On September 7, 2023, the Montgomery County Planning Board voted to approve the design of the future neighborhood park in Lyttonsville, which, when completed, will be the closest park to many North Woodside residents. Over 25 community members and groups, including the North Woodside Citizens Association, provided oral and written testimony in support of the park, which will feature a Bridge Memorial made from the historic Talbot Avenue Bridge’s steel girders. The historic bridge spanned the train tracks between Lyttonsville and North Woodside and was the only direct physical connection between our two communities for over a century, until its demolition in 2019.
Here is the joint letter that the Lyttonsville Civic Association, North Woodside Citizens Association, and Rosemary Hills Neighbors’ Association submitted as written testimony:
View a compilation of all the written testimony submitted here.
And here is the text of the oral testimony that Anna White, a NWCA board member, presented in person on behalf of the North Woodside Citizens Association (View video of oral testimony, which starts at 20:45; Lyttonsville Civic Association’s testimony begins at 49:25, and NWCA’s at 56:45):
The North Woodside Citizens Association would like to register its strong support for the facility plan—and full funding—of the future new neighborhood park in Lyttonsville.
Our neighborhood has not always been a welcoming place for residents of the historically African American community of Lyttonsville. Founded in 1890—almost 40 years after Lyttonsville was—and developed further in the 1920s, our neighborhood had racist deed covenants that prohibited Black people from owning property or living in it, except as domestic servants. The 1940s census found just 11 Black people residing in our census district, all domestic servants. Even after racist deed covenants were ruled unenforceable, their legacy continued in patterns of urban development and neighborhood demographics. And, as we all too sadly know, the racist beliefs at their root did not all-of-a-sudden disappear. As late as the early 1960s Black people were still being denied service at popular businesses in downtown Silver Spring, just a mile from our neighborhood. This is not long ago history. This is recent history—in the lifetime of some sitting in the room and watching online today.
Current and former residents of Lyttonsville have shared with us stories of racial bigotry they experienced within North Woodside over the course of their lives, as children and as adults, and as late as the 1990s. When the historic Talbot Avenue Bridge fell into disrepair in the 1990s and North Woodside residents—and our association—advocated for its permanent closure to vehicles, some Lyttonsville residents perceived our efforts to be racially-motivated, something we learned 5 years ago when the short documentary film “The Bridge” was released. This is completely understandable in the context of local history and Lyttonsville residents’ lived experience of racial bigotry. And, it was hard for some of us in North Woodside to hear.
In recent years, our association has taken steps to explore, acknowledge and denounce our neighborhood’s role in past racial segregation, and to build with our Lyttonsville neighbors a foundation for a new chapter in the relationship of our communities, a new chapter rooted in mutual respect, friendship, unity, and love.
In September 2018 we unanimously passed a resolution to mark the occasion of the Talbot Avenue Bridge’s Centennial Celebration, which our then President publicly presented on the Bridge to the over 300 attendees. In it we recognized the importance of the Talbot Avenue Bridge to Lyttonsville, formally acknowledged and denounced racial bigotry, in all its forms, past and present, and, in particular, racist deed covenants. We especially recognized that current and former residents of Lyttonsville had experienced racial bigotry in our neighborhood. And we resolved that by recognizing this past and embracing our neighbors on both sides of the bridge, it enables us to work towards building a stronger community for the future.
A few years later, in May 2021, we voted to add language to our association bylaws that we “acknowledge our neighborhood’s history of legal and de facto segregation and seek to make North Woodside a place for all people.”
It is in this same spirit that our neighborhood association strongly supports the creation of a neighborhood park in Lyttonsville, and the Bridge Memorial in particular, that will further help raise awareness of Lyttonsville history, which in many ways is intertwined with our own neighborhood’s history; facilitate cross-track socializing; and deepen the shared sense of community among neighbors—and neighborhoods—connected by the bridge.
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