A short personal history of Upper Chevy Chase in Washington, D.C.

In the early part of my life  I lived in  Chevy Chase,  a neighborhood in the northern part of  Washington, D.C. ( There are also villages  on the other side of D.C. border in the Maryland suburbs that  are referred to collectively as  Chevy Chase, MD). Technically, the part I lived in is now called Upper Chevy Chase-a  name assigned by the city to differentiate  this  neighborhood from the parts of Chevy Chase closer to Connecticut Avenue. 

In the mid-1800's much of  the northern parts of Washington D.C. were still  forest and farmlands. It took many decades  for the city to develop beyond it's  beginnings as L'Enfant's downtown original grid.  It was the  development of the street car  around the turn of century that  made it much easier for people to live further away from downtown D.C yet still work there. In the mid-1800's the urban street  grid had not been filled in parts of Northwest DC and the major  avenues named after various states such as Wisconsin Ave., Connecticut  Ave.and Utah Ave.  either did not exist or went under different names.  Dirty old country roads such Rock Creek  Ford Road , and Milkhouse Ford Road were the main roads.

Chevy Chase D.C before it was developed.  The Rock Creek Ford Road was eaten by the grid-but the Broad Branch road survived. 

Much of the development of Chevy Chase both in D.C. and in Maryland  was facilitated by the Chevy Chase Land Company which had been founded in 1890.  As  developers built new blocks  they were asked by the city to try maintain Washington D.C grid system.  This meant mostly straight line roads. The east- west roads ascended the alphabet and the north south roads were numbered.   Diagonal avenues were named after  the states. Some of the old country roads retained their old names-however, some of these old roads were wiped off the map -since they no longer fit the grid. Upper Chase was mostly farms in 1890  was slowly developed over the next 50 years.

Above: Upper Chevy Chase before it was fully developed about 1909.

29th street in 1919

In the early 1900's  -the Chevy Chase Sanitarium still existed in the neighborhood -and it would be  soon be replaced by houses.  Two  large estates-  Knollwood and Bonnie Brae bordered Rock Creek Park.  They would replaced by the Army Distaff House in 1962  and the Unicorn Lane developments in the 1970's.

Bonnie Brae

I lived on 29th Street, NW adajacent to the Army Distaff House which  is now the Knollwood Military Retirement Community. The western section of the street was built first, because  it all been owned originally by one property owner (Alexander Matthews). The  eastern section of the street was owned by multiple parties. After the street was filled in one of the older houses from the old owners  on 29th Street remained.  Years later at the end of the century,  this older house was replaced by a much larger house that it worth almost two million dollars today.  The house I lived was built in 1935   in the final section of the development of 29th street.   The  twelve houses in this  tract were packed in a unbuilt triangle that was so small that there was not enough backyard for each house-so the houses were restricted by covenant from building fences to allow some semblance of a common area to make up for the small yards. A further projected continuance of 29th street wasn't built and so 29th street  stopped right at Tennyson St.

The wedge between 29th Street and Tennyson Street. 

It was a wonderful neighborhood to live in. Most of the houses had  sunny front yards with   large trees in  the backyard.  The houses were all different.  Rock Creek Park was nearby, as were the Maryland suburbs, and the commercial district of Connecticut Avenue.  The people who lived there were often professionals sometimes of a slightly nerdy bent.  We lived next to a congressman, and nearby lived Frank Wilson, the treasury agent who nailed Al Capone on tax evasion.  We went  to Lafayette Elementary School and attended church at Blessed Sacrament.  People who lived there at  time often talked about Chico the tennis coach, or Curly the grocery deliveryman at the Broad Branch market.  They  would speak fondly of   the Lafayette Annual School Fair.  At the Blessed Sacrament church there  was Father Jennings who was "hip to the young people".  TOn Connecticut avenue there was a  People's Drug Store and the Avalon movie theater. In the early 1970's  they had just built  a  new  library and community center.

Eventually, for a variety reasons my parents decided in the early 1970's to move to  a newly built house in Rockville, MD.    Surprisingly, the  Upper Chevy Chase neighborhood really hasn't changed too much in the almost 50 years since I lived there. It's a little more multi-cultural and the property values have skyrocketed but the actual changes to the neighborhood are mostly cosmetic -the stores have different names, the trees even taller.  Lafayette is bigger -it's once  black top playfields  are  now covered with school room additions even as the original brick structure of old school  remains.  One thing that  did change was the playground in  the Lafayette Park.  At the time I lived  there - there were large concrete pipes to play on and big wooden storage boxes that you could  climb on top of. Those  have all been  demolished, but typically the small summer camp building next to the tennis courts still remain as does the ballfield  oval on the  Lafayette school  grounds.  I still think of this area fondly.

Summer Camp Building at Laftayette

Related links:
Historic Chevy Chase DC
Baist's DC real estate atlas, 1919
Hidden clues reveal Old Roads in Chevy Chase D.C. An article by Eric Fielder
History of Rockshire Development 

Originally written/published January 2019 by J.C.Bernhardt