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The Chevy Chase Land Company

American real estate company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chevy Chase Land Company
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The Chevy Chase Land Company is a real estate holding and development company based in suburban Washington, D.C. It owns 4 million square feet of office, mixed-use, residential and retail properties, mostly in Montgomery County, Maryland. For over 135 years, the The Chevy Chase Land Company is a privately held real estate asset management and development firm based in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It owns and manages approximately 4 million square feet of property, including office, residential, retail, and mixed-use developments. Most of its portfolio is located in Montgomery County, Maryland, with additional holdings in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia. Founded in 1890, the company has played a long-standing role in the region’s urban development. In addition to property ownership and development, it also provides asset management, accounting, and portfolio oversight services.

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An 1897 map showing property owned by the Chevy Chase Land Company along with Connecticut Avenue and the Rock Creek Railway streetcar line, both created by the Land Company and its owners. Many of the streets depicted in northwest D.C. did not yet exist.

The company website says that as of 2025, the company has over the years donated to and otherwise supported more than 500 local schools, small businesses, environmental conservation programs, and initiatives promoting social equity[1]; the site also says the company organizes four days of service each year, during which employees collectively volunteer over 200 hours to community organizations.[2]

The company was founded in 1890 by Francis G. Newlands and William M. Stewart,[3] who sought to develop streetcar suburbs for well-off white people in what is today the Chevy Chase area of Maryland and Washington, D.C.[4] The company, which disavowed racist practices in the 2020s, continues to operate today as a privately held firm.[5]

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Portfolio

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As of 2025, the company manages over 1.6 million square feet of commercial real estate, including office, residential, retail and mixed-used developments.[6]

Office

Retail

Residential

  • 672 Flats[21]
    • Ballston, Virginia
    • 6-story boutique building with proximity to metro and various amenities
  • The Barrett at Chevy Chase Lake[22]
  • The Claude at Chevy Chase Lake

Recognition

The Chevy Chase Land Company has been recognized through numerous awards and accolades. These are some of the highlights.

Chevy Chase Lake

  • Silver Award Honors for Mixed-Use Community, Multifamily (2024), National Association of Home Builders Best in American Living[25]
  • Award of Excellence for Best Multifamily Property (2024), NAIOP DC | MD Awards of Excellence[26]
  • Excellence in Construction, Diamond Winner (2024), Associated Builders and Contractors Greater Baltimore[27]
  • Awards of Excellence The Best of Architecture 2022 – Vertical Mixed Use (Retail and Residential) (2022) Mid Atlantic Real Estate Journal[28]
  • Lennard Award for Excellence in Architectural Design (2022), 58th International Making Cities Livable Conference, Paris, France[29]
  • Best Washington/Baltimore Mid-Rise Apartment Community (2022), Delta Associates 26th Annual Multifamily Awards[30]

The Collection

2 Bethesda Metro

  • Redevelopment of the Year (2025), CoStar Group Impact Awards[34]
  • Award of Excellence in Construction (2024), ABC of Metro Washington & Virginia[35]

2 Wisconsin Circle

5471 Wisconsin Avenue

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History

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19th century

Around 1886 or 1887, Newlands launched an all-but-unprecedented effort to create a major streetcar suburb of Washington, D.C. His funding came from the inheritance of his deceased wife, a daughter of wealthy banker William Sharon; he also attracted other investors, including Nevada politicians known as the "California Syndicate"[38]. Newlands directed the quiet purchase of land along a straight line from just north of Dupont Circle, which was at the time the northwestern edge of urban development, into an unincorporated area of Maryland's Montgomery County and up to today's Jones Bridge Road. Newlands initially intended this line to run to the established town of Rockville, Maryland, but found it easier and cheaper to buy Montgomery County land about a half-mile to the east.[39]

Among the parcels was "Oak View" in present-day Cleveland Park, the 26.5-acre country estate of Grover Cleveland, who had recently completed his first term as U.S. president. Newlands paid $140,000 for the land in February 1890, just four years after Cleveland had purchased it for $21,500.[40]

On June 6, 1890,[41] when his group of straw purchasers had accumulated 1,712 acres (6.93 km2), Newlands incorporated The Chevy Chase Land Company to bring the parcels together for development.[39] That year, the Washington Star newspaper called it the "most notable transaction that has ever been known in the history of suburban property."[39]

In the meantime, Newlands and his partners were building a streetcar line to connect their remote landholdings to the city center. In 1888, they had acquired majority control of the Rock Creek Railway, which had obtained a charter to build one of D.C.'s first electric streetcar lines but lacked the funds for construction.[39] Newlands and his partners funded the grading and construction of the road and streetcar right-of-way that would become Connecticut Avenue north of Rock Creek; the thoroughfare north of the District line was built by their Chevy Chase Land Company.

Streetcar operations began in 1890 on two blocks of Florida Avenue NW east of Connecticut. The company ultimately spent about $1.5 million[42]($52,494,444 today[43]) to build a five-mile line from 18th and U Streets NW to Coquelin Run in Maryland.[44] A key link was the first bridge across the deep valley of Rock Creek at Calvert Street. Erected by the Edgemore Bridge Company in 1891 at a cost of $70,000 ($2,449,741 today[43]), it stretched 755 feet across six wrought-iron trusses on iron trestles that were 125 feet high. The company then conveyed the bridge to the municipal government of Washington, D.C., which took up half the cost of maintaining the structure.[42] When the bridge began to fail in 1911,[45] its deck—a 40-foot-wide roadway flanked by five-foot walkways—was narrowed.[46] (The bridge would be replaced in 1933-35 by the current Duke Ellington Bridge.)

In shaping the Chevy Chase neighborhoods, The Land Company pioneered efforts to provide various services to the growing areas. The Society for Architectural Historians writes, "A major reason for the success of this pioneering suburban community was the fact that The Chevy Chase Land Company included civil, sanitary, and structural engineers as well as architects, landscape architects, and real estate agents to incorporate zoning, architectural design guidelines, landscaping, and infrastructure...The company also constructed water and sewer systems and an electrical power house."[47] That "power house" held the hydroelectric generator that drove the Connecticut Avenue streetcars; The Land Company had also built the manmade lake—Chevy Chase Lake—that drove the generator, and later became the centerpiece of an eponymous amusement park with boating, swimming, and other activities.[44]

These services did not include shops, stores, or commerce in general, which were banned from the area; company leaders instead provided "freight service" on the Connecticut Avenue streetcar line by which groceries and other household goods might be delivered.[48]

An avowed white supremacist, Newlands took steps to keep African Americans out of the new neighborhoods. Though The Chevy Chase Land Company only began attaching racial covenants to its houses several decades later, it initially set its prices for houses at points that effectively limited sales to well-off whites: $5,000 ($154,800 today) and up on Connecticut Avenue and $3,000 and up on side streets.[4]

In 1894, the company built the Chevy Chase Inn on Connecticut Avenue; the property became Chevy Chase Junior College from 1903 until 1950,[44] then the national youth center for the National 4-H Foundation through 2021; as of July 2025, it is to be redeveloped as senior living.[49]

20th century

In November 1901, the company sold $25,000 ($731,300 today) worth of land on the west side of Connecticut at today's Van Ness Street. The buyer was the National Bureau of Standards—specifically, Dr. Samuel W. Stratton, the federal agency's first director—which was moving from its first home on Capitol Hill. The Bureau would turn the old Vineyard and Springland Farm into one of the country's most sophisticated scientific laboratory complexes: a 70-acre, 90-building campus.[50]

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A historical marker, erected in 2024, commemorates the 1906 attempt to establish Belmont and its thwarting by the Chevy Chase Land Company. The sign stands in Friendship Heights Village, across the street from the former Belmont parcel. Visible at right is the 2 Wisconsin Place office building, built on the parcel and still owned by the company.

In 1906, Newlands' Land Company helped block the creation of Belmont, a subdivision intended to be a neighborhood created by African American developers and populated by African American homebuyers.[51] In 1927, the company would successfully petition to have the subdivision erased from the Montgomery County property books.[52]

In 1913, The Land Company provided the land for Montgomery County's first public school. The parcel sat northeast of Rosemary Circle in what is today the Town of Chevy Chase. Residents raised $5,000 to buy and erect four portable frame buildings as temporary classrooms for first- through 10th-grade students. In 1917, this Chevy Chase School opened its first permanent building, a two-story Art Deco-inspired brick structure; it would eventually become Chevy Chase Elementary School.[53]

Newlands ran the company until his death in 1917.[54] One year previously, a sales brochure alluded to steps taken to keep Chevy Chase white: "The only restrictions imposed are those which experience has proven are necessary in any residential section to maintain or increase values and protect property holders against the encroachment of undesirable elements."[55]

Newlands was succeeded by Edward J. Stellwagen.[54] In 1925, the company built the Chevy Chase Arcade in northwest D.C.; it was planned as "one of four business centers alternating with apartments along Connecticut Avenue."[56]

In 1932, Edward Hillyer became company president.[54] Under Hillyer, The Chevy Chase Land Company inserted covenants into land purchases barring their sale to Black[57] or Jewish people.[58] The racial "restrictions waned during World War II and were barred entirely by the Supreme Court in 1948, but the legacy of discrimination lingers," a historian wrote in 2016;[58] Chevy Chase Village, for example, was 95.9% White at the 2015 census.[59]

Under Stellwagen and Hillyer, the company mostly just sold off pieces of land. That would change after World War II, when it began to more actively develop buildings.[60]

In 1946, William S. Farr became company president. Born in 1903, Farr was both a grand-nephew and grandson-in-law of Newlands.[54]

Farr was followed in 1972 by Hunter Davidson.[54] In 1979, the Chevy Chase Land Company announced plans to build a 12-story office building immediately north of the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and Western Avenue, on the southern tip of the former Belmont parcel. The wedge-shaped plot, still owned by the company, had been occupied by a Howard Johnson's motel since at least 1942.[61] The building was constructed along with and above the Friendship Heights station of the Washington Metro's Red Line, under a deal that allowed the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to add its station without the expense of purchasing land.[62] Originally called the Chevy Chase Metro Building, it is today known as 2 Wisconsin Avenue.[63]

In 1981, Davidson handed the reins to Farr's son, Gavin M. Farr (b. 1942).[54]

In 1988, The Land Company sold a 22.5-acre tract at Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. As part of the sales agreement, the company "retained the rights for architectural approvals in order to be sure that Chevy Chase's architectural integrity is maintained," a company official said.[60]

21st century

Ed Asher was CEO in 2006, when the company's holdings totaled 2 million square feet.[64]

In 2008, David Smith, a great-great-grandson of Newlands, became the company's president and CEO. He was abruptly ousted in August 2014; company officials declined to say why.[65] At the time, the company owned some 1.5 million square feet of commercial real estate, mostly office space and retail properties in or around Bethesda and Chevy Chase.[66]

Smith was replaced as interim CEO by board leader Kate Carr, and then by Tom Regnell, who had been an executive at Washington Real Estate Investment Trust.[67] In July 2020, Regnell was replaced as president and CEO by John L. Ziegenhein III,[68] a Baltimore native who previously worked in commercial real estate banking and for developer McCaffery Interests.[69]

In June 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, company officials released a statement that said, "The Chevy Chase Land Company of today stands for the ideals of diversity and inclusion", that "to truly move forward, we must acknowledge our past and come together to build an inclusive community", and that "Our Board of Directors recognizes that despite Senator Newlands’ accomplishments, his views on race contradict the ideals of our company fabric." In the statement, officials said they would support the renaming of the Newlands fountain at Chevy Chase Circle.[70]

After a historic marker commemorating the Belmont affair was installed in 2024,[71] Ziegenhein said that the company believes "in the importance of transparency regarding the actions taken at Belmont. More importantly, we must ensure those actions are never repeated."[72]

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