Takoma Voice: Features

With azalea blossoms adding their colorful accents, the Takoma Park House and Garden Tour offers its 34th edition on Sunday May 6, from 1-5 p.m. This year’s tour–“Carroll Connections”—will focus on the stretch of Carroll Avenue from Ethan Allan to Sligo Creek, once the homestead of General Samuel Sprigg Carroll.

Historic Takoma, which sponsors the tour, chose this neighborhood to highlight its newly acquired headquarters at 7328 Carroll Avenue. Originally built as a Piggly Wiggly grocery, it was later housed Barcelona Nuts. Historic Takoma’s first permanent home, it requires major renovation before it can serve as a museum and archives. All proceeds from $20 ticket sales ($15 if purchased in advance from local Old Takoma merchants) go to support this renovation.

Photo courtesy Historic Takoma

General Samuel Sprigg Carroll

Manor Circle, now the site of an apartment building, still evokes the image of sweeping driveways which once led to General Carroll’s manor house. Although not as grand as the colonial houses of other members of the extended Carroll clan, the house sat on a hundred acre estate. Named for his maternal grandfather, Samuel Sprigg, Maryland’s 16th governor, S.S. Carroll devoted his life to the military and was one of the acknowledged Union heroes at Gettysburg.

Following the war and his subsequent retirement, he built the manor house here for his wife and three children. The road linking his house to a train stop on the B&O’s new Metropolitan branch line quickly took on his name. When Benjamin Franklin Gilbert arrived by train in 1883 with his idea for a sylvan suburb, this road proved to be a convenient “main street” for the growing community.

Ten years later Gilbert purchased 96 acres from the Carroll heirs. The only caveat of the family was that the streets carved out for the new subdivision be named for Civil War generals: Sherman, Sheridan, Hancock, even Lee.

The manor house itself as briefly used by Seventh-day Adventist church officials as temporary headquarters when they arrived in the early 1900s. Over the subsequent decades, however, the house was neglected. Finally in 1960, in the days before historic preservation was an issue, the house was turned over to the fire department and burned down as part of training exercises. The apartment building appeared soon afterward.

This year’s tour includes a dozen houses and gardens which occupy the former Carroll lands. The oldest house of the tour dates back to the days of General Carroll. In keeping with the tradition of the tour, however, there is a mix of very old and more recent houses.

The newest house, at 208 Manor Circle, is currently a work in progress. Rick Leonard of Heritage Construction and Renovation, built a colonial house in 1988 on the empty lot. It is now being enlarged and re-designed as a Victorian, with a wraparound porch, a steeper pitch to the roof, and “gingerbread” touches. It will be provide a comfortable house for his family while showcasing the craft skills of his company. Given the unfinished state of construction inside the house, however, it will not be open to visitors.