The Chevy Chase Land Company
Founded in 1890 by Francis G. Newlands to develop all-white residential suburbs,[1] it continues to operate today as a privately held firm.
Using his inheritance from his deceased wife's father, and attracting other investment partners—particularly Nevada politicians known as the "California Syndicate"—Newlands directed the quiet purchase of land along a straight line from just north of Dupont Circle, which was at the time the northwestern edge of urban development, into an unincorporated area of Maryland's Montgomery County and up to today's Jones Bridge Road.
Newlands initially intended this line to run to the established town of Rockville, Maryland, but found it easier and cheaper to buy Montgomery County land about a half-mile to the east.
[3] On June 6, 1890,[4] when his group of straw purchasers had accumulated 1,712 acres (6.93 km2), Newlands incorporated the Chevy Chase Land Company to bring the parcels together for development.
In 1888, he acquired majority control of the Rock Creek Railway, which had obtained a charter to build one of D.C.'s first electric streetcar lines but lacked the funds for construction.
The company ultimately spent about $1.5 million[5]($50,866,667 today[6]) to build a five-mile line from 18th and U Streets NW to Coquelin Run in Maryland.
The Society for Architectural Historians writes, "A major reason for the success of this pioneering suburban community was the fact that the Chevy Chase Land Company included civil, sanitary, and structural engineers as well as architects, landscape architects, and real estate agents to incorporate zoning, architectural design guidelines, landscaping, and infrastructure...The company also constructed water and sewer systems and an electrical power house.
[19] One year previously, a sales brochure alluded to steps taken to keep Chevy Chase white: "The only restrictions imposed are those which experience has proven are necessary in any residential section to maintain or increase values and protect property holders against the encroachment of undesirable elements.
In 1925, the company built the Chevy Chase Arcade in northwest D.C.; it was planned as "one of four business centers alternating with apartments along Connecticut Avenue.
[23] The racial "restrictions waned during World War II and were barred entirely by the Supreme Court in 1948, but the legacy of discrimination lingers," a historian wrote in 2016;[23] Chevy Chase Village, for example, was 95.9% White at the 2015 census.
[19] In 1988, the Land Company sold a 22.5-acre tract at Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
[28] At the time, the company owned some 1.5 million square feet of commercial real estate, mostly office space and retail properties in or around Bethesda and Chevy Chase.
[29] Smith was replaced as interim CEO by board leader Kate Carr, and then by Tom Regnell, who had been an executive at Washington Real Estate Investment Trust.
