On a late summer day in 1986, real estate agent Adrienne Deming found a buyer for a house she was holding open in the Battery Park neighborhood of Bethesda: herself.
"I walked through the door and fell in love," Deming recalled. "That had never happened before."
Tom Kostelecky, (L-R), with wife Angela Kostelecky talk with neighbors Adrienne Deming and husband Charles Fortin Sunday afternoon in the Battery Park neighborhood of Bethesda, Md.
(Kevin Clark - The Washington Post)
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BATTERY PARK
BOUNDARIES: Old Georgetown Road to the north, Wilson Lane to the south and Maple Ridge Road to the west. SCHOOLS: Children in the primary grades go to Bethesda Elementary School, but where they attend middle and high school depends on where they live. Houses west of Maple Ridge Road, as well as even-numbered addresses on Maple Ridge, are assigned to Thomas W. Pyle Middle and Walt Whitman High schools. Houses east of Maple Ridge, as well as odd-numbered Maple Ridge addresses, are assigned to Westland Middle and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High schools.
HOME SALES: In the past 12 months, 16 houses have sold at prices from $625,000 to $1.5 million, said Adrienne Deming, an agent with Long & Foster's Bethesda-Gateway office. Two houses are on the market, at $899,000 and $1,399,000.
WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE: Downtown Bethesda, Metro, Bethesda Elementary School, library
WITHIN 10-15 MINUTES BY CAR: Westfield Shoppingtown Montgomery, Cabin John Regional Park, Suburban Hospital
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Battery Park, within walking distance of downtown Bethesda, is a collection of 186 bungalows, Cape Cods, Colonials and what early ads promoted as "Italian Villas." The community was developed in the 1920s, soon after World War I. Local legend has it that the name is owed to the targeted first buyers: veterans of the same artillery battery.
Most Battery Park houses sit on lots of about one-quarter acre on tree-lined streets where impromptu cookouts and block parties are regular occurrences thanks to the stroll-and-chat camaraderie fostered by sidewalks.
The neighborhood's old-fashioned charm, close-in location, and the size and mix of house styles are what residents speak of when asked about living there.
"You can walk to everything you'd ever want, the grocery store, the cleaners. I drive my car once every three weeks. The houses aren't huge, so you end up outside more. That leads to spontaneous neighborhood gatherings . . . a real sense of community," said D.C. lawyer Jeremy Simon, a five-year resident of Battery Park and co-president of the neighborhood civic association.
"It's a 17-minute walk to downtown [Bethesda] and the Metro. Minimally, I get my 30 minutes of [exercise] a day," said Charles Fortin, Deming's husband.
Fortin, an urban planner, was enthralled with the four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath arts and crafts bungalow that had smitten his wife. The house, built in 1923 and among Battery Park's first dwellings, was featured in the 1995 book, "Bethesda, A Social History," by William Offutt.
"I like the historic content of the structure. We wanted to do improvements, a porch and a deck, but we had tremendous responsibility that it wouldn't be de-characterized by what we wanted to do," Fortin said.
Fortin and Deming said it was important to them to find an architect who was knowledgeable about bungalows and shared their sentiments about preservation and history. Over the years, their new home had undergone a series of improvements, some of which had taken away from its original style.
Battery Park resident Thomas Kostelecky fit the bill.
"It's in the nature of bungalows to have exterior spaces that are an extension of the inside," Kostelecky said. "Bungalows always have front porches, but here it was gone."
Under Kostelecky's guidance, a front porch was returned. He also opened up a back downstairs bedroom that Deming uses as her study by removing two existing windows and replacing them with French doors that open to a deck and a landscaped yard.
"We have very nice yards in Battery Park," he said. "They are small but intimate. We wanted to tie that and make it become an extension to the living space. Before, it was just cut off. You couldn't see what was back there."
Kostelecky, a Battery Park resident since 1997 and a former president of the civic association, said he had a special interest in the project. "It's something we walk by every day. It was an opportunity to improve the character of the neighborhood," he said.
Battery Park homeowners receive automatic membership in its civic association, which allows access to two tennis courts, a tot lot and a small clubhouse that is the site of neighborhood holiday parties and dinners as well as private celebrations such as birthdays and weddings.
"Battery Park is one of six taxing districts where the state collects the dues and sends them back to the community," said George Schreiber, an epidemiologist and former civic association president who has lived in Battery Park for 25 years.
He said dues are based on house assessments and cost about $200 a year.
Battery Park residents acknowledge that convenience and charm come at a price. For example, they worry that the proximity to downtown Bethesda that they all enjoy could also spoil Battery Park.
"We are very vigilant about keeping the commercial properties where they are supposed to be and not letting them encroach," Simon said.
While there are rules on the books to protect neighborhoods such as Battery Park, residents say they don't think the county enforces them stringently enough. They point to a house on the corner of Old Georgetown Road and Battery Lane as a recent example.
"A nail and hair salon was being run over there illegally. We took it the zoning board and the county. She finally got fed up and sold the place," Schreiber said of a situation that dragged on for months and was only resolved after Battery Park residents used their civic association dues to hire a lawyer.
"Twenty percent of our budget we had to use to protect ourselves and do what the county should have done," said Kostelecky. Other regular irritants include cut-through traffic and, in the evenings, restaurant valets who bring customers' cars to Battery Park's quiet streets because they can't find spaces in downtown Bethesda.
"Our street is one way and people go up the wrong way toward Wilson Lane. They see that they can't, but they do it anyway, and on the weekends and every night, the valets tend to speed through," Kostelecky said.
Residents also take issue with home buyers who seek the neighborhood's convenience but not the existing houses.
"They're buying and sitting and hoping it goes commercial and therefore they're not maintaining the house," Kostelecky said. "Or they're buying and tearing down. They're within their rights, but it stands out."
Although he is not planning to sell his house, Kostelecky said he is solicited daily with offers for his three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath circa 1923 Cape Cod for the purpose of demolishing it and replacing it with something bigger.
"People are buying and bulldozing and putting these houses up that are as large as the building envelopes will allow," he said. "They have the feeling they'll get [the investment] back."
For the residents committed to Battery Park's preservation, the positives of their neighborhood outweigh the negatives.
"It's trade-offs," said Lori Palmer, a pension-consulting-firm adviser who moved from Gaithersburg to Battery Park 11 years ago. "There's ease of life, [but] we don't have big homes and we have small closets."
