Montgomery Modern: Modern Architecture In Montgomery County, Maryland, 1930–1979

By Clare Lise Kelly

An illustrated reference guide to the history of modern architecture in Montgomery County, Maryland, from 1930 to 1979, with an inventory of key buildings and communities, and biographical sketches of practitioners including architects, landscape architects, planners and developers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329867482

Book preview

Contents

Half Title

Frontispiece

Title

Copyright

Future Montgomery County

INTRODUCTION

Modern Movement

Suburbanization

Modern Architecture in Montgomery County

EARLY MODERNISM, 1930–1945

Prefabricated Housing

World of Tomorrow and the Broadcasting Companies

Federal Agencies and Progressive Designers

Silver Spring Business District and Early Modern Design

POSTWAR MODERNISM, 1945–1955

Residential Design and Community Building

Carl M. Freeman and Americana Modern

Architect-Builder Collaborations

Prefabricated Housing and Custom Homes

Schools

Montgomery County and Home Rule

Public Libraries

Recreation Facilities

Religious Facilities

Mid-Rise Office Buildings

Landscape Preservation

Garden Apartments

Commercial Googie Design

Hotels and Motels

MODERNISM MATURES, 1955–1965

High-Tech Corridor I-270

National Institutes of Health

Industrial Complexes

Suburban Corporate Campus

Tract Housing

Custom Houses

Townhouse Apartments

High-Rise and Apartment Hotels

Shopping Centers and Department Stores

High-Rise Office Buildings

Hotels and Motels

Schools

Police and Fire Stations

Recreation Facilities

Senior Facilities

Religious Facilities

LATE MODERNISM, 1965–1979

Custom Houses

Affordable Housing

Apartments

Religious Facilities

Brutalism and Concrete Technology

Hotels and Corporate Headquarters

Public Facilities

CONCLUSION

Future of Mid-Century Modern Resources

APPENDICES

Practitioners: Architects, Landscape Architects, Planners, Developers, Builders

Inventory of Montgomery Modern Buildings and Districts

Endnotes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments and Image Credits

About the Author

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Front cover: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robert Llewellyn Wright House, Bethesda (1957).

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Paul Philippe Cret and Frederick W. Southworth’s Bethesda Naval Hospital Tower (1942).

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Montgomery Modern: Modern Architecture in Montgomery County, Maryland 1930–1979 by Clare Lise Kelly

Published by

The Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission

©2015 The Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the publisher.

The Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission

8787 Georgia Avenue

Silver Spring, Maryland 20910-3760

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelly, Clare Lise, 1962–

Montgomery modern: modern architecture in Montgomery County, Maryland 1930–1979 / Clare Lise Kelly.

         p.          cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-9715607-2-7 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-9715607-1-0 (pbk.) — ISBN: 978-0-9715607-3-4 (e-book)  1. Architecture—Maryland—Montgomery County—History—20th century.  2. Architecture and society—Maryland—Montgomery County—History—20th century.  I. Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission, issuing body.  II. Title.

NA730.M32M6625 2015

720.9752'840904—dc23

2015030643

Display type set in Mandate (Robert Hunter Middleton, 1934), and Alternate Gothic No. 3 (Morris Fuller Benton, 1903)

Designed by Robert L. Wiser

Edited by Nicole Diehlmann

Color photographs by Carol M. Highsmith and historic black-and-white photographs by Robert Lautman unless otherwise noted (see Acknowledgments and Image Credits appendix)

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Speculative sketches by D. Winklosky of a future Montgomery County, as seen in the M-NCPPC’s On Wedges and Corridors: A General Plan for the Maryland-Washington Regional District (1964).

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MODERN MOVEMENT

The Modern Movement was a revolution in design philosophy that had a dramatic impact on the built environment of the mid-twentieth century. The clean lines and functional forms of modern design stood in sharp contrast to revivalist architecture with its historical allusions and applied decoration. While revivals of colonial, medieval, and classical design were steeped in formality and tradition, contemporary design reflected a new spirit of optimism, steeped in a yearning for nature and respect for new technology. The Modern Movement was not merely an exterior styling, but was a revolution in construction, interior organization, and site planning. Its origins lie on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the early twentieth century; with the organic works of Frank Lloyd Wright in the US and the functional minimalism of Europeans like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Slowed by the Great Depression and World War II, the movement exploded in the postwar era as developers strove to meet pent up demand for housing, and for commercial, civic, and religious facilities.

Montgomery County, Maryland’s suburban built environment reflects major themes of the Modern Movement as translated to a region located at the northern boundary of Washington, DC. Architects designed housing that promoted contact with nature for office workers who, in contrast to previous generations of farmers, were not living off the land and who yearned for a connection with the earth. For individuals seeking contact with nature, the county’s rolling often rugged landscape was a strong attraction, as was its extensive stream valley park system and abundance of available farmland. Federal installations for national defense agencies, and scientific and medical research brought modern design into the county landscape. A new population of well-educated citizens promoted cooperative communities and institutions, local government, and equal opportunities while skilled practitioners affiliated with progressive government programs employed new experimental materials and construction and built affordable housing. At the same time, steel frame high-rise offices and apartments created skylines that spoke to a new age of commerce and technology. Jewel-tone curtain walls of glass and ceramic presented a starkly modern face to the public, while interior, open floor plans promoted camaraderie and cooperation. Modern design, therefore stands as testimony to the spirit of this age as reflected in the county’s built environment and its landscape.

SUBURBANIZATION

The twentieth century brought profound changes in the development patterns of Montgomery County. Nineteenth-century Montgomery County was predominantly rural and agricultural. The richest and most influential citizenry were centrally situated near the population centers of Rockville, county seat and government center, and Gaithersburg, agricultural trade center. However, as railroad, and later streetcar suburbs, were constructed to access jobs in Washington, DC, the down-county population began to increase as the up-county lost population. The rate of growth for down-county population accelerated with the automobile culture, the Country Life movement, and the booming economy of the 1920s. Wealthy Washingtonians established large estates, notably along lower Rockville Pike, while affluent middle-class residents settled in country club communities along River Road.¹

Meanwhile, the county government began to recede in its duties starting in the 1910s. The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), a state agency, was created in 1916 to regulate subdivisions and water and sewer service. Special taxing districts for new streetcar suburbs paid for public services. The shift in population was reflected in 1927 with a government reorganization that created regional down-county taxing districts for Western and Eastern Suburban Districts, and the creation of the Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) to assume planning and zoning roles for the county.

Montgomery County was ripe for suburban development, with undeveloped farmland located just outside the nation’s capital. While the pace of suburbanization was moderate in the early twentieth century, by the post–World War II era, Montgomery County was one of the fastest growing suburban counties in the nation. It is challenging to understand the extreme nature of the pace of change during this period. The county population had remained fairly steady at about 30,000 people from 1890 through the 1920s. In the era of the Modern Movement, the population doubled each decade. From 1940 to 1979, the county grew by 1,000 percent—from 50,000 people to about 500,000. Federal financing programs in the postwar economy made land subdivisions attractive for developers, and affordable for prospective homeowners. From 1947 to 1952 alone, more houses were built in Montgomery County than had been built since its settlement.²

A driving force in the early suburbanization of the county was E. Brooke Lee, a World War I hero, real estate magnate, and county political boss, who played a key role in establishing the Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission, a state agency that took over the role of subdivision review from WSSC in 1927. Lee was the single most influential figure in setting the stage for suburbanization of Montgomery County. Describing the growth of Montgomery County in this era, Royce Hanson, former Planning Board Chair observed, The car made suburban living feasible. Sewers made it possible. Lee made it happen.³

M-NCPPC created a system of parkways and stream valley parks that has been considered one of the finest in the country and became a major attraction for prospective landowners. For this task, the Commission hired Irving Root, urban planner, and Roland W. Rogers, landscape architect, who revealed extensive plans in a 1929 issue of E. Brooke Lee’s newspaper, the Maryland News. The natural character of Rock Creek Park was to be preserved, along with other creeks including Sligo and Northwest Branch. The Capper-Cramton Act of 1930, authorizing a park and parkway system in the national capital region, provided funding for acquisition of over 900 acres of parkland in Montgomery County.

Eventually, the citizens of the new suburbs led to the undoing of E. Brooke Lee’s regime. Many New Dealers living in Montgomery County were accustomed to innovative procedures in federal government, and so, observed historians Richard MacMaster and Ray Hiebert, they were eager to apply their skills to County problems. The League of Women Voters and the Montgomery County Civic Federation, along with progressive Sandy Spring farmers, led a movement for a charter form of government in search of greater control over local issues.⁴

In 1939, the Board of County Commissioners hired the Brookings Institution for Government Research to conduct a scientific study of county government, which is said to have been one of the first of its kind. In its 1941 report, Brookings found that the county—comprised of 12 incorporated towns and 25 special taxing districts—had outgrown its form of government. The report recommended a countywide form of government that would have local authority. The charter form of government meant that an elected council could pass local legislation without having to go through the Maryland General Assembly. In the election of 1948, citizens adopted the home-rule charter, making Montgomery County the first county in Maryland to establish a charter form of government. Today, 11 of Maryland’s 23 counties have adopted home-rule charter governments.⁵  

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Vernon DeMars, shown in 1943 with a model of Fort Drive Gardens, was one of a cadre of talented architects designing planned communities during World War II in anticipation of a postwar housing boom.

Preparing for postwar development, forward thinking individuals including Vernon DeMars, Carl M. Freeman, and S. E. Sanders advocated for planned communities. Such proposals followed the Garden City principles of Ebenezer Howard, promoted by planners Clarence Stein and Henry Wright who called for new communities of low density with ample open space. In Maryland, Greenbelt, located in Prince George’s County, is an example of a government-sponsored garden city community. Dwellers of residential enclaves and developers of upscale developments opposed planned communities that were not supported by extant zoning. Later, M-NCPPC would produce On Wedges and Corridors: A General Plan for the Maryland-Washington National Region that called for corridor cities with wedges of open space. The General Plan, adopted in 1964, provided for a Town Sector zone to create new communities, the first of which was Montgomery Village.

Federal programs facilitated the movement of white middle-class families to the suburbs. The passage of the National Housing Act and creation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1934 was the first large-scale effort by the federal government to aid in providing affordable housing in the wake of the Great Depression. The FHA insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for homebuilding. Federal housing programs expanded a decade later, following World War II, with the Veterans Administration (VA) housing effort to settle returning veterans. Together these programs substantially increased the number of Americans who could afford to purchase houses using low-cost mortgages. By 1961, half of all suburban housing in the US could claim FHA or VA financing. In the first 26 years of the FHA program, Montgomery County received $467 per capita for home mortgages, compared to $87 in Washington, DC.⁶ The FHA also established construction standards for FHA-insured properties. These guidelines served to discourage modern design, which was considered a destabilizing force. FHA guidelines of 1947 stated, Experience reveals the short-lived acceptance of certain architectural styles and the continuing appeal of others. Extremes of stylistic design tend to become ‘dated’ and to suffer early obsolescence. This is usually the case with styles, which are unsuited to the local environment, such as those inspired by prototypes, which are foreign to the locality. They are less likely to retain market appeal than are the well-proportioned examples inspired by the traditional types which may be native to the locality.⁷

In contrast, other federal agencies were introducing modern design into the lives of Americans, through notable Depression-era projects such as the Farm Security Administration workers housing and, locally, in installations of the US Navy and Department of Defense.

After the stagnant years of the Depression, Montgomery County experienced a building boom. New residents arrived in the county, attracted by the proximity to federal jobs in Washington, DC; the lure of nature; and an abundance of affordable housing. Reformers built innovative subdivisions and apartments to provide well-designed, livable, and affordable housing. The newly organized county government built schools, libraries and other public facilities. Corporations, such as Vitro Corporation, and the Government Employee Insurance Company, later GEICO, located headquarters here. Federal agencies located in the county—first attracted by abundant land and natural resources, and then, in the Atomic Age, governed by national defense policies of dispersal—bringing related industry and drawing more workers to the county. By the mid-twentieth century, Montgomery County’s population was well educated with a large proportion having college and higher degrees.

Meanwhile, systematic discriminatory practices and laws had discouraged and prevented minorities including African American and Jewish people from buying or renting homes in the county. Real estate covenants banning purchasers based on ethnicity or religion were outlawed in 1948, yet the FHA continued to endorse racially segregated residential communities until 1968, under the belief that mixed-race developments were economically unstable. School segregation of black students was outlawed nationally in 1954. As discriminatory practices against black and Jewish populations were banned, there was an era of change for civil rights and diversification. In 1950, blacks comprised about 6 percent of the county’s population. Following citizen protests, Glen Echo Park opened its gates to black citizens in 1961. The Montgomery County Council passed an open accommodations ordinance in 1963. In addition, discrimination against low-income people began to shift as government-supported affordable apartments were built during the 1960s.⁸

MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY

Modernist design philosophy called for integration of a building with its setting and honest expression of structural frame and contemporary building materials—a philosophy that permeated design and construction of mid-century buildings. The Modern Movement represents the first time that architects were designing buildings that looked to the future rather than harkening to the past. Gone were the columned porticos and pedimented gables of classical design, or the half-timbered walls and scalloped slate shingles of medieval design. Instead, buildings were designed to represent a new age, with a functional and minimalist design that spoke to the twentieth century age and its lifestyles, economies, technology and world view. This architectural revolution is embodied in the Montgomery County landscape. It is seen in the works of masters including Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, and Charles Moore, as well as in projects by skilled local practitioners the likes of Keyes, Lethbridge & Condon, Deigert & Yerkes, and Charles Goodman.

In his 1925 treatise, International Architecture, Walter Gropius of Germany had envisioned a global modern architecture. While the birth of twentieth century modern architecture took place in Europe, the United States was influential in its development, through the work of architects Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, through its iconic factories and grain elevators that appealed to modern principles of functionalism and simplicity, and as home to architects who left their European homeland.  

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In 1920, Theodor Horydczak captured this view of the Bowman grain elevators in Gaithersburg. To locals, the form was utilitarian. To European modernists of the day, the utility of the American grain elevator and industrial buildings was an inspiration for modern design whose basic philosophy called for simple volumes to meet specific functions.

European modernism was seen as a rational approach to design. Swiss architect Le Corbusier admired grain elevators of the US and Canada for the primary, geometric form determined by the function of the facility. In 1923, he stated that grain elevators were the magnificent first-fruits of the new age. The design of Albert Kahn’s Ford Motor Company factory in Detroit and its mass production system influenced the design and construction of the Bauhaus campus of Walter Gropius. The influential Bauhaus School in Germany is noted for its unique approach to design and programs that linked the various branches of art and architecture.⁹  

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Le Corbusier designed houses for the Werkbund Exhibition, Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart, Germany, in 1927. The house at left is elevated on his signature pilotis, or columns.

Back in the US, European émigrés designed modern projects starting in the 1920s—from the West Coast where Austrians Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra were working in the Los Angeles area, to the East Coast, where Swiss architect William Lescaze set up practice in New York City in 1923. Through the early 1930s, architecture schools were heavily based on the tradition of the École des Beaux Arts of Paris, which focused on classical arts and architecture from Ancient Greek and Roman culture. Architecture students were becoming aware of modern design through journals, which featured the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and through the publications of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Catherine Bauer and Lewis Mumford who traveled through Europe and the Netherlands between 1929 and 1932. Vernon DeMars, who later designed Bannockburn houses and plans, recalled being unaware of European modernism while attending Berkeley’s architecture school, yet was informed of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work through journals and fellow students. After graduating, he explored European modernism by traveling a circuit in Europe and Scandinavia, using Bauer and Mumford as travel guides. His contemporaries list similar travel itineraries in their applications for membership in the American Institute of Architects (AIA).¹⁰  

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J. J. P. Oud, apartments (1924–27), Hook of Holland, Netherlands.

European modernism has been called the International Style, a term promoted in the Modern Architecture exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) of 1932. Philip Johnson curated this landmark exhibit that raised awareness of modernism, albeit a narrowly defined section of modern architecture. As set forth in the exhibit guide by Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the International Style was a new approach to architecture, in which design is an expression of volume rather than mass, balance rather than preconceived symmetry, and applied ornamentation was to be avoided. Meanwhile, architects designing modern projects tended to eschew stylistic terms for or definitions of their work, preferring instead to conceive of a design as a solution to a functional challenge specific to the project.

The immigration of Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to the US in 1937 increased their influence, both as designers of American projects and in their roles in academia to train a new generation of architects in modernism. Gropius became head of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, while Mies led the Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture. Breuer joined the Harvard faculty and tutored other future architectural greats such as Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, and John Johansen.

In the Washington area, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s progressive government programs of the 1930s, collectively called the New Deal, attracted talented architects and artisans who pursued innovative ways to provide buildings for the ages. The Roosevelt Administration and New Deal programs and practitioners brought modern movement design directly into the lives of Americans much more than MoMA publications or exhibits, contrary to presentations made elsewhere. With its proximity to Washington, DC, and to federal agencies, this was particularly true in Montgomery County. A particular issue throughout the early twentieth century was the lack of decent, affordable housing and it was the subject of study for leading and forward-thinking architects.¹¹

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E. Burton Corning’s WJSV/WTOP Radio Transmitting Station, Wheaton (1940).

Early examples of modernism in the county were designed by German architects Oscar Stonorov and Alfred Kastner. The partners played an important role in the development of modern public housing in the United States. Their Carl Mackley Houses in Philadelphia, built 1933–34, were the earliest modern housing project in the US and the first public housing project financed by the Public Works Administration (PWA). In 1935, Stonorov and Kastner designed modern tract house prototypes in Bethesda. Kastner took a position as principal architect for the US Resettlement Administration, Construction Division, in Washington, DC, where he also operated a private architectural practice.

Alfred Kastner continued to work on public and private housing ventures in the Washington, DC, area through the 1930s and early 1940s. Trained at the University of Hamburg, Kastner had emigrated from Germany in 1925, and later served as the director of research for Princeton University’s Bureau of Advanced Housing. With Louis Kahn, Kastner designed Jersey Homesteads (1936–37), a housing project in Hightstown, NJ. In 1937, Alfred Kastner formed a short-lived partnership with Julian E. Berla, who would become an architect for Greenbelt, MD. Both partners had trained with Bertram Goodhue in New York and had worked for the US Resettlement Administration. In 1939, the newly formed Montgomery County Housing Authority (MCHA) engaged Kastner for a venture that would be the first rural public housing project approved by the US Housing Authority (USHA). The MCHA, chaired by E. Brooke Lee, planned to build housing projects for eight white communities and eight black communities, which according to the practices of the time were segregated. USHA funds were approved in October 1939, but the project was curtailed along with other domestic construction activities when the US entered World War II. During the war, Kastner was involved with private commissions for custom houses he designed in Kenwood and Northwest DC.¹  

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Modern Houses Inc. of Kensington built this exhibit house at 11018 Montrose Avenue in Garrett Park in 1935. The residence has a European modern sensibility evident in the boxy shape, white walls, corner casement windows, and rooftop sun deck. This historic view shows a compatible second-story addition designed in 1956 by local architect Alexander Richter.²

Several subdivisions in the county included stand-alone European modern houses, composed of simple, unadorned blocks, smooth white walls, and roof decks. Examples of such European modern houses, built between 1938 and 1941, include the Modern Houses, Inc. exhibit house in Garrett Park, as well as Takoma Park Investment Company’s 9013 Flower Avenue and 206 E. Wayne Avenue, in Highland View of Sligo Park.³

Republic Steel houses (1935)

8502 Jefferson and 5603 Roosevelt Streets, Oscar Stonorov and Alfred Kastner  

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Oscar Stonorov and Alfred Kastner designed prototype steel frame houses for Republic Steel’s Berger Manufacturing Company to answer the need for quick, affordable housing. Built in 1935 in Bethesda, the houses have a distinctive European modernist sensibility with boxy modular forms, flat roofs, enclosed porches, and asymmetrical bands of windows. During construction, the houses were visited by crowds of onlookers eager to see the innovative structures. The houses used four tons of steel in frames that could be built in two days or less. The entire house could be built in three weeks—one-third the time of a wood frame house. Steel wall units and window and door frames were built in four-foot interchangeable modules. The houses had gas air-conditioning systems and sold for under $7,000, including a landscaped lot.⁴ The steel frames were adaptable to a variety of architectural styles and floor plans. Other steel-frame residences in Bethesda were designed in traditional revivalist styles.⁵  

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Republic Steel Houses, 1935. Architects Alfred Kastner (right) and Oscar Stonorov (center) with Republic Steel officials at an open house on May 16, 1935, which drew a crowd of 50 people curious to see the steel frame house under construction.

Walter and Wilma Teichmann House (1941)

5409 Dorset Avenue, Alfred Kastner  

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Alfred Kastner designed a substantial three-level, custom house in Kenwood for fellow German Walter Teichmann and his wife Wilma. The project was featured in the February 1942 issue of the publication called Pencil Points (later Progressive Architecture). The house has a spare, geometric form representative of European modernist projects. A recreation room on the lower level overlooks a flagstone terrace, while a projecting game room on the middle floor is surmounted with a deck accessed by the master bedroom. The design called for another upper level deck above a rear garage. Another custom house by Alfred Kastner was the 1940 Raymond and Olive Clapper House at 3125 Chain Bridge Road NW, in Washington, which has a similar functional design sensibility. Olive Clapper was a Montgomery County Housing Commission officer.⁶

PREFABRICATED HOUSING

In the wake of World War I and the Great Depression, a rising middle class increasingly found difficulty in obtaining adequate housing. Architects and entrepreneurs turned to prefabrication as a way to bring affordable houses to people in a short time. Prefabricated houses are comprised of standardized, factory-built sections that were shipped and assembled on site.⁷

In 1933, American Houses began manufacturing the Motohome, a portable manufactured house that arrived on site ready for occupation, complete with a refrigerator full of groceries. Motohomes, designed by architect Robert W. McLaughlin, were featured in the January 1934 issue of Architectural Record and the May 1935 issue of Architectural Forum. The first Motohome in the Washington area was located in Kenwood, under construction in October 1935 for Lee D. Butler, a prominent automobile distributor. The house, at 6424 Brookside Drive, was the largest Motohome constructed thus far, having twelve rooms, three baths, a large sundeck, and a two-car garage. The steel frame structure had gypsum slab floors and was sheathed with Celotex, a fireproof asbestos cement paneling described as indestructible. The house still stands, in altered condition. By this time, Motohome was touted as a scientific product, with a moto-unit nerve center, which was a steel-core,