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Story Post V: Development Patterns Begin to Shift
#5
Pictured: Washington DC and surrounding counties.
1984
Ed Deavers was haunted by his family legacy. That happened often with old families. Odds were pretty good that, with any hallowed name, any given generation was going to be the one to disappoint, to topple the grand old clan from its perch in the history books, and when one generation didn’t manage the toppling that just upped the pressure on the next.
Okay, the Deavers of Montgomery County, Maryland had never exactly lit the world on fire, and if their legacy should pass, not many would notice. But Ed would. And since he’d come to the decision to sell the family land, he could practically hear the spectral heads of hundreds of dead relatives shaking in disappointment.
The Deavers had been farming in Montgomery County for a shade over 200 years. It had been a matter of luck that Amos Stanhope Deavers had decided to sink his plow into the reasonably fertile soil of central Maryland a year before it was decided to build the young nation’s capital practically on his doorstep. Before long, hungry customers on the banks of the Potomac were eating anything the Deavers could grow. More land was bought, eventually amounting to three sizeable farms in the north, south, and center of the county.
Even in the days of Amos’s children, the Deavers had been entrepreneurial, first renting the farms to tenants, and eventually building weekend cottages on the verges of their land for middle-class city-dwellers to rent or buy. The last Deavers to actually do anything close to farming (other than a spot of gardening) was Amos’s grandson, Daniel. After that, the family had been pure management class.
Still, it was one thing to manage land from a distance, another entirely to detach one’s name from a tangible legacy and become a man of accounts, as Ed was considering. In his defense, he hadn’t begun that trend, either. The family’s southernmost farm, almost on the border with the District, had been slowly sold off beginning in 1920 to housing developers. They proceeded to create America’s first generation of bedroom communities, in this case at the end of one of the city’s streetcar lines. Decade by decade, more of the southern farm’s fields were sold off and turned into what would become the inner-suburbs of Montgomery County. By the end of the 1950s housing boom, the southern farm was entirely gone and a few tracts of the central farm were already being prepared.
It just didn’t make economic sense to farm anymore. The railways were faster than ever; the interstates had been built. The great breadbasket of the Midwest could feed practically the entire country at a motorized pace. The market for local produce evaporated, while housing prices only ever seemed to go up. All a landowner had to do was wait for the ever-expanding sprawl to reach the edges of one’s land, then sell it for a hefty profit. A constant infusion of new funds as the years progressed transformed the family from well-off to wealthy by the time Ed’s father died and he took over the family accounts at the tender age of 24.
Young Ed was less interested in this meted out, generational process than his forebears. While appreciating his legacy, he already felt detached from the land, and from his family. Since realizing he was gay at the age of 12, he’d kept his distance from his patrician father, not daring to get close and be seen, to be found out, not wanting to even think about the consequences. Now there could be no reveal, and never really knowing for sure what his father would have said had he known was a separate pain Ed bore every day. But neither would there be disappointment if he ended his connection with this staid, suburban community and concentrated on his life in the city. A strong, beautiful gay community was thriving in Dupont Circle and the surrounding neighborhoods. He had a house there, and a small real estate business of his own. And his business didn’t discriminate against sexual minorities like most realtors in the city. Even as the Anderson Justice Department prosecuted those who wouldn’t sell a house to an African American west of Rock Creek Park, DC’s gay community had to hide itself whenever it went looking for a home, without any support from the government. Ed was one of the few realtors and property owners who worked openly with gays in the city. He was proud of his work, and wanted to increase its scale. By selling off his suburban holdings he hoped to raise the capital to become a major player in DC real estate. Even if it cost his family their roots in Montgomery County.
Unfortunately, the suburban real estate market wasn’t what it once was. No, that was an understatement: the bottom had all but fallen out.
The Anderson administration had signaled that the days of cheap gas and huge mortgage deductions were over back in 1981, and now those policies were showing their teeth. The signs of change were everywhere, all over the country, especially in counties bordering major cities, as Montgomery did.
Large homes with big lawns built out on the metro area fringes sat vacant. Out past them, lots cleared for construction turned back into field and forest. In the inner suburbs, older houses were bulldozed, and under-utilized space filled in with newer, more affordable types of housing: duplexes, row houses, and small apartment buildings. Around transit stations, miniature cities were growing up, with 30- and even 50-story buildings planned for places that until recently had been nothing but bungalows and strip malls.
In the cities themselves, the spreading blight that had been a problem for almost 20 years was suddenly reversed: new construction starts within the city limits of DC surpassed those of its surrounding jurisdictions for the first time since perhaps the 1930s. Even the hallowed building height limit had been relaxed. And far from just a DC phenomenon, this was as much true in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Cleveland, St. Louis, and any other major metropolitan area in the country.
While a part of him applauded the change, Ed felt his plans evaporating in front of him. His deal to sell the remainder of the family’s central-county farm was in trouble, with buyers backing out left and right as the market moved inwards. He eventually was able to sell much of it when it was announced that Maryland was bringing commuter rail service to a small crossroads near the farm, though about 30 more distant acres remained unsold. Meanwhile, no one was interested in the northernmost farm. There was even talk of the county extending its agricultural reserve- an area in the north of the county set aside for purely wilderness and farming purposes- to include much of his property, something Ed would consider disastrous to his prospects.
But as the year went on and national trends continued to develop, the situation suddenly changed for Ed. As winter approached, he unexpectedly found buyers for all his remaining land. Sure, the prices they offered weren’t on the level of the boom-time real estate market, but they would allow for a tidy profit and something close to enough capital to enter the real estate market in DC in style.
When the buyers explained what they wanted to do with the land, Ed almost had to laugh. It seemed that the endless breadbasket of the Midwest was facing some problems of its own. Even though commercial trucking (and all other non-personal gasoline use) had been exempted from the 35% gas tax, the market was still a market. People were driving less. Demand was down, so supply took a hit as well. And with lower supply came higher prices. The cost-effectiveness of transporting goods with a marginal profit (like food) ceased to make economic sense. An increase of shipment by rail kept the price of food from going up, but the railroad companies were nearing capacity. New, closer sources of food would have to be found.
Luckily, Montgomery County still had plenty of farmland. Ed sold his northern farm to a commercial cooperative of farmers, mostly located on the Eastern Shore and looking to score contracts with a local grocery store chain. His remaining 30-acre tract in the middle of the county was sold to a different kind of co-op: a group of men and women- 20 years ago he’d’ve been calling them Hippies- who wanted to bring something called “organic produce” to the people of DC. (This confused Ed: wasn’t all produce organic?) As dubious as he was about their lifestyle, he quickly recalled his own mission in the city in regards to another so-called “alternative lifestyle,” and gladly drew up papers with them and made the deal.
And so something of the Deavers’ legacy would remain in Montgomery County after all. The land that they had cleared and cultivated generations ago would remain under the plow. It eased Ed’s mind, somewhat. Sure, he would forever be the Deavers that sold off the last of the family land, but the spirit of Amos Stanhope would live on.
Pictured: Farmland south of Olney, Maryland, 1985
Pictured: Washington DC and surrounding counties.
1984
Ed Deavers was haunted by his family legacy. That happened often with old families. Odds were pretty good that, with any hallowed name, any given generation was going to be the one to disappoint, to topple the grand old clan from its perch in the history books, and when one generation didn’t manage the toppling that just upped the pressure on the next.
Okay, the Deavers of Montgomery County, Maryland had never exactly lit the world on fire, and if their legacy should pass, not many would notice. But Ed would. And since he’d come to the decision to sell the family land, he could practically hear the spectral heads of hundreds of dead relatives shaking in disappointment.
The Deavers had been farming in Montgomery County for a shade over 200 years. It had been a matter of luck that Amos Stanhope Deavers had decided to sink his plow into the reasonably fertile soil of central Maryland a year before it was decided to build the young nation’s capital practically on his doorstep. Before long, hungry customers on the banks of the Potomac were eating anything the Deavers could grow. More land was bought, eventually amounting to three sizeable farms in the north, south, and center of the county.
Even in the days of Amos’s children, the Deavers had been entrepreneurial, first renting the farms to tenants, and eventually building weekend cottages on the verges of their land for middle-class city-dwellers to rent or buy. The last Deavers to actually do anything close to farming (other than a spot of gardening) was Amos’s grandson, Daniel. After that, the family had been pure management class.
Still, it was one thing to manage land from a distance, another entirely to detach one’s name from a tangible legacy and become a man of accounts, as Ed was considering. In his defense, he hadn’t begun that trend, either. The family’s southernmost farm, almost on the border with the District, had been slowly sold off beginning in 1920 to housing developers. They proceeded to create America’s first generation of bedroom communities, in this case at the end of one of the city’s streetcar lines. Decade by decade, more of the southern farm’s fields were sold off and turned into what would become the inner-suburbs of Montgomery County. By the end of the 1950s housing boom, the southern farm was entirely gone and a few tracts of the central farm were already being prepared.
It just didn’t make economic sense to farm anymore. The railways were faster than ever; the interstates had been built. The great breadbasket of the Midwest could feed practically the entire country at a motorized pace. The market for local produce evaporated, while housing prices only ever seemed to go up. All a landowner had to do was wait for the ever-expanding sprawl to reach the edges of one’s land, then sell it for a hefty profit. A constant infusion of new funds as the years progressed transformed the family from well-off to wealthy by the time Ed’s father died and he took over the family accounts at the tender age of 24.
Young Ed was less interested in this meted out, generational process than his forebears. While appreciating his legacy, he already felt detached from the land, and from his family. Since realizing he was gay at the age of 12, he’d kept his distance from his patrician father, not daring to get close and be seen, to be found out, not wanting to even think about the consequences. Now there could be no reveal, and never really knowing for sure what his father would have said had he known was a separate pain Ed bore every day. But neither would there be disappointment if he ended his connection with this staid, suburban community and concentrated on his life in the city. A strong, beautiful gay community was thriving in Dupont Circle and the surrounding neighborhoods. He had a house there, and a small real estate business of his own. And his business didn’t discriminate against sexual minorities like most realtors in the city. Even as the Anderson Justice Department prosecuted those who wouldn’t sell a house to an African American west of Rock Creek Park, DC’s gay community had to hide itself whenever it went looking for a home, without any support from the government. Ed was one of the few realtors and property owners who worked openly with gays in the city. He was proud of his work, and wanted to increase its scale. By selling off his suburban holdings he hoped to raise the capital to become a major player in DC real estate. Even if it cost his family their roots in Montgomery County.
Unfortunately, the suburban real estate market wasn’t what it once was. No, that was an understatement: the bottom had all but fallen out.
The Anderson administration had signaled that the days of cheap gas and huge mortgage deductions were over back in 1981, and now those policies were showing their teeth. The signs of change were everywhere, all over the country, especially in counties bordering major cities, as Montgomery did.
Large homes with big lawns built out on the metro area fringes sat vacant. Out past them, lots cleared for construction turned back into field and forest. In the inner suburbs, older houses were bulldozed, and under-utilized space filled in with newer, more affordable types of housing: duplexes, row houses, and small apartment buildings. Around transit stations, miniature cities were growing up, with 30- and even 50-story buildings planned for places that until recently had been nothing but bungalows and strip malls.
In the cities themselves, the spreading blight that had been a problem for almost 20 years was suddenly reversed: new construction starts within the city limits of DC surpassed those of its surrounding jurisdictions for the first time since perhaps the 1930s. Even the hallowed building height limit had been relaxed. And far from just a DC phenomenon, this was as much true in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Cleveland, St. Louis, and any other major metropolitan area in the country.
While a part of him applauded the change, Ed felt his plans evaporating in front of him. His deal to sell the remainder of the family’s central-county farm was in trouble, with buyers backing out left and right as the market moved inwards. He eventually was able to sell much of it when it was announced that Maryland was bringing commuter rail service to a small crossroads near the farm, though about 30 more distant acres remained unsold. Meanwhile, no one was interested in the northernmost farm. There was even talk of the county extending its agricultural reserve- an area in the north of the county set aside for purely wilderness and farming purposes- to include much of his property, something Ed would consider disastrous to his prospects.
But as the year went on and national trends continued to develop, the situation suddenly changed for Ed. As winter approached, he unexpectedly found buyers for all his remaining land. Sure, the prices they offered weren’t on the level of the boom-time real estate market, but they would allow for a tidy profit and something close to enough capital to enter the real estate market in DC in style.
When the buyers explained what they wanted to do with the land, Ed almost had to laugh. It seemed that the endless breadbasket of the Midwest was facing some problems of its own. Even though commercial trucking (and all other non-personal gasoline use) had been exempted from the 35% gas tax, the market was still a market. People were driving less. Demand was down, so supply took a hit as well. And with lower supply came higher prices. The cost-effectiveness of transporting goods with a marginal profit (like food) ceased to make economic sense. An increase of shipment by rail kept the price of food from going up, but the railroad companies were nearing capacity. New, closer sources of food would have to be found.
Luckily, Montgomery County still had plenty of farmland. Ed sold his northern farm to a commercial cooperative of farmers, mostly located on the Eastern Shore and looking to score contracts with a local grocery store chain. His remaining 30-acre tract in the middle of the county was sold to a different kind of co-op: a group of men and women- 20 years ago he’d’ve been calling them Hippies- who wanted to bring something called “organic produce” to the people of DC. (This confused Ed: wasn’t all produce organic?) As dubious as he was about their lifestyle, he quickly recalled his own mission in the city in regards to another so-called “alternative lifestyle,” and gladly drew up papers with them and made the deal.
And so something of the Deavers’ legacy would remain in Montgomery County after all. The land that they had cleared and cultivated generations ago would remain under the plow. It eased Ed’s mind, somewhat. Sure, he would forever be the Deavers that sold off the last of the family land, but the spirit of Amos Stanhope would live on.
Pictured: Farmland south of Olney, Maryland, 1985
- Expat
- Word Count: 1.6k