In a neighborhood renowned for its residents’ deep roots, Peter Engelstad enjoys pointing out that he’s a Brookmont lifer. He grew up in a red bungalow alongside the Potomac River, returned 10 years ago to live with his elderly father and is raising his two children in the very same Bethesda home.
Next door to Engelstad is another Brookmont lifer, his friend Teri Tomlin, 55, a school nurse. She also moved back into her childhood home, where she raised two daughters and a son.
When they were kids in the 1950s and ’60s, Tomlin and Engelstad used to decorate their bikes on the Fourth of July and play baseball in Brookmont’s park. They suspect that they’ll be in Brookmont until they die, even as they worry that the neighborhood’s appeal is changing its character.
“I am happy we have this house, and my mom, who passed away, is probably happy because of it. It was very important for her that this house was not to be torn down,” said Engelstad, 58. “And I think this is a nice place for my kids to live. Maybe they’ll get to do the things I got to do.”
The Washington area has long been defined by its transience. Although the majority of Americans live in the state where they were born, less than half do in Maryland and Virginia, U.S. Census data show, and just over a third do in the District.
But pockets of permanence dot the region. From Anacostia to Annandale to Annapolis, there are enclaves much like Brookmont, filled with people who have lived decades or even their whole lives on the same street.
In Brookmont, the neighborhood’s charms are easy to understand. Where else in Washington, its denizens argue, could they get a 15-minute commute to downtown along with a short walk to the C&O Canal towpath and the Potomac from their front door?
Some Brookmontians keep one house for years, then trade up for something down the street. Others — especially competitive kayakers and canoeists — rent in group homes, then purchase. Many more bought decades ago, don’t have the money to seriously upgrade and are not budging from their coveted perches.
Barbara Torrey, a longtime resident who co-wrote a recent book on the neighborhood’s history, estimates that 40 out of the neighborhood’s 180 homes are occupied by people who have lived there for more than 30 years.
“I’ve been here for more than 30 years, and I am considered by neighbors as a latecomer,” said Torrey, who paid $155,000 for her Sears and Roebuck mail-order home, which she’s kept mostly as is. “People refer to your house for years after you move in by the former owner’s name. Only after 20 years do they stop referring to the former owners. It’s a very odd phenomenon. I’ve heard myself doing it.”
Affordable Brookmont houses go on the market infrequently enough that a wannabe resident posted a deferential letter asking if anyone wants to sell on a traffic-circle kiosk. “We have no plans to tear anything down,” assured the letter writer. “We love Brookmont and are really hoping we can make it our permanent home.”
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