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How Chevy Chase was built, from DC's historic building permits, and what the newspaper said about it a hundred years ago this week.
| Decade | Buildings |
|---|---|
| 1900s | 54 |
| 1910s | 376 |
| 1920s | 957 |
| 1930s | 1,463 |
| 1940s | 577 |
| 1950s | 363 |
| 1960s | 21 |
| 1970s | 33 |
| 1980s | 29 |
| 1990s | 3 |
| 2000s | 2 |
| 2010s | 5 |
Each record is one building listed on a historic DC building permit; a single permit can cover many buildings. The busiest decade is highlighted in the chart.
In 1912, Harry Wardman built 19 buildings on the 3700 block of Jocelyn Street NW under 3 permits, designed by White (Frank Russell) & Co.. The largest permit covered 14 buildings at an estimated $48,000 in total.
Mentions of Chevy Chase in the Evening Star, October 31 – November 6, 1926. Searched for "Chevy Chase, D. C.", "Chevy Chase, D.C.".
“Price has been materially reduced. $31,000 Chevy Chase, D. C. Among’beautiful surroundings, a little over a square west of Conn. ave. and well tills side of the Circle, in a section of new. high-class homes, on a lot with a frontage of 75 …”See page 42 at loc.gov ↗
“… weather-stripped, lighted by electricity and heated hY mo*t improved vapor system; oak floors, of course, and all that goes to round out a real home. $13,750 Chevy Chase, D. C. On an avenue about 2 squares from Conn, ave, a brand-new detaohed home with 6 rooms and bath and garage; right up to date as regards oak floor hot-water heat and light: one of the …”See page 44 at loc.gov ↗
“BUYS! $13,450 In Chevy Chase, D. C. Just off Connecticut ave. in a section of all fine old detached homes.”See page 56 at loc.gov ↗
Clips are machine-read text (OCR) from scanned Evening Star pages on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America, lightly cleaned (line-break hyphens rejoined, stray symbols removed); misspellings are the scanner's. Newspapers this old are public domain. Each clip links to its page at loc.gov. Clips that mention race, covenants, deed restrictions or slurs are skipped automatically (keyword list: race, races, racial, colored, coloured, negro, negroes, white only, whites only, for whites, white people, white persons, white residents, caucasian, segregation, segregated, covenant, covenants, restricted, restriction, restrictions, plus a list of slurs), because they need an editor's context; legal notices and lists of private individuals are skipped too.
![Conn. Ave. north from Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C., [between 1909 and 1932]](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/cph/3a10000/3a13000/3a13300/3a13376r.jpg)
![Chevy Chase Presbyterian, [Washington, D.C.], [between 1910 and 1925]](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/npcc/31700/31734r.jpg)
Photographs from the Library of Congress (National Photo Company Collection; Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection), each with no known restrictions on publication or in the public domain, per the Library. Titles are the Library's, written when the photos were catalogued; some use the language of their time. Each links to its record.
Lord Baltimore deeded a 560-acre tract called Cheivy Chace to Col. Joseph Belt on July 10, 1725. The name echoes the ballad of Chevy Chase about a 1388 border battle in the Cheviot Hills. In 1890 Francis Newlands founded the Chevy Chase Land Company, whose streetcar suburb carried the name across the District line.
Earlier: Cheivy ChaceSources: What's in a Name? Chevy Chase (Boundary Stones, WETA) · The Naming of Chevy Chase (Chevy Chase Historical Society) · Chevy Chase (Washington, D.C.) - WikipediaThe Chevy Chase Land Company built the circle around 1890 while extending Connecticut Avenue; it marks the avenue's only bend, where the company turned north after failing to buy land for a straight road to Rockville. The Garden Club of America added entrance markers in 1933, and the Newlands Memorial Fountain went up in 1938.
Source: Chevy Chase Circle - WikipediaRepresentative Francis Newlands quietly bought more than 1,700 acres along a five-mile line and, around 1890, extended the avenue north from Rock Creek with his Rock Creek Railway. The Taft Bridge joined the two halves in 1907. Streetcars ran through Chevy Chase Circle until 1935, when buses replaced them.
Sources: Connecticut Avenue - Wikipedia · Chevy Chase Circle - WikipediaBuilt by the Union Army during the Civil War to link the forts of northwest Washington. A Rock Creek bridge, now Joyce Road Bridge, came in 1929, and around 1960 a four-lane bypass with a new crossing replaced the original two-lane route over the creek.
Source: Military Road (Washington, D.C.) - WikipediaStarts at Oregon Avenue in Chevy Chase and runs southwest past several circles and American University. It was called Chain Bridge Road until 1906.
Earlier: Chain Bridge RoadSource: List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - WikipediaA state-named street that winds through Chevy Chase from Western Avenue to Broad Branch Road.
Source: List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - WikipediaRuns from Military Road along the west side of Rock Creek Park to Western Avenue. It was Daniel Road until 1938, the same year the original Oregon Avenue, in Shaw, was renamed Swann Street.
Earlier: Daniel RoadSource: List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - WikipediaA state-named street in upper Chevy Chase running from 27th Street to Western Avenue.
Source: List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - WikipediaOne of three streets along the D.C.-Maryland line, though it lies wholly inside the District. Proposed in 1893 and built fitfully from about 1900 to 1931, it passes through Chevy Chase Circle and Pinehurst Circle on the way to Oregon Avenue.
Earlier: Columbia Boulevard, Boundary AvenueSource: Western Avenue (Washington, D.C.) - WikipediaStill looking for a reliable source on Broad Branch Road NW, Chevy Chase Parkway NW, Livingston Street NW, McKinley Street NW, Northampton Street NW, Rittenhouse Street NW, Legation Street NW, Morrison Street NW, Tennyson Street NW, Oliver Street NW, Patterson Street NW, Quesada Street NW, Belt Road NW, Pinehurst Circle NW. We don't publish a name's story until we can cite one. Know it? Tell us.
A speech by the retired principal of the Chevy Chase School, later the E.V. Brown School, which opened in March 1898 on the site of today's community center. She describes a four-room building amid mud and thickets, 25 pupils from outlying farms when only Connecticut Avenue was cut through, and stove-heated classrooms.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Chevy Chase School, E.V. Brown School, early Connecticut AvenueDean, who lived from birth in her family's stone house in Chevy Chase, tells how her grandfather bought about 40 acres in the early 1900s, reaching it by streetcar, and how the land was sold after his 1945 death, with houses along Rittenhouse built in the early 1950s.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Rittenhouse Street, Nebraska Avenue, family landBenson describes his parents finding their house on Upland Terrace by chance during the Depression, the farmland across Western Avenue, and, in the 1940s, Pinehurst Circle neighbors raising money to buy out a racially mixed couple who had bought a house there.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Pinehurst, segregation, Upland TerraceAn oral history prepared around 1999 from an interview with Marie Higger. Sam Higger bought a building in the 5800 block of Connecticut Avenue in 1930 and installed a big soda fountain that became a neighborhood meeting place; the store was the first in the area to carry penicillin. She recalls a warning that some might oppose a Jewish pharmacist.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Higger's Drug Store, soda fountain, Connecticut AvenueHiggins, a Chevy Chase native and sculptor, lives in what the archive calls the oldest house in Chevy Chase DC. She describes the house her builder father designed in 1925 and his family's earlier years in a shotgun house beside the Broad Branch Market.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · oldest house, Broad Branch Road, Quesada StreetKlieger, from a German Jewish Washington family, recalls how she and her husband chose Oliver Street in 1956 for Lafayette School, looking for swing sets in back yards, and how glad they were to find a neighborhood without restrictions against Jews. Mothers volunteered heavily at Lafayette.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Jewish families, Lafayette School, Oliver StreetThe couple explain why they stayed in the city while others left for the suburbs. Mae chose their short street for its many children and Lafayette School; she recalls friends moving to Maryland when busing began at Deal Junior High.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Lafayette School, busing, staying in the cityAn interview the astronomer gave about the neighborhood rather than her science. Rubin traces her family's moves, coming to Washington, and settling in the Chevy Chase house where she arrived with three children while her husband was still in Illinois; their fourth child came in 1960.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · McKinley Street, family, astronomy careerBeach recalls moving to Chevy Chase Parkway in 1942, hearing about D-Day in 1944, pickup games on Nevada Avenue and at Lafayette, Maryland children crossing Western Avenue to D.C. schools, and the 1942 builder houses on streets such as Rittenhouse and Stuyvesant.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Chevy Chase Parkway, D-Day, street games, Lafayette SchoolKotler, described by the archive as father of the ANCs and the neighborhood government movement, recounts his Chicago youth, studies and community organizing with Saul Alinsky, and coming to Washington to join a new policy institute based near Dupont Circle.
At Historic Chevy Chase DC · Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, neighborhood government, Institute for Policy StudiesSearch the archives yourself: The People's Archive, DC Public Library · Historic Chevy Chase DC Oral History Archive · Humanities Truck Community Archive, American University · Tenleytown Historical Society · Boundary Stones (WETA) · Glover Park History: Oral History and Reminiscences · Cleveland Park Historical Society Oral Histories · Rainbow History Project Digital Collections · hometown DC (DC History Center) · Hola Cultura: Adams Morgan History · Citizens Association of Georgetown · Peabody Room, Georgetown Neighborhood Library (DC Public Library) · Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum Archives: A Right to the City Exhibition Records · Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project · Mosaic Theater H Street Oral History Project · Library of Congress, Manuscript Division · Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Smithsonian) · Naval History and Heritage Command, Navy Department Library · The Catholic University of America Archives · Bygone Brookland · Dig DC, DC Public Library · hometown DC (HumanitiesDC / Historical Society of Washington, D.C.) · Dig DC, DC Public Library's digital repository · A Right to the City exhibition records, Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Smithsonian) · Rainbow History Project Digital Collections · Palisades Community Association · Forest Hills Connection (neighborhood history series). Summaries are ours; the recordings and their rights stay with each archive.