Replies

How Takoma Park Became ‘The Berkeley Of The East’

https://wamu.org/story/19/04/24/how-takoma-park-became-the-berkeley-of-the-east/

Exploring the origins of a Washington suburb’s hippy-dippy reputation.

PART OF WHAT’S WITH WASHINGTON
Mikaela Lefrak

Takoma Park, Maryland, is a small suburb with a big reputation. It has an official ban on nuclear weapons, a peace delegate, an annual folk festival, a local voting age of 16 and a giant crocheted octopus that lives on its clock tower. Many people in the Washington region refer to it as “The People’s Democratic Republic of Takoma Park” or “Granola Park” instead. An Urban Dictionary contributor calls it “the capital of hippie-land.”

The city’s reputation is so pervasive that it prompted Will Kastens of Adelphi, Maryland, to submit a question to WAMU’s What’s With Washington about its origins. “How did Takoma Park become the Berkeley of the East?” he asked.

The answer dates back more than 100 years. But before we go there, let’s clear up one thing first.

Which Takoma Are We Talking About, Exactly?

The Washington region is home to two places with similar names: Takoma Park, Maryland, and Takoma, D.C. They share a Metro station, a lot of history and a reputation for progressive activism.

Takoma and Takoma Park were founded as one by the developer Benjamin Franklin Gilbert in the early 1880s. He liked the land’s position along the B&O railroad (easy commuting!), its elevation and forests (not a swamp!), and the fresh water supply from Sligo Creek (again, not a swamp!). He took its name from the Native American word “tacoma,” which is thought to mean “high up” or “near heaven.”

Takoma Park, Maryland, was incorporated in 1890. It straddled Prince George’s and Montgomery counties for most of the 20th century. The county lines were finally adjusted in 1997 to place the city entirely in Montgomery County. That helped clear up some confusion, but Takoma/Takoma Park’s nomenclature still befuddles many a longtime area resident today.

Teetotalers Get The Ball Rolling

My first stop is a house on Holly Avenue. The street is classic Takoma Park: Gray-haired neighbors wave hello and adjust their lawn signs for progressive causes. Many of their big-but-not-too-big houses are painted bright colors and surrounded by white picket fences.

I head into the house of U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat whose district includes Takoma Park. He remembers the neighborhood as having multiple reputations when he moved in with his wife in 1990. “Part of it was the hip, funky, progressive counterculture mecca. It was also known as a place that was more affordable, more working class and more gritty.”

Raskin dates Takoma Park’s liberal reputation all the way back to 1903. That’s when the Seventh Day Adventist Church relocated its world headquarters to Takoma Park — HQ2, if you will. The Adventists liked that they could have a D.C. address while still benefiting from the area’s open space, natural beauty and a ban on alcohol (the founder and mayor, Gilbert, was a teetotaler).

“The Seventh Day Adventists were do-gooders,” Raskin said. They founded institutions like a university, hospital, publishing house and sanitarium that helped make the commuter suburb an attractive place to live.

Community-focused organizations continued to crop up over the next couple of decades. The town won a bid for a Carnegie library, founded a Fourth of July parade and welcomed a new Boy Scout troops and many new churches. For years, it remained a successful but quiet suburb.

Then Sammie Abbott showed up.

A ‘Perpetually Mad’ New Yorker Brings Activist Fervor To Takoma Park

To get the story of Sammie Abbott, I head to the house of Takoma, D.C., resident Loretta Neumann. She’s lived in the neighborhood since the 1970s, as have the two other women she’s invited to join us: Historic Takoma president Diana Kohn and historic preservationist Sara Green. Neumann is a co-founder of Neighbors, Inc., a group founded to end blockbusting and redlining.

“Sammie Abbott!” Neumann exclaims. Says Kohn: “He made a huge fuss. Everyone knew who Sammie Abbott was.”

Abbott was a labor organizer and graphic designer who moved to Takoma Park from New York in 1943. He once described himself to the Washington Post as “a perpetually mad person” and “too mad to sleep.”

All that anger came to good use in the mid-1960s, when Abbott led a fight against a proposal to connect the new Beltway to downtown D.C. by building another freeway. The road would have cut through Takoma and displaced hundreds of families.

Abbott rallied black and white families in both Maryland and D.C. to join a years-long battle against the freeway. He won and even got the state to invest in a Metro station for Takoma Park instead.

“Everyone got activated after that,” says Kohn. “Sometimes you were fighting two battles at the same time, and Takoma pretty much won all of them.”

Abbott went on to become mayor from 1980-85. During his tenure, Takoma Park voted to become a nuclear-free zone. For the record, it did it three years before Berkeley, California.

Can An Expensive Suburb Still Be A Hotspot For Activism?

Longtime residents like Green say they’re still keeping the activist tradition alive in Takoma Park and Takoma.

“That reputation of feistiness, it suits this community very well,” she says. “We get up in front of the City Council on things that affect the whole city, am I right?” Neumann and Kohn nod vigorously.

But Takoma Park has become such an attractive place to live that the area’s once-midrange Victorians and bungalows now easily sell for more than $1 million. “It’s very competitive right now,” says Long & Foster real estate agent Elliot Barber. “There’s a definite strong upward trend (in home prices) that even five years ago I didn’t see coming.”

Housing prices and the average age of residents have both gone up since its activism heyday. It might be tough for a young Jamie Raskin or Loretta Neumann to move there now.

But if you’re looking for a reliably funky July 4th parade or a history lesson on 1960s activism, Takoma Park is still the place to go.