The neighborhood history in a piece of wrought iron railing

Jerry McCoy, a special collections archivist and librarian at the DC Public Library, is retiring after 24 years. The news, reported by NBC4, got our attention because McCoy was posted at the Washingtoniana Collection’s interim Van Ness location in 2018, during the renovation of the MLK Library.

We knew that because, shortly after Washingtoniana moved in, McCoy took a walk around the neighborhood. And something he saw outside of ZIPS Dry Cleaners inspired him to use the collection’s resources to dig into the history of the place.

The 4418-4420 Connecticut Avenue exterior in 2018 (photo by Jerry A. McCoy)

McCoy posted the results of his search on Facebook on October 2nd, 2018, and at the same time, taught us how to use DCPL’s The People’s Archive to learn about the people and places that came before us. If you have a Facebook account, it’s worth checking out the full post and the additional images and information in the comments.

If you don’t use Facebook, here’s a reproduction of the main post, with some of the photos.

by Jerry A. McCoy

Today marks Washingtoniana’s third-week anniversary of opening at 4340 Connecticut Avenue NW. Like at our two previous interim locations, after settling in I’m propelled to walk around the new neighborhood to see what history there is to discover.

Last week I only had to walk one block north of “WASH” when I spotted it. Hiding behind a Rube Goldberg-like contraption of utility pipes and meters was a section of wrought iron railing painted battleship gray. Radiating out from a centered vertically-oriented opening were lightning bolts that culminated in sunbursts.

Original 1948 railing located at south end of 4418-20 Connecticut Avenue NW. (photo by Jerry A. McCoy)

Detail of original 1948 railing located at south end of 4418-20 Connecticut Avenue NW. (photo by Jerry A. McCoy)

“This is old and there has to be a story behind it,” I surmised.

Arriving back at WASH the first thing I did was to check the DC Government Office of Planning’s “HistoryQuest DC” map. Typing in the address of the building, 4420 Connecticut Avenue NW, resulted in discovering that the building was constructed in 1948 and that the original owner was the Chevy Chase Radio & Electric Company. I realized immediately that this railing had to be part of the original business that opened at this address 70 years ago.

The architect was Louis de Ladurantaye (1885-1956), who designed 87 buildings in Washington, DC between 1923 and 1949.

Next I conducted a search of the Evening Star newspaper at the DC Public Library Special Collections’ “Newspapers, Magazines & Journals” database (available at any DC Public Library or remotely with a DCPL library card). Searching “4420 Connecticut” with the searched narrowed to just 1948 resulted in hits for two businesses at this address but neither of them were the Chevy Chase Radio & Electric Company.

Having recalled seeing another entrance at the south end of the building opposite the 4420 address imprinted on a canopy over an entrance at the north end, I searched for “4418 Connecticut.” Quickly I found four advertisements that the Chevy Chase Radio Company ran between April and August of 1948. Next up was to search WASH’s “Evening Star Photo Morgue” and the “Washington Historical Image Collection” to see if there were any photos of the building as it originally looked in 1948. Nothing.

Next I consulted Forest Hills, an Images of American book (975.3 E398) published in 2006 by the Forest Hills Neighborhood Alliance (the neighborhood where WASH is located). No luck there either.

Lastly, I ran a Google Images search for “Chevy Chase Radio Company” and, in addition to lots of photos of the actor Chevy Chase coming up, found one black and white photo of a building titled “Potomac Electric Power Co.” But plainly visible on the building was signage that read “Dowd’s Chevy Chase Radio & Electric Company.” The poor quality photo was credited to Theodor Horydczak, whose photo archive (I knew) was housed in the Library of Congress.

Dowd’s Chevy Chase Radio & Electrict Co. (1948 photograph by Theodor Horydczak, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Within seconds I was at LOC.gov, which had (unfortunately) the same poor quality exterior photo but included an interior image of the business as well. Both photos were taken by the photographer on April 15, 1948, the first month that Chevy Chase Radio began advertising in the Star.

It’s too bad that this nice example of wrought iron craftsmanship is not more visible to passersby on the sidewalk, but if it had been it probably would not have survived the past seven decades.