There is no such thing as North Bethesda. Or if there is, its border basically ends at the Bethesda Marriott, what used to be known as the Pooks Hill Marriott. Just as the Rio Grande separates Mexico from the United States, so a mighty river separates Bethesda from Not Bethesda. That river — of cars, not water — is called the Beltway.
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And yet some in Montgomery County want to give Metro’s White Flint Station a new name: North Bethesda. Why not call it South Gaithersburg?
Our area is chockablock with porous geographic borders. Neighborhood monikers are stretched like bungee cords by real estate agents eager to make the houses they sell more desirable. Why be Gaithersburg when you can be North Potomac? Why be Scaggsville when you can be Laurel? And why be Rockville when you can be North Bethesda?
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To which I say: What’s wrong with Rockville?
Last week, my colleague Justin George wrote about how officials in Montgomery County want to rename the White Flint Station, changing it to North Bethesda.
A little history: The Metro station took its original name from the White Flint mall, which officially closed in 2015. And the mall took its name from a country club that had been nearby. The country club was apparently named after the flint stone common in the area. The White Flint Country Club was on the site of an earlier club, the Harper Country Club. The Harper Country Club claimed to be the first golf course in the area to split the difference between a public course and a private course, with a low annual membership fee and a cost of just 50 cents to play a round.
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By 1930, the Harper Country Club had been foreclosed upon and a new club, White Flint, opened in that location. A 1930 Post article noted that “This course is located on the Rockville Pike, some distance beyond Bethesda.” (Emphasis mine.)
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I accept that “White Flint” may no longer be the best name for the station. White Flint may have been the “fancy” mall of my youth — the Tiffany of malls compared to the Kay Jewelers of my home shopping center, Wheaton Plaza — but it’s long gone. (Montgomery Mall? So foreign was it to us unwashed Rockvillians, it may as well have been in Zanzibar.)
And, frankly, White Flint was never the most appropriate name anyway. Like “North Bethesda,” it was a marketing ploy. It was quite the hike from the Metro station to the namesake mall, along the punishing Rockville Pike — or what I guess should be renamed “Wisconsin Avenue,” if the Orwellian rebranding goes through.
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I hope it doesn’t. There is a perfectly good name for the station: Pike & Rose. That’s the mixed-use development at Rockville Pike and Montrose Road. It’s a short walk from that Red Line station to Pike & Rose, a lot shorter walk than to Bethesda, north, south, east or west.
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It would have been nice to rename the station after the Arby’s across the Pike, but, alas, that fast food restaurant closed in the summer. WMATA is inviting feedback through Tuesday at wmata.com/whiteflintsurvey.
The hills are alive
Speaking of neighborhoods, I came across a great newspaper ad from 1916 for the then-new Aurora Hills development in Arlington. The ad promised empty lots starting at 50-by-135 feet, from 10 cents to 15 cents per square foot.
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The ad touted the neighborhood’s improvements, including “pure” water, paved streets, sidewalks, electricity, telephone service and other amenities “that are so essential to comfort.”
There was also the location, which offered a panorama of Washington in one direction and wooded slopes in the other. The area was chockablock with “healthfulness,” too. In the most recent published statistics, the ad noted, Alexandria County — it wouldn’t take the name Arlington County until 1920 — didn’t have a single fatality from typhoid or malaria.
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But what jumped out to me was the commuting time, just 14 minutes from Aurora Hills — near where the Pentagon City mall is now — to 12th and Pennsylvania NW.
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I guess that’s not too dissimilar to a ride on the Blue or Yellow line now, if you time it right, but the Mount Vernon electric railway had one benefit: with 54 double-car trains every day, the ad trumpeted, “Your wife does not sit with the smokers and workmen.”
I guess if your wife smoked, she was out of luck. And if you were the wife? It doesn’t say.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.