MD -- Silver Spring -- Acorn Park:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- ACORN_050906_07.JPG: A series of murals in the Acorn Park Area.
One of the most significant reasons for Silver Spring's growth was its location along the Metropolitan Branch of the B&O Railroad. The railroad line stimulated the development of outlying commuter suburbs. It also allowed the County's agriculture products to be transported to market with greater speed and ease.
The trains began operation on the B&O line in 1873 and the original Silver Spring train station was built in 1878. This ornate building, designed by E. Francis Baldwin, stood until 1945 and was replaced by a station in the Colonial Revival style.
- ACORN_050906_11.JPG: In front is the tiny Acorn Park which memorializes the "silver spring" that gave the area its name.
- ACORN_050906_21.JPG: The first decades of this century saw Silver Spring transformed from a 19th century rural village into an early 20th century residential community and center of commerce. Major E. Brooke Lee and Captain Frank L. Hewitt, returning World War I veterans, were influential in laying out the first subdivisions in Silver Spring during the 1920s and establishing major commercial and civic institutions.
One of the earliest and most substantial buildings to be constructed along Georgia Avenue was the first National Guard Armory. It was built in 1914 for Company K of the 1st Maryland Infantry. It has been remodeled and now houses the Silver Spring Volunteer Fire Department.
- ACORN_050906_24.JPG: Washington, D.C. was raided in 1864 by 14,000 Confederate troops led by General Jubal Early. Skirmishes took place in Silver Spring and Washington, with the attack finally being stopped at Fort Stevens -- just a few miles south of this site. Seventeen of the Confederate soldiers killed in this battle are buried at Grace Episcopal Church on Georgia Avenue.
The Confederate officers under General Early made their headquarters at the Blair residence, "Silver Spring," which was ransacked. The nearby home of Montgomery Blair, then Postmaster General of the United States, was burned to the ground.
- ACORN_050906_29.JPG: In 1842, Francis Preston Blair built a country house very near this park and divided his time between his 300 acre farm and his city residence "Blair House," which is now the President's official guest house in Washington, D.C. Blair was a powerful newspaper publisher and a friend of President Andrew Jackson.
Blair called his estate "Silver Spring," after a beautiful natural spring on the property which bubbled up through mica rock, giving it the appearance of being lined with silver. The town that grew up near Blair's farm became known as Silver Spring.
- ACORN_050906_63.JPG: Silver Spring's heyday as a commercial center began in 1938 with the opening of the Silver Theatre and Shopping complex, designed by John Eberson. These streamlined buildings housed a wide variety of shops, as well as a 1,100 seat movie theater, and were among the first in the region that were built to accommodate the use of automobiles.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the county's population exploded and Silver Spring grew into a major shopping district with large department stores like Hecht's, J.C. Penney's, and Jelleff's. This monumental growth made Silver Spring not only a major suburban community, but also an important economic center for the entire state.
- Wikipedia Description: Acorn Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Acorn Park is a park in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland that features an acorn-shaped gazebo and an artificial grotto. The site is thought to be the location of the mica-flecked spring that inspired Francis Preston Blair to name his estate "Silver Spring."
The gazebo was constructed in 1842 by Benjamin C. King.
Blair's son-in-law, Samuel Phillips Lee, had the stone grotto built at the site of the spring in 1894. It originally contained a statue of a Grecian nymph.
It was purchased by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in 1942, and refurbished and rededicated in 1955 .
The park is located at the intersection of East-West Highway and Newell Road, in south Silver Spring.
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