©2004 The Washington Post Company

Looks Can Be Deceiving, Even in Burnt Mills Hills
Subdivision Stands Out Despite Its Similar Name

By Eugene L. Meyer
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, March 20, 2004

Whatever you do, do not confuse Burnt Mills Hills with Burnt Mills Village, Burnt Mills Manor, Burnt Mills Estates or other similarly named subdivisions in Silver Spring.

In eastern Montgomery County, not well-known for high-end homes on acres of land, Burnt Mills Hills is an oasis of exclusivity, a collection of 60 mostly venerable houses on lots that range from one to four acres. These are not McMansions. These are mansions, plain and simple, yet at prices that would be considered a bargain a few miles west.

John B. Nutter, 92, designed 14 of the 60 homes in Burnt Mills Hills and has lived in his English Tudor-style house there since August 1937.

"It's sort of like Kenwood," said real estate agent Gail Young, referring to the pricier Bethesda community. "It has the look of Kenwood. But it's over here. It's in Silver Spring."

An early ad promoted the development as "a community of country estates already famous throughout the East for its originality and elusive charm." Today it seems, well, not so famous; yet, once seen, its charm is not so elusive.

The subdivision, which is 1.4 miles outside the Capital Beltway, began in the mid-1930s. R.E. Latimer Land Co. constructed a dozen homes on former farmland three miles "beyond the Silver Spring traffic light," as the ads located it for prospective buyers when the only stoplight in that stretch was at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road.

Architect John B. Nutter came on board in January 1937 and in 10 months designed 14 more houses, including the English Tudor he has occupied since August of that year. "Our friends thought we were crazy coming all the way out here in the country," he recalled. "We were a young married couple looking for exciting things to do, so we moved out here to the sticks."

Nutter, now 92, is effectively the neighborhood historian. "I have been here 66 years," he said. "I guess I'm the oldest inhabitant. I'm not going to move until they carry me out."

Nutter said Latimer, an "excavating man" with four "gas shovels," invited him in 1936 "to come out and see what he was doing. He rode me all around the place."

McCeney Avenue was a major road in the new subdivision. An 1879 map shows a property belonging to Annie McCeney (pronounced McSee-nee). By the time Nutter came around, Bill McCeney was Latimer's superintendent. No McCeneys live in Burnt Mills Hills today.

But Robert S. McCeney, 74, lives in Burnt Mills Manor, across Lockwood Drive, in a more modest 1956 home. Retired from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, he said the Office Depot on nearby New Hampshire Avenue occupies the old McCeney home site. The family once owned what is now the neighborhood's oldest house, an 1856 farmhouse that still stands on a hill in Burnt Mills Hills, but they never lived there.

One sure sign that this is not your typical slice of suburbia is that some of the houses have not only street numbers but also names. Among them: the Arcadian, Tanglewood, Whistle Winds.

But this is not a standoffish place, neighbors say. There's a Burnt Mills Hills Citizens Association, which sponsors a progressive dinner each winter and a picnic in the summer. By design, the streets have no sidewalks, and residents are often out walking, jogging or, as children will, riding scooters and bicycles.

Some residents were unhappy when one of the old Cape Cods was razed in 2001 to make way for a much, much larger new house that is one of the few that are gated. But homes are more often handed down than torn down, as new generations from the same family move in.

Jane Davenport bought her Burnt Mills Hills house from her father, who grew up there. It was built in 1934 and, Nutter said, may be the first in the Latimer subdivision. "We're a little hidden," Davenport said, not unhappily. "We're the lot with all the trees."

Several houses have been constructed in recent decades, making the neighborhood architecturally more diverse. The housing stock now includes contemporaries, including a 1981 house on 1.2 acres designed by the late architect Ronald Senseman, who also lived in it. The house is now for sale, for $975,000.

While Burnt Mills Hills retains its off-the-beaten-path feeling, commuters have discovered ways to cut through between Lockwood Drive (the former Colesville Pike before Route 29 became Colesville Road) and New Hampshire Avenue. Residents have campaigned for speed bumps, but a morning traffic count of 377 vehicles in November 2000 did not meet the county's threshold. Traffic came to a brief halt last fall after Hurricane Isabel downed power lines that blocked the way through Gatewood Avenue.

Today, residents fear traffic could increase because of the planned move by the 7,700-employee Food and Drug Administration from Rockville to the former Naval Surface Warfare Center across New Hampshire Avenue.

For now, however, there is hardly gridlock in the neighborhood, which also has several dead-end streets and a southern edge that abuts Northwest Branch Park. The branch, another surprising feature with its deep rocky gorge just off Route 29, once powered mills that have since burned down, giving the neighborhood its name.

The park and the tree-shaded hills contribute to the rustic feeling of Burnt Mills Hills. Still, from some of the houses, the high-rise apartments of nearby White Oak are part of the skyline, and the Beltway is just five minutes down the road.

Jim Cummings, 58, a consulting engineer, and at least two other families moved to Burnt Mills Hills from the modest Indian Springs neighborhood, off Colesville Road just inside the Beltway. "It's like a progression, a stair-stepping," said Cummings, who lives in a 1942 Nutter house he has expanded since he bought it in 1988.

"We used to come back here when I was 16 or 17, find the dead ends and park," recalled Cummings, who grew up in closer-in Silver Spring. "Once you got past Four Corners, you were pretty much in the country."

In 2001, Millard and Deborah Barger and their two sons also moved up from Indian Spring to have room for their six dogs. They live in a large Cape Cod built in 1941 on a hilly two-acre lot with 92 boxwoods and a towering magnolia tree in back. "We didn't know the neighborhood was here until we were house-hunting," said Deborah Barger.

Over the years, Burnt Mills Hills has had its share of notables. Among them: Minnesota Rep. Albert H. Quie, who later served one term as governor; the Bainum family, which owned the Manor Care nursing homes; the founder of Briggs Ice Cream; Arch McDonald, the legendary late radio sportscaster; and Frank S. Pohanka, the automobile dealer.

But it's the homes themselves that sell the neighborhood. "Aristocratic! Beautiful! Luxurious!" cries out a 1937 ad for the Norman, "A Gentleman's Country Home" with 2.2 acres on Edelblut Drive.

When new, it sold for the then-lordly sum of $40,000; last July, it went for $845,000. Designed by Nutter, it was built to resemble a castle, and it still does.

©2004 The Washington Post Company