Touted as the “best suburb of the National Capital” by the Washington Post, Chevy Chase DC is exemplary of an early-twentieth-century residential suburb built along the electric streetcar route in Washington, D.C. Now collectively known as Chevy Chase DC, the numerous planned residential subdivisions bifurcating a commercial corridor on Connecticut Avenue south of the Maryland and District line at Chevy Chase Circle create a distinctive neighborhood with both urban and suburban characteristics dating from 1907 to the mid-twentieth century.
Historic Pictures
The platting of Chevy Chase DC by two of the Washington metropolitan area’s most prominent developers, Francis Griffith Newlands and Fulton Gordon, propelled development in the northwestern quadrangle of the nation’s capital, forever changing the layout of the city and adding to the prestige of Connecticut Avenue. Although bordering its precursor, Francis Newland’s planned picturesque Maryland suburb of Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase DC illustrates more of the traditional components of the District of Columbia: commercial buildings, apartment buildings, and multi-family dwellings as well as freestanding single-family houses laid out in a relatively traditional grid-like plan. The multifaceted growth is a result of several different developers and builders, and their vision for residential subdivisions along a highly traveled commercial corridor in northwest Washington, D.C.
The area currently known as Chevy Chase DC consists of eight distinct developments:
Chevy Chase DC (1907),
Connecticut Avenue Terrace (1907),
Connecticut Avenue Park (1909),
Chevy Chase Heights (1910),
Chevy Chase Terrace (1910), and
Chevy Chase Grove No. 1, 2, and 3 (1913/1915/1918).
Throughout its development, the neighborhood of Chevy Chase DC has striven to create its own identity, which has been accomplished through its churches, schools, public facilities, and its thriving commercial district, as well as throughout its distinct early- to mid-twentieth-century residential architecture.