Northwood News ♦ June 2003

Homes Sweet Homes Revisited

By Robin Loube

Perhaps you have noticed the 44 brick ranch-style homes on Cavalier Drive and on Belton Road.  These homes have a unique and interesting history:  they were built nearly 50 years ago by Maryland’s only member-run cooperative housing project.  Thirteen of the founding members, including initiators Leo and Alma Gershenson and Esther Lahne, still live in the neighborhood.

In May of 1985, a local newspaper, The Chronicle, published an article about the cooperative and its history.  Headlined “Homes Sweet Homes,” the article by Lola Demma described the birth of the project and the challenges the leaders and members faced in bringing the idea to fruition.  The following paragraphs excerpted from Demma’s article highlight aspects of that story:

“‘In March of 1951, four women (D.C. apartment dwellers) ... were pushing their children around, then they got to talking that some day they would like to own their own homes,’ says Gershenson.  One of the women ... learned of a new federal program designed to encourage cooperative home building....

“The five original families formed an organization, with nine members contributing $1 each.  Four of the nine members dropped out the following day, Gershenson recalls....

“The first thing they did was set out to buy a piece of land that they thought could accommodate about 25 homes.  They eventually settled on a 10-1/2-acre site ‘way out’ in Four Corners, the last remaining piece of Maggie Reed’s farm (which they bought) for $20,000....

“Meetings were held and committees appointed to tackle financing, house plans, and subdivision drawings....  The women started looking in the newspapers to get an idea of the kind of house they wanted....  Next, surveyors and architects were hired.  It was a pay-as-you-go deal.  Each time a bill came up, it was divided among the members....

“They initially envisioned 26 homes with 12,000- to 15,000-square-foot lots.  But the FHA told them that was not economically feasible, and plans were made for 44 homes with an average lot size of about 8,500 square feet....

“To get the other 24 co-op members needed to go forward with the development, they managed to get a story published in The Washington Post about their unusual housing project....  Soon after that, the Northwood Park Association had its 44 members....

“At this point the association faced its most difficult problem:  it could not get mortgage financing.  Bank after bank turned down their application for a $600,000 loan....

“For nearly a year the group looked for financing.  At stake was the life savings of 44 families....  Finally their friends (lawyers whose clients included the National Housing Authority, forerunner of the Department of Housing and Urban Development) went to Congress and got a special amendment to the federal housing law to include cooperatives in the national mortgage program.  The cooperative got mortgage money, and it was full steam ahead on building....  The average price for the homes was about $18,000....

“As building was about to get underway, the association’s board of directors were working feverishly, nights and weekends, non-stop.  Some of the leaders were working as many hours on the project as they were on their jobs....  ‘We wrote the (building) specifications,’ says Herbert Lahne.  ‘We typed them out on stencils, one finger at a time.  And it was 27 pages, single-spaced, of specifications.’ ...What they didn’t know, they looked up in books.

“Perhaps the biggest shock to the builder, Elias Nadelman, was the fact that he had, in effect, 44 building supervisors....  An example of the personal supervision given the project was seen the day the bulldozers came to grade the land.  ‘The women (says Lahne) ... came out with their own set of blueprints and knew the swale of how that land should go.  They were out there ... telling the poor bulldozer guy, ‘You’re going too high,’ or, ‘You’re going too low.’”

The families finally moved into their new homes four years after the project began, in the spring of 1955.  Thirty years later, when the original mortgages were paid off, 22 of the families remained.  Demma ended her 1985 article with this remark from Leo Gershenson:  “The reward has been, quite simply, the neighborhood.”

Early plans are afoot for a community celebration of the Northwood Park project.  Please call Robin Loube or Liz Sequiera [contact details redacted] if you’d like to help.   ■

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