Historic entrance to Glen Echo Park in Maryland

Glen Echo began as a real estate investment by Edwin and Edward Baltzley. Edwin had invented a new-and-improved egg beater and had amassed a small fortune from this and other investments. Predicting that the future was living outside the city in what would become known as a suburb, the brothers came from Philadelphia to Washington, D. C., in 1888 and purchased 516 acres overlooking the Potomac River. Their plan included building an exclusive residential neighborhood and a high-end restaurant, and later, a chautauqua, which is best described as an outdoor adult continuing-education summer camp.

Chautauquas began as a way to educate Sunday School teachers, and the name comes from the very first such facility that started on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in New York in 1874. Many Sunday School teachers had no teaching experience and often hadn’t even finished grade school. At a chautauqua they would not only have the opportunity to study religion but also liberal and fine arts. After all, a better educated person should make a better Sunday School teacher. The idea caught on and became somewhat of a fad, and soon the curriculum was expanded to all sorts of subjects and open to any adult. There was a fee to join the chautauqua, a fee for each class, and of course a fee for room and board and all other goods and services a person spending a month away from home would need, all of which the owner of the chautauqua would provide. The Baltzleys first heard about chautauquas after Edwin’s wife became involved with one.

The brothers began selling lots and building their café, the Pa-tow-o-meck, a five story structure with views of the Potomac River that was made entirely of cedar. It was completed in July 1890 and became very popular with upper-class Washington society, but unfortunately it burned down only four months after opening. By that time the brothers had sold about 20 percent of their residential lots. In an attempt to draw more buyers, they gave prominent citizens free homes with hopes that once celebrities moved in that everyone would want to move in. One home was given to Clara Barton, but since it was too far from Washington and trolley service had not yet come to Glen Echo, she ended up turning it into an office and warehouse for the newly formed American Red Cross (she did make it her home in the late 1890s once trolley service was established). The house is now Clara Barton National Historic Site, and it shares the parking lot with Glen Echo Park. You can visit both parks in an afternoon.

Despite the restaurant disaster, the Baltzleys continued on with their business, focusing next on starting a chautauqua. The Baltzleys approached the Chautauqua Institute in New York about making Glen Echo the home of the Chautauqua Union of Washington, D. C. After agreeing to donate the land, the Glen Echo Chautauqua was established as the nation’s 53rd chartered facility. If the land were one day not used as a chautauqua, ownership would revert back to the Baltzleys.

To accommodate the expected crowds, in January 1891 the Baltzleys began construction on support buildings: a hotel, restaurant, and a 6,000 seat amphitheater where lectures would be held on the banks of Minnehaha Creek. Ten acres of land were officially transferred to the National Chautauqua of Glen Echo in March and another sixty-seven acres in April. Amazingly, everything was ready for the arrival of 500 guests in June. (Today the ruins of the amphitheater can be viewed from an observation deck at the Glen Echo Park parking lot. The amphitheater was condemned in 1949 and torn down.)

For the 1891 season, the chautauqua opened on June 16^th and was set to run until July 4^th, but it was so successful and everyone was having so much fun that the Baltzleys decided to extend it until August 1^st. That decision turned out to be one that essentially put them out of business. A Dr. Henry Spencer caught pneumonia while at Glen Echo and died at the end of August—had the season ended as originally scheduled, he would have gotten sick somewhere else. Dying from pneumonia is nothing to start a panic, but rumors spread that he died from malaria. Back then nobody knew mosquitoes were the cause of the disease, and soon the public believed that the air at Glen Echo was “full of malaria.”

By the time the 1892 season rolled around, hardly anyone signed up to attend, and the chautauqua never opened again. People who had purchased home lots began to default on their loans, and the brothers were only able to sell a few lots here and there over the next few years. Furthermore, since nobody was coming to Glen Echo, a trolley line from Washington that had broken ground was shuttered, and it would be another five years before service came to the neighborhood. Edward quit the venture in 1897, leaving only Edwin to keep things going.

With all the buildings from the chautauqua sitting empty, including the amphitheater, Edwin began promoting the place as an entertainment venue where you could come to picnic and relax. He brought in musicians and vaudeville acts, and even hosted boxing matches. In 1898 a few rides were added, such as a carousel and a mini-railroad, the origin of what would eventually become the roller coaster. Trolley service had arrived, and with it the electricity to power more exciting rides. However, by 1903 Edwin was so far in debt that he could no longer make his loan payments. The bank foreclosed on all of the Glen Echo chautauqua property, leaving Baltzley with only the land where the Chautauqua entrance and administration buildings were located.