HAMMOND WOODS

AN MCM ENCLAVE IN SILVER SPRING

Hammond Wood is Goodman at a more intimate scale. The historic district holds 58 Contemporary single-family houses built between 1949 and 1951 on a fifteen-acre wooded, rolling tract southwest of Veirs Mill Road, about a mile north of the downtowns of Kensington and Wheaton. Across the street sits a smaller Goodman neighborhood, Hammond Hill, built 1949 to 1950.

The developers were Paul I. Burman, an experienced builder, and Paul Hammond, an actor whose interest in residential design was sparked by a visit to Hollin Hills. Together they formed Hammond Homes, Inc. and engaged Goodman for the land planning and architecture. An earlier plan to cut the parcel with a straight road was abandoned to save the old trees. Instead Goodman curved the main road, Pendleton Drive, and added cul-de-sacs, with his chief engineer Milton Gurewitz mapping the site for traffic-slowing effect. Burman later called tree preservation his proudest achievement.

The five model types offered two or three bedrooms and an open-plan living and dining area with a screened kitchen workspace. The simply massed houses have shallow-pitched gable roofs, exterior walls that contrast wood siding with expanses of unbroken brick, and window walls of floor-to-ceiling glazing. Lots range from one-sixth to one-quarter acre, each house angled for privacy and for southern exposure on the dominant glass facade. The homes are painted in a kaleidoscope of colors, preservation plum, cobalt blue, marigold yellow, so that they nearly disappear into the folds of the landscape.

Progressive Architecture praised the design in May 1952. Protective covenants established in 1951 required approval for alterations from a committee of Burman, Hammond, and Goodman himself. The neighborhood joined the National Register in 2004. It is one of only two sizable developments in Montgomery County where Goodman houses were built exclusively.