| Page 3 of 5 < > |
The Pastel Dream Of the Developer
The woman who built Friendship Heights: Millionaire developer Thelma "Tim" Edwards and her Rolls-Royce outside her Little Pink House on Willard Avenue.
(By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
She set up her own firm, Edwards Properties, running it from home, along with raising her family. Says daughter Deborah Demaree, the youngest of her four children: "I thought everyone's mother sewed clothes and made multimillion-dollar real estate deals off the back porch."
There was indeed money in the land. Edwards paid off the mortgage and brought in enough cash that Billy could quit his job selling liquor. She bought her first Rolls, in part to impress her male peers. "Men like toys," Edwards says. "You don't raise boys and a husband-- which is like raising a boy -- without understanding what makes them tick."
To drive with the top down in all sorts of weather, she bought a red mink coat.
"She wanted to act like a man in a man's world, and did it with a lot of confidence," says Stanley R. Zupnik, an area real estate broker.
"She didn't just have bravado," says Austin Kiplinger, a friend and publisher who lived on Willard Avenue in the 1940s. "She did her homework."
He laughs. "How she got herself a red mink coat I don't know. I guess you dip it in red ink."
Once, hoping to lure in a buyer who had previously snubbed her, Edwards hired a chauffeur to pick him up from the airport in the new Rolls. "Same woman, same brain, nice car, and all hell breaks loose," she says. She landed the deal. "You like to think everyone loves you, but really it's just the money."
A High-Flying Woman
More roads were made, and the countryside was divided into lots. More houses and bigger houses . . . apartment houses and tenement houses . . . schools . . . stores . . . and garages spread over the land.
-- "The Little House"
Edwards eventually tired of selling houses to family after family, watching the faces change while the houses remained. She wanted to change the face of the city itself.
