Features

In the time of streetcars

BY DIANA KOHN

It was the railroad tracks branching north of Washington, DC that inspired Benjamin Franklin Gilbert to create Takoma Park in 1883, but it was the streetcar lines that linked our community to DC. Gilbert envisioned families living in the fresh air and open spaces of the countryside, and fathers riding the train downtown to work each morning.

However, living in Takoma, six miles from downtown, turned out to be isolating for early families. Wives especially were used to shopping and visiting in the city. A turn-of-the-century newspaper cartoon published in the Washington Star shows a well-dressed Takoma Park lady lamenting "I won't live way out in the country, we'll never have any neighbors, and nobody'll ever be able to find us."

Private streetcar contractors saw the need for alternative transportation and began stringing overhead wire and laying tracks to link the outlying neighborhoods to downtown. Streetcars, which stayed in operation until the 1960s, ended up having more impact on people's lives than the once-an-hour, limited-destination trains.

The first streetcar line arrived in Takoma Park in 1893, when Brightwood Electric Railway brought tracks out to Fourth Street and Butternut, half a block from the train station. The storekeepers clustered around the train tracks welcomed the new business. H. L. Thornton built a row of shops (still standing) along Fourth Street, between Cedar and Butternut.

A few years later, a rival transit company came out Fourteenth Street, ending at Laurel and Carroll Avenues. Gilbert's old log cabin had long dominated that intersection. Thornton built another block of stores along Laurel, creating a commercial focus for the Maryland side, now called Old Town Takoma –or should it be New Town?

By the turn of the century, the streetcar tracks were extended up Carroll Avenue, first to Sligo Creek near New Hampshire, and later rerouted straight up Carroll to the Adventist Hospital, providing easy access for most residents. Fares were six tickets for a quarter. Automobiles were a novelty and would remain so for a long time.

Nearly every early resident who has left us oral history descriptions talks about riding the streetcar — to work or to school (many Maryland children attended DC schools in those days) or especially to shop. The favorite shopping district was on Fourteenth Street between Park Road and Columbia, where all the latest fashions were available for purchase. Even on Sundays, when the stores were closed, young ladies would ride the streetcar down to go window shopping.

Another weekly shopping trip was likely to be to Center Market, the huge public market at Seventh Street and Constitution. Before it was torn down to make way for the National Archives and Navy Memorial, hundreds of vendors set up inside and outside the enclosed structure offering an extensive selection of local and exotic meat and produce.

The American History Museum is bringing the days of railroad and streetcars back to life as part of its new exhibit, "America on the Move." This is not your old-fashioned, glass-paned-display-cases-with-photographs kind of exhibit. Instead, much of the first floor has been turned into a sprawling array of trains, streetcars, buses, even a multi-car traffic jam, set against dioramas that examine the ways each transformed our world.

Center Market is the backdrop for the Washington DC section, circa 1900, introducing the creation of the suburbs. The Capitol Transit streetcar on display is not so different from the ones that once connected Takoma Park to DC. (Note the long antennae or "trolley" that connected the car to the overhead electric wire.) Although some suburbs, like Takoma, originated with the railroad, others, like Chevy Chase, were the creation of streetcar companies.

And there on display is the Washington Star cartoon showing the lady lamenting the isolation of Takoma Park before streetcars provided a link to downtown. The exhibit is on permanent display and can also be previewed on the web at www.americanhistory.si.edu.