Edward Baltzley and his twin brother, Edwin, had a grandiose dream: They envisioned a suburban community rising on a picturesque stretch of land along the Potomac River, about five miles above the District line. In 1890, The Washington Post declared, “There is certainly no view in this city comparable in ruggedness and wildness.” The Baltzleys considered it the perfect setting for the well-to-do and well-connected.
“The upper Potomac must be to Washington what the Rhine and Hudson are to their respective sections,” the Baltzleys wrote in early promotional literature. “…There is no reason why it should not surpass that which has been done elsewhere in the past. Our country is opulent in wealth and good taste, and a high spirit prevails among those who are able to perform.”
The Baltzleys saw themselves as among those “able to perform.” They sought to capitalize on the suburban movement booming out from Washington, D.C., toward the end of the 19th century. Ventures such as the Forest Glen Improvement Company, founded in 1887, were already selling lots to prospective homeowners seeking the fresh air of still-rural Montgomery County. In 1888, the Baltzleys joined the developers’ parade with the purchase of a 500-acre tract on Conduit Road—today’s MacArthur Boulevard—just downstream from the confluence of Cabin John Creek and the Potomac. They named their new community Glen Echo.
The Baltzleys had come to Washington, D.C., from Ohio in the early 1880s, joining the ranks of workers filling the federal payroll. Edwin was a secretary to U.S. Sen. John Sherman of Ohio; Edward was a clerk at the Department of the Treasury. Grandsons of Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, the pair inherited their grandfather’s inquisitive spirit.
Beginning in 1872, Edwin patented an array of newfangled items, from an early escalator he called a “stairavator” to lemon juice extractors, paper clips, meat grinders, paper cutters and a prototype of the modern office workstation, complete with integrated file cabinets, bookcases and a typewriter shelf. But Edwin’s most lasting invention was a hand mixer patented in 1885 and dubbed “the Keystone Beater,” after the Philadelphia manufacturing company he founded to produce the device. Sarah Tyson Rorer, principal of the Philadelphia Cooking School and editor of Table Talk, one of the earliest domestic science magazines, devoted a monthly feature to the utensil, offering recipes for a mélange of whipped and aerated dishes turned out by the beater, which quickly became a kitchen fixture.
Edwin made a fortune from his inventions, and by 1890 had invested a significant portion of his wealth in the brothers’ new Glen Echo venture. Their landholdings expanded to more than 1,300 acres, with 150 designated for a trolley line to connect the new community to the D.C. city center. By April 1890, more than 175 lots had been sold in what became known as Glen Echo Heights. Its twisting, turning roads, skirting rocky creek beds and spiraling up hills, bore Native American names—Mohican, Tuscarawas, Scioto and Walhonding— carried from the Baltzleys’ boyhood in Ohio. (Today’s Mohican Hills community occupies part of the original tract.)
Only four of the lots were “purchased for speculative purposes,” the brothers avowed, although those speculators included the wife, daughter and personal secretary of President Benjamin Harrison, lending the fledgling community an air of prestige.
Deed holders were obligated to build “a substantial brick, stone or frame dwelling house of not less value than $3,000.” The brothers encouraged stone houses by opening up several quarries on the property, offering granite and other building stones for the cost of extraction. Deeds also prohibited the building of “any hotel tavern, drinking saloon, blacksmith, carpenter or wheelwright shop, steam mill, tannery, slaughter house, skin dressing establishment, livery stable, glue, soap, candle or starch manufactory or other building for offensive purpose or occupation.”
As a community enhancement—and an inducement to prospective homeowners—the Baltzleys did build a grand café across MacArthur Boulevard from the present-day Sycamore Store. In keeping with the Native American theme, they named it the Patawomeck Café. Designed by D.C. architect Ellwood Hallowell and opened in July 1890, the structure was built of 30,000 unhewn cedar logs still covered in bark. The Post called it a “poem in architecture,” with towers, lookouts, balconies, pavilions and a 100-foot-long main dining room. An “air castle” connected to the main building by a rustic bridge served as the residence for Edwin and his family.
