Its Name Lacks a 'Park,' but Not Its Vibe

By Mara Lee
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 7, 2008

Takoma has had an activist spirit from the start.

An early example: Georgia Avenue was a toll road in the neighborhood's early days, and residents built out Piney Branch Road to avoid the payments.

In the 1880s, when Takoma Park was founded as a railway suburb of the District, distinctions between the Northwest Washington side, now known just as Takoma, and Maryland side, Takoma Park, were little noticed. Even until the 1950s, children from both Maryland and the District attended the same Takoma elementary school in the District.

Carolivia Herron, vice president of the neighborhood association, moved to the south end of Takoma in 1961 as a teenager. She lives today in that same house on Underwood Street, although she has moved away a number of times over the years.

She's proud of the activist history of Takoma, that neighbors were part of a coalition that blocked Interstate 95 from cutting through the District and that they blocked high-rise commercial development around the Metro station.

She remembers Marvin Caplan, a neighborhood equal-housing activist, visiting her family not long after they arrived, telling them the neighborhood was fighting fear-mongering among real estate agents who were warning white residents that as black neighbors arrived, they should sell. Herron's was one of the first black families on the street. The racial balance in the neighborhood eventually flipped so that few whites were left. Now, she said, "The southern end of Takoma is slowly integrating."

Mary Kadzielski, 25, moved to a group house on Eighth Street NW in February. Her roommate Elizabeth Ide, 26, arrived in August.

Kadzielski said she likes the farmer's market, which is across the line in Maryland. Ide praised the Takoma Park Silver Spring Food Co-op, also on the Maryland side, with its emphasis on organic and vegetarian products. Kadzielski's job is also in Takoma Park, where she works for a group that lobbies for climate-change policies.

Their house gives them easy access to those and other Takoma Park amenities -- it's closer to the downtown area than most group houses on the Maryland side -- at a price they can afford. The roommates pay $550 to $725 a room.

Takoma has some grand Victorian houses, many 1920s bungalows and two-story wood-frame houses, some duplexes, brick Colonials, brick rowhouses and apartments, and a few ramblers scattered among the older homes. The streets are lined with sidewalks, many shaded by massive trees.

"I love the green life of it," Herron said. "I just love the refreshing quiet."

Sterling Ward and his wife, Cynthia, live on Eighth Street NW. He says his block is "very tranquil, very peaceful" because of the mature oak trees. He said he likes the character of their 86-year-old house, with its built-in bookshelves in the living room. The value of the house has doubled since 2002, he said. "We couldn't afford to buy today."

Lynn and Larry Hailes moved into a Victorian house two blocks from the Metro station in 1996. Before that, they lived about five blocks away for seven years.

In the dozen years they have lived on their block, only two houses have turned over.

"It's a diverse neighborhood, and close-knit," Lynn said.

"There are a lot of potluck dinners during the holidays," Larry said.

Recent figures on the ethnic and racial mix of Takoma aren't available, but in both 1990 and 2000, the census reported that the area was roughly 75 percent black. The part of the neighborhood east of Piney Branch Road is about equally divided between renters and owners, and was about 10 percent Hispanic and about 10 percent white in 2000. The section west of Piney Branch was almost 20 percent white, and was 70 percent owners.

Christy Hartless, who is white, arrived in 2001 with her husband from Fairfax County. "People were very welcoming to us," she said. Over the past seven years, she said, more houses have turned over to families with young children, like her own.

She loves the neighborhood atmosphere. And the revival of nearby downtown Silver Spring since their move "has been a huge bonus that we never banked on."

David Arthur chose Takoma for its diversity and convenience. He lived in Dupont Circle before buying a house in 2000; his wife moved from Silver Spring.

They paid $364,000 for a house a five-minute walk from Metro, and they have stayed true to their goal of having only one car. Arthur said his commute downtown to his lobbying job takes 30 minutes door-to-door.

"We knew we wanted to start a family, and we wanted to make sure they were exposed to as much diversity as possible -- ethnic diversity, racial diversity, gay-lesbian-bisexual diversity," Arthur said.

"There's a sense of community here," he said, with monthly potlucks among families with young children. "There's a real activist spirit in Takoma D.C. you don't find in every neighborhood."

One of the downsides of Takoma, he said, is that the neighborhood schools are not up to his family's standards. Maya, 6, and Zoe, who will be 3 in September, go to a bilingual Montessori charter school in the District that runs through eighth grade.

Once Maya reaches high school age, "I'm not sure what we'll do," he said.

The Haileses' children, now grown, attended D.C. public schools, but not the neighborhood ones. They went to the Capitol Hill cluster schools through eighth grade, then their daughter went to Banneker and their son went to Duke Ellington. Larry Hailes graduated from Coolidge, the neighborhood high school, but it was far different then, he said.

Both Lynn and Larry Hailes said they feel crime has gotten worse in the neighborhood in the past three or four years, although they see police are responding with stepped-up patrols.

Kadzielski was mugged at 9:30 p.m. recently, and her roommate had her car stolen the day she was moving in, with many of her possessions still in it. It was never recovered.

But the women don't think that's a reason to leave the neighborhood. Kadzielski lived in Columbia Heights earlier, and sees the crime level as the same.

Hartless said that before shopping in Takoma, she never realized her family could afford a city neighborhood where homes are sheltered from traffic and have generous yards. When she was asked what she likes about her neighborhood, she was speechless for a moment.

"Gosh, there are so many things," she said.