Woodside Park is a residential community of approximately 600 homes located 8 miles due north of the White House in suburban Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland. It is surrounded by Colesville Road, Spring Street, Georgia Avenue, and Dale Drive.
The neighborhood was established in 1922 when Alton Farm, the estate of Crosby S. Noyes, the late Washington Evening Star newspaper publisher, was sold for development as Woodside Park, which featured “Acre Plot Home sites of Distinction.” The neighborhood developed slowly. Most homes were built from the 1920s through the 1950s, although some in-fill construction has taken place from the 1960s into the 1990s. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s many homes have been added to and a few smaller homes have been demolished and replaced by new, larger homes.
Woodside Park contains homes of virtually all architectural styles popular in 20th Century America. Homes were built by lot owners who hired their own architects and builders and by small-scale builders who bought one or a few lots and constructed homes speculatively. The neighborhood was also popular with architects as the site for their own homes. Woodside Park has been recognized by the historic planning staff of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission not only as the best preserved early 20th Century neighborhood in the county, but also as “purest manifestation of the ’20s/’30s suburban ideal to have been built in Montgomery County.” The neighborhood has hosted several architectural/historical bus tours, including one sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution.
Woodside Park streets were built to create a park-like setting for homes. Unlike the grid pattern typically found in urban areas, Woodside Park streets follow the contours of the land and curve to follow natural ridges and stream valleys. Most street rights-of-way are unusually wide, and homes are set back from the rights-of-way almost twice as far as required by zoning regulations. This creates an usually spacious look not found in most urban or suburban neighborhoods.
Woodside Park is immediately northeast of the Silver Spring Central Business District, but is buffered from it by Fairview Park and Spring Street’s wooded median. It is within walking distance of both the Silver Spring and Forest Glen Metro stations and is less than a mile from the Washington Beltway via both Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road. Many routes to Downtown Washington from North Capitol Street on the east to Sixteenth Street on the west also converge near Woodside Park, making the neighborhood unusually convenient to automobile commuters.
Woodside Park History (Robert Oshel)