Woodside Park and Suburban
Development
The popularization of the automobile transformed the Silver Spring area. Development originally
had been clustered in the rural communities of Sligo and Silver Spring. Country estates for the
wealthy had grown up around these communities. Then the B&O Railroad and the trolley line
made more intense suburban development possible by linking new subdivisions such as Woodside
to downtown Washington's employment opportunities. These new subdivisions, however, were all
located close to the railroad or to the trolley line. The farther one lived from these transportation
links, the more inconvenient it was to live in the suburbs.
The automobile literally changed everything. Automobile owners could conveniently live some
distance from the railroad or the trolley. Indeed automobile owners could provide their own
transportation to jobs in the District.
Developers were quick to recognize the new situation as a golden opportunity to sell real estate.
Many subdivisions were platted around Silver Spring in the 1910s and 1920s. The population of
what is now Silver Spring and Wheaton boomed from 14,285 in 1920 to 49,206 in 1930. Not
coincidentally, the number of motor vehicles in Maryland grew from 103,000 in 1920 to 320,000
in 1929; the number of cars in the urban areas probably grew even faster. Country estates and
rural subdivisions gave way to advancing suburbanization. Twenty-three thousand acres of
Montgomery County farm land was converted to suburban development between 1912 and 1932.
Woodside Park was one of many subdivisions platted in the 1910s and 1920s. But it was not
typical. Woodside Park was planned from the beginning to be "Washington's Most Beautiful
Suburb" with "Acre Plots for Homes of Distinction." This was not mere advertising hype. Not
only were the lots unusually large, the developers ensured that all homes built would be relatively
expensive and that they would be built well back from the development's often wide and unusually
well constructed streets. While most of the original lots have been divided, today's Woodside Park
retains much of the atmosphere that did make the area "Washington's Most Beautiful Suburb" and
the home of many prominent people.
The Woodside Park Area
The Woodside Park neighborhood as it is recognized today is shown on the map on the
"Contents" page. As described in an early Civic Association document, it is roughly bounded as
follows: Starting at Spring Street on Georgia Avenue, the east side of Georgia Avenue to a point
slightly above Grace Church, thence cross country to near the beginning of Dale Drive [at
Columbia Boulevard], thence east on both sides of Dale Drive to Colesville Road, then south on
the west side of Colesville Road to Spring Street, then the north side of Spring Street to the
beginning point on Georgia Avenue. Added to this are the houses on the 9500 block of Clement
Road and the 1200 block of Clement Place in "Watson's Addition to Woodside Park," which was
created by Mary C. Watson, Jacob S. Gruver and Anne R. Gruver in October 1940. The owners
of houses in this small subdivision were admitted to membership in the Civic Association since
they had no neighbors except those across Dale Drive in Woodside Park.
The principal part of the neighborhood as defined above was Alton Farm, which contained about
182 acres and was covered by the original plats for Woodside Park filed on January 30, 1923.
This land had for many years belonged to the Noyes family, identified since 1867 with the
ownership and operation of the Evening Star Newspaper Company, and was sold to the
Woodside Development Corporation by deed of trust dated December 1, 1922 for development
into a high grade community of individual homes.
Three other small areas although not a part of the original Woodside Park subdivision have
always been considered a part of the Civic Association's area. One of these was the large lot now
containing the original house at 9111 Georgia Avenue and two adjoining new houses, one facing
Grace Church Road and one facing Georgia Avenue. This lot had been a part of Alton Farm but
was sold by the Noyes estate to a buyer favored by the Woodside Development Corporation (as
explained later in this history) without ever being included in the Woodside Park subdivision. The
second area was a lot on the southwest corner of Colesville Road and Dale Drive that was not a
part of Alton Farm. This area is now a part of the St. Luke Lutheran Church property. A third
area along Dale Drive near Crosby and Midwood Roads, which was platted as Woodside Forest
Section One in 1936, has also been considered a part of Woodside Park since it was developed
before the rest of Woodside Forest in the blocks north of Dale Drive.
In the late 1940s the area of the Civic Association was expanded to embrace small adjoining
sections of land which seemed logically a part of the neighborhood:
1. An area (23.5 acres) that had been a part of the Wilson Farm. The boundaries of this area
began at Georgia Ave. and Spring Street, ran north on Georgia to the rear of the lots fronting on
the south side of Noyes Drive, followed the rear lot line of the lots facing Noyes around the curve
to the rear of the lots on the north side of the 8900 block of Fairview Road, followed the rear lot
line of these lots back to Spring Street, and then followed Spring Street back to the corner of
Spring and Georgia.
2. Griffith's addition to Woodside Park, consisting of about seven acres making up most of the
block bounded by Colesville Road, Noyes Drive, Fairview Road and Spring Street.
3. The property facing Fairview Road between Griffith's Addition and Alton Farm, now the site of
the Woodside Park Townhouses.
While the Noyes estate formed the basis of Woodside Park, it was not the first subdivision
planned in the neighborhood or even the first subdivision planned on what became Alton Farm. It
was the fourth. There had been earlier subdivisions in the 1880s and 1890s. The first was Selina
Wilson's 1887 subdivision of the southeast corner of her farm. The area surrounded by the
Brookeville Turnpike (now Georgia Avenue), the Colesville Turnpike (now Colesville Road), and
her new Spring Street (which then had a much sharper "J"-shaped curve and intersected Georgia
Avenue where Planning Place now intersects it, not where Spring Street intersects Georgia
Avenue today--a line of telephone poles and cables still follows the original Spring Street
right-of-way through the large parking lot behind the Maryland-National Capital Park and
Planning Commission building) plus about seven acres east of the new Spring Street and north of
Colesville Road made up her addition. The seven acres were divided into seven lots, five facing
Spring Street, one facing Colesville Road, and one facing the Spring Street-Colesville Road
corner. Most of the area covered by these seven lots was eventually re-platted as Griffith's
Addition to Woodside Park and most of the area became non-residential in the 1960s, but a small
part of it was assimilated into Alton as the "Spring Street property;" the rest of Selina Wilson's
addition is a part of the downtown Silver Spring Central Business District.
The second subdivision came on December 11, 1891 when William L.F.
King filed a plan for a subdivision bearing his name on a more or less
trapezoidal shaped piece of land purchased from the estate of John C.
Wilson, Selina Wilson's husband. The north side of the tract was about
1200 feet long; the south side was only about 720 feet long. The trapezoid
was about 575 feet from top to bottom. The proposed subdivision had
only one street, C Street, which was directly across the Brookeville Turnpike (now Georgia
Avenue) from Woodside's C Street (now Noyes Drive; Woodside's streets were renamed to
conform to the street names in Woodside Park in the 1940s). Woodside had been established 2
years earlier by Benjamin F. Leighton on part of the original Wilson Farm inherited by John C.
Wilson's older brother on the west side of what is now Georgia Avenue. King's C Street extended
east about 800 feet from the Turnpike and ended in a circle with a diameter of 180 feet. The
center 60 feet of the circle was to be a park; all the lots faced C Street; most were about a half
acre in size. The circle would have been about where 1229 and 1233 Noyes Drive are now.
William L.F. King's subdivision was not an instant success. Only one lot was sold before 1895.
Then in May 1895 William S. Thompson, Jr. and his wife Nettie bought all the lots on the north
side of C Street. They built a house and stable. The "Thompson house," which eventually was
numbered as 1319 Noyes Drive (on the northeast corner of Noyes Drive and Georgia Avenue),
became the home of Charles W. Hopkins after his Woodside Development Corporation bought
the Noyes estate. The home, which has been enlarged and much altered, now serves as the
Woodside Synagogue. In November 1895 all the lots on the south side of C Street, except the one
that had been previously sold, were sold as a group. The buyer also purchased the single lot that
had been sold in 1891 from its owner so he owned all the land on the south side of the street.
Nothing was built on these lots.
The third subdivision in what is now Woodside Park was platted a little
more than four years after William L.F. King's subdivision but less than six
months after the last of its lots were sold. On April 2, 1896 another King,
Henry King, Jr., filed a plan for his "Kingsville" subdivision. This
subdivision was immediately north of William L.F. King's subdivision and
had also originally been a part of the Wilson Farm. Kingsville was a
9-sided tract of land that fronted on the Brookeville Turnpike and ran about 920 feet south along
the Turnpike from the southern property line of Grace Church. The tract ran about 2,150 feet to
the east of the Turnpike at its deepest and was divided into lots that generally were 100 feet by
200 feet, or a little less than half an acre. Rather than following the contours of the land,
Kingsville's streets were laid out either parallel or perpendicular to the Turnpike, much like the
streets in Woodside, which faced Kingsville across the Turnpike. Parallel to the Turnpike were
Grace Street, Caroline Avenue, King Street, and Mortimer Street. The only entrance into the
subdivision was D Street. Kingsville's D Street was opposite D Street in Woodside (now Highland
Drive) and extended about 2,000 feet perpendicular to the Turnpike. It would have ended in what
eventually became the back yards of Woodside Park's 1309 and 1311 Pinecrest Court. Only one
street was parallel to D Street in Kingsville, Milton Avenue, which, had it been extended through
to the Turnpike, would have intersected it at the northern property line of Grace Church.
Except for approximately the first block of both C and D Streets east from the Turnpike, the
streets of William L.F. King's subdivision and of Kingsville have no relationship to the street
layout found today. None of the Kingsville lots were sold. Crosby S. Noyes bought Kingsville in
1899 and abandoned it as a subdivision. It became part of Alton Farm. In 1900 he bought the lots
on the south side of C Street in William L.F. King's subdivision from their owner; he bought the
Thompson property on the other side of the street in 1901. These areas were also abandoned as a
subdivision and added to Alton Farm, as was another small plot facing Spring Street that he
purchased in 1901.