Several historic societies want to protect the Perpetual Bank building on Georgia Avenue from the wrecking ball. But a lawyer for the building’s owners asks: What’s the big friggin’ deal?
“Not all past events are historical,” Patricia Harris, who represents the building’s owners, testified Thursday before the planning board. “If there’s a real need to celebrate savings and loans, then we suggest there are better ways to do it.”
The five-story, 50-year-old building at 8700 Georgia Ave once housed the Perpetual Bank’s Silver Spring branch, according to documents submitted to the planning board. However, residents may know it better as the former SunTrust Bank building, or home to the dance troupe Tappers With Attitude.
“The loss of this building would result in a significant loss to the architecture of Silver Spring,” Marcy Stickle, a member of the Silver Spring Historical Society, told the planning board. Isabelle Gournay and Mary Corbin Sies, both associate professors with the University of Maryland, labeled the building’s style “suburban Baby Boom modernism”.
Defenders also claimed the Perpetual Bank, which had branches in The District, Bethesda and Hyattsville, financed many homes in Montgomery County. The bank was also among the first to give mortgages to the county’s black Americans, state delegate Tom Hucker (D-20) wrote to the board.
But attorney Harris wasn’t buying it, arguing that historic preservation was never raised when plans to erect a new building on the site were presented in November 2006. The proposed project would have ground-floor retail, office space, apartments and a pocket park.
“We don’t want to see an abuse of historic preservation rules,” Harris testified. “Every building has a story, but that story must be compelling.”
Disdain for the proposed project could have been behind calls for historic preservation, planning commish Allison Bryant said. But what’s a planning board to do?
“All of us make use of what is available when we want to stop something,” Bryant told Harris. “That doesn’t mean we succumb to it, or that the people trying to stop something should stop using [what's available].”
“That’s a part of the process,” Bryant concluded.
The full planning board will decide at a future meeting whether to recommend the building’s preservation to the county council. No date has been announced.
Photo courtesy of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
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I hope they can get out of the requirement to build a pocket park on this tiny, tiny site.
It’s not the world’s most horrifically ugly building, which seems to be the main preservationist criteria sometimes, but I really don’t get why it’s historic, either. Our doctors (Cameron Medial Group) are in there, and I never noticed anything particularly amazing inside.
I’m all for preserving buildings with significant national or local historical significance, but there’s no way you could convince me that some random S&L meets one of those criterion.
DMZ – agreed. I think there is little to nothing of architectural interest, uniqueness or significance to that building. To quote the article – “suburban baby boom modernism”… which was incidently the most disgusting period of architectural history, almost, but not even topped by the recent wrath of “clusters ‘o identical mansions”. Hundreds of thousands upon thousands of soldiers needed housing and they needed it really quick. That where the vast suburban developments of near windowless brick houses that cluster PG county and the more unfortunate neighborhoods of MoCo came from. And with it came a general architectural style of simple, utilitarian and just flat out uninteresting. The suntrust building has no architectural detail at all. To quote an old teacher talking about my 1960’s high school – it as itneresting as a cereal box turned on it’s side.
Tear it down
Editor’s note: Don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel. ;-) — JD (Jan 15, 2008)
It’s an ugly box. Tear it down.
I agree with the sentiments of those who want to preserve truly historical and/or beautiful buildings, but ugly is ugly, and this utilitarian building does nothing to enhance the environment. Begone!
I bet that building looked cool in 1970. In 2008…not so much. Break out the wrecking ball.
Historical preservation groups offer valuable education to the community about the significance of buildings. However, these historical societies can be a real impediment to community revitalization and economic development.
Here’s some food for thought, courtesy of the Silver Spring Scene:
(1) Silver Spring’s Perpetual Building has a sister in Hyattsville.
(2) The project proposed for 8700 Georgia Ave would have ground-floor retail, two stories of office space, 11 stories of apartments, and an alley for a pocket park.
The existing building may not be architecturally unique. Then again, the proposed building ain’t no looker, either.
What’s Silver Spring to do?
I don’t think the building is really ugly – only that it is boring and generic looking. I live a few blocks away from it and have walked past it literally hundreds of times. Guess how many times I have paused and said to myself, “What an ugly or interesting or neat or ___ building?” None. It is just another bland looking, functional looking building. Knock it down!
Perhaps I am the only one who thinks it is an attractive building (circa 1958). Either way, it’s not architecturally significant so I also say “tear it down”.
“Preserving the past, building for the future”
http://www.gazette.net/stories/011608/silvnew210501_32360.shtml
Perpetual Building Association Building Hearing Before the Montgomery County Planning Board, 1/10/08
http://www.mc-mncppc.org/board/agenda/2008/agenda20080110e.html
then click on each:
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Agreed that the proposed building doesn’t look much better… I don’t really like much current day architecture either. But if neither is gonna be aesthetically appealing, because no one is willing to pay for aesthetically appealing any longer like they were pre-1930ish, then we might as well have a multi-use high density development there. Scrap the pocket park though… a thought I think most who comment on here would agree with…. if we pooled the money and land resources from every dumb pocket park, we wouldn’t have had such an uproar over the loss of the turf, we would have had real green space somewhere in the CBD instead of cemented areas scattered across the neighborhood.