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Top of the Town
Tenleytown Heritage Trail
19 Community Building Blocks
Security and style came to Tenleytown in 1900, when Engine House No. 20 opened across from Wisconsin Avenue. No longer would fire fighters have to come all the way from Georgetown to extinguish blazes in Tenleytown's wood-frame houses. Opened with horse-drawn equipment, Engine House 20 became the District's second motorized fire station. The modern fire house reassured builders and buyers that Tenleytown was a good investment.
Recent improvements to the fire house harmonize with its original handsome Italianate design by Leon Dessez. The 1907 Art Deco style C&P Telephone Company Exchange Building to its left was designed by Eidlitz and McKenzie, who are better known for No. 1 Times Square, where each December 31 a lighted crystal ball drops to mark the New Year.
The fist enterprise to occupy the 4200 block of Wisconsin Avenue was Raymond T. Johnson, Sr.'s Wisconsin Avenue Market. Shortly after the grocery opened in 1932, Johnson agreed to sell a few of his neighbor's geraniums. From these humble beginnings grew Johnson's Flower Center.
At 4321 Wisconsin Avenue is the Friendship Building, Tenleytown's first office building. Its second floor dance studio was the 1944 birthplace of the Washington School of Ballet.
Nearby on the corner of 39th Street and Windom Place is "the Rest," Tenleytown's oldest surviving house, dating to the early 1800s. It is the centerpiece of Armesleigh Park's quiet blocks to see the variety of houses with rough stone chimneys and generous porches designed by prolific local architects George Santmyers or Alexander Sonnermann. |