Features

Showing off Silver Spring

Visit Indian Spring and Woodmoor on the 6th Annual Old Silver Spring House Tour on May 18

BY WHITNEY BEERS

On May 18^th, peeking is allowed.

The 6^th Annual Old Silver Spring House Tour features 11 properties in the Woodmoor and Indian Spring neighborhoods, giving regular folks a chance to poke around in some of the most interesting homes in the area. The tour benefits The Shepherd's Table, The Silver Spring Library, and the Silver Spring Stage, all vital organizations mortared into the weave of the Silver Spring Community.

The Silver Spring House Tour Association began reaching out to the community 6 years ago, looking for organizations in Silver Spring that might benefit from a local home tour event. Two of this years beneficiaries, the Shepherd's Table and the Silver Spring Library, have been with the tour since the beginning. The Silver Spring Stage is added to the list this year.

"These events in the community are vitally important to us because non-profits are having a hard time being successful right now in this economy. We're fortunate to have a lot of community involvement both from individuals and from groups like this," says Gretta Jones, Executive Director of the Shepherd's Table. The charity will be celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. "Through all the storms and bad weather we've never once been closed, not in 20 years," said Ms. Jones.

The Silver Spring Stage and the Silver Spring Library are area landmarks as well, with the Silver Spring Stage located right in the Woodmoor Shopping Center at the edge of the neighborhood. Both are big parts of life in Silver Spring, with the theatre producing at least 8 shows during its 2002-2003 season and the Library playing host to several family and individual events weekly.

Gladys Smith, a resident of the area and recent transplant from New York City thinks that the prototype of community residents supporting community causes is a good one.

"I'm excited to see the people of Silver Spring supporting their own living space through events like the Home Tour. It's wonderfully interdependent."

Bordered by University Boulevard and Colesville Road, Woodmoor and Indian Spring reach back to the Northwest Branch Watershed, giving the space a nestled in, woodsy feeling uncommon to more modern communities. In the 30's and 40's, a house here could set you back as much as $24 a month, furnishing the buyer with the luxury of air conditioning and "outdoor hoses."

Indian Spring has its roots as a gift in 1654 from Lord Baltimore to Abraham Clarke, a farmer. In the 1920s houses were built along University Boulevard, and in 1924 Rialto Theater owner Tom Moore built the first Indian Spring Country Club and Golf Course, creating a center around which the community could develop.

By 1956, further development and the Beltway had taken up much of the golf course space, and so another Indian Spring Country Club was built and the original building converted into the Silver Spring Y.

Around the corner in the 1930's the Moss Realty Company was beginning to develop Woodmoor, a slice of the area behind the Woodmoor Shopping Center. Buyers in this area had multiple builder options on houses, and could increase their lot sizes if they liked, the net result a neighborhood filled with variety.

The houses on the tour are just the ones you slow your car down going by. Conifers in Pat and Gus Singer's yard catch the eye and it's only the very astute that can tell this house came out of a catalog from Sears. Folks hit the brakes in front of Sam and Charleen Noto's house, too — probably because of the rooster. An artist, Sam made the sculpture for Charleen and, like much of his work, the piece is an integral part of the house's environment.

Many of the homeowners on the tour have made their properties showcases for the work of local designers and craftsmen and their own collections. Bill and Sharon Ballard display tribal oriental rugs that rival the display of Navaho rugs in Jim and Marca Woodham's home.

Nancy and Kirk Esherick display a woodcut from the famous Wharton Esherick, Kirk's great uncle, and their addition was designed by another Indian Spring Resident, architect Mark Giarrputo.

Back at Pat and Gus Singer's, local artists Francie Hester and Monique Binswanger earn a place on the walls with their work.

Because all of the homes on the tour are at least half a century old, most have been through a change or two. Previous owners of Steve Kokkinakis and Rebecca Lane's house in Indian Spring treated themselves to a new in-law suite on the first floor, leaving free the 3 bedrooms upstairs for their eight children.

With a similar regard for escape and less for asthetics, the previous owner of the Singer's house thwarted canine terrorist attacks on his cats by carving feline-sized holes into the bedroom doors (the holes are now fixed and the cats elsewhere and presumably safe).

Joe DeRosa, also a Woodmoor resident, designed an ambitious first and second floor addition to Lawrence and Julie Parsley's house, giving them essentially a brand new home, while Nell McCarty and Michael Rubin transformed their home with a shell game remodel that made the living room the dining room, the dining room the kitchen, and redecorated everything to accommodate their new baby.

Shelby and Timothy Whittier took on a project with their property 3 years ago when they bought a jungle and finally found a house at the center. With much of vision and all the paint in Silver Spring, the house has been transformed from a bit of an eyesore into a spectacular living space.

Kate McGee and Nancy Clark designed their own addition, showcasing an enviable lot next to the creek and lighting the house with stained glass windows by Kathy Woolridge, an artist in Newport News, Virginia.

Built in 1948, Mike and Betsy Hatcher's house came with a stone façade (one of the few), and a membership to the original Indian Spring Country Club. One amenity conveyed and the other didn't, so instead of golfing the Hatchers spent time creating a 2 story addition that blended with the original façade while filling the house with more light.

As with most house tours, the pleasure is in the discovery of the personal touches that earmark a neighborhood's journey to becoming "home."

Tickets to the May 18 journey through Woodmoor and Indian Spring can be purchased at the Silver Spring Library, Consign It!, and Kirsten's Cafe for $10 in advance and $12 on the day of the tour.

This year's Tour is in need of volunteers to make it all run smoothly. For more information, contact Maureen Lambe at 301-589-7873 or mplambe@aol.com.