Silver Spring Heritage Trail Finally Gets Props in the Post

In April 2010 the Silver Spring Historical Society dedicated the first six signs of the Silver Spring Heritage Trail along historic "Main Street" Georgia Avenue.  In all there will be twenty signs located throughout downtown Silver Spring extolling the amazing hidden history that our community encompasses.

As the first designated heritage trail in Montgomery County, and one that the SSHS worked on for over a decade to create, our organization felt that the trail's dedication deserved coverage in The Washington Post which, of course, it did not receive.  Well, finally it has...sort of.

In today's "Local Living / Montgomery Edition" of the Post on p. 17 the article "Piratz Tavern bar gets a Spike TV makeover" appears with two photographs. One of the photos prominently shows our "Post Office 1936" sign in the foreground with the late Piratz Tavern in the background!

Of course to the uninformed reader no one would know what this sign is much less what is written on it.

Hopefully Montgomery County print readers of the Post who are curious about what the sign is will check it out in person and in the process will seek out the other five signs.  Stay tuned because two more heritage trails signs are in the works and will hopefully be dedicated later this year.

Delights to the Eye

"Takoma and Takoma Park, Silver Springs (sic) and Forest Glen are all picturesque and beautiful villages lying along or within the boundaries of Maryland. They are reached by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, as well as by the trolley. During the summer season many of the people of Washington take up their residences there, where they live in the midst of nature and at the same time of civilization. Glimpses of rural scenery in these neighborhoods are a constant delight to the eye."

From "Every-day Life in Washington...with Pen and Camera" (p. 372) by Charles M. Pepper (New York: The Christian Herald, 1900).

Collection of The Peabody Room,
Georgetown Branch, DC Public Library.

Playing Christmas Day 1955 at the Silver Theater

Anyone who wants to go out to see a movie in downtown Silver Spring on Christmas Day has an overwhelming selection of film offerings. From sixteen different motion pictures at the Regal Majestic & IMAX to four films at the AFI Silver Theatre.

Fifty-six years ago Silver Spring filmgoers had far less options.  Playing at the Silver Theater (note the spelling difference) on December 25, 1955 was the Janet Leigh & Jack Lemmon musical My Sister Eileen.  This singing and dancing remake of the earlier 1942 film of the same name was about two Ohio sisters (Leigh and Betty Garrett) seeking success in the big city...and where else in 1955 was that but in NYC's Greenwich Village.

Maryland News, December 23, 1955, p. 5.
Microfilm collection of the Silver Spring Historical Society.

My favorite dance sequence in the film is when the legendary choreographer and sometimes actor Bob Fosse spars with actor/dancer Tommy Rall.  Rall will be 82 years-old on December 27th but Fosse sadly dropped dead of a heart attack in 1987 in front of the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.  He was only 60 years-old. 

Interspersed between showings of My Sister Eileen was the George Montgomery and Nancy Gates western Masterson of Kansas, directed by the equally legendary William Castle.  Four years would pass before Castle really begin establishing his reputation with low-budget, over-the-top gimmicky thrillers such as House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler, both released in 1959.


Both of these Silver Theater/Theatre Christmas Day offerings were second run films with My Sister Eileen (appealing to a mostly female audience) being initially released the previous September and Masterson of Kansas, aimed at the guys, already being a year old having been released the previous Christmas.


The Silver's only other local competition was the Roth's Theatre at 8242 Georgia Avenue, originally opened in 1927 as the SECO (Suburban Electrical COmpany).  The SECO was the first movie theater to open in downtown Silver Spring and held the monopoly for eleven years until the Silver opened in 1938.


After the kids opened their Christmas presents that day and settled down for lunch they could shoot over to Roth's to catch the 2:00 pm Walt Disney hit Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier, starring Fess Parker.  Even though the movie had ben released the previous May and was nothing more that a compilation of three Davy Crockett television episodes that aired on the ABC television show Disneyland, it was billed as "NOW...ON THE MOTION PICTURE SCREEN!"  I'm sure there were plenty of eight year-old boys wearing their coonskin caps in the theatre.

Later that evening the adults could catch Robert Taylor and Kaye Kendall in The Adventures of Quentin Durward, the story of a Scottish night (Taylor) who finds himself in France to facilitate a marriage between a rich and beautiful countess (Kendall) and his aging uncle, King Louis XI, played by Robert Morley.  Intrigue ensues.  No problem convincing the kids to miss that one.

If you REALLY wanted to see the first release films all one had to do was to catch the streetcar at Alaska and Eastern Avenue and head down to F Street, NW where the Loew's Palace (at 13th Street) and the Capital (at 14th Street) were respectively showing Rains of Ranchipur, a drama about an Englishwoman (Lana Turner!) having an affair with a Hindu doctor (Richard Burton!), and the Vincente Minnelli (Liza'a father) directed musical Kismet, starring Howard Keel and Ann Blyth.

Whatever motion picture you watch this Christmas Day, new release or old, in a movie theater, on television, via dvd or streaming, may it be an enjoyable ending to 2011!

A Silver Spring Christmas: 1955 Style

Maryland News, December 23, 1955.
Microfilm collection of the Silver Spring Historical Society.

Like this year, Christmas day fell on a Sunday in 1955.  Shoppers who had yet to complete their holiday purchases might have felt relieved when this advertisement for G. C. Murphy & Co. appeared in the Friday, December 23rd Maryland News.

This "five and dime" variety store was the namesake of George Clinton Murphy, who founded the business in 1906 in McKeesport, PA.  A national chain store that offered low-priced merchandise, Murphy's had been located at 8237 Georgia Avenue since 1937.

Murphy's occupied the ground floor of the MUCH altered building that still sits on the southeast corner of Georgia and Thayer avenues (originally contructed c. 1927 and named the Heizer Building after its owner, Roy M. Heizer).  It is  difficult to imagine all of the merchandise touted in this advertisement fitting into such a small building.

Adjusted for inflation, the advertised prices do not seem too dissimilar from what one would pay for the same items today.  That 67c nylon hosiery for your wife or girlfriend is equal to $5.66 and the high-end $5.98 all-metal wagon for little Dickie (or Sue) would be set you back $50.48.  Keep in mind that the national average wage in 1955 was $3,301.44 or $68.78 each week...before taxes.

Murphy's remained in the Heizer Building thru at least 1968.  Amazingly, no photographs of either the exterior or interior of this business that served our community for over three decades have surfaced.  If you have photos...or even reminiscences of shopping or working at this Murphy location...please share them here.

Montgomery Blair Coming to a Screen Near You?

Recently a research company working on Steven Spielberg's $100M motion picture Lincoln, to be released December 2012, contacted me. They are looking for an image of Montgomery Blair's "crest," a heraldic design that I've never come across.

If it ever existed, perhaps it looked something like these...

Blair family crest courtesy of 
http://www.allfamilycrests.com

Montgomery Blair High School crest
courtesy Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette

The question that begs to be asked though is does this mean that Blair, Lincoln's postmaster general from 1861-1864, will be in the film that is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 biography Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln?  Montgomery is well represented in the book along with his father and brother, Frances (senior and junior), mother Eliza, brother James, and sister Elizabeth.

To my knowledge the last depiction of Montgomery Blair...at least on the small screen...was in 1955 when Mack Williams (I know, who?) played him in Lincoln's Doctor's Dog, an episode written by William R. Cox and Christopher Morley that was part of the short-lived television anthology series Screen Directors Playhouse.  Although Mack Williams did not have a single line of dialogue, he was a spiting image of Blair so some casting agent did their job well.

Montgomery Blair courtesy of

The Gilder Lehrman Collection, New York
Reference Number: GLC 5111.07

Who do you think Spielberg should cast as Montgomery Blair?

UPDATE:

Remembering that I had been in email contact with a few Blair descendants over the years, I checked my emails and lo and behold found THE Blair family crest:

Courtesy
http://katharinesweb.net/Ancestors/Blair/Blair.htm

Let's hope that Montgomery Blair doesn't wind up on the cutting room floor!

UPDATE:

Blair certainly has not wound up on the cutting room floor as he is being played by 86 year old Hal Holbrook.  I hope Spielberg uses CGI on Holbrook's face as Blair was in his late 40s/early 50s during the years he was Lincoln's postmaster general (1861-64)!

Mean Streets?

Every fall when institutions of higher learning start classes, I begin to get emails from both local as well as not so local graduate students (Canada, I'm talking about you) .  They have a paper to write and have chosen Silver Spring as their topic.


The below email arrived in my in-box today:


"Hello. My name is BLANK and I am a senior psychology major attending BLANK. I have been living in Silver Spring for the past four years. I have an assignment for my Urban Sociology class where I need to look at the population demographics of Silver Spring from the year 2000 to now. I was able to find some information on the census website, but a lot of people tell me Silver Spring used to be a tough area not too long ago. I was wondering if you would be able to give me some insight on how the area has changed, what caused the social change to occur, and around what year(s) did it happen? I would be very appreciative of any information you would be able to give me. Thank you."


I smiled at the thought of Silver Spring being thought of as "a tough area."  By 2000 both Whole Foods (then named Fresh Fields) and Strosniders Hardware opened in "Phase One" of Silver Spring's "Town Center."  Discovery Communications and the American Film Institute had also decided by 2000 to locate here.

This "tough area" is one of the biggest (sub)urban myths that Silver Spring still seems to be trying to live down.  I've lived in downtown Silver Spring since 1992 and have been a visitor since the late 1970s and never once felt any more endangered here than anywhere else in the DC metro area that I have ever been to.

I welcome readers' opinions/answers to this student's questions.  Please post comments and I will share them with this individual.  Thank you.

See the World's Largest Acorn & More Unusual Local Attractions!

Did you know that the world's largest (man-made) acorn can be found right here in downtown Silver Spring or that a statue of a lobsterman is in Washington, DC?

These and other greater Washington one-of-a-kind landmarks and destinations will be featured on More Unusual Attractions, to air on October 7th and 10th at 9 pm on WETA TV 26.

I will appear in the segment about Silver Spring's historic circa 1850 Acorn Gazebo, located in Acorn Park at the corner of East-West Highway and Newell Street.  For information about the other landmarks and attractions that will appear in the program, visit the More Unusual Attractions Map.

Please join me this Saturday, October 1st, for a walking tour of historic Silver Spring that will include the Acorn Gazebo along with other fascinating insights into Silver Spring's history.

The tour kicks off at 10 am from the Silver Spring Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station, 8100 Georgia Avenue, and concludes at noon.  The cost is $5 per person.  Reservations are not required.  Limited parking available in front of the station or a short walk from the Silver Spring Metro Station.  Well behaved dogs welcome!

(The railroad station is open FREE from 10-3 on Saturday.)

Hope to see you Saturday!