18:00 15.05.2006 | All news from "Real Estate News"
Woodsy Worlds Away From the City
Six months ago, Eneida Somarriba rediscovered the moon when her family moved to Carderock Springs.
When she was growing up in Costa Rica, she said, "I lived with the moon." And since she came to the United States, she has missed it.
Ryan Massey and his sister Sammi fulfill the sign's warning in Carderock Springs. (Photos By Ann Cameron Siegal For The Washington Post) CARDEROCK SPRINGSBy Carderock SpringsBOUNDARIES: Congressional Country Club and Persimmon Tree Lane to the west, Cabin John Regional Park and Seven Locks Road to the east, River Road to the north and an irregular boundary to the south, with most of the community outside the Beltway. SCHOOLS: Carderock Springs Elementary, Thomas W. Pyle Middle and Walt Whitman High schools. HOME SALES: Seventeen houses have sold since June at prices from $734,000 to $951,000, said Theres Kellermann of W.C. & A.N. Miller Cos. One house is on the market for $979,000 and two are under contract, listed for $859,000 and $869,000. WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE: Clubhouse, five tennis courts, three pools, wooded trails, playground, C&O Canal towpath. WITHIN 15 MINUTES BY CAR: Naval Ship Research and Development Center, Potomac, Glen Echo, Georgetown, Chain Bridge, Capital Beltway, Interstate 270. var technorati = new Technorati() ;technorati.setProperty('url','http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032400951_Technorati.html') ;technorati.article = new item('Woodsy Worlds Away From the City','http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032400951.html','Six months ago, Eneida Somarriba rediscovered the moon when her family moved to Carderock Springs.','Ann Cameron Siegal') ;document.write( technorati.getDisplaySidebar() );#delicious_display {display:none ;color:#333333 ;background-color:#EEEEEE ;padding:4px ;padding-top:0px ;border:1px dotted #0D3159 ;}Save & ShareSaving options1. Save to description: Headline (required) Subheadline Byline2. Save to notes (255 character max): Subheadline Blurb None 3. Tag This ArticlesetTimeout('update_delicious_form(delicious_cookie)',1) |
"Why didn't we have a moon in Gaithersburg?" she jokingly asked her husband, Jorge.
Carderock Springs lacks the light pollution that plagues more populated, commercial areas. "It's so dark here," Somarriba said of her Montgomery County community, tucked between Congressional Country Club and Cabin John Regional Park, just outside the Capital Beltway.
On moonless winter nights, a parade of flashlight beams heralds the end of the workday as residents walk home from a bus stop on River Road.
Somarriba and her husband, both art teachers at the nearby Norwood School, are very conscious about how light plays on the walls inside their house and filters through the branches of the trees outside.
"The moon bathes the house at night and I get to see it from different angles," she said.
Carderock Springs is woodsy, rocky and hilly, located in an area where quarries once provided the stones used to build the C&O Canal in the 1800s. Wooded, pine cone-strewn paths winding through the community give walkers a sense of being far away from city life. And yet, residents say, it's only a 20-minute drive to the White House.
The original 404 Carderock Springs houses are low-profile contemporaries with large walls of windows and two-foot overhangs. Many people shun curtains because the houses are angled to take advantage of wooded views.
"We don't like curtains, we like light," said Raul Mandler, a professor of neurology at George Washington University Medical Center.
George Petsche was just out of architecture school in 1962, shopping for several acres farther out, when friends told him he should look at what developer Edmund J. Bennett was doing. "These were modeled after Charles Goodman's properties in Virginia," Petsche said.
Like Goodman's Hollin Hills community in Fairfax County, Carderock Springs was designed to make the outside an extension of the interiors. In a few cases, that goal was taken literally. Several flat-roofed "atrium houses" are built around square center courtyards. One even has an evergreen tree peeking out the top from within.
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