Montgomery Parks planners have pitched a new park to be built in the Silver Spring neighborhood of Lyttonsville, that would act as a rest stop along the Capital Crescent Trail and highlight the history of one of Montgomery County’s historically Black communities.
At the Sept. 7 Planning Board meeting, board members approved the project and will be proposed for final design and construction in the FY2025-2030 Capital Improvements Program. According to Montgomery Parks officials, construction of the park will likely begin in 2028, pending the completion of the Purple Line. Currently the site is a construction staging area.
At the meeting, planners said the project cost would total $1.9 million and the 0.84-acre park would have a yearly operating budget of about $30,000 to $35,000.
Early design concepts of Lyttonsville Neighborhood Park include a picnic area, amphitheater, skateboarding element, bike repair station, play and sitting areas and a native meadow, planning documents state.
Pieces of the Talbot Avenue Bridge would also be integrated into the park. The Talbot Avenue Bridge was a historic one-lane wooden and steel bridge that went over the CSX/WMATA tracks and provided Lyttonsville residents a connection to employment, shopping and recreational opportunities in Silver Spring, according to the Greater Lyttonsville Sector Plan.
Residents from the Lyttonsville, Rosemary Hills and North Woodside neighborhoods told Montgomery Parks planners that they wanted elements of the bridge to be installed in the park in a way that “visitors could travel over a recreated bridge that provided a sense of crossing similar to the old bridge,” planning documents state. Three community engagement meetings took place from June 2022 to March 2023.
“I just know that if the older folks were here today–my grandmother, my parents–they would rejoice. This is a dream they had dreamed of,” said Lyttonsville resident Patricia Tyson at the Planning Board meeting. Tyson is a member of the Lyttonsville Community Civic Association and said she has lived in the neighborhood for more than 75 years.
At the meeting, Tyson explained that growing up in Lyttonsville she always felt protected and loved in her neighborhood but knew that where she lived was “on the other side of the tracks,” she said, referring to the CSX railroad tracks that divided Lyttonsville from the neighborhood of North Woodside.
North Woodside is part of the primarily white neighborhood of Woodside which has 54.9% white residents, according to the 2020 Census.
The Talbot Avenue Bridge was the key point of connection between those communities until it was demolished in 2019 due to its deteriorated state. Construction of a new bridge in the same spot is under way, Montgomery Parks officials said at the meeting.
Lyttonsville Park is planned to be along the Capital Crescent Trail and CSX railroad tracks at 2205 Kansas Ave. Lyttonsville is situated in between the Chevy Chase and Woodside neighborhoods. The park will be about two blocks away from Rosemary Hills Elementary School and a quarter of a mile from the future Purple Line Lyttonsville Station, according to planning documents.
Residents brought up one issue at the Planning Board meeting–the placement of the proposed skateboarding element in the park, which they said was too small and too close to the Capital Crescent Trail path. They said this could result in skaters interfering with the path of runners, walkers and cyclists using the trail.
Planning Board Chair Artie Harris said at the meeting that the skateboarding element in the park will continue to be discussed among planners.
According to project manager Ching-Fang Chen, planners hope the project will “promote social equity, sensibility and highlight the unique cultural resources, help restore the environment and provide amenities to surrounding residents and regional trail users.” The proposed park includes a “Heritage Terrace” that outlines the neighborhood’s history and new open green space in a former industrial site.
Tyson said that Lyttonsville residents have long “pleaded” for a chance to improve their neighborhoods and the new park demonstrates an improvement the community sought after.
Anna White, a North Woodside Citizens Association board member, expressed her strong support for the plan at the meeting and acknowledged the role her neighborhood had in racial segregation of the past.
“Our neighborhood has not always been a welcoming place for residents of the historically African American community of Lyttonsville,” she said. “Founded in 1890, almost 40 years after Lyttonsville and was developed further in the 1920s, our neighborhood [Woodside] had racist deed covenants that prohibited Black people from owning property and living in it except as domestic servants. The 1940 census found just 11 Black people residing in our census district, all domestic servants.”
Tyson and White are members of the Talbot Avenue Bridge Committee, which works to commemorate and preserve the bridge and its history, as well as unify the neighborhoods that were once racially segregated with an annual Lantern Walk in November.
This year’s Lantern Walk will be the sixth annual walk and will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 11, according to White.
Lyttonsville was founded in 1953 by Samuel Lytton, a free Black laborer, according to Montgomery Parks. The community was originally an all-Black enclave, a pre-Civil War settlement for free Black people. Today, the community is more racially and ethnically diverse than the county with about 70% of residents being African American, Hispanic or Asian, according to the Sector Plan.
“Hopefully I’ll still be around so I can enjoy [the park],” Tyson said. “But if I’m not, may it be a symbol to others to do the right thing, as well as be the right people, to help one another. Our community now is an international community with many people from many cultures and places. We get along together; we work together and I just pray that this park will be assembled in a way that will always bring people together.”
