USA Vacations

Maryland Vacations

Annapolis

Antietam National Cemetery

Assateague Island

Baltimore

Bethesda

Cumberland

Ellicott City

Gaithersburg

Hagerstown

Ocean City

Rockville

Silver Spring

Silver Spring, Maryland Vacations, Travel Packages and Silver Spring Experiential Tours

Silver Spring is an urbanized, unincorporated area in Montgomery County, Maryland, USA. After Baltimore, Silver Spring is the second most populous place in Maryland.  Silver Spring would be the second most populous "city" in Maryland, after Baltimore.

The urbanized, oldest, and southernmost part of Silver Spring is a major business hub that lies at the north apex of Washington, D.C.. As of 2004, the Central Business District (CBD) held 7,254,729 square feet (673,986 m2) of office space, 5216 dwelling units and 17.6 acres (71,000 m2) of parkland.

Silver Spring takes its name from a mica-flecked spring discovered there in 1840 by Francis Preston Blair, who subsequently bought much of the surrounding land. Acorn Park, tucked away in an area of south Silver Spring away from the main downtown area, is believed to be the site of the original spring.

Silver Spring History

Silver Spring Nineteenth century
The Blair and Lee families, two politically active families of the time, are irrefutably tied to Silver Spring's history. In 1840, Francis Preston Blair, who later helped organize the modern American Republican Party, along with his daughter Elizabeth discovered a spring flowing with chips of mica (the now-dry spring is still visible at Acorn Park). Two years later, he completed a twenty-room mansion he dubbed Silver Spring on a 250 acre (one-square-kilometer) country homestead situated just outside of Washington, D.C. By 1854, Blair's son, Montgomery Blair, who became Postmaster General under Abraham Lincoln and represented Dred Scott before the United States Supreme Court, built the Falkland house in the area. By the end of the decade, Elizabeth Blair married Samuel Phillips Lee, third cousin of future Confederate leader Robert E. Lee, and gave birth to a boy, Francis Preston Blair Lee. The child would eventually become the first popularly elected Senator in United States history.

During the American Civil War, in 1864, Confederate Army General Jubal Early occupied Silver Spring prior to the Battle of Fort Stevens. After the engagement, fleeing Confederate soldiers razed Montgomery Blair's Falkland residence. By the end of the nineteenth century, the region began to develop into a town of decent size and importance. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's Metropolitan Branch was completed in 1873 and ran from Washington, D.C. to Point of Rocks, Maryland through Silver Spring. The first suburban development appeared in 1887 when Selina Wilson divided part of her farm on current-day Colesville Road (U.S. Route 29) and Brookeville Road into five- and ten-acre (20,000- and 40,000 m²) plots. In 1893, Francis Preston Blair Lee and his wife, Anne Brooke Lee, gave birth to E. Brooke Lee, who is known as the father of modern Silver Spring for his visionary attitude toward developing the region[citation needed.

Silver Spring Twentieth Century
The early twentieth century set the pace for downtown Silver Spring's growth. E. Brooke Lee and his brother, Blair Lee I, founded the Lee Development Company, whose Colesville Road office building remains a downtown fixture. Dale Drive, a winding roadway, was built to provide vehicular access to much of the family's substantial real estate holdings. Suburban development continued in 1922 when Woodside Development Corporation created Woodside Park, with 1 acre (4,000 m²) plot home sites. In 1924, Washington trolley service on Georgia Avenue (present-day Maryland Route 97) across B&O's Metropolitan Branch was temporarily suspended so that an underpass could be built. The underpass was completed two years later, but trolley service never resumed. It would be rebuilt again in 1948 with additional lanes for automobile traffic, opening the areas to the north for readily accessible suburban development.

Takoma-Silver Spring High School, built in 1924, was the first high school for Silver Spring. The community's rapid growth led to the need for a larger school. In 1935, when a new high school was built at Wayne Avenue and Sligo Creek Parkway, it was renamed Montgomery Blair High School. (The school remained at that location for over six decades, until 1998, when it was moved to a new, larger facility at the corner of U.S. Route 29 (Colesville Road) and Maryland Route 193 (University Boulevard). The former high school building became a combined middle school and elementary school.) The Silver Spring Shopping Center and Silver Theatre (designed by noted theatre architect John Eberson) were completed in 1938, at the request of developer William Alexander Julian. The shopping center was unique because it was one of the nation's first retail spaces that featured a street-front parking lot. Conventional wisdom held that merchandise should be in windows closest to the street so that people could see it; the shopping center broke those rules.

By the 1950s, Silver Spring was the second busiest retail market between Baltimore and Richmond, with the Hecht Company, J. C. Penney, Sears, Roebuck and Company, and a number of other retailers. In 1954, after standing for over a century, the Blair mansion "Silver Spring" was razed and replaced with the Blair Station Post office. In 1960, Wheaton Plaza (later known as Westfield Wheaton), a shopping center north of downtown Silver Spring opened, and captured much of the town's business. The downtown area soon started a long period of decline.

In December 1961, a short segment of the Capital Beltway (I-495) was opened to traffic between Georgia Avenue (Md. 97) and University Boulevard East (Md. 193).[6] On Monday, August 17, 1964, the final segment of the 64-mile Beltway was opened to traffic and a ribboncutting ceremony was held near the New Hampshire Avenue interchange, with a speech by then-Gov. J. Millard Tawes.

Washington Metro rail service into Washington, D.C. helped breathe life into the region starting in 1978 with the opening of Silver Spring station. The Metro line was built on the median of the old B&O Metropolitan Branch right of way, and went downtown, parallel to Georgia Avenue (U.S. Route 29) before descending into Union Station. By the mid-1990s, the Red Line continued north from the downtown Silver Spring core, mostly underground to three more locations in northern Silver Spring, with the opening of Forest Glen, Wheaton and Glenmont stations.

Nevertheless, the decline continued in the 1980s, as the Hecht Company, the downtown's last remaining department store, closed and opened a new store at Wheaton Plaza. Furthermore, Hecht's added a covenant forbidding another department store from renting its old spot. City Place, a multi-level mall, was established in the old Hecht Company building in 1992, but it had trouble attracting quality anchor stores and gained a reputation as a budget mall, anchored by Burlington Coat Factory, Gold's Gym, Marshalls, AMC Theaters (now closed) and a short-lived Nordstrom Rack. In the mid-1990s, developers considered building a mega-mall and entertainment complex called the American Dream (similar to the Mall of America) in downtown Silver Spring, but the revitalization plan fell through before any construction began because the developers were unable to secure funding.

Another notable occurrence in Silver Spring during the 1990s was a 1996 train collision on the Silver Spring section of the Metropolitan line. On February 16 of that year, during the Friday-evening rush hour, a MARC commuter train bound for Washington Union Station collided with an outgoing Amtrak train and erupted in flames on a snow-swept stretch of track in Silver Spring, leaving eleven people dead.

The Maryland State Highway Administration started studies of improvements to the Capital Beltway in 1993, and have continued, off and on, examining a number of alternatives (including HOV lanes and Express Toll Lanes, since then.

Silver Spring Twenty-first century
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, downtown Silver Spring began to see the results of redevelopment. Several city blocks near City Place Mall were completely reconstructed to accommodate a new outdoor shopping plaza. New shops included national retail chains such as Whole Foods Market, Borders Books & Music, a 20-screen Regal Theatres, Men's Wearhouse, Ann Taylor Loft, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Office Depot, and Pier 1 Imports, as well as many restaurants, including Romano's Macaroni Grill, Panera Bread, Red Lobster, Coldstone Creamery, Fuddruckers, Potbelly Sandwich Works, Baja Fresh, and Chick-fil-a. In addition to these chains, Downtown Silver Spring is home to a wide variety of family-owned restaurants representing its vast ethnic diversity. In 2003, Discovery Communications completed the construction of its headquarters and relocated to downtown Silver Spring from nearby Bethesda. The same year also brought the reopening of the Silver Theatre, as AFI Silver, under the auspices of the American Film Institute. Development continues with the opening of new office buildings, condos, stores, and restaurants, although City Place Mall continues to struggle to fill its vacancies despite the explosive growth around it. The restoration of the old Silver Spring Train Station was undertaken between 2000 and 2002, as recorded in the documentary film Next Stop: Silver Spring.

Silver Spring Culture
Downtown Silver Spring hosts several entertainment, musical, and ethnic festivals, the most notable of which are the Silverdocs documentary film festival held each June and hosted by Discovery Communications and the American Film Institute, as well as the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade (Saturday before Thanksgiving) for Montgomery County. The Silver Spring Jazz Festival has become the biggest event of the year drawing 20,000 people to the free festival held on the second Saturday in September. Featuring local jazz artist and a battle of high school bands, the Silver Spring Jazz Festival has featured such jazz greats as Wynton Marsalis and Arturo Sandoval.

Dining in Silver Spring is also extremely varied, including American, African, Burmese, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Italian, Mexican, Salvadoran, Jamaican, Vietnamese, Lebanese, and fusion restaurants, as well as many national and regional chains.

Silver Spring has many churches, synagogues, temples, and other religious institutions, including the World Headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Silver Spring serves as the primary urban area in Montgomery County and its revitalization has ushered in an eclectic mix of people and ideas, evident in the fact that the flagship high school (Montgomery Blair High School) has no majority group with each major racial and ethnic group claiming a significant percentage.

Silver Spring hosts the American Film Institute Silver Theatre and Culture Center, on Colesville Road. The theatre showcases American and foreign films. Discovery Communications, a cable and satellite programming company, has its headquarters in downtown, as well. Gandhi Brigade, a youth development media project, began in Silver Spring out of the Long Branch neighborhood. Silver Spring Stage, an all-volunteer community theater, performs in Woodmoor, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) north up Colesville Road from the downtown area. Downtown Silver Spring is also home to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a branch of the United States Department of Commerce incorporating the National Weather Service; the American Nurses Association; and numerous real estate development, biotechnology, and media and communications companies.

www.wikipedia.com

Expert Silver Spring Vacation Planners

Book your Silver Spring Vacation or Tour Here