In 1713, two colonists were granted a tract of land extending from what is now Cleveland Park all the way to present-day Rockville. That tract long predates both the city of Washington DC and the United States as a whole, and its owners named it “Friendship”.
By the turn of the 20th Century, only two homes were located in the area, one was located a few hundred yards back from Wisconsin Avenue in a grove of silver maples, and the other lay closer to the road and was owned by the Ball family. This home had an attached blacksmith shop and also served as a changing station for stagecoaches bound between Rockville and Georgetown. In the early 1900s, trolley tracks were laid connecting Georgetown to Montgomery County, and the area became prime real estate.
Over the next decade, the land was purchased and subdivided by two men, Albert Shoemaker and Henry Offutt, and a small community began to developed. By 1914, the Village of Friendship Heights and The Hills was recognized by the state of Maryland, and the community around it was also known as Friendship Heights. This was a rural area, and an annual fall hog slaughter was a much anticipated event.
Friendship Heights grew up as a pleasant residential area with small businesses, churches and single-family homes lining Wisconsin Avenue, the neighborhood’s main artery.. People could order groceries from Georgetown and have them delivered on the trolley later that day.
In 1964, things started to change in Friendship Heights. Former Marriott executive Milton Barlow built the area’s first high rise, still called the Barlow Building today. The following year, Highland House, a 400 unit apartment building, was built next-door. Commercial development came quickly, and hasn’t really stopped. Mazza Gallerie, named after property owner Olga Mazza, was opened in 1977.
Friendship Heights is separated from Tenleytown by Fessenden St, the street I grew up on, making it one of my childhood neighborhoods. When I was very young, my dad worked for GEICO and I vaguely remember visiting the corporate headquarter building there as a kid. My mom gave me my first driving lesson in their parking lot a decade later. As a kid I remember going to the American Cafe on Sundays after church, and movies at the old Jennifer and Cinema theaters. I went to High School at the Heights School in Potomac, originally housed in what’s now Tenley Study Center across from Rodman’s. Of course Chadwick’s was a wonderful bar and restaurant for many years, and Booeymonger is an iconic neighborhood joint. I have a lot of great memories from Friendship Heights, and I’d love to hear yours, so please comment in the space below, and thanks for checking out my photos of Friendship Heights.
D.C. Quarantine Quarters is a series of photo essays from around my hometown, Washington D.C, in the time of our quarantine here due to Covid 19 in 2020. Washington D.C. is itself divided into four quadrants or quarters, and people from the city strongly identify with which quadrant they grew up in. As a visual storyteller, my normal photo essays are long, but this series aims to be more succinct and include only about 25 photos in each post, hence “quarters”. I hope you enjoy these photos of my hometown neighborhoods. Click on any photo to enlarge it. All photos are available for purchase and licensing, please contact me at the link below for more information.