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The Chevy Chase Arcade, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, opened in 1925 to rave reviews in the Chevy Chase News, under the headline "Praise to Whom Praise Is Due." The paper called the building "beautiful and costly" and an "example of a builder recognizing his debtorship to the neighborhood."
The National Register describes the complex as "the only local example of a distinctive building type (the arcade) that gained prominence in 19th-century Europe" and as a specimen of classical revival design, noting the "high artistic value" of its ornamentation in plaster and stone.
As recounted May 14 in "Past is Present," Chevy Chase - both the D.C. neighborhood and the Maryland suburb - was a planned development spearheaded by Sen. Francis Newlands, D-Nev., founder of the Chevy Chase Land Co. The company spent $1.5 billion in the 1890s buying land along the Connecticut Avenue corridor from Rock Creek to the railway now known as the Capital Crescent. The subdivisions would be, strictly residential except for public...