Author Archives: David Rotenstein

Montgomery County Planning Board Ends Preservationists’ Bid to Designate Silver Spring Church

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Yesterday the Montgomery County Planning Board held a session to evaluate whether it should forward a draft amendment to the Master Plan for Historic Preservation that would have designated the First Baptist Church of Silver Spring as historic.

By unanimous consensus, the Planning Board elected to not have a draft amendment prepared, effectively killing the proposal to designate the church. The Planning Board deferred to the 6-2 vote by the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission that the property met none of the nine legal criteria for designation.

I wrote briefly about the local preservationists who pursued the designation in an earlier post and I plan a follow-up post on the many issues raised by this case. In the meantime, the testimony I submitted to the Planning Board is reprinted below. The local newspaper, the Montgomery Gazette, reported on the Planning Board’s decision in a post published at its Web site overnight. Continue reading →

Historic Parkwood: An Introduction

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Earlier this year we moved into the Parkwood subdivision. Located partly in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, and partly in the City of Decatur, Parkwood is one of the last subdivisions developed in Druid Hills, the Garden City vision initially designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for Atlanta. Shortly after we arrived I asked myself, “How could I possibly live in an Olmsted suburb and not go rooting around in its history?”

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The Society for Industrial Archeology Meeting: Social Media View

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A little Continue reading →

That’s No Tree, That’s A Cell Tower

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People occasionally duck into Song Won’s Pro Cleaners to ask her about the large tree in the parking lot behind the dry cleaning store on North Highland Ave. NE.  The thing behind her store, however, is no tree. It’s a cell tower constructed to look like a tree.

“The tree is kind of interesting,” she said. “I tell customers, these are antennas. It’s not a tree. They take pictures.” Continue reading →

Urban farm or neighborhood nuisance? Decatur to decide (Updated)

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What would you do if you lived in a dense urban neighborhood that is zoned R-60 (a single-family residential district) and your neighbor had nearly 30 chickens, two ducks, an adult turkey, three pygmy goats, two dogs, two cats, a turtle, and some fish?

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DeKalb County’s ranch houses: ubiquitous and uber sexy?

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When we moved from the D.C. suburbs to the Atlanta suburbs in February, we exchanged a common 1930s house for a common 1950s house. We went from a Cape Cod built in 1936 to a ranch house built in the mid-1950s.

After we moved in we realized that we were living inside the Druid Hills Historic District and that the ranch houses lining our street were considered contributing elements to the district. Last year, the Georgia’s state historic preservation office released a well-researched and highly accessible ranch house context study. I downloaded the report and browsed through it before moving on to the business of moving. When I revisited the report a few weeks ago I realized that several of the homes discussed in there report were located just a few hundred feet from our new Georgia home.

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Silver Spring church not historic, says Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission

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I testified at tonight’s hearing. The HPC voted 6 to 2 against designating the First Baptist Church of Silver Spring. Here is the testimony I delivered earlier this evening: Continue reading →

Groundhog Day 2011

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Each year I used to celebrate Groundhog Day with calls to friends and relatives and with home-made cards. People would send me Groundhog Day-themed cartoons and I would add them to my collection. Then, in 1993 Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day movie was released and the holiday went commercial. You just can’t compete with popular culture and I abandoned the annual Groundhog Day celebration. Continue reading →

2011 snow storm: waiting for help that never arrived

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Last week we had a little snow storm that created huge problems for the Washington metropolitan area. A downed power line sent flames and smoke into our yard as the wire remained draped on our wood fence 20 feet away from our house. Using landlines and cellphones, our neighborhood was unable to reach Montgomery County 911 to report the downed lines and fire. We subsequently spent 45 hours without power (and heat) and we were lucky.

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