Neighborhoods
Bethesda
Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Presbyterian Church (1820, rebuilt 1850), which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda. (In Aramaic, beth hesda means "house of mercy".)
Bethesda is one of the most affluent and highly educated locales in the country, placing first in Forbes list of America's most educated small towns and eleventh on CNNMoney.com's list of top-earning American towns. In April 2009, Forbes ranked Bethesda second on its list of "America's Most Livable Cities."
As an unincorporated area, Bethesda has no official boundaries. The United States Census Bureau defines a Census-Designated Place named Bethesda whose center is located at 38°59' North, 77°7' West. The United States Geological Survey has defined Bethesda as an area whose center is at 38°58′50″N 77°6′2″W / 38.98056°N 77.10056°W , slightly different from the Census Bureau's definition. Other definitions are used by the Bethesda Urban Planning District, the United States Postal Service, and other organizations.
According to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000, the community had a total population of 55,277. Most of Bethesda's residents are in Maryland Legislative District 16. The National Institutes of Health has its main campus in Bethesda.
History Bethesda is situated along a major thoroughfare that was originally the route of an ancient Native American trail. Between 1805 and 1820, it was developed into a toll road called the Washington and Rockville Turnpike, which carried tobacco and other products between Georgetown and Rockville, and north to Frederick. A small settlement grew around a store and tollhouse along the turnpike. By 1862, the community was known as "Darcy's Store" after the owner of a local establishment, William E. Darcy. The community was renamed in 1871 by the new postmaster, Robert Franck, after the Bethesda Meeting House, a Presbyterian church built in 1820 on the present site of the Cemetery of the Bethesda Meeting House. The church burnt in 1849 and was rebuilt the same year about 100 yards south at its present site.
Throughout the 1800s, Bethesda was a small community, consisting of mostly a post office, a blacksmith shop, a church and school, and a few houses and stores. It was not until the installation of a streetcar line and the beginnings of suburbanization in the early 1900s that Bethesda began to grow in population. Subdivisions began to appear on old farmland, becoming the neighborhoods of Drummond, Woodmont, Edgemoor, and Battery Park. Further north, wealthy men like Luke I. Wilson, Brainard Parker, Gilbert Grosvenor, and Merle Thorp built mansions and helped establish the original Woodmont Country Club on land that is now part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus. Thorp's mansion, "Pook's Hill" (on the site of the current neighborhood of the same name), became the home in exile of the Norwegian Royal Family during the Second World War.
That war, and the expansion of government that it created, further fed the rapid expansion of Bethesda. Both the National Naval Medical Center (1939) and the NIH complex (1953) were built just to the north of the developing downtown. This, in turn, drew further government contractors, medical professionals, and other businesses to the area. In recent years, Bethesda has consolidated as the major urban core and employment center of southwestern Montgomery County.
Landmarks Important institutions located in Bethesda include the National Institutes of Health campus, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division. Bethesda is also home to the National Naval Medical Center, commonly referred to as Bethesda Naval Hospital. The Bethesda Naval Hospital is also the place where the President goes to get his yearly check-up. Adjoining the hospital to the east is the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
The headquarters of defense conglomerate Lockheed Martin, managed health care company Coventry Health Care and hotel and resort chains Marriott International and Host Hotels & Resorts, Inc. are located in Bethesda. Software company Bethesda Softworks was originally located in Bethesda, but moved to Rockville, Maryland in 1990. The Discovery Channel also had its headquarters in Bethesda before relocating to Silver Spring in 2004. On the professional services side, numerous banks (PNC, Wachovia, Chevy Chase Bank, which is headquartered in Bethesda) brokerage firms (SmithBarney, Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Fidelity) and law firms (JDKatz, Paley Rothman, Learch Early & Brewer) maintain offices in Bethesda. Bethesda has two farmers markets, the Montgomery Farm Woman's Cooperative Market and the Bethesda Farmer's Market.
Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT) has developed much of the west side of Bethesda into an area called Bethesda Row. The vibrant district includes Barnes and Noble and an Apple Store. It was built in the early 1990s, Also located in downtown Bethesda is one of the Madonna of the Trail monuments, erected by the National Old Trails Association working in concert with the Daughters of the American Revolution. Judge Harry S. Truman, presided over the dedication of the Bethesda monument, on April 19, 1929. Nearby is the Bethesda Post Office. Also starting in the heart of downtown Bethesda, is the Capital Crescent Trail which follows the old tracks of the B&O Railroad stretching from Georgetown, Washington, D.C. to Silver Spring, MD.
The Writer's Center in Bethesda publishes Poet Lore, the longest continuously running poetry journal in the United States.
Bethesda Lane was built in the summer of 2008. This walk-only "44,000-square-foot hub of new retail at Bethesda Row" was a " $77 million project, being developed Federal Realty Investment Trust of Rockville, including 16 retail spaces" along this "strip near the corner of Bethesda Avenue and Arlington Road." The development also includes "Upstairs at Bethesda Row, 180 luxury apartments with rents ranging from about $2,000 to $4,000 a month," although the apartment complex experienced delays in opening and resident complaints.With "three new restaurants, including Redwood Restaurant and Wine Bar – a concept from the owners of Mendocino Grill in Georgetown and Sonoma in Capitol Hill – the neighborhood's dining options grow to 25. A Giant Food grocery store and Marvelous Market are in the area too."
Bethesda is also home of the AT&T National, Tiger Woods' golf tournament, the exclusive Burning Tree Club, the Bethesda Country Club, and the Bethesda Community Baseball Club which operates the Bethesda Big Train, a summer collegiate baseball team. Bethesda is also home to America's favorite men's fall league softball team, The Swamp Donkeys.
The series of books The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares take place in Bethesda, Maryland, as the author has ties to this area.