The Big Question

In Lewes, a town founded by the Dutch in 1631, residents rose up after an old house on a historic street was torn down about five years ago and replaced with a large modern structure with a ground-level garage. Neighbors called it "the Snout House" because it reminded them of a pig's stubby nose. In December 2004, the city began requiring all new homes or significant additions in a 50-block radius to undergo review by the city's historic preservation committee. In the past 18 months, about 100 homes have come before the committee. A handful have been rejected outright.

New construction in that area is now pretty iffy, said Henry Baynum, building official for Lewes. "Normally you try to rebuild what you have there," he said.

Longtime Lewes resident Alan Keffer was skeptical at first. He has come to think, though, that the reviews are needed because so many home buyers seemed to be caught up in keeping up with, and surpassing, the Joneses.

"It's almost the same as when people stopped driving cars and had to outdo each other with SUVs," Keffer said. "It's like there is peer pressure in whatever their realm might be. They're doing things that are not really necessary for their lives. . . . The intention here is not to prevent people from modifying their homes but to keep the scale of the community and the street in the way that those of us living here expected it to remain."

Edward Barrows of Glen Echo Heights, a neighborhood in Montgomery County, has been horrified to see lots "scalped," with their leafy trees "scraped" away when new homes are built. Barrows, a professor of forest biology at Georgetown University, sees the problem as part of a global environmental crisis.

"I care about trees," Barrows said. "Trees are going down all over the planet."

But he feels powerless to do anything about it. Glen Echo Heights is in Bethesda, an unincorporated area that is governed by Montgomery County. "The law doesn't protect us," he complained. "There's almost nothing we can do because our representatives aren't protecting us."

Carolyn Shawaker, mayor of Garrett Park, shares his feelings of helplessness and blames it on what she sees as a pro-developer attitude among county planners. "That's made it harder for the little communities to do things to protect themselves," she said.

So Shawaker and other local leaders sought aid from Maryland Del. Richard S. Madaleno Jr., (D-Montgomery County), who sponsored a law that will permit about 11 communities in suburban Maryland to get more control of their zoning. He introduced the legislation after attending a Fourth of July picnic in the town of Chevy Chase, finding himself in a flood of 400 local residents walking around emblazoned with "Moratorium Now" stickers.

"People are almost exclusively opposed to how the new homes are changing the character of the neighborhood and their own lifestyles," Madaleno said. Still, he noted, once these small municipalities get the right to write their own new design guidelines Oct. 1, it is impossible to say exactly what they will do.

That's because many people remain conflicted about what is best, even in places such as Arlington that have long sought to control development. Mark Weinress, president of the Lyon Village Citizen's Association, which encompasses 800 houses in Arlington, said that while many people are saddened when a beautiful home is demolished, some ugly older homes seem to warrant that fate.

"Some houses that get torn down deserve it, but others are real losses," Weinress said.