Downtown Silver Spring

A Flaneur In Silver Spring

A flaneur is a walker in the city -- a person who strolls and observes the passing life with both interest and detachment -- perhaps in the manner of Walt Whitman. The artistic medium of choice for the flaneur is photography. In a Wikepedia article, Susan Sontag is quoted as follows:

"The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of walking, conniseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the world 'picturesque'".

Nothing could interest a flaneur more than photos of places seen in the course of walking. I have lived literally next door to Silver Spring, Maryland for many years and have walked its streets incessantly. This is in part due to choice and in part due necessity -- I don't drive a car. Although it is a suburb of Washington, D.C. Silver Spring has little of the character of a sleepy bedroom community. It is a distinct urban environment with a sense of place of its own. Over the years it has changed many times, from an early period of prosperity, to a long period of disrepair and deterioration, to its current revitalization which began in the mid-1990s. It is a pleasure to walk up and down the streets, to see the bridges, parks, railroad tracks, facades, businesses, and homes.

Even though I have walked Silver Spring for many years, Jerry McCoy's new book, "Downtown Silver Spring" (2010) made me catch myself and look afresh with new eyes. This is the second time I have had such an experience with McCoy, the founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society, and Silver Spring. An earlier book of McCoy's "Historic Silver Spring" had taught me to use my walks in a new way, and McCoy's new book served as a reminder. Both books are published by Arcadia Publishing, a firm which specializes in historical photographs of local history. McCoy's new book includes a pithy introduction by the noted Washington D.C. noir writer, George Pelecanos.

The book consists of approximately 100 pages of photographs in which a historic photo of a Silver Spring landmark is juxtaposed with a photograph of the site as it is today. The area covered in the book is relatively compact. Thus McCoy moves block-by-block, almost building-by building in showing Silver Spring as it was in the early years of the 20th Century and as it has changed. Indeed, the Silver Spring landscape changes constantly. Some of the businesses shown as current in the book have already passed away due to the continued vicissitudes of the economy and are the stuff of memory.

The book is in four sections covering four areas. The first and longest section of the book treats the historic thoroughfare of Georgia Avenue, which I walk in both directions, south into Washington, D.C. and north to the Silver Spring downtown. The photos begin with an old trolley stop on Georgia Avenue and Eastern on the District line and proceed northward. Many of the old buildings and archways remain, and I saw through photos what I pass many times but perhaps miss in my walks. Other sections of the book include photos of Silver Spring's other main street, Colesville Road which intersects with Georgia Avenue to form the city downtown. McCoy gives the reader a tour from the site of the current Metro station to a lovely old historic restaurant, Mrs. K's Toll House, on the east side of Colesville Road a landmark where I have spent the past two New Year's Eves. The two remaining sections of the book cover East West Highway and Eastern Avenue which intersects Georgia Avenue near where I walk to the grocery store, and an area of old homes and new shops known as Fenton Village, just east of Georgia Avenue.

When I was reading this book on New Year's Day, I noticed a photograph of a place unfamiliar to me: a historical boundary marker placed in 1962 commemorating the location of a 1792 boundary marker of Washington, D.C. placed by Benjamin Banneker. (p. 80) I hadn't noticed the plaque before and was unsure of the location. Thus, I took a little New Year hike of perhaps one-half mile. I found the marker at a location I have passed many times in front of what is a small, delightful local bakery that had never caught my attention. Thus, I found both a marker that had escaped my notice and an intimate, friendly community gathering spot. People were gathered in the cafe quietly welcoming the new year. The little bakery has a copy of this book in the window, opened to the appropriate page,

This book will intrigue readers familiar with Silver Spring. More broadly, the book will appeal to flaneurs who love to walk city streets, to stroll, and to observe.

Robin Friedman