Finding Friendship Along Wisconsin Ave.

Map It:  Friendship Heights   Tenleytown 

WHEN YOU HEAR the name "Friendship" used in a local context, Friendship Heights and it's Metrorail station straddling the Maryland-District line usually comes to mind. On the Maryland side of the border, there is actually a 34-acre unincorporated special tax district within Chevy Chase called "Friendship Heights," a village filled with towering offices and apartments, just to the west of Wisconsin Avenue and north of Willard Avenue. (Today's Friendship Heights is largely the result of one woman, Thelma Edwards, the 89-year-old developer profiled by The Post's Adriane Quinlan in Friday's Style section.) But the entire business district centered on the intersection of Wisconsin and Western avenues, and the entire neighborhood surrounding it (on both sides of the Maryland-District line, has come to be known as Friendship Heights, cutting into the greater identity of Chevy Chase, the collection of exclusive Maryland jurisdictions and their companion D.C. neighborhood.

But that's not where "Friendship" ends. Driving south on Wisconsin, you can find traces of the word near the National Cathedral, about 3 miles away. To get a better grasp of the word and its effects on our local geography, this blogger on Monday walked north on Wisconsin Avenue from the National Cathedral toward Maryland, where the Friendship there — because of Edwards' development success — dominates the entire area. This blogger created a Wayfaring Map on our personal account to plot out our 3.4-mile-trek and where we found Friendship along the way. More on the jump.

If you do a search on Google Local for "Friendship" and "Washington D.C.," you'll come across a cluster of businesses and other locations in the Wisconsin Avenue corridor in Upper Northwest. The farthest south is the Friendship Flower Shop, located on Wisconsin Avenue, just south of Macomb Street NW, near the National Cathedral. The farthest north is the Friendship Heights Metrorail station, with various outposts of Friendship between.

Clustered near Newark Street NW, you'll find the Friendship Office Building, pictured above, and Friendship Jewelers. At Van Ness Street NW, you find the U.S. Postal Service's Friendship Station. At Windom Place NW, you'll find the Friendship Building. At Albemarle Street NW, you'll find the currently closed Tenley-Friendship Library. And at Brandywine Street NW, you'll find the Friendship Animal Hospital. Only Sidwell Friends School, an institution founded by the Quakers (the Society of Friends) has an easily explainable Friendship name.

Back in the late 1600s, much of the area was part of a 3,000 acre chunk of land granted to Col. Thomas Addison and James Stoddert. Because of their friendship, the property became known as Friendship, according to local lore. As the land was subdivided over the generations, the one large chunk — about 75 acres — was bought by John McLean, who owned The Washington Post and whose son Edward would later bankrupt it during the Great Depression. The summer Friendship estate became one of Washington's top social calls in the 1920s, thanks to Edward McLean's wife, Evalyn (owner of the Hope Diamond), known for her extravagant entertaining. (Full history here.)

During World War II, defense housing was built on the Friendship property, now called McLean Gardens. Its community ballroom, pictured at left, plus its original fountain and statues, are the last reminders of the old Friendship property. That is, except for its name, which has been sprinkled up and down Wisconsin Avenue, confusing those who think the only Friendship in the area sits firmly established at the Maryland-District line.

Photos by Michael Grass/Express