When Edwin and Edward Baltzley set out to explore Conduit Road, now MacArthur Boulevard, in the late 1880s, they happened upon a scenic spot where echoes reverberated and the hills sloped to a glen. The twins, both government workers, came from an Ohio family of industrialists and inventors. It didn’t take long for them to see investment potential in the cooler, high ground above the Potomac River.
In 1888, using money from Edwin’s invention of a mechanical eggbeater, they purchased 516 acres along the Potomac River. To reduce travel time from Washington, D.C., near the area that is now Friendship Heights, they joined others in developing a trolley line, the Glen Echo Railroad Company. In sales brochures they offered a romantic vision of a community with castle- like homes and called it “Glen Echo on the Potomac: The Washington Rhine.”
To further entice people to the area, the Baltzleys turned to the growing Chautauqua movement, which offered classes, speakers and performances for the education, spiritual enlightenment and entertainment of the middle classes.
The Baltzleys advertised a Hall of Philosophy and an Academy of Fine Arts, and built an amphitheater and stone buildings with round turrets in 1891. Even though the trolley would not begin operating until the next day, nearly 1,000 people came on June 16, 1891, to opening ceremonies for the National Chautauqua Assembly of Glen Echo. They heard speakers, saw minstrel shows and strolled lighted pathways on the grounds. Hundreds stayed to attend classes that summer, living in tents on raised platforms. The tents eventually gave way to summer homes.
The building lots were small, and in keeping with Chautauqua educational values, streets were named after prestigious schools. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, built her house and organization headquarters on Oxford Road in 1891. Then, in 1892, Chautauqua business school director Henry Spencer developed a fever, and fears of malaria swirled. Barton herself tried to dispel the rumors (Spencer later died of pneumonia, not malaria), but attendance waned and the Chautauqua succumbed to growing debt.
In 1899, the Baltzley brothers rented the grounds to the Glen Echo Company for an amusement park with rides and a merry-go-round, later replaced by a Dentzel Carousel. Edward had moved to Colorado in 1897 to pan for gold, where he developed mercury poisoning. He later died in a sanitarium in Arkansas. Edwin went to live with his son in New Jersey and died penniless. In 1903, the Chautauqua grounds and buildings were foreclosed and later sold to the Washington Railway and Electric Company.
The community expanded as amusement park workers and others began living there year-round. In 1904, Glen Echo became an incorporated town with a mayor and town council. Over the decades, the amusement park added new attractions, such as the gigantic Crystal Pool, a 90-foot wooden slide, a roller coaster, bumper cars and The Whip, with cars that whirled around an oblong track. But with deteriorating structures, other modern amusements and the arrival of bigger theme parks, attendance declined and, in 1968, the amusement park closed.
The National Park Service acquired Glen Echo Park in 1971. The carousel remains, and the nonprofit Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture Inc., runs arts and education programs there.
Judith Welles is a writer in Bethesda.
