Deigert and Yerkes

Save the Date: MoCo Modern Bus Tour – Oct. 8

This year’s Montgomery Modern bus tour explores the Montgomery County work of Deigert and Yerkes, a leading modernist architecture firm in the Washington, D.C., area, best known for the National Arboretum Administration Building in Washington. Operating from 1947 to 1967, the partnership of Robert Campbell Deigert and David Norton Yerkes, created distinctive designs with variety in materials and textures, surprising angles, and contrasting spaces. Led by Montgomery Modern author Clare Lise Kelly, the tour will include the rustic modern houses of Tulip Hill (1950-55) and Oak Spring (1966), lunch at Primary Day School (1955, pictured above), and a concluding reception at Pietro Belluschi’s Cedar Lane Unitarian Church (1958). The tour will be held Oct. 8 and will run from 10 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.

Presented by the Montgomery County Planning Department, the tour is offered in partnership with Docomomo-DC and AIA-Potomac Valley. Bus pickup and drop off will be at the Grosvenor Metro Kiss and Ride. Please find more information at www.montgomeryplanning.org/montgomerymodern.

Cherry Blossoms and Modernism

If you want to enjoy the weather this weekend, see the cherry blossoms before they disappear and see some modern architecture for good measure, you may want to head to Rock Creek Woods in Silver Spring (map). The community by architect Charles Goodman and builders Herschel and Marvin Blumberg has dozens of Yoshino cherry trees. When the neighborhood was built, homeowners agreed to pay Montgomery County $10 per cherry tree planted. Nearly four dozen more tree were planted in 1998, while nearly three dozen were planted in 2001, according to the neighborhood’s website. Another place to see modernism and cherry trees without the crowds of the Tidal Basin is the U.S. National Arboretum. The arboretum has more than 2,000 trees, the largest collection of cherry blossoms outside the Tidal Basin. If you go, make sure to check out the Administration Building, with its zig-zag roof. The building was designed in the early 1960s by Albert G. Mumma Jr. of the architecture firm Deigert & Yerkes. Below are a few pictures from my quick walk through Rock Creek Woods. Have a good weekend.