The Starbucks at 5500 Connecticut Avenue NW is the first storefront in a building that turned 101 this year. Down the same frontage there is a pizzeria, a Greek restaurant with a lounge, a dry cleaner, and a door leading up to a floor of small offices. The building went up in 1925 and is known as the Hatcher Building. On the evening of Wednesday, December 2, it gets a history workshop of its own.
Historic Chevy Chase DC is hosting the workshop from 5 to 7 p.m. inside that Starbucks. It will cover the building and the businesses that have filled it over the past century. The Hatcher, the Chevy Chase Arcade and the old Chevy Chase Savings Bank, which share the Livingston-to-Morrison block, all went up in 1925 and 1926. The narrow buildings from that stretch have kept their scale ever since, and the businesses in them still run to the errands of a neighborhood main street.
A Bank, Then a Coffee Bar
The fullest public record of the building comes from the National Register nomination for a proposed Chevy Chase Historic District, which is posted by the DC Office of Planning. In its survey of the neighborhood's 1920s commercial buildings, the nomination describes them this way:
"Typically, these buildings were narrow one- or two-story buildings that were constructed of brick, often with the façade clad in a different material such as cast stone."
The same passage lists "the Hatcher Building at 5500-5514 Connecticut Avenue NW (1925)" and notes it was "likely named for its first owner Frederick R. Hatcher." The nomination's inventory credits the design to the architect A. S. J. Atkinson, and a photo caption places the building at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Livingston Street.
According to a Chevy Chase Main Street history published by District Bridges, the Hatcher originally housed a bank. Most of the century between that bank and today's coffee bar is what the December 2 workshop sets out to fill in.
The current lineup is clear. The Chevy Chase News business roster, dated September 1, 2026, lists these tenants along the building's frontage:
- Starbucks at 5500
- Core 72 at 5502
- Mamma Lucia Pizzeria & Cafe at 5504
- A cluster of small offices and practices at 5506, among them District Kids, Health Psychology Partners, Skin Stories, Total Release Reflexology, DC Youth Futbol Club and the Defiant Requiem Foundation
- Parthenon & Chevy Chase Lounge at 5510
- President Valet Cleaners at 5514
All of that fits inside a 1925 building that fills just eight street numbers.
One Block, Built in Two Years
The Hatcher was built alongside its neighbors. Between Livingston and Morrison streets, the nomination and the DC Historic Sites records place the block's three largest buildings in 1925 and 1926. A smaller building at 5518, between the Hatcher and the Arcade, now holds Artsy Beast and Grenfell Architecture.
| Address | Building | Built | On the roster as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5500–5514 | Hatcher Building | 1925 | Starbucks, Core 72, Mamma Lucia, Parthenon & Chevy Chase Lounge, President Valet Cleaners |
| 5520 | Chevy Chase Arcade | completed by 1925 | Barista, Macon Bistro, Art Sound Language, Bert's Jewelers, Infinity Martial Arts |
| 5530 | Chevy Chase Savings Bank | 1926 | PNC Bank |
The Arcade was the showpiece of the block. District Bridges describes it as one of four business centers the Chevy Chase Land Company planned in the 1920s to alternate with apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue. Architect Louis R. Moss designed it in the Classical Revival style, with a limestone facade, a vaulted ceiling, marble floors and relief panels lining the passage. The DC Historic Sites entry records its DC Inventory listing in 1988 and National Register listing in 2003, and it notes that the interior is protected as well. That makes the passage a landmark you can walk through on the way to Macon Bistro or a coffee at Barista.
The Corner That Has Banked Since 1926
At the Morrison Street end of the block, one use has never changed. The DC Historic Sites history of the Chevy Chase Savings Bank traces it to an office that opened in 1921 at the southwest corner of McKinley Street and Connecticut. A year later the bank bought the lot one block south at Morrison Street, and it built the current building there in 1926.
The architect was Arthur B. Heaton, and this is the only surviving bank of the two he designed in this Italian Renaissance Revival style. The exterior is sandstone and granite, with medallions of Pierre L'Enfant, George Washington and both faces of the 1920s Peace Dollar. After the national bank holiday of 1933, the bank reopened as a branch of Riggs National Bank. A 1958 addition by Mills, Petticord and Mills added three bays to the west, which created the run of six arched windows along Morrison Street. Christian Wohlgemuth Jr. built both the original building and the addition. Riggs operated the branch until 2005, when the bank was sold to PNC, and the building still operates under PNC. It joined the DC Inventory on January 26, 2023, and the National Register on April 27, 2023.
The Riggs name also turns up in the corridor's oral history. In an interview recorded in 2011 for Historic Chevy Chase DC's oral history collection, longtime resident Dallas Dean remembered Riggs Bank alongside Dart Drug Store, People's Drug Store, Schupp's Bakery, Edward's Shoe Store and Safeway as the businesses of the avenue in her youth.
Why the Shops Clustered on These Blocks
The strip sits where it does because of who owned the land. The DC Historic Sites account explains that commercial use was limited along this part of Connecticut Avenue. The Chevy Chase Land Company owned the east side and was bound by those limits. The west side had different owners, so a commercial strip could grow on the west-side blocks within the subdivision called Connecticut Avenue Terrace. The east side, the account says, "would not gain its commercial character until the early 1950s."
District Bridges looks at the same period from across the line. It notes that commercial development was not permitted on the Montgomery County side of Chevy Chase in the early 1900s, which pushed shops onto the DC side of Connecticut Avenue and its cross streets. The Hatcher, the post office building and the Avalon were all part of that growth. The Avalon Theatre is the best-known survivor of that wave a few doors up the avenue.
The Side Streets Still Run on Errands
The rest of the commercial district runs around the corners onto Livingston and Northampton streets, and these buildings are, if anything, smaller. They are where the day-to-day errands still happen.
According to the nomination, Albert S. J. Atkinson, the same architect credited with the Hatcher, designed the row of Classical Revival-style commercial buildings at 3811 to 3817 Livingston Street NW, completed in 1927. The September 2026 roster places Lee's Laundry at 3811, Park Story at 3813, Harmonic Music Studios at 3815 and Salon Familia at 3817.
A year later, in 1928, a group of Spanish Colonial Revival buildings designed by the Wire Reality Company went up at 3808, 3810 and 3812 Northampton Street NW, along with 5632 and 5636 Connecticut Avenue. Expert Shoe & Luggage Repair now occupies 3808 and Ramer's Shoes occupies 3810. On the avenue side of the same group are Jetties at 5632 and the post office at 5636.
Between those two groups are the single-story buildings of the period. The building at 5614 to 5618 Connecticut, from 1923, now holds The UPS Store and Subway. The 1927 one-story building at 5544 is home to Chevy Chase Wine & Spirits, and the 1920 building at 5534, with its raised roof and cupola, houses Opal.
Taken together, the 1920s buildings on these few blocks still house a laundry, a dry cleaner, a shoe repair shop, a shoe store, a post office, a shipping counter, a bank, a wine shop and a handful of single-room restaurants. Those are the uses of a neighborhood main street, and the buildings were sized for them.
A Short Walk Before December 2
Arriving early for the workshop leaves time to see most of this on foot:
- Start on Northampton Street at 3808 and 3810, then walk to the avenue and look at the matching 1928 facades at Jetties and the post office.
- Head south past 5614 to 5618 and on to Opal at 5534. The cupola is easy to spot from the sidewalk.
- At Morrison Street, stop at PNC to see the L'Enfant, Washington and Peace Dollar medallions, then walk west along Morrison past the six arched windows of the 1958 addition.
- Walk through the Chevy Chase Arcade at 5520 to see the vaulted ceiling and marble floors.
- End at the Starbucks at 5500, on the Livingston Street corner, by 5 p.m.
Readers who want the larger record can find it in the nomination behind most of these building dates. It was first prepared in July 2007 and revised in October 2023, and the Chevy Chase DC Conservancy submitted it in fiscal year 2024 as the proposed Chevy Chase Historic District, Case 24-03. The case remains on the Office of Planning's list of pending historic district nominations.
Jill Schwartz Group works across Chevy Chase block by block, and if you would like to talk through how the history of this strip fits with your own plans on the surrounding streets, we would welcome the conversation. Request a private, confidential consultation.
