led a substantive conversation about his book.

Attempts to silence authors at Politics and Prose violate our spirit and mission. Such incidents have not deterred, and will not deter, us from bringing books, authors, ideas, and constructive dialogue to our community.

The safety and security of those who enter our doors remains a top priority. Recognizing that incivility, intolerance, and hate too often define the political discourse in America today, we have taken, and will continue to take, measures to ensure that all visitors—from authors to audience members—can enjoy Politics and Prose and its programs without risk or threat to any person’s freedom and safety.

We would like to commend our staff for their grace, poise, and professionalism and for their unwavering dedication to cultivating community and managing so many literary and cultural activities. Together they and all of you who support Politics and Prose will help ensure more great book events in the years ahead. — Brad and Lissa

The post The 2016 Transition… Post-Election Shock in Chevy Chase DC appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

History Now author: Carl Lankowski

Date written: September 2015, updated November 2015

On 30 November 2014, a draft resolution was posted to the Chevy Chase listserv to change the name of the fountain in Chevy Chase Circle by Gary Thompson, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (ANC Commissioner) for ANC 3/G encompassing the “DC side” of Chevy Chase Circle, the round-about that originally defined the new street-car suburb from 1892. The recitations in the draft resolution were clearly about distancing the community from honoring Francis Griffith Newlands—lawyer, Nevada Congressman, then senator, and heir to great wealth through his wife—because of the outspoken racially segregationist positions he advocated during the same period (ca. 1890 to Newlands’ death in 1917) that he founded Chevy Chase (on both sides of Western Avenue, the DC/MD boundary).

Chevy Chase Circle is on land controlled by the federal government through the National Park Service. (National Park Service, 2015) The fountain was built and dedicated by an act of Congress in 1938 on a design submitted by Edward Wilton Donn in 1933. The funds came from the widow of the honoree. On February 22, 2007, DC’s Historic Preservation Review Board voted to list the Francis Griffith Newlands Memorial Fountain in the District’s inventory of historic sites. (Chevy Chase Historical Society Newsletter–Newlands Fountain Receives Historic Designation, 2007)

Thompson’s ANC action was his last as an elected member, as he decided not to stand again in the November 2014 DC municipal election. As a self-described amateur historian, he had been active for many years in local preservation causes, one of which involved commemorating the 150thanniversary of the July 1864 battle of Fort Stevens, a nearby element of DC’s civil war ring fort system attacked by Confederate General Jubal Early’s forces.

In his listserv post, Thompson referenced long-time Chevy Chase, Maryland resident, Edward Sisson as an inspiration for placing the landmark re-naming on the ANC agenda. Edward Sisson’s aunt lived in one of the big houses on Lenox Street near the corner of Connecticut Avenue, just north of Chevy Chase Circle, in the heart of the original Chevy Chase development, from 1937 until her passing in 2013. In 2009, Sisson contributed an article to the on-line journal, NewGeography, “The Chevy Chase Club: Real Estate and Racism,” in which he asserts that this country club, whose SE corner is across Connecticut Avenue from his aunt’s house, is typical of the genre in its racial discrimination, an irritating vestige of a plantation mentality. (Sisson, 2009) Francis Newlands was the founder and first president of The Chevy Chase Club. Newlands Street runs through the heart of Chevy Chase Village. In an interview with me on March 6, 2015, Sisson referenced a growing sensitivity to racial discrimination as background for his statement about The Chevy Chase Club and his Newlands Fountain initiative.

Leaders of the Chevy Chase (Maryland) Historical Society lost no time in responding to Thompson’s ANC initiative. Four days in advance of the ANC meeting, on December 4, a five-page document signed by its president, a board member and the director of its archive and research center, was sent to the ANC to clarify Newlands role and alleged inaccuracies in Thompson’s account. (Angela Lancaster, 2014)  The authors formally eshew taking a position on renaming the fountain. They wanted to contextualize Newlands’ racial views: “Senator Newlands’ views on race are a matter of public record and have been well-documented over the years. And while today we, and most Americans, find those views repugnant, they were widely-held both in our area and throughout the nation during Senator Newlands’ lifetime.” They went on to contest some of the assertions in Thompson’s draft resolution. They denied the inclusion of racial and religious covenants in deeds associated with the Chevy Chase Land Company. They denied that evidence existed for the assertion that Newlands’ vision for Chevy Chase was perpetual racial segregation. They challenged the assertion that Rock Creek Park had been inspired in part by segregationist aims. They aver to Rowley’s biography of Newlands, which avers a mix of Progressive and segregationist and anti-immigration positions he held. Their penultimate paragraph summarizes their position: “None of the foregoing comments contradicts the fact that Senator Newlands was a man whose beliefs about race we find abhorrent today. These comments do, however, correct certain factual errors in your Resolution and place Newlands in the context of his time. The overall tone of the Resolution presents Senator Newlands in only one dimension, and it overlooks his many achievements, as well as the large company of elected officials, business leaders, and civic elites who shared his racist views in the Progressive era.”

Reacting to the lively listserv discussion between Gary Thompson’s original draft and the ANC meeting of December 8, he introduced a revised resolution, which provided in its recitations several examples of Newlands’ poignant white supremacist statements and eliminating references to racial covenants, resolving to support removal of Newlands’ name from the fountain and appealing to D.C. Council to support the ANC resolution and add one of its own and send both to the D.C. Historic Preservation Office for implementation. A brief discussion ensued, in which several views were expressed and after which the matter was indefinitely deferred on a 4:2 vote.

The next day, Edward Sisson sent around a reaction to the 8 December proceedings to ANC members and board members of Historic Chevy Chase DC. He was especially concerned with taking issue with the “man of his time” defense of Newlands. “When [Newlands] was born, and throughout his development of Chevy Chase, and then when he was elected to the House, and then to the Senate, and then when he was a close advisor of governor Wilson in 1912, and then nominee Wilson, President-elect Wilson, and President Wilson, the legal principle in America was that race is irrelevant to the right to vote. The principle was often undermined by stratagems such as the poll tax, literacy tests, etc., but the principle was colorblindness in the vote. That was the “default setting” on voting as regards race…Newlands tried to change that “default setting” of “his time” back to the “default setting” of an earlier time. Newlands’ position was so “NOT of his time” that he did not even get the Democratic Party of 1912 (the party was very racist in those days) to go along with him. Newlands’ “white plank” did not go into the Democratic Party platform. Newlands’ position on race was not a “man of his time” position, it was a new and extreme minority position.”

Sisson’s other point in his reaction e-mail message “is the location of the current memorial at a gateway to the capital city…My undergraduate degree is in architecture from MIT, a field to which urban planning is quite close. If a planner were to look at the city from a large-scale overview, it would immediately clear that each major entry-point to the capital city is an important symbolic location, and the symbol chosen at each entrance says something about the people in the city and about the people whose national capital is that city.”

Some weeks later, on January 23, 2015, some of Newlands’ descendants contributed to the debate in the form of a letter addressed to the ANC commissioners. (Sandia Johnston, 2015) The main argumentative thrust of the two-page document is that Newlands was honored in 1938 for a variety of accomplishments, many in keeping with positions of the Progressive movement that are still widely taken for granted today. While acknowledging racist commentary made by their ancestor, the broader picture included many praiseworthy elements that still deserve recognition. These include: Newlands’ role as primary author of the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, support for women’s suffrage, advocacy for labor unions, and of course, the visionary development of Chevy Chase. The argument is summed up with: “as with any historical figure, it is important to fully understand his story and place him within the context of his time.” When a Washington Post writer asked for a reaction to the ANC initiative from the Chevy Chase Land Company, the vehicle Newlands created to develop the eponymous residential neighborhood north and south of Western Avenue, it declined to comment. (Turque, 2015)

A Local Debate in Two Phases (as of July 2015)

The Newlands Fountain debate was largely carried out on the Chevy Chase DC listserv, although several articles also reflected it in the local press. (Klibanoff, 2015) (Turque, 2015) (Sherwood, 2015) Several dozen posts involving at least two dozen individual participants appeared between Gary Thompson’s post of 30 November 2014 and mid-February 2015. Then, the topic disappeared from the listserv until a new wave of posts were made in July 2015. Almost all participants in the summer wave had weighed in during the winter wave.

At least three discussions of the initiative to change the name of Newlands Chevy Chase Fountain were organized in Chevy Chase-DC: at the ANC meeting; at the December meeting of the Chevy Chase Citizens Association, and at the regular board meeting of Historic Chevy Chase DC in December. On December 8, the HCCDC board voted to support a name change to “the Chevy Chase Fountain,” while the CCCA and ANC did not take action. CCCA’s board members were divided on the renaming issue and decided not to take a CCCA position. The ANC deferred discussion indefinitely, giving as the reason the desirability of gathering information and community input. Another community organization, Friends of Chevy Chase Circle (FoCCC), decided to stay out of the debate altogether. (Kraut, 2015) An advocate advanced a proposal to revert to “Chevy Chase Fountain” in the HCCDC, CCCA, and the ANC. Opinion was divided in each.

Context

Why should this issue have attracted as much attention as it did at this moment? What accounts for its re-emergence six months after a first round of debate? Several factors come to mind:

• Regarding the first wave,
  • The Obama presidency and reemergence of racial incidents
  • Changing demographics in DC (all-minority profile from first time since 1960s)
• Regarding the second wave,
  • Racially charged policing incidents peak
  • Charleston SC AME Church massacre and subsequent Confederate Flag debate
  • Broadcast and print media covered the discussion that started about renaming schools tied to the Confederacy in at least one school district in northern Virginia

The first wave: December 2014-February 2015

The Chevy Chase Listserv debate drew early responses from both Chevy Chase DC and Chevy Chase Maryland.

The awareness-raising character of the fountain debate is reflected in listserv posts that expressed surprise that it had a name other than the one in common use—“Chevy Chase fountain.” “…there is no need for the fountain to have a “name” other than Chevy Chase Fountain. Never knew it had one.” Another respondent agreed and suggested archiving the Newlands plaque: “Let’s just keep the name most–if not all–of us use: “Chevy Chase Circle Fountain.” Just remove the plaque and all will be forgotten. Place it somewhere in the CC Library as a historic, teachable-moment relic. We really do not need another place in Washington named after a general. A nice generic name works perfectly.” 

One listserv contributor queried the motivation for the renaming initiative: “Why has renaming the fountain after a non-racist, or someone presumed to have been a non-racist, arisen? To appease the general conscience, especially in light of the police brutality we’ve been witnessing? To give the illusion of equality, inclusiveness, or progress? Or for some other reason(s)?”

One answer to this question was given by a Chevy Chase DC neighbor living on Morrison Street and involves the challenge of new awareness about Newlands: “whatever the situation before the renaming was brought up, our community’s new awareness demands that we make a determination of some kind. What kind of response do we want to give? There are longtime members of our Chevy Chase community who will feel less welcome, less a real part of the community, if, now that we know who we are honoring, we decide that we’re okay with simply leaving the fountain and plaque as it is. There are people who are potential future members of our community, people who would add to the warmth and richness of our neighborhoods, who will see this opportunity, if we don’t take it, as a signal that they will never be a real, accepted part of Chevy Chase. The name on that fountain is not simply a memorial of a time in Chevy Chase’s history. As mentioned, the current make-up of our neighborhoods is a direct result of the very intentional and racist development of Chevy Chase, led by the man for whom the fountain is named. That racism still shapes us today. To undo these wrongs takes intentional and explicitly anti-racist actions. Our neighbors, not “them,” not “others,” not “overly sensitive people,” are hurt when we choose not to address racism. It’s not their responsibility to make an outcry, it’s our responsibility, as people who are privileged to get to choose, to choose to do the right thing.”

Some listserv respondents reflected decades of living in Chevy Chase DC and embraced the importance of fostering an awareness of community history: “I’ve appreciated reading the posts about renaming the fountain at Chevy Chase Circle. They made me reflect on the people who have made a real difference in in the lives of many in our city, some of whom we’ve been privileged to know over the almost 50 years we’ve lived here. I think we should consider Hilda and Charles Mason who lived long lives of service to Washington. An interracial couple who married in mid-life–Hilda was an activist, first a teacher, then elected to the school board, and then served several terms on the city council. Charles earned his law degree after a career in teaching and in government service. He and Hilda supported the UDC School of Law and Charles was instrumental in its accreditation. They were both involved in activities supporting children in need and donated substantial amounts of money for college scholarships. It’s fascinating to read about their incredibly productive lives and I would recommend doing a search online for even more information. I hope this effort to rename the fountain is successful. We have much to be proud of in our community and we have an obligation to young people and those new to our neighborhoods to pass on our history.”

In a similar vein, another respondent wrote: “Doing something about the Fountain name seems like a small, but necessary effort if we think of our community as one that welcomes people of all origins. Sure, most of us may never use the old (or new) name for the “Chevy Chase Circle Fountain”, and, perhaps, some in the community are not bothered by the racist history of the person honored on the plaque, but that is not a reason to disregard the concerns of community members and visitors that find it offensive. It is also not a reason to let a repugnant symbol of a shameful part of our nation’s history stand unanswered. Let’s rename the fountain in celebration of one of the other CC historical figures that truly captures the open, accepting, and neighborly spirit of our community today, and find a place for the Francis G. Newlands plaque in the CC Library or CC Community Center where it can be shown as a historical piece alongside a sign recognizing the very different perspectives held by today’s CC residents with respect to diversity and inclusion. Or keep the plaque where it is and add supplemental community statement next to it, so people can get the full historical perspective. This is not political correctness, nor is it an attempt to erase or rewrite history. It is civil decency.”

Some posts emphasized an alleged relative absence of African Americans in Chevy Chase DC: “Since most African Americans and other persons of color can’t afford to buy and maintain properties in Chevy Chase, they remain barred. “This land is your land” applies only to the rich. During my daily walks through the parts of Chevy Chase in which I live and shop, the only African Americans and Hispanics I see are servants.”

But at least one African American neighbor weighed in to challenge the assumption that people of color were not present as residents in Chevy Chase DC. “I live on the DC side [of Chevy Chase] and there are many African American families who own homes and live here. I live on a corner and going down one block there are four African American families, including mine, and going down the other block, there are two (this time not including mine, don’t want to double count). My neighbors and I are always out and about walking throughout our neighborhood, I believe that we are highly visible members of this community. When anyone sees one of us walking our dogs or pushing a baby stroller or shopping at Safeway or eating at Blue 44 or picking up dry cleaning or enjoying the trick-or-treating on Halloween or working on our lawns or shoveling our snow, please don’t assume that we are the help.”

A large minority of listserv posts took issue with renaming local landmarks, most of them objecting to the principle of renaming. Here is one such, which also offered insights about the racial and ethnic composition of Chevy Chase DC: “we can’t change history because we don’t like it. That smacks of Communism. Whether it’s good or bad, it has hopefully made us better for it and should be there to prevent us from repeating it. I don’t know what the original deed on my home said, but I do know that the deed on my uncle’s house on 31st, both built in 1934, had some strange covenants. My uncle grew up on a farm in southern Maryland and worked in the tobacco fields, side by side, with black men. They also sat at the dinner table together in my great-grandmother’s dining room, every workday. He was the kindest man you could ever meet. Contrary to what has been said, there are a lot of Asian, Black and foreign families in this neighborhood, who have lived here for more than 60 years. I have lived in the same house for 70 years and my parents moved here 80 years ago. I grew up next door to a Jewish family, who moved there in about 1949.”

A much smaller minority defended Newlands: “This seems to be pushed through post haste without advance notification to all residents in Chevy Chase. I, for one, am not in favor of the renaming because this means we will have to consider renaming many of our statues, signage, and others across the city for their racist, bigoted, prejudicial stances. This also means we’ll have to discredit President George Washington for his past as a slave owner. Mr. Thompson’s proposal is noble per se, yet in fact sets a bad precedent. Senator Newlands should neither be shunned nor decried for his racist beliefs. He wasn’t the only one in the previous generation who advocated segregation as that was the norm back then. It was not illegal, just the way of life. He should be respected for developing Chevy Chase and shouldn’t be discredited posthumously and shouldn’t be compared to the Nazis. Unfortunately, segregation was part of American history. There are behaviors of today that seem very discriminatory, which in turn, leads us to state boldly that we should allow our children and their children in the next generation to consider taking down plaques and statues of those people who perpetuate such beliefs today.”

The listserv discussion evolved, eliciting ripostes such as this one made during the second week of lively contributions, focusing on impact of new knowledge: “Many seem to be missing the point of the renaming opportunity, including people I’ve talked to who are not privy to the listserv messages. Some are in the “does it matter what the fountain is named, as no one even knows its name” camp. That might have been true before we all learned the history, and the renaming attempt made the Post…As of now, if we fail to take advantage of an opportunity to repudiate the racist development history of Chevy Chase, we will be making a strong statement about our own apathy that will reflect badly on our community. Imagine a European town that votes on a ballot to rename their fountain named after a prominent Nazi and then the renaming ballot fails to pass. Would anyone feel good about visiting that town? …For African-Americans prevented from building wealth by real estate covenants from 1860 to 1950, the impact of a racist developer cordoning off parts of DC is hard to overstate…We need to seize this opportunity to actively repudiate the part of Chevy Chase history we do not want to own.”

The charge of hypocrisy stalked some commentary. “If we want to make a difference about Chevy Chase’s future, ignoring the straw issue of the fountain name, we may have the ability among us to make that change. If Francis Newlands is really on our mind, then we should do something that changes the future rather than erasing the past.”

Elements of irony, sarcasm and humor ran through the listserv commentary. Several contributions embellished these tones with an articulated program. “I agree with those who propose to call the fountain what it is, i.e. “The Chevy Chase Fountain”. To me this is a no brainer. However, if the fountain must have a name, I propose a contest: The names of those who can successfully cross the circle on foot, during rush hour, touch the fountain and return safely, be etched onto a bronze bell. This bell is to be sounded every rush hour (morning and night) when new contestants may try their skill and bravery to have their name placed on the Chevy Chase Fountain Bell.”

Some appealed for further enlightenment. “I would love to know how to search Census data about the demographics of the Chevy Chase DC and Chevy Chase Maryland neighborhoods. I have no idea how to do that, or if it is an easy task, but I am sure it would be an interesting exercise. I have lived in this little corner of DC for over 50 years. My family purchased the home in which I live as a newly built structure in 1950. Although I agree that this small, somewhat affluent neighborhood, on both sides of the ‘line’, is still predominately white, I have been encouraged, personally, by the increase in diversity of residents here in the past years. Not an overwhelming rate of change, I am sure, but there nonetheless. But this observation, too, is subjective. Is there a way to find some objective, fact-based statistics on the demographics of Chevy Chase DC and MD?” In fact, Historic Chevy Chase DC had a project underway since the summer of 2013 to produce a community profile, the first chapter of which deals with demographics.

Second Wave July 2015

If Gary Thompson’s action-forcing draft resolution in December 2014 triggered the first round of listserv postings, then the June 2015 massacre of nine attendees of a Bible-study session at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina by a young white supremacist and the immediate and successful mobilization to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state house led to renewed postings in July 2015.

Thompson himself reintroduced his renaming proposal with further substantiation on July 10, the day the Confederate flag was moved. “Are we still ok with the Francis Newlands monument at Chevy Chase Circle?  Our own neighborhood issue drew quite a bit of press last fall, nationally on NPR & elsewhere.  People wondered if changing a monument like this to a white supremacist might call into question the permanence of other historic monuments and symbols?  Perhaps we were a bit ahead of the curve in asking the question.  Now the Confederate Flag is fading fast (good riddance) and other monuments to the historic leaders of our country’s racist past are up for reconsideration, from Rebel statues to the windows in the National Cathedral.  It is a healthy re-examination.  As for old Francis Newlands, recall that a major focus of his career was to advance the cause of white supremacy, with increasing fervor in the later years of his life.  He sought to eliminate or restrict as much as possible the vote, education, and job opportunities for African-Americans.  Here in DC, as a member of the Senate Committee on the District, he pushed for segregated and unequal education for African-Americans, restricted to vocational training for menial jobs.  He wrote and spoke about African-Americans as an “inferior” race of “children” requiring “control.”  His “white plank” in 1912 was part of a successful political movement that set back Civil Rights for many more decades.  The “negro problem,” as he put it, “was the most important questioning confronting the nation.”  Even his chief biographer, who was somewhat of an apologist for Newlands, laid it bare in an article called “Francis G. Newlands: A Westerner’s Search for a Progressive and White America” (available at http://nsla.nevadaculture.org/statepubs/epubs/210777-1974-2Summer.pdf).  Thank goodness that post-Reconstruction chapter is behind us…So while we read about flags and monuments elsewhere, do we want this monument in our own backyard?  On the one hand, it hardly matters in that the Circle is an abandoned place, with broken benches, glass and trash, and a now inoperable fountain (arguably the worst circle in DC).  It is hard to care about a couple of old honorific plaques to a long-dead Senator whose once outspoken words are long forgotten.  On the other hand, as originally proposed, it might give the old Circle a little re-start by re-dedicating the fountain to someone else that makes us inspired, and from that symbolic re-start, maybe someone might also actually improve the circle in tangible ways…For better or worse, Newlands is a part of the history of Chevy Chase, DC, and America.  I have always distinguished that from the separate issue of whether we (or anyone else) would want to put up an honorific monument to the man.  I can read a biography about Jefferson Davis but do I want a monument to him?  Two different things.  In 1935, I guess the answer for Chevy Chase was yes, we do want to salute Newlands.  In 2015, maybe we have a different answer.  Other examples – deciding it is time to have a woman on some of our currency (I think Susan B Anthony over Andrew Jackson); removing a saint-like depiction of Robert E Lee from a church window; renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge for someone like John Lewis.  These are all fair questions for re-examination, each perhaps with a different answer.  The only question for our neighborhood is whether we still want to honor Newlands in our own circle.  The most persuasive reason I have heard against taking any action is that who really cares because nobody goes out there anyway.  It is not like seeing a flag fluttering in the breeze.  But on the merits, what if it were the Frederick Douglas fountain?  That would be better, and maybe attract some attention to fixing up the circle.  (The funniest idea I heard is to name it after the comedian Chevy Chase, then we could call it the “Chevy Chase” fountain, which we already call it anyway; we could set up a screen in the circle and have a Chevy Chase movie festival)…In terms of process, last December the ANC voted 4-2 to table the motion to rename the fountain for someone other than Newlands.  At the time, this procedural vote came with a promise from the ANC to consider this issue in early 2015 and bring it to a vote.  The practical question remains whether our ANC can even get the monument re-named, but there is only one way to find out – tip the first domino and see what can be done (next steps: DC Council Resolution, name change on the national registry, request to NPS to physically remove the plaques).”

One commentator thought that Chevy Chase Fountain was too small a matter to bother with: “If it really makes folks feel better to change the name of every public building/place named after someone whose views/actions are highly objectionable to our 21st-century sensibilities … why start with a fountain named after someone few people in our neighborhood have ever heard of ‎– a fountain, in fact, that only a tiny percentage of people in our neighborhood even knew *had* a name?…Go big, folks…our city itself ‎is named after a slaveholder. Let’s change that too…But in any case: is any name change really the best use of our energies if we want to demonstrate to the world (or to the city, at least) that we as a community are welcoming to all?”

The defining exchange was made immediately after the Confederate flag denouement in Charleston. “Newlands was not simply a product of his time. He and a few others (J.C. Nichols springs to mind) designed segregationist policy that spread across the country and created untold harm to generations of African-Americans, and also undermined the social fabric of the entire country…Upward mobility for both white and black populations is substantially impaired in places that are more segregated…A proposal to tear down monuments to MLK, rename our city, or dynamite Mt Rushmore is not a valid method of debate in this setting. The method works equally well against the idea that appeals to “history” should preserve any already named monument: I’m sure we can all think of monuments erected before 1945 that we would want to remove or rename if we noticed them in our neighborhood, so that we do not memorialize past actions (by e.g. Hitler or Stalin) that we now find despicable. If a form of argument works equally for and against, it is not a valid form of argument…Perhaps the politically expedient first step is to have the fountain be dedicated simply as Chevy Chase Fountain, but I agree with others who think a more intentional re-dedication should repudiate the neighborhood’s racist beginnings…To call the very reasonable requests to engage in dialog (about whether we should memorialize this kind of damaging accomplishment) a form of political correctness, and to further characterize a request for dialog as “tyranny” is morally objectionable. Engaging in debate is not tyranny; telling other people not to dispassionately discuss an issue (because you might find yourself on the losing side of the debate) on the other hand *is* a form of tyranny…A telling account from Georgia: there is an equally emotional reaction from others, particularly far right groups, who complain that the removal of such statues and renaming of various public buildings represents nothing more than political correctness gone overboard. Efforts to remove such monuments are typically met with strong resistance. And their campaigns often take years before there is any movement. In fact, Michael Hill, the head of the League of the South, a secessionist organization based in Kilen, Alabama, said it was a move by the state of Georgia showing that it was “caving in to political correctness.””

The response: “This is very well written and well-reasoned, but I think it fails to make the distinction between something that would regularly offend those who were harmed (Hitler, the Confederate flag) and someone who’s barely known and, at least prior to this debate. I doubt the statue offends any large number of people who see it and who are therefore brought to a recollection of some action against them or their ancestors.”

The riposte: “I agree that a fountain named for a relatively unknown senator and a Confederate flag flying in the circle are 2 different orders of magnitude, but the fact that virtually no one knows the backstory of the circle does not change the moral imperative to change its name, it only lowers the cost of taking action: if few know the current name, all the easier to change it…In the last round of this debate you said that proponents of change are guilty of “presentism” (judging past people and actions by today’s standards)–and I am wondering if you would make the same argument about a Confederate flag flying in the circle, or a statue of a Nazi.  I think we have no choice but to judge past people and actions by today’s standards, at least in part, and especially so when we decide who to memorialize, since that choice is how we convey to future generations what we think worthy in our own past. I think political correctness is far less in play than implicit racism.”

Returning to the issue of what, if anything, the community should do, this practical suggestion for change with remembrance – in effect, the chronicling of a Rousseauesque “politics is education” moment—was advanced. It is a fitting place to bring this account to a close. “Concerns that removal of the plaque would erase history could be assuaged by renaming the circle, and hanging an explanatory plaque, such as one sees along old roadways, reminding readers whom the circle previously commemorated, what his deeds were, and why the community ultimately decided that a new name would be more fitting to our aspirations as a community. At present, most people confronting the name on the circle are at a loss to know the history, commendable or reprehensible, that Mr. Newlands represents.“

*The HCCDC board adopted a resolution on 8 December 2014 to support ANC Commissioner Gary Thompson’s motion to change the name of Newlands Fountain to Chevy Chase Fountain, but this article, authored by a board member, is neutral on that issue.

Works Cited

Angela Lancaster, M. S. (2014, December 4). Retrieved from Chevy Chase Maryland Historical Society: http://chevychasehistory.org/sites/default/files/Letter_to_Thompson_rename_fountain_12-5-2014_.pdf

Chevy Chase Historical Society Newsletter–Newlands Fountain Receives Historic Designation.(2007, spring). Retrieved from http://www.chevychasehistory.org/sites/default/files/2007_gala_spread.pdf

Klibanoff, E. (2015, January 2). A battle to wash away a fountain’s controversial namesake.Retrieved from NPR: http://www.npr.org/2015/01/02/374621746/a-battle-to-wash-away-a-fountains-controversial-namesake

Kraut, A. (2015, July 24). Chevy Chase Circle Fountain Up and Running but Supporters want more Improvements. Retrieved from Bethesda Magazine: http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/2015/Chevy-Chase-Circle-Fountain-Up-and-Running-But-Supporters-Want-More-Improvements/

National Park Service. (2015, July 26). Chevy Chase Circle-Rock Creek Park. Retrieved from National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/cultural_landscapes/snp/600261.html

Sandia Johnston, e. a. (2015, January 23). Letter from family of Newlands. Retrieved from Washington Post: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/local/letter-from-family-of-newlands/1416/

Sherwood, T. (2015, March 18). What’s in a name…? The Northwest Current, p. 8.

Sisson, E. H. (2009, March 20). The Chevy Chase Club: Real Estate and Racism. Retrieved from NewGeography: http://www.newgeography.com/content/00660-the-chevy-chase-club-real-estate-and-racism

Turque, B. (2015, February 17). Senator’s Descendants urge no Change in name of Chevy Chase fountain. Retrieved from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/senators-descendants-urge-no-change-in-name-of-chevy-chase-fountain/2015/02/17/f5da4a46-b6c0-11e4-a200-c008a01a6692_story.html

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Date written: May 2015

Each year for the past 35 years, there has been a Holiday party on the 3200 block of Oliver Street, and this is because of an amazing couple – Bernie Hillenbrand and Aliceann Wohlbruck. The party takes place on a Sunday evening a couple weeks before Christmas at Bernie and Aliceann’s home.

Lena Heron says, “It is amazing the community that we have here on Oliver Street because of Bernie and Aliceann. They are the center and heart of this community.” This sentiment is expressed by all neighbors, who call Bernie the mayor of Oliver Street. Christian Eigen-Zucchi says “despite being in one of the great American cities, it feels like a small village here and Bernie and Aliceann are the focus.”

To set the scene – Neighbors arrive at 6:30 p.m. with casseroles and all sorts of dishes, which are placed on the long dinning room table. Bernie and Aliceann provide the mulled cider. After the feast, all congregate in the living room where Bernie encourages the children to show off their musical talents.

Most children play the piano, but others have played the violin and other instruments in past years. Christian Eigen-Zucchi says it “gives the young blood the chance to play – a platform.” This past December (2014), Milo, who is 10 years old, delights all as he joyously plays a song on the piano. Then with the group’s encouraging applause, he plays two more.

Milo’s mother, Lena Heron, says Milo was 2 years old the first time he played at the Oliver Street party. When Bernie invited interested kids to play the piano, much to his mother’s surprise, Milo volunteered. She said that even though he couldn’t really play at that age, he was “very respectful…not just banging on the piano.” When he finished, he made a little bow and that evening a showman was born. He looks forward to playing the piano at the Oliver Street party each year.

Bernie and Aliceann were married on the porch of their Oliver Street home 35 years ago. They have a son with a disability, and Bernie said that one reason they started the Oliver Street Holiday party tradition was as a way of thanking their neighbors who were kind to their son. Bernie says that his philosophy has always been “be kind to people and that will give you a good life. It all comes down to human kindness. If you do that, you will be rewarded. “

After the children’s performance, the group sings Christmas carols with the accompaniment of Diane Winters Pyles, who was Aliceann’s college roommate. Although she lives in Springfield, Virginia, Diane travels to Chevy Chase to provide the music. She has only missed one party in 35 years.

Participants in the party are old-time residents like Orr Kelly, who moved to Oliver Street in 1962. He says he has rarely missed a party, although he sold his Oliver Street home and moved to a Bethesda condominium some years ago.

Another neighbor, Abby Arnold, says her children have been coming to the party since they were babies. They are now 24 and 25. “They grew up with the Oliver Street party. To this day, if they are in town, they come to the holiday party,” Abby says. 

Another long-time resident is Joan Dodge, who has lived in her Oliver Street house for 40 years. Joan says that the Oliver Street parties are a way for neighbors to interact. In that way we do more than just wave and say “hi” to our neighbors. Joan says that people from small communities always understood that it was important to develop community cohesion. “In these days of urban living, it is important to create a community, “ Joan says.

Although Christmas carols are sung at the holiday party, many of the Jewish people who live on the block have come to the party throughout the years. When the party has fallen on Hanukkah, the lighting of menorah candles has been added to the festivities. Joan remembers Debbie Blum – who has since moved away. “She always brought her “delicious noodle kugel and shared her recipe,” Joan says. Loretta Kiron says that she is a secular Jew, but has always enjoyed Christmas music. She has rarely missed an Oliver Street holiday party.

Christian Eigen-Zucchi, who is living in his Oliver Street childhood home, agrees that music was always a major focus of the Oliver Street parties. He remembers that in the early days his parents played chamber music – his mother, Jutta, on the piano and his father, Peter, on the recorder – while people milled around and enjoyed the food. After carols were sung in the house, the group would go outside and carol in the neighborhood. His father accompanied the group playing the saxophone. Joan Dodge remembers that Orr Kelly played the trumpet. They would carol on neighboring Northampton and 33rd Streets and then would stop by Oliver Street neighbors who may have been too old or infirm to come to the party.

Loretta Kiron recalls that one year when she was ill, the neighbors serenaded her from the street. Joan Dodge says that the group sang in front of the house of George Haley, who was a Tuskegee Airmen and a past President of the Chevy Chase Citizens Association, when he became too ill to come to the party. “It was an organic process. It happened without a lot of direction,” Joan said.

Not all the party participants are old timers. John Poppajohn grew up on Rittenhouse Street. He was away for many years, but last year bought a house on Northampton Street – which is just behind the home of Bernie and Aliceann. To his delight, Bernie and Aliceann invited John and his family to the Oliver Street party this year. John loves the sense of community that he experiences in Chevy Chase. He says that this is the reason that his mother came to Chevy Chase in the 1950’s and is epitomized by the Oliver Street party and Bernie and Aliceann. That is why he is happily raising his children in Chevy Chase.

Back to History Now!

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Richard Graham interviewed by Carl Lankowski (November 2013)

On November 23, 2013, HCCDC board member Carl Lankowski sat down with Richard Graham, who has been active in the CNC—Connecticut Avenue Neighborhood Coalition—to discuss the history of the controversy surrounding plans to build a large glass structure on the block defined by Connecticut Avenue, Military Road, Kanawha Street and an alley running parallel to Connecticut Avenue. Though animated by the specifics of the 5333 case, the issues involved transcend it, creating an opportunity to offer insight into the broader characteristics of the Chevy Chase community, its outlook, capacity to act, and willingness to engage.

Q: To set the stage, let’s start with your own history in the neighborhood. How long have you been in DC?

RG: I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just across the border. If you went to the Pinehurst Tributary and took a left and went just over the border, we were just there. I grew up on the Maryland side, but I attended Chevy Chase Presbyterian Nursery School and then Blessed Sacrament School, so I have been in the neighborhood essentially my whole life.

Q: How old are you?

RG: 40. I should add that my mother and all her sisters attended Blessed Sacrament as well. They grew up on Quesada and Rittenhouse Streets going back to the 1930s. My family has been here for a very long time.

Q: Where did the family come from originally?

RG: Half the family, I think, came from New York, the other half from western Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh. My grandfather came to DC to work for the FBI after law school.

Q: What did your dad do?

RG: He was an attorney for the government most of his career—with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Q: Are you following in his footsteps?

RG: I am not an attorney. I work in finance.

Q: Where are you living now and what brought you there?

RG: I live on Kanawha Street, 200 feet or so east of Connecticut Avenue, in a very old home, I think it’s 103 years old now. We have been living there since 2004.

Q: How would you characterize the neighborhood?

RG: The neighborhood around the 5333 site—taking in Jenifer, Jocelyn and Kanawha Streets, and Military Road—were part of the original Mount Airy subdivision, which at some point became known as Chevy Chase Terrace. That was subdivided in June, 1910. A few homes were built very soon thereafter. The oldest ones were started in June, 1910.

Q: What kind of homes are they?

RG: The ones built mainly between 1910 and 1918 had a lot of shingle-style homes, like mine, in the mix. On the 5333 site there were originally ten homes, all of which had been torn down in the 1970s, and all of them date from this same period. They possessed a lot of architectural character. Not crazy fancy homes; just what Chevy Chase was like in [1910] the teens. Many mature trees, overall very much in the character of Chevy Chase DC.

Q: What was the relationship between Connecticut Avenue and the surrounding residential properties?

RG: The central fact is that once you get one lot deep off of Connecticut Avenue, it becomes a quiet residential neighborhood. There is an interesting dynamic in that most of the buildings that are currently on Connecticut Avenue were historically, essentially one lot deep. The apartment buildings that line Connecticut, including those to the north of 5333, are one lot deep. The ones between Military and Livingston were historic mansions, so those were very deep lots and so the Kenmore and similar buildings were built of these parcels of land. But that is one interesting feature of Connecticut Avenue that most people don’t realize: the buildings were originally zoned one lot deep for commercial purposes. That then went into the zoning maps of the 1950s, which maintained this definition for commercial or multi-family and did not intrude further into the surrounding neighborhoods. This set the character of the neighborhood, whereby you could have commercial areas and apartment buildings in close proximity to homes without altering the character of the single-family neighborhoods. This is a unique attribute in comparison to development further down Connecticut Avenue, where an apartment building takes up an entire city block. In Chevy Chase you have the unique feature where you have one lot deep, an alley behind it, and a building that was relatively shallow. In that regard, my neighbors and I, and many in Chevy Chase DC like the fact that you can be so close to the action and still live in a neighborhood that still has a pronounced residential feel.

5333 Connecticut Avenue is different in that they actually took ten lots—four lots deep—off of the Avenue. That is a major point of angst in the neighborhood. The building is being set much, much further back in the neighborhood than any equivalent building along Connecticut Avenue. The proposed building would be character-changing in that there would be single-family homes along three sides of the building, as opposed to just one or two, which is much more typical of the Avenue.

Q: Let’s talk about the long development of the 5333 site. The story goes back at least 40 years, does it not?

RG: So, the homes were torn down, we believe, based on photographs of my neighbors, around 1975. There had been ten single-family homes. A developer named George Baer bought all the homes in conjunction with those land-owners, paying them premium prices. They testified before the Zoning Commission that they wanted those lots to be re-zoned. Everything was contingent on re-zoning. In this deal, all were to make out very well financially, clearing the way for a change in the context of the development philosophy of the 1960s, which prized multi-family dwellings. This fit with the plan that the city had for an apartment building on that site for at least the four original lots along Connecticut. The site has been sitting vacant since the mid-1970s. I have a vague childhood memory of driving down that stretch with my father, observing the homes in the process of being torn down.

Q: How was the land used, formally or informally, following the razes?

RG: My understanding is that the land was designated for a time as a community park, a step that probably was sought by the owner in order to minimize property taxes pending development. For many years, the neighborhood children would play on the land and a community garden was set up. Over time, this sort of informal use has fallen off. With foundations of the razed structures still defining the area, it was not the most hospitable place for that sort of use.

Q: A garden was planted?

RG: There were people who used part of the area as a garden in the late 1970s.

Q: Aside from the foundation remnants, the absence of buildings must have been pleasant for the surrounding neighbors.

RG: The neighbors always thought that something reasonable would be developed there eventually. They just did not expect what we are up against currently.

Q: How did the situation evolve?

RG: The zoning documents from the mid-1960s are worth a read. What the developer originally promised was an apartment building that would be situated tightly along Connecticut Avenue with a very large, gardened, green space behind the building, which would offer a good measure of separation from the community. Approximately 65-70% of the lot was foreseen as green space, and that portion would be almost entirely behind the building, connecting it to the neighborhood. In that context, neighbors would be much happier with what is going on and it would fit much more with the character of the community, where there is some separation from the surrounding homes.

In 1985, Calvin Cafritz and his representatives went to the ANC 3G and asked for at least one additional lot, currently at 3710 Military Road, to be re-zoned and included in the site to achieve a larger floor-area ratio, enabling him to put up a larger building than he had been currently entitled to. That was Calvin Cafritz’s initial attempt to develop the land after he had purchased the site in 1973. He approached the ANC in February, 1985. The ANC and neighbors were quick to shoot down the idea of extending the site still further into the neighborhood from Connecticut Avenue. It became clear that he needed to get cooperation from neighbors for the development of the site. Subsequently, he would never ask for re-zoning of parcels adjacent to the land he currently owned. Constraints included deed restrictions on some of the surrounding homes that prohibited an apartment building indefinitely, a common practice in Chevy Chase. That was another interesting feature, part of the history of this site: many of the lots that had been purchased also had these deed restrictions that forever prohibited an apartment building from going up. Calvin Cafritz fooled many of the owners in 1972-1973 when he filed a lawsuit claiming that he was simply cleaning up title on his property, while in fact, the essence of the move was to remove the deed restrictions, paving the way for an apartment building.

Q: Give us some insight on the Cafritz firm.

RG: Calvin Cafritz and his father, Morris Cafritz and Gwendolyn Cafritz were some of the original developers of DC going back to at least the 1920s. They are one of the original development firms in DC. They have done a lot of wonderful things as a family, especially the older generations, for DC, mainly through their charitable foundation. The younger generation has split and has gone their own ways. The charitable and neighborhood mission is not what it once was. Calvin Cafritz is a very wealthy, powerful developer with longstanding political connections.

Q: How extensive are the business interests of the Cafritz family?

RG: They are certainly city-wide. I do not know how far they extend regionally.

Q: What happened after 1984?

RG: In 1985 and onward, the neighbors reached out to Calvin Cafritz and tried to work with him on the development of the site, hoping to get benefits for the neighborhood as well as ensuring a reasonable investment and building for him. They attempted to reach out between 1985 and 1987, without much luck. But the neighbors did file an action to prohibit the use of the alley behind the site for ingress or egress for any future building. They had done this by filing for the alley to be closed. That constituted a major restriction on Cafritz’s development efforts, because he preferred to use the low side of the site along Military Road and alley to Kanawha Street for ingress/egress. In fact, the alley in question was never open in the first place. It was an alley on paper, a stand of trees that, technically, was a public alley. The neighbors did not want it paved; neither did the ANC. The city would not let Cafritz pave it. This situation helped force Mr. Cafritz’s hand.

In addition, back then, the City Council and the mayor had a balanced approach in dealing with neighborhoods and developers. Chairman Clarke at that point in time was a big benefactor for the community and he tried very hard and essentially at the end demanded that Calvin Cafritz negotiate with the neighbors, so that everyone could come to a winning situation. So in the fall of 1987, the neighbors and Calvin Cafritz began to work on a planned unit development. That planned unit development would allow a little additional density, versus what a matter-of-right project would have allowed, and some other flexibilities that would he would not have had in a matter-of-right development. In return, the community would get a laundry list of benefits as far as the massing of the building towards Connecticut Avenue, the stepping down of the height of the building toward the neighborhood—a roughly 20 point list included in the eventual 1990 Zoning Commission approval, with which Cafritz was required to comply. It would have given benefits to the neighborhood, in conjunction with the benefits that the neighborhood gave him by allowing the denser building. That was the content of the zoning order of March 1990, which allowed him to plan a 184 to 204 unit building.

Q: Why did it take so long for him to do anything with it?

RG: The city had seen a real estate boom in the 1980s. The situation reversed in the 1990s; the real estate market was stagnant in DC. Mr. Cafritz and his financiers, apparently, did not consider the timing advantageous to launch the project.

Q: The layman wonders how it is possible to hold onto a valuable piece of property like that.

RG: There is some speculation about whether the terms of purchase resulted in very low tax bills relative to the underlying value of the property.

I would only add to the narrative to this point that the neighbors worked very collegially with Mr. Cafritz from 1987 to 1989 to develop the project in a way that would address their concerns and his concerns. Indeed, the PUD (Planned Unit Development=the agreement between the developer and the neighbors) was considered to be an accomplishment of the neighborhood.

Q: That brings us to the more recent situation.

RG: The PUD expired in 1998. It only had a two or three year term, but it got extended several times. Its expiration meant that the promises made to the community no longer were valid. Nor were the benefits Cafritz got from the community. What many neighbors at the time did not think was that he would potentially go back and build a building that was anti EVERYTHING that was in the PUD. Now he has in mind a building that is very, very tall, very close to single-family homes, with much, much less green space around the back of the building. If you go down the list of the benefits of the PUD to the neighbors, almost every single one of them has been ignored.

Q: Have new neighbors moved in, or are the neighbors today the same people as those who witnessed the beginning of the process in the 1970s?

RG: They are largely the same people. George Gaines is probably the oldest veteran also involved in the current process. He moved into his house in 1969. A lot of the other residents have been there since the early 1970s. There is a longstanding history of the neighborhood, with many here throughout the entire period.

Q: What kind of folks are they? What do they do?

RG: They are normal Chevy Chase neighbors: government employees, attorneys, teachers, the standard profile for Chevy Chase DC.

Q: Basically middle class folk.

RG: Yeah, upper middle class folk.

Q: Let’s turn our attention to the current controversy over 5333. From what you have been saying, I have the sense, which I would like you to confirm or contest, that the current uproar over the site development at 5333 comes from the shock experienced by neighbors about the scale and suddenness of the new development plan. If that is the case, when did it happen?

RG: Neighbors had become used to the appearance of maintenance crews at the site occasionally over the years. They were mowing or tending to trees. A small amount of activity was not uncommon on the site. In the fall of 2012, my wife noticed someone with a small drill, drilling bores on the site, which she found unusual. This led her to Google 5333, which produced the revelation that a soil boring report referenced a potential building.

Q: When was that?

RG: October 2012. In the week or two after that, we found some additional information. Eventually, I appeared before the ANC in November 2012. I asked them if they knew anything about this project. All permits are supposed to be shared with the local ANC, which would have an opportunity to understand what is going on in their community. They all were unaware that applications had been filed for permits for the site; they had no information about that. By early December, we had done some additional research and returned to the ANC with a more formal report of our findings, regarding what had been applied for permit-wise, what was going up on the site, some of the architectural plans we were able to get off the Internet…

Q: When you say “we,” who is the we?

RG: In early December, 2012, I and a few neighbors called a neighborhood meeting, distributing flyers within a few blocks of the site. It was decided at these meetings that we would form a neighborhood coalition to see if we could negotiate with the Cafritzes. We thought it wise to band together also to communicate more effectively with the ANC and overall we wanted to band together to protect the community as best we could, to insure that harmful features of the building were minimized.

Q: That is the origin of the CNC?

RG: Yes. That is the origin of the 5333 Connecticut Neighborhood Coalition in December 2012.

Q: What were your constitutive meetings like?

RG: When we described the scale of the building and the distance it came back off of Connecticut Avenue and its height, people—including those involved in the 1980s—were shocked, because it was the antithesis of the agreement between the community and Mr. Cafritz going back to that time. There was shock over the massing of the building, sitting back into the neighborhood, the lack of green space of the building, that prospect that all the trees would be torn down—not just on the site, but also in the surrounding public area. So, I think we were dumbfounded by the scale—originally it was going to be 184 to 204 units. Now, all of the sudden it was 263 units. How was he able to build a much, much larger building now when he had built a maximum-sized building in the 1980s, which was much smaller. Going around the room, people were dismayed. We all felt protective of our community. We were now confronted by a building twenty feet taller and substantially wider than the building we expected, if there were going to be a building on that site.

Q: Were people also concerned about the lack of outreach and consultation by the developer?

RG: Absolutely. People were very concerned that it was done completely in secrecy and to the point that, again, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs(DCRA), which is required by law to notify the ANC of projects that are in their district, had simply allowed the ANC line on the permanent application to be left blank, so that the project would be invisible to the ANC. And this was repeated the first seven times the DCRA reported permit applications on its ANC report. The ANC district box was not filled out. So, it essentially made the building invisible to the ANC for roughly seven months after the permits were initially applied for.

Q: How did you interpret this? Was it a kind of strategic move on the part of the developer?

RG: We consulted with some people with knowledge of the situation and “yeah, for some of the very connected permitting people and permitting agencies, the permit runners and the very connected law firms, that this type of thing can be done in a way that is strategic. You could essentially avoid scrutiny.

Q: You could buy yourself some time.

RG: You could buy yourself some time until it was very late in the process. And that’s what happened here.

Q: So it does happen. Is it supposed to happen?

RG: Absolutely not. It is very clear in the ANC law that they are to be notified and are to receive a report twice a month for permit applications affecting the ANC’s jurisdiction. So, it is clearly not consistent with the ANC law.

Q: I am trying to place myself in that meeting you convened in December 2012. Some frustration must have been articulated.

RG: Some things we had to cobble together over time. We tried to figure out for a month or more how the ANC didn’t know about it. If it hit the report and said there was a 263 unit apartment building, you would think someone would notice that. But it didn’t hit the report. Moreover, in the note column it said something like “residential.” It didn’t have a description that every other project on the report had, thereby letting the ANC know what was going on. There was just a very vague reference. There was no way that anyone could know what was proposed there from the permit. It was an underhanded way of hiding the project.

Q: When did you finally get a good sense of what was being proposed?

RG: Well, Google is an amazing thing. We were able to Google enough of the architectural plans left on a public website by the contractor, that by early December 2012 we very much knew what they were proposing. Understanding the building was not the hard part. It took us another week or two to look through the plans. We scratched our heads, pondering how they were able to build a building 20% larger this time than last time, when none of the zoning regulations had meaningfully changed. We were led in this way to look at the plans in more detail, with the participation of architects who live in our neighborhood. We came to the conclusion that they were taking exceptionally lenient and absurd views of the zoning regulations to simply not count entire floors of the building that should have been counted toward its size. Because we had access to such a volume of plans, it did not take us long to figure out the games they were playing and what was being proposed. I think it took us longer to figure out that the ANC hadn’t been notified seven straight times regarding permits applied for by the project. It took us a little bit longer to figure out some of the games that had been played, but the gist of the building we knew pretty early on.

Q: One thing that strikes me in listening to you is the concentration of expertise and technical background in the neighborhood available to you for developing an independent capacity to evaluate the project and then share the information and analysis with the neighborhood so it can react in whatever way it desired. One doesn’t find that often in communities.

RG: Right. There is no doubt that being in Chevy Chase with an amazing talented pool of neighbors is very helpful in endeavors like this. There are attorneys and architects and public relations people within a single block of 5333.

Q: What happened next, now that the coalition has been launched?

RG: In December 2012 and January 2013 we did a large amount of research to make sure we fully understood the architectural plans, the legal history of the site, the old PUD documents. As a group, we really dug in on the legal front, on the architectural front and probably most importantly on our relationship with the ANC and with DC City Councilmember Cheh. The culmination of that was an initial meeting at the Chevy Chase Community Center on January 3, 2013. There we presented an overview of the project to the broader Chevy Chase DC neighborhood. There was a heartening turnout and Councilmember Cheh attended. That was the first time we got a much larger swathe of the neighborhood into a room and they were able to get a report on the project from us and what we had learned to that point. Neighbors were able to give their feedback to us and to Councilmember Cheh.

Q: Was that the event at which the Cafritzes were also present.

RG: No. That came 20 days later.

Q: How many showed up at the initial meeting?

RG: My impressionistic count was in the range of 150-200 people. There was some streaming in and out—at any moment there were probably 150 people at most.

Q: That is an enormous turnout!

RG: Yes, but many more attended the second meeting 20 days later when the Cafritzes showed up. Based on the sign-in sheets at the January 23 meeting, we attracted about 400 people.

Q: How did you get from the first meeting on the 3rd to the one on the 23rd?

RG: Councilmember Cheh was helpful in prodding the Cafritzes, who at that point wanted absolutely nothing to do with the community. She had been flooded with emails from Chevy Chase residents expressing dismay that the Cafritzes had been quite stand-offish and had shown no interest in engaging with the community whatsoever. She was helpful in applying pressure on the Cafritzes and their counsel to appear at the Community Center, so that people could comment to them, ask them questions, and get a report on their plans.

Q: I cannot remember any other event that drew as many residents to the Community Center.

RG: DCRA Director Nicholas Majett tweeted from the meeting commenting on the huge turnout.

Q: More than turn out to vote sometimes…

RG: It took a significant amount of legwork by the community to inform their neighbors. We wanted everyone to understand what was going on, as it has implications not only for this particular building, but broader implications for community development going forward. I think the community responded because there is always a sense of right and wrong that is strong in the Chevy Chase community. The idea that developers would do something harmful to the community, without even attempting to mitigate its effect, clearly did not go over well. We have had a huge amount of support within the community registered in petitions we circulated and people have shown up in large numbers to the meetings. If nothing else, it has been a tremendous way for getting to know a lot more neighbors and appreciating the talented pool of people who live in this community.

Q: Bring us up to date. What has happened between then and now? What is the current situation?

RG: Between last January and now we have spent a lot of time trying to apply pressure. We challenged the project with the release of certain legal documents in the spring of this year to apply pressure on the government, which appeared to be rubber-stamping the plans. Ultimately, some minor changes were made to the plans and they were approved by the government in May 2013. Within a few days of that, we filed appeals before the Board of Zoning Adjustment and the Office of Administrative Hearings for both zoning and building code violations. Much of the springtime was taken with meeting with ANC members, getting their support, which they did give. They joined both the BZA appeal with the neighborhood and the OAH appeal with the neighborhood. So, they were party to those appeals that were filed in June 2013.

With the ANC joining our appeal, that finally brought the Cafritzes and their representatives out of the shadows. In late June 2013, they actually agreed to meet with us and with the ANC for the first time.

Q: Did the meeting take place?

RG: Yes. The meeting took place in June 2013. Clearly, the Cafritzes were very worried that the ANC had joined the appeal and that summer they agreed to make some relatively minor changes to the building, including more parking spaces underground. There were other minor changes, but nothing relating to the mass of the building or the height of the building, or anything that we in the neighborhood would view as more meaningful. We had two meetings with the Cafritzes. From the point of view of the neighbors, nothing meaningful was accomplished. Ultimately, there was a feeling on both sides that there would not be a resolution amenable to both sides. What the Cafritzes did succeed in doing is getting the ANC to agree to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for a “new building.” Essentially, this new building would have additional parking, would not allow residential parking permits for the residents, and various other provisions. In August 2013, the ANC indicated to us that they were going to enter into this memorandum of understanding with the Cafritzes.

Q: When you say “new building,” you are referring to the same project?

RG: It is the same site and essentially the same building. It is something of a shell game. They say the building is going to be a tiny bit shorter. In the end they removed a railing on top of the building, so they claim it is shorter: but it is not shorter. So there was nothing meaningful changed, except for a little more underground parking.

Q: Is that the current situation?

RG: By coming to that agreement the ANC removed itself from the appeals. They stood down from the BZA and OAH appeals. In late September 2013, we had our Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing. We presented our case, also publishing it on our website (www.5333cnc.org) to make sure we were very transparent with our allegations, so that the matter would not disappear into an administrative black hole. We wanted our community and other communities across the city to understand the types of favorable treatment, the absurdities, the imaginary measuring points that developers can get away with in DC these days. So we did a ca. 175-200 page pre-hearing statement with exhibits that we published on our website. That was the basis for our appeal in late September of this year.

Q: Who drew up that report? It must have been quite an undertaking.

RG: It was indeed. Several neighbors drafted it with some assistance from outside counsel, who polished it up and prepared it technically for submission.

Q: Did they do it pro bono?

RG: Nope. We paid them.

Q: So, you had to raise some money.

RG: Yes. The neighbors willingly invested some capital in this. I think all of us are happy to invest some amount of capital to do the right thing. We think this is the right thing to protect the neighborhood. Even if the odds in this political environment are stacked against you, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do the right thing. We have all been willing to spend some money to bring transparency to this situation and hopefully to modify the outcome of the building.

Q: In a real sense, you are doing pro bono work for the community.

RG: Yes, more or less.

Q: You obviously have a website—another capacity that can’t be taken for granted even in this day and age. How did that come about?

RG: We have another neighbor who lives close by who we had never previously met, K.J. Hannah, who happened to be an amazingly talented web designer. Once she found out what was going on, she emailed the group and offered her services as our technology master. Another talented Chevy Chase resident willing to give a lot of her time. This allowed us to develop a website that had electronic petitions, that had a lot of information—a lot of the documents we published are on there, press releases—a tremendous resource that I think will live for years so that everyone has access to see the history of what’s gone on, the various legal documents, filings and so forth, so that when other community groups have to fight similar battles in the future, they will know what we went through and hopefully can piggyback on some of the work we have done.

Q: Who did you reach out to in pressing the case for transparency and plan modifications?

RG: It’s hard to say, as we have reached out to so many. Through the connections in the community we reached out to every at-large DC City Council member. We reached out to the relevant department heads in the city administration—DDOT, DCRA and otherwise—to lobby, to try to understand what was going on. We reached out to attorneys in the community for pro bono advice. We reached out to our own paid attorneys. We reached out to countless people for what to do. Community organizers, too. We are a broad coalition and we tapped a broad spectrum of expertise and connections.

Q: It is a miracle of our system of governance that people will come together when they are so busy attending to the exhaustively consuming daily demands of life—especially when they are not directly and immediately affected, not living in the shadow of the project. What do you think is motivating people?

RG: If it were simply a group of people complaining about a reasonable building that somebody had a right to build, I don’t think there would be nearly the community support. I think it taps the injustice that a lot of people in the community feel—the fact that the community wasn’t consulted, that it was hidden, that they ignored just every point of negotiation from the 1980s. Many are motivated by a desire to protect the unique, historic community that we live in. It felt like an unnecessary attack on the community. They could have easily built a structure in accordance with the 1980s plans—the same size and massing—and it could have been extremely lucrative for them. Instead, they chose to expand the building all the way back towards the homes at the full height. And I think that just doesn’t sit well with people who are highly protective of their community. This includes people from Barnaby Woods, who live more than a mile from the site. So yes, it hit a lot of people throughout the city. We have had people from the Palisades, from Tenley, and from other wards weigh in, sending emails and coming forth. People from Prince George’s County who are embroiled in a dispute with the Cafritzes out there. There is a lot of educated discontent. There was not a lot of “we don’t want a building there at all.” It was much more wonderment about why they were going out of the way to harm the community, needlessly. That has been our theme all along. I am sure you have seen the lawn signs around the neighborhood. For us, it is more about respecting the community and avoiding needless harm, which would have been easy to do.

Q: When you mobilize like this, there is a constellation of interests resisting, if only passively, your action. In addition to that, have you sensed any backlash to your campaign? Have you been aware of people disagreeing with your stance, perhaps animated by another vision of urban development?

RG: I would say that almost all the opposition that we have had is a very ignorant opposition. It is people from other parts of the city who will tweet “NIMBY”, without knowing any of the details, but willing to weigh in anytime someone opposes a development in DC, they assume it is crotchety old people without a leg to stand on, denying any change, wanting things to stay the way they are. But that is not who we are as a community. So, it has led to very, very little opposition within the Chevy Chase community to our efforts, because it is hard to say that, when you could build a building close to Connecticut Avenue, that instead you should build it next to a 1911 home. We just feel like we have a very defensible position that resonates well, and not just within the community, but throughout the city. The only people who apparently don’t like what we are doing are members of the urbanist tribe who feel that any multi-family housing or condominium complex is good, not matter what the harm.

Q: In the broader scheme of things in DC there are several related conversations playing out. One is the discussion about amending the city’s zoning law. And there are other projects under consideration in which the issue of parking availability is playing a role. These are matters on the radar screen along with 5333.

RG: Right. I think this has caused 5333 to resonate a lot more, because although this is the project that affects our community, it is so very representative of the push in the DC, both on the Zoning Re-write (ZRR) as well as on the Height Act changes. The confluence of these issues meant that each person had to pick their spots and allocate their time, but there is a common thread for many of us engaged in 5333, or the zoning re-write, or the height act. There is a groundswell in DC for a not well thought-out push to change things for the sake of change. Many things in the zoning re-write and the height act are detrimental to single families, because they are thought of much more in the context of neighborhoods further towards the center of the city, or the Penn quarter or downtown areas. They don’t take sufficiently into account the wishes and unique needs of single-family home areas. So it has certainly been an interesting time. I would say the same thing about the Height Act. That is a matter that our community and immediate neighborhood around 5333 feels very strongly about, because we live in very close proximity of apartment buildings. And we can do that because they are mostly 80 feet high with some systems on top and built tightly along Connecticut Avenue. Therefore, it is possible to live in harmony with them. When you start talking about buildings 20, 30, or 40 feet taller that are also much more expansive, the shadowing effects and the effect on trees really have character-changing potential throughout the city. We have had neighbors testify as recently as a few days ago for the Height Act hearing. It really has been an eye-opening experience for people like myself who were very focused on raising children and not activism. I probably would not have known that any of this stuff was going on were it not for getting on list-serves mainly through work with the 5333 project.

Q: Let’s take a moment to talk about aesthetics. 5333 is destined to be a glass building, if I am not mistaken. What role does this factor play in people’s attitudes toward the project?

RG: I think its proposed glass construction doesn’t help. But everyone latches on to their own aspect of the building. Most people associate Connecticut Avenue with masonry buildings with good-sized windows surrounded by large trees. When you walk along the Avenue in the evening, it is a dark, serene place. Light pollution on Connecticut Avenue is very low in comparison to other cities and this is a unique attribute of the Connecticut Avenue corridor that many neighbors appreciate. The glass aspect of 5333 plans brings up a lot of issues people don’t automatically think about. The light pollution is something we are certainly worried about. There are going to be a lot of evenings on which it will be just brighter. It may not be all night long; as the night progresses, some portion of the residents can be expected to turn of lights. But in reality, some people do leave lights on in the Kenmore and other large buildings. So the all-glass aspect of 5333 has issues with reflected light, with light pollution, and my understanding is that a lot of lamp posts are contemplated for the front of the building, although I don’t think they have even submitted a public space plan at this point. But this would project a lot of light up and out, as opposed to the traditional lights for safety, which project down and are limited. So I think you are seeing an attempt to bring an out-of-character glass development that will have a light pollution impact that will have reflected heat limiting trees that can be grown around the building. The height of the building will block light for any trees to the north of it. There are underground parking vaults that insure there will not be permeable soil around the building, because the parking extends out all the around the property line. In short, you are going to see a lot that originally had ten single-family homes surrounded by trees on which for all time you will not be able to plant anything more than small trees. The glass, the lack of trees, the general feel of the building as something that is more appropriate to the Dulles corridor have affected the views of many. Others are most offended by the ridiculous zoning interpretations and the fact that the building sits back off of Connecticut. But certainly the glass has not gone over well. It is something that bothers me, though I understand that under the zoning code there is nothing I can do about it currently. Hopefully that will change in the future.

Q: Is my sense correct that the opposition to 5333 as currently conceived is not a matter of an attitude toward modernity as much as it is about the technical aspects you have described. It has more to do with how the building would function in the actual context. Surveying Chevy Chase neighborhoods, one can find examples of successful modern buildings in the single-family residential areas.

RG: Not like this. This one will stand out. There are no equivalent buildings in the neighborhood. In the evening, anyone driving past will be drawn to the massive light coming off of it, and because there are not trees around it, it will stand out like no other building in the community.

Q: Among single-family homes there is some variation between styles—many are shingle or colonials, but you also see the odd Bauhaus type dwelling. I guess my question is your sense about how much people’s views of 5333 is driving by aesthetics and taste in architecture.

RG: I think there is a lot of that. The vast majority think the building is tremendously ugly. Referring back to the members of the Board of Zoning Adjustment, there was a visceral negative reaction to the design of the building. It was that out of character for people who understand the neighborhood. Even if we succeed in getting a slightly narrower building or a slightly less tall building, a glass building will be built and the neighbors are not going to be happy and I predict that even those who think they might be happy will be visually shocked by the amount of light pollution. It will be similar to the effect of office buildings downtown, lit up like Christmas trees. When you are looking at a building that is 100% windows, it will be bright.

Q: Do you think that an historic preservation district might have made a difference in this case?

RG: I would hope so. I have long contemplated what could have been different. Legally, I don’t know all the minutia. But looking around the city, it is stunning to me that with the number of areas that have zoning overlay districts or historic districts, Chevy Chase has never thought that it could be the victim of bad processes which can result in a 5333. When zoning overlays and historic districts have been brought up, many couldn’t comprehend the relevance for them. They tended to think of these measures as someone meddling with aspects of their home, but they didn’t think of the larger picture—that the entire character of the area around Politics & Prose Bookstore, or the Methodist Home, or Knollwood, or Ingleside, or the entire commercial stretch north of Livingston Street could be meaningfully changed. Many who are not for historic districts or zoning overlays are trusting; they think that DC will somehow magically protect their communities. I think that what we have seen is that if you do not have a zoning overlay or a historic district the DC permit office will not protect your community. They will take the most aggressive interpretation that any developer wants to give to zoning requirements. There is an overall penchant for development. They will look the other way so that the developer can succeed. One thing about the Board of Zoning Adjustment: for people who think it is not easy to go through the BZA for waiver of a zoning rule, experience shows that it is preposterously easy to do this. Something like 95% of the cases that go before the BZA get approval. These are normally people who are looking for waivers of zoning regulations without benefit to the community, often to build something bigger and more economically advantageous to them. The BZA is not a source of protection. It is important for people to understand that it is a mechanism for knowledgeable people to navigate the system to get breaks on zoning regulations. So, with all that said, I am certainly in favor of zoning overlay districts, historic districts, or anything that protects the character of the community in a reasonable way. You can come to arguments as to why you should not have such a district easily and those tend to propagate. You can say I don’t want so and so telling me how to choose my windows. My sense is that there are many people who were against the historic district when it was voted on a handful of years ago who I think would change their tune now that they understand how things truly work in DC. So I think things would be different and the question is how they would be different and that I am less certain about. I know that even city-wide the degree of protection now is not what it once was. The office of planning is very, very pro-development and pro-growth. Once you have the characters of communities change, you can’t really get it back. It takes a hundred years or even two hundred years to build character, but it can go away in a flash.

To return for a moment to 5333, we are now awaiting the outcome of our claim before the Office of Administrative Appeal. In addition to zoning violations that happen across the city and can happen on a smaller scale with individual homes, the building code in DC is something else that has not been enforced. That is the subject of our OAH appeal. We hope if the building code is enforced that this, too, would provide protection for communities like Chevy Chase. Currently, you can look at a giant bay window of the type not allowed and argue that it is three bay windows attached and get away with it and build three times as large as the code allows. With respect to 5333, we are still fighting a lot of Building Code aspects with broader implications for what developers can get away with, both downtown and in neighborhoods like this. We also see it relevant to single-family neighborhoods in determining what people can inflict on their neighbors by, for instance, inventing elevations. Where there is a 40-foot height restriction, can you first build a mound of dirt on which to place the structure and “legally” exceed the limit? There are all sorts of games that are being played these days that we think should be clamped down on to give everyone a fair playing field. Hopefully, between the zoning re-write fight, the Height Act fight, potential future historic districts and zoning overlays we will achieve more ways to protect our neighborhoods.

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The post Mobilizing to Protect the Neighborhood: The 5333 Connecticut Avenue Development Plan, 1977-2013 appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Editor’s note: With this contribution, HCCDC launches an effort to capture the texture, topography, demographics, institutions, everyday and notable events, rhythm of the community and the issues that animate Chevy Chase as it materializes in the actions and perceptions of our neighbors. In so doing, we are complementing the oral history project we launched in early 2011 with a round of interviews aimed at reconstituting the neighborhood from the 1920s to the 1950s. In that case, the aim is to reconstruct the past from memory. In this case, it is about reflecting the present or just-past. Making use of the archival potential of digitized records, we hope we are contributing a record that will be useful to historians in generations to come.

Snowmaggedon—February 2010, one of the biggest snows over the course of a century—did not particularly distinguish Chevy Chase DC from the surrounding region, but that is the week we moved to McKinley Street from our previous home in Friendship Heights DC. This residential upgrade was a counter-intuitive move in light of our recent graduation to the status of empty-nesters. In fact, the upgrade—with greater and more genial space, a nice garden, a deck—was designed in part to attract our adult children back with families they would presumably acquire in the coming years. In between these visits we hoped to embrace a life more involved in the community than before (if that were possible for parents of a Deal and Wilson student). We expected to make an important life transition.

We already knew something of Chevy Chase DC—at least around the Connecticut Avenue artery—since we made frequent visits, sometimes on foot, from Friendship Heights to the Avalon Theater, Potomac Video, and Politics & Prose Bookstore. Indeed, I had lived for a year on Quesada Street in the early 1990s, when I was on the faculty of American University and was still a jogger. My route ran down Utah into Rock Creek Park.

Quickly we learned that we had landed in a logistical sweet spot. All the E Metro buses stop across the street from our house. The Community Center and library are five minutes by foot; Politics & Prose is a 13 minute walk; and the Broad Branch Market is literally around the corner. Not to speak of the Lafayette tennis courts. The new location did add two miles to my 18 mile round trip to and from work, which I sometimes walk.

The house itself is a gem: a “kit house” from the Lewis Manufacturing Company of Bay City, Michigan—the Chevy Chase model shown in Lewis’ 1920 catalogue. A classic bungalow, it was built in 1919 on land subdivided from a large estate. Street legend has it that the four Lewis homes constructed on McKinley Street behind the “farm house” (which faces Nevada Avenue) were designed to advertise what LMC had on offer. Ours had three owners in the 90 years since it had been built before we moved in. It has been structurally modified only slightly and so projects an authentic sense of the style’s arts and crafts origins. Parts were pre-cut and shipped by rail, then assembled locally by the owner or a builder. Local components included the granite blocks used for the foundation and chimney, which came from a quarry possibly in Cleveland Park or Kensington. Those blocks are ubiquitous in area homes.

Speaking of blocks, my wife’s role as neighborhood watch block captain on McKinley Street conveyed with the property acquisition. The previous owner, a designer-architect, had been the block captain and we had just received the training for the program in our other neighborhood. So, it was natural that she assumed the responsibility. It was a smart move on our part, since it forced us to ring our neighbors’ doorbells within the first two months after the move. We learned something important about the character of the place that way: if there is a mechanism for meeting the neighbors, you will find them very welcoming. Otherwise, they will be discreet in approaching you. We also learned early on about the life-paths of those most proximate to us—a resident since ’67 from across the street sold up and moved to the west coast to be near his son after his brother and co-tenant passed away. The process was bittersweet, as neighbors came together to mourn and subsequently to party once the property had been sold. Another welcome party was arranged for the new neighbors—also a local move of new empty-nesters. Another neighbor suffered a stroke, communication made the rounds about that and meals were coordinated for the family. The District of Columbia is famously a city of transients, thanks to its role in national and international relations, but Chevy Chase effortlessly mixes continuity and change. Through HCCDC’s oral history project, we have learned that many residents can trace their Washington roots back two generations or more.

We also learned that neighbors are differentially gregarious. We have connected with three block neighbors with whom we occasionally have dinner—or at least drinks on the deck or front porch. And then the conversation is about the €urozone, China, the DC school system, experiences with development aid agencies, or trading notes on gardeners-landscapers, plumbers, or other service providers. Sometimes these rendezvous are quite spontaneous. We call on each other in small but meaningful ways—keeping an eye on the house when the neighbor is away, collecting the newspapers or mail.

History is to be found embodied in most of the neighbors we have met. There is our Ukrainian neighbor who after experiencing alternating German and Soviet occupations, had a split-second decision to make that allowed her to survive and later prosper. ChCh is expatriate rich. Until recently, the Swiss embassy counselor for science and technology lived two doors down with his family. The Washington bureau chief of a mass circulation Berlin newspaper lives a couple of blocks away with his Polish wife. A Danish journalist also lives close by. Many older neighbors have immigrant backgrounds and are connected with major doings in DC. One neighbor is an internationally regarded astronomer whose work on angular momentum of galaxies provided the basis for “dark matter” theories of the cosmos. The father of one of our ANC representatives is a descendant of the engineer who executed the trolley line plan for ChCh’s initial development. He came to DC in the 1930s as a New Deal intellectual who was married to a woman born in Berlin of an American mother and German father. There was a thriving German-Jewish community in DC in that same decade and their descendants also count among our neighbors.

Six months into our residence on McKinley Street we took the walking tour organized by Historic Chevy Chase DC. Chatting with HCCDC president, Chas Cadwell, after the event while sipping an iced coffee in the Avalon café, it became apparent that his second grade school teacher in Stratford, Connecticut and my mother were the same person. So, we signed up for HCCDC. We represented the “new blood” following a phase of retrenchment once the historic district movement, led by HCCDC, failed to carry the day in 2007. Who are we? Post-55 professionals interested in the community—an architect, a builder, a real estate agent, a think-tank guy, a journalist, and a few retirees from or late career employees in federal service or quasi federal service—State Department, Archives, National Academy of Engineering.

HCCDC has advanced community self-awareness. So, too, has the Chevy Chase Listserv, to which we are plugged in, especially for the safety announcements (wearing our block captain hats). But we also purchased a canvas by a Peruvian painter through it, were alerted to Chevy Chase Citizens Association meetings, found out about estate/yard sales in the neighborhood, and followed spikes associated with local elections, planning issues, and especially service providers, e.g., PEPCO response after power outages. The ChCh Listerv is more comprehensive than its Friendship Heights counterpart.

Carl Lankowski is an HCCDC board member, reachable at c.lankowski@verizon.net.

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