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Art deco gem boosts a community

By Jennifer Hopfinger

Silver Spring Shopping Center and its movie theater are historic and architectural gems, but not long ago it seemed they were going to the dust heap.

The 76,000-square-foot Maryland shopping center and its 25,000-square-foot movie-theater anchor, the Silver Theater, were designed by theater architect John Eberson and built by developer William Alexander Julian in 1938. The center, a fine example of art-deco architecture, was one of the earliest open-air centers in the U.S. and helped pioneer retail space featuring street-front parking.

The success of the shopping center, at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road, led to more commercial building in the vicinity, creating a business hub in Silver Spring and an unincorporated area of Montgomery County, at the north end of Washington.

The 1950s were the heyday for the shopping center and for downtown Silver Spring, but the center and its environs began to decline in the 1960s as competing malls in outlying areas of Montgomery County started popping up.

“Downtown Silver Spring went into an economic tailspin that lasted for about a generation,” said Jerry McCoy, founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society. By the early 1980s “the downtown area was no man’s land. It didn’t appear to be economically viable anymore.” The Silver Spring Shopping Center seemed destined for the wrecking ball.

But in 1984 the Art Deco Society of Washington launched a campaign to save the center as a historic site. Thus the shopping center was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and then added to Montgomery County’s historic-preservation plan in 1994. Montgomery County acquired the property for about $10 million in 1996 from a local family. “The center was vacant,” said Gary Stith, director of Montgomery County’s Silver Spring Regional Center. “The roof leaked like a sieve. It was in very poor condition.”

County officials were convinced that the center was a diamond in the rough that, once restored, could spur a development spree in the downtown business district. Their bet paid off.

Two years later the county signed an agreement with the nonprofit American Film Institute to restore the Silver Theater and subsidize its operations. The county spent $27 million on the renovations, and the cinema reopened in April 2003. The American Film Institute leases the space from the county for $10 a year and shows documentaries and vintage films in its 400-seat main theater and in two screening rooms, one with 70 seats and the other with 200. The county also kicked in $1.5 million to restore the shopping center’s art-deco facade.

The county’s commitment attracted private developers, and the Silver Spring Shopping Center became part of a larger redevelopment project called Downtown Silver Spring, which includes 450,000 square feet of retail space. PFA Silver Spring — a partnership of Argo Investment Co., Foulger-Pratt Cos. and Peterson Cos. — owns the development, which also has office and residential components.

The developers rebuilt the interior of the shopping center, completing the work in 2003. The shopping center was designed with a nautical motif; the theater looks like a huge ship, with the marquis as the masthead. Turquoise and gold abounds. Signage uses aluminum art-deco letters trimmed in neon. Hand-cranked awnings shield the 20-odd storefronts from the sun. A second floor of retail space was added, but this is set back from the original structure so as not to detract from the first story.

The original 1938 businesses, such as Ethel’s Millinery and Bags, Haas Brothers Hardware and Silver Barber Shop, have been replaced by Panera Bread Company, Red Lobster and Romano’s Macaroni Grill. The center is 95 percent occupied.

The privately owned, Fairfax, Va.-based Peterson Cos. handles Silver Spring Shopping Center’s leasing and management. The county owns the ground leases on the shopping center, but ownership will pass to the joint venture in phases over the next seven years.