A Little Bethesda History
from William Offutt's Bethesda - A Social History
"Among those
building houses in Bethesda shortly after the trolley's
arrival was the president of the electric railway and the
town's first great promoter, John Beall, owner of some
thousand acres of prime residential property. His empire
collapsed in the Panic of 1893 and the hurricane of '96, and
after his death at the turn of the century, much of his
property had to be auctioned off. His big Victorian house
crowned a knoll above the tracks on Old Georgetown Road
where Glenbrook Road was later cut through. It stood empty
for a decade, and some early Battery Park denizens
remembered it as the local "haunted" house. Then the
Presbyterians used it in 1925-26 and finally it became the
home of the Lutheran church.
In 1911 St.
John's Norwood Parish built a rectory on a lot donated by
Joseph Bradley. The Rev. Thomas Lewis, the original
full-time rector, was the first to live in the manse on Old
Georgetown Road, which was later purchased by Walter Perry.
It was located just north of George Sacks's Commerce Lane.
Other
builders followed in Woodmont and Northwest Park. Small
subdivisions such as Highland Park briefly blossomed, but
the building was sporadic and scattered even though the land
speculation of the '90s just about ended farming in central
Bethesda. Long before World War I began and the Bradley Hill
venture took wing, the first Bethesda boom evaporated. Some
marked its end with the sudden demise of Bethesda Park in
the hurricane of '96. By the time John E. Beall lost his
shirt, the town's pre-trolley population of about one
thousand had tripled.!!
Many early
Bethesdans worked in the building trades. The 1900 census
showed more carpenters than attorneys and as many other
skilled workers (plumbers, bricklayers, painters, well
diggers and stone masons) as there were government "clerks,"
a very broad term then."
