Jerry McCoy is founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society, whose mission is to create and promote awareness and appreciation of Silver Spring's heritage through sponsorship of educational activities and the preservation and protection of historical sites, structures, artifacts and archives.
He holds a B.A. in Visual Communications from The American University and a M.A. in Library Science from The Catholic University of America. Jerry is a librarian/archivist with the District of Columbia Public Library's Washingtoniana Division of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and the Peabody Room at DCPL's Georgetown Branch Library. He lives with his wife Nan in a 1921 bungalow on Thayer Avenue in downtown Silver Spring.
July 2008
Last month I wrote about the distinctive Roadhouse Oldies storefront, a rare surviving example of a pre-fabricated commercial façade designed and erected in 1946 by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Corporation. Located at 958 Thayer Avenue, the structure is slated to be razed for redevelopment of the site.
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June 2008
For me the best part of conducting historical research is the serendipity of discovering a really interesting piece of information while looking for something completely unrelated. Such was the case recently while scanning through newspaper microfilm of the 1946 Silver Spring Standard. I was looking for stories about the opening of Tastee Diner that year when I came across “Silver Building Gleams in Glass At the Busy Bonifant Corner” on the front page of the April 19th issue.
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May 2008
Silver Spring in the early 1900s saw the construction of several private dwellings fronting the east side of Georgia Avenue, originally named the 7th Street Pike (or Turnpike) and later Brookville Pike (full name Washington & Brookville Turnpike). One of these homes was an American four-square house constructed in 1909 by twenty-one year old John Joseph Dolan for himself, his wife Geneva, and their daughter Helen (who would be born the following year). Dolan, a plasterer by profession who had moved to Silver Spring only the year before, went on to work as a builder, contractor, and a director of the Silver Spring National Bank.
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April 2008
Ten times each week, I walk up and down the 1100 block of Bonifant St. on my way to/from the Silver Spring Metro station. On each trip I pass under the ugly co-joined concrete structures collectively referred to as the Bonifant-Dixon Public Parking Garage #5. As an historian, I am usually either blessed or depressed to be able to see in my mind’s eye what downtown Silver Spring used to look like when I wander about, and I definitely feel the latter when I see these two hulking structures.
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March 2008
This month’s column is being guest written by Sharyn Bowman of the Committee to Save the Watson House — Jerry McCoy
Silver Spring has a rich history that spans centuries. A house sits atop a hill at 9206 Watson Road that represents part of that history. The Watson House was completed in 1916 for James Angus Watson and his wife, Mary Clement Watson. It still remains essentially unaltered and is, therefore, an excellent representation of the early 20th century Dutch Colonial Revival architectural style which the Watsons chose for its design. The house is surrounded by a low stone wall that distinguishes the entire area.
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February 2008
From November 1925 to June 1928, an irregular feature appeared in the pages of The Washington Post titled “In the Capital Suburbs.” Compiled by an unknown journalist, as was common for the times, this column offered readers a snapshot of local “happenings,” news from various neighborhoods in Washington, DC to neighboring towns and communities in Maryland and Virginia.
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January 2008
January 13, 2008 will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Silver Spring branch of the Perpetual Building Association, at one time the largest savings and loan institution in the United States. The best “birthday” present that this well-preserved landmark structure, still standing at 8700 Georgia Avenue, can receive would be designation on Montgomery County’s Master Plan for Historic Preservation.
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Previous columns
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
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