As I finish the edits on next Monday’s post on new Silver Spring McMansions, I put together this collage showing the older building stock in my North Four Corners neighborhood juxtaposed against a map with some of the earliest subdivision plats and their dates as an overlay.
© 2010 David S. Rotenstein
Greater Greater Washington is discussing urban football stadiums. Back in 1998, I wrote an opinion piece on Pittsburgh’s plans to demolish Three Rivers Stadium and build two new publicly-subsidized stadiums, one for the Steelers and another for the Pirates. Here’s my 1998 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article: Continue reading
They are among some of the search phrases used by people visiting the H4H blog this week. If you find any unifying threads, please let me know. Continue reading
Unpublished letter to the Washington Post:
As an academically trained folklorist, I continue to cling to the hope that one day newspapers will update their style guides to effectively decouple the word “myth” from all things untrue. In oral and written traditions there are myths, legends, and outright lies. Robert McCartney’s 12/9 column on Pepco’s untruths clearly falls into the latter category. Folklorists define myths as narratives believed to be true, which may contain a grain of fact, but which deal with supernatural beings or events. There’s nothing supernatural in Pepco’s conduct and the company’s lack of reliability.
— David Rotenstein, Silver Spring.
Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington
In 2007 I stumbled into a Washington, D.C., historic preservation kerfuffle. A local preservation advocate desperately wanted the District of Columbia government to designate a large brick home in Chevy Chase as a historic landmark. Although never designated, the brick home at 3637 Patterson Street NW came to have three stories attached to it before it was demolished. This article documents the man who built the house; the building’s place in space and history; and, the historic preservation battle fought to prevent its demolition. Continue reading
Downtown Silver Spring may lose another locally owned and operated business. According to a November Silver Spring Singular blog post, the Peterson Companies are pressuring the Family Dry Cleaners to leave the prominent Wayne Avenue Shopping Center location they have occupied since 2000 when the center opened. The dry cleaner’s lease expires next March. The blogger wrote that Peterson — which manages Downtown Silver Spring under an agreement with Montgomery County — is courting CVS to occupy the space now held by the cleaners, along with adjacent spaces formerly occupied by Hollywood Video and MotoPhoto (later, an Upscale Pharmacy outlet).
Family Dry Cleaners, Downtown Silver Spring. Photo by the author, December 2010.
The Montgomery County Planning Board last night voted to create two new historic districts in Clagettsville and Etchison in the county’s Upper Patuxent Planning Area. Last night’s meeting was the second work session held on proposed Master Plan for Historic Preservation designations since an October public hearing. Originally scheduled for early 2011, last night’s session was hastily added to the agenda because a property owner in one of the proposed historic districts pleaded with the Planning Board at its last work session on the designations to decide on her property before a purchase contract expires the end of the year. Continue reading
The latest issue of the Art Deco Society of Washington‘s Trans-Lux newsletter is hot off the press (or whatever it is you call the PDF distiller). My article on Silver Spring’s 1939 World’s Fair Home:
© 2010 David S. Rotenstein
A new page aggregates links to blog posts and news stories about the Montgomery County, Maryland, park originally called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”: Josiah Henson and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” links roundup.
Please leave your suggestions for additions in this post’s comments field.
Thanks!
It’s been a fact of life in Washington for so long that people don’t notice — Rabbi Barry Freundel, Kesher Israel Synagogue, Washington, D.C.
Life inside an eruv, for Jews and non-Jews, is like life anywhere else. The boundary created by the eruv and the domain inside are meant to be unobtrusive and their builders strive for invisibility. I live inside an eruv and until I began than research, I was unaware of its existence or its limits. The same is true for many of my neighbors and friends and colleagues who live elsewhere in Montgomery County, Maryland. Continue reading