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Moving from basement to storefront in Takoma Park

The old archives? It’s history

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo David S. Spence⁄The Gazette A tag from the Takoma Park Historical Society identifies this item as Takoma Park’s first ballot box, another part of Historic Takoma. Click here to enlarge this photo David S. Spence⁄The Gazette Takoma Park resident Dorothy Barnes displays and discusses some of the historic items she keeps in her basement for Historic Takoma. Items of note include the city’s original ballot box and chairs from the city’s first library.

But in a couple of years, those items will have a new home in Takoma Junction, where Historic Takoma, which maintains an unofficial collection of city artifacts and documents, is planning on opening a professional archive to house the items. The organization has signed a lease with an option to buy a vacant grocery store on Carroll Avenue.

The option to buy is well within reach now following a series of state and county grants over the last year that have put more than $500,000 toward the effort.

Historic Takoma’s project to build a permanent home for its collection comes at a time when, as newcomers are moving to Takoma Park, they are unaware of its history. But it is not an issue isolated to the city.

‘‘Unfortunately, I think there is not the level of knowledge of the history of this community and its founder and so forth out there that we would like to see, and I don’t think that’s just in Takoma Park,” said Sabrina Baron, the president of Historic Takoma who teaches history at the University of Maryland, College Park. ‘‘Our county only has 200-odd years and we just don’t have a strong connection with our history, and we don’t seem to connect to our history in the way that some other people do.”

At the same time, Takoma Park has always had a core group of people interested in documenting the city’s history, perhaps the biggest among them being the late William A. Hooker, who was president of Historic Takoma’s predecessor, the Takoma Park Historical Society.

‘‘Dr. Hooker was always going into the Maryland State Archives and the Library of Congress to do research to find out about the Carroll family, who originally owned the land, and to find out about the Civil War in this area,” Baron said. ‘‘Earlier generations were very self-conscious about what was going on here. You read their stuff and you almost feel that they had embraced a kind of mission, that what they were doing here was special.”

While Historic Takoma is working out the specifications for what they’d like to have in the Carroll Avenue storefront, there is a strong desire to have some kind of exhibition space to display some of the artifacts in the collection. Among them are items like the Town of Takoma Park’s first ballot box, which Barnes has kept in her basement since Historic Takoma moved out of rented space in Old Town a few years ago.

‘‘I think it’s great that we’ll have more opportunities to get more people interested in what we have,” said Barnes, who has spent nearly all of her 83 years on Elm Avenue. ‘‘Too many people don’t know the history of the town because they haven’t been exposed to it.”

In addition to the ballot box, Barnes’ basement contains two of the chairs from the original Takoma Park Maryland Library, opened in 1935 in a home on Jackson Avenue. In a nearby box sits the town’s original seal, while the ballot box itself also has a 1920 Bank of Takoma Park signature stamp bearing the names of the mayor and town treasurer.

Other boxes contain 1920s-era newspapers, the city’s cash ledger from the same period and the marketing materials city founder Benjamin Franklin Gilbert used to sell land in what he developed as Washington’s first railroad suburb.

‘‘Virtually everything we have came from residents who saw the importance of preserving things for future generations,” Baron said. ‘‘The Takoma Park Historical Society did an incredible job. One of the things I’ve thought is ironic about our collection is that it’s really strong in the early years, but post-World War II, it starts to drop off.”

Historic Takoma has made a point of incorporating the oral histories of lifelong city residents into its archives, and with a new home, the group may be able to offer oral history workshops for others who are interested, Baron said. Another area the organization is exploring is a ‘‘Then and Now” walking tour of Old Takoma, which includes the business district on either side of the Maryland⁄D.C. border.

‘‘The possibilities for those kinds of exhibits and projects are endless, I think,” she said.

And while the new archive will allow Barnes to reclaim her basement and other areas of her home where she stores Historic Takoma’s materials — a role she said she doesn’t mind playing for the group — what’s most important in her mind is telling Takoma Park’s story.

‘‘We’ll be able to display items like the first ballot box and some of these other things,” Barnes said. ‘‘B.F. Gilbert really seemed to have a vision of what a small town ought to be about.”