Van Ness

Streets of Washington is the brilliant blog covering some of DC’s most interesting buildings and history written by John DeFerrari. John is also the author of the equally brilliant Lost Washington DC. ‘Streets of Washington Presents…’ will feature some fascinating buildings and history from around PoPville.

It was supposedly “one of the largest parking and shopping units in the country” when the Chevy Chase Ice Palace and Sports Center opened in 1938 on upper Connecticut Avenue. As strip malls go, the building, which still stands in the 4400 block of Connecticut Avenue just north of the Van Ness Metro stop, now looks quite tiny, which says something either for the exaggeration of the Washington Post article of November 20, 1938, the growth of shopping malls since then,—or both.

In 1938, this part of the city was well on its way to transitioning from a lightly populated “suburb” within the District to an urban residential zone. The avenue had been zoned in 1920 such that most of it was to be lined with medium-density apartment buildings. At regular intervals, single blocks were designated for commercial development. The 4400 block was one such commercial zone.

Developer Garfield I. Kass (1890–1975) saw a great opportunity at this location, despite the difficult site that sloped steeply from street level down to a tributary of Rock Creek in the valley below. There was pent-up demand for shopping from local residents that did not have other options in their neighborhood. Beyond that, “park and shop” centers like this one were hot commodities in the 1930s, after the successful development in 1930 of the Park and Shop center just down the street in Cleveland Park. Kass had already developed park and shop centers in the Rosslyn and Clarendon neighborhoods of Arlington County, Virginia, and another at Georgia Avenue and Rittenhouse Street, NW, in Shepherd Park. Situating such centers along main commuting arteries—on the same side of the street as the evening, homeward-bound traffic—was sure to make for substantial profits.

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