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...On Saturday, May 3rd, 1986. A lot of things we're interested in. First, we'd like to start with how you became interested in Bannockburn, how you found out about it? Well, It was late 1945 or '46, and Arthur Lieb and Roberta Lieb were

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members of the co-op. I think it was called the Greenbelt Co-op or Rochedale Co-op. And they knew about this housing co-op that was being started.

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And they told us about it. They knew very little themselves, actually. But they had begun attending

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meetings at the friend's meeting house down at Florida Avenue on around 21st and 22nd, that beautiful old stone building. And we went to a few of these meetings and they were very boring meetings.

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But the idea was that if enough people got together to buy a piece of land and build it cooperatively, we could get it done inexpensively, which is what appealed to me.

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And then they also had the feeling they could shape their own neighborhood. And so I started going to meetings. And Nothing much happened for a long time because the meetings

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went on and on. There were a lot of theoretical discussions about housing co-ops. Nobody really knew how to build

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anything. You got to understand that. This was all a lot of people who thought that it would be a good idea to do, but as far as buying land and building houses, nobody

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knew anything. But there we were, so that's how I heard about it. All right.

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Here we go. Okay. Everything is going. Well, where did you live at the

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time, Lou? At that time, Eric was our first child. He was born in August '46. We were living at Tuckerman Street, near 16th, 1440 Tuckerman.

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That's downtown Washington. I think I was also making, not downtown, you know, it's a long way out. I was making $1,440 a year then.

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I was working at the National Labor Relations Board. Now that was in October of '46. Once we had decided, and I'm running ahead now, that we were

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going to build this house, you know when things had gone along right more into the late late '40s in the early '50s I think we then moved back to Gloria's boarding house to save up enough money to buy the land.

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But in any event I can't tell you the exact date, and it must have been late '45, because we didn't buy the land until April 6, '46. And here it is, late '45, early

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'46. And the word came out that the Bannockburn tract was for sale. And I don't remember, we went out

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to look at it, I think we took the streetcar, and, you know, it was amazing. I had also, At these meetings that we were holding, Mary Hurling was involved and she was also

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investigating Oxon Hill. I remember we went out to Oxon Hill and looked at some stuff there, but I didn't like Oxen Hill.

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I was very anti-Oxen Hill and wisely so. But my earliest specific recollections of doing something about it was that I got myself

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appointed a sort of a person to go around and raise money for the auction. We needed to, I forget the exact amount of dollars, We needed a big pile of dough to go in and bid at

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the auction. We had over 120 acres and I think they wanted us to have a check for $25,000 or $50,000 there. Did you have that much money at the time?

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No, we didn't have any money at the time. You've got to understand that. As far as my own personal finances were concerned, we decided that everybody had to commit a thousand

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bucks, but nobody had a thousand bucks. Some of us did, but I didn't, certainly. And so we were going to make it easy. You were going to come in for 200 and promise to pay the rest.

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And what we were doing in a legal sense was joining a thing called Bannockburn Cooperators. We would have shares in Bannockburn Cooperators and we would be credited with whatever we

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put in, in any deal that came out later. So I don't know where I got 200, I think I borrowed it. And then I started getting people at the labor board to join. And I got a lot of people to join and they all put up 200.

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I remember going over to Virginia I didn't limit myself only To panic bird to the labor board, But somehow people at the labor board were living in Park Fairfax or What is that place on Glebe Road? Buckingham Right there were a lot of remember having meetings with

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people like Pollock Chase Orkin a number of them and we ultimately we got a bundle of dough together. I don't know how much I collected. We bid it in and we got the property.

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It was amazing. But then we were really in trouble in a sense because what the hell are you gonna do with the hundred some odd acres of land and you don't know what to do and you

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don't know how to build and all you have are really, we had some very idealistic people, they were visionary people, but they were not business people and this used to worry the hell out of me because the first deal we made showed how little we knew.

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We made this deal with Solomon in which we gave him an open-end cost-plus contract and yet we gave the various members who were buying the houses in the pilot project a fixed price. With Solomon, the builder of the pilot project?

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Yeah, he built the pilot project, you see. And, you know, he had every builder overruns. His estimates sucked. They didn't mean a goddamn thing.

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Mm-hmm. And so we went took a bad And we also insisted that he be a union builder because everybody was union minded There was a you know a large called liberal, left-wing

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element in the movement, which was fine, so we had union people, but nobody wanted to pay union wages. They wanted to pay it, but they personally didn't want to pay it.

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They would like other people to pay union wages. When it came to them, they wanted cheap houses.

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I remember the first meetings we had before we even started the pilot project, We had asked people to estimate the cost of certain plans. We had had some plans drawn up.

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And we were aghast when the bids came out to something like $12,000, $13,000. And everybody claimed rape, robbery. You know, it was terrible.

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The first thing, other things are sort of falling into place now. We needed an overall plan, you see.

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We weren't just gonna build houses, we were gonna build this integrated neighborhood. And we were gonna have individual homes, we were gonna have townhouses, we were gonna have apartment buildings out here in

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the middle of this golf course. We were going to have a small shopping center. And when the neighbors heard about

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that, they fell in on us and the zoning people refused to let us do, this total neighborhood, cradle to grave, you could move in here, have your babies get older and then die and get buried somewhere in the woods here.

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-. Sounds great. So that didn't work. And so we decided then to live, to develop the land and just build houses.

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No apartments, no shopping center. And we, I got myself appointed to a committee which interviewed architects. And we had architects come to see us.

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We invited Frank Lloyd Wright, but he says he doesn't bid on projects. When he wrote us back, he called us dear ladies of the auxiliary.

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Anyhow, but we had some guy from Israel, a guy named Neufeld. Then we had Vernon DeMars. It was a local guy.

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And then a guy named Burkett, who built school buildings. And they presented various plans. Neufeld said he would make us a nice house with a nice roof, with

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a nice wall and a nice window. I'll never forget him. He was a character. He wanted to do cement walls, pour

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them on the ground, and then sort of lift them up. This vision of some kibbutz out in Israel that I got in mind. Anyhow, we got the, we had elaborate plans drawn and we finally got started on the first houses, the pilot project, I think

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in 1948. And from the beginning it was apparent that we were not going to be able to do this successfully because if the rest of the co-op was bankrolling a deal for a

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specific number of people who were gonna live on Wilson Lane, and the costs were gonna just keep going up, and we were only gonna get a specific number of dollars back, we were gonna lose money, and we lost money.

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For 20 years thereafter, at every annual meeting of Banneker and Co-operators, Leon Zitfer would get up and ask for an accounting of the lost money on the pilot project.

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He says, how did we do it? I'm not satisfied. Mary Hurling would break down. It was terrible.

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Well, during the building of the pilot project, it had become apparent, as I said, that we were not business people and we didn't have enough money to carry on. So we had to raise money.

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People were invited to buy their lots from the co-op. We now had a plat, the thing had been platted and people were told if you, if you have a thousand

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bucks in or you have two hundred in, add another eight hundred, the money will be credited to you for the acquisition of a lot. Otherwise, you were not going to get your money out. You were going to be dead in the water.

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I know people threatened to sue. Some may have sued. I, the crucial question was what good was a lot unless you had a house? That's right.

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So, Jack Torren and I, who were somewhat disillusioned with the way the pilot project was handled, got ourselves appointed to the board of directors and we were authorized to go out and we were authorized first to establish lot prices for East Halbert Road and

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Donnockburn Drive, the first segment up from MacArthur Boulevard and We had a Jack was very good with numbers it was very precise and between us we put values on the land. And we had a drawing and for among the people who were interested to

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see which lot you would be allowed to buy. Because the lots had varying qualities. My lot cost $2,000, something like that. We were also authorized to go out and talk to developers.

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And we talked to, what the hell is his name? Guy was building a lot of contemporary houses around here. The one who was building in Holland Hills? Yeah, what was his name? Freeman?

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Yeah, Carl Freeman. Carl Freeman. Exactly. We went to see him.

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We met him in Alfonso's, the first French and Italian restaurant in Washington in the late '40s. And he said he'd build us a nice house and charge us somewhere around $13,000, $14,000.

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But he refused to develop the land. He says, get somebody else to do that. He had been burned, putting in roads and sewers, and the county was impossible to deal with.

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We said we wanted a firm price from him for every house, for the roads, the storm drains, and if you wouldn't bid that, forget it. We were disappointed.

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He refused to take it. Then we talked to Becker and Rakoosin. They were building out somewhere.

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Merrimack. Merrimack Houses out in New Hampshire Avenue. Out in New Hampshire Avenue,

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right. And they looked like they knew what they were doing. We went out and looked at their

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houses. They gave us a good price. I think it was around 12,000 bucks for the average house. They had 2,000 for a lot, had 14,000.

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Well, we ultimately signed a deal with them for the first batch of around 20, 24 houses up East Halbert and up Bannockburg. And that was in the spring, the winter of '49 or the very early 1950.

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And it was in the summer of '50, I was at the beach. I remember that. I was on the, Jack and I were honchoing the whole deal.

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We were the contact for getting it built. And I got a call from Becker or Racoosin, I was at, we're over the beach, saying that they will not guarantee the prices unless everybody who has contracted to buy, we all had individual

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contracts, would come, would give them, I don't know, $1,000, so that they could buy the refrigerators and the stoves and the other appliances because the Korean war had just broken out or was about to break out and the prices were gonna go sky high and

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blah, blah, blah. So we came back from vacation, everybody got together, we put our money up, we gave them the money, they bought a carload of all this crap and stored it in the boilers,

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water boilers, and they stored it in the clubhouse. And water boilers comes to mind because Joe Goldberg, he had a wife named Vita, she was a doctor at Group Health. Joe Goldberg was a pain in the ass.

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He insisted that Becker and Rakoosin had given him a boiler, which, a water boiler, a hot water boiler, which had been intended for another house and not for his house, and that he had contracted for a bigger one, and that he wanted Jack and me to go to the

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police and actually place a criminal charge against them. And this was the same thing as Zit for bugging us for 20 years about the money we lost on the pilot project. Goldberg, every time he saw me, would say, press charges.

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And I'd say, you're a lawyer, Joe, go do it yourself. He says, you were the ones that made the deal with these crooks. Well, ultimately, he bought the house and moved in. But Joe is the kind of guy, when I bought a station wagon from him, a

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used station wagon, a Pontiac, for $275, and I went to pay him, He said, wait a minute. He says, I have gas and oil in the car.

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I said, Joe, how much gas have you got? He said, I got a half a tank. I don't know what he paid, quarter a gallon. I paid him for half a tank and he says I'll throw the oil in.

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So that was, so we built the houses. We built the houses and we moved in I guess in early 51. Now Becker and Racoosin, they went up Bannockburn Drive and did a few more.

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And they went up East Halberton and did more. They went up East Halberton and did a few more.

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Right. They did them with basements. A lot of people wanted basements, but they didn't do it.

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They wouldn't do basements for the price we gave them. And that was a sore point. But, you know, who had that kind of money?

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For me to build that house, to get the money and put it up, I needed two grand down. I went to Gloria's aunt, she had an Aunt Enzelberg in New York who owned half of Astoria, and she

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said, no problem, kinder, she talked with a big, I'll lend you the 2000. She sent me a check for 2000 and she had had her lawyer draw up a six page mortgage and I had to pay

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her 6% interest, it took me four years to pay it off. So that's Bannockburn. Right. Okay.

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We lived on East Halbert Road, 6208, from 1950 to about 1967, I would say, or '66. The kids all grew up on East Halbert Road. I had three sons and it seemed like everybody else on East

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Halbert Road had sons. So it was a wonderful place for kids to grow up. Everybody knew everybody else.

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And we got along marvelously. It was a wonderful neighborhood for raising children. In 1967 or thereabouts, Roberta

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Lee decided that she would like to buy a lot that was on Crathie Lane. Crathie Lane was immediately adjoining the Bannockburn Tract.

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She had a cousin who was a builder. We bought a piece of land that had room for two houses and he built them, and we left Bannockburn

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Tract, but we were literally contiguous with the neighborhood and continued as a part of Bannockburn. That was Craythe Lane and many of our Bannockburn stalwarts live on Craythe Lane.

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There's the Bensons, the Volkovs live there, the Schwartzes, the Brightmans, Finkelsteins, you know. The Brightmans, Finkelsteins, you

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know. So it was really like, you know, it was like the West Bank, you might call it. And we lived there through '76.

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When we moved to Erlain, now there's a lot, there was a woman on, lived on Erlain, a Hungarian princess. She had a big brick house, about

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an acre of land. It adjoined the last, and I guess you might call it at this point, the northwesternmost point of Bannockburn.

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And when Bannockburn needed money, she and her husband bought up another acre. And this was a Bannockburn acre, an acre and a quarter, which was going to serve as a buffer between her and Bannockburn.

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Her husband was killed in Logan Airport, bringing back some Korean kids, and so she decided to sell her brick house and the entire two and a quarter acre tract, including that one and a quarter acre from Bannockburn Co-operators.

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I bought it. I sold the brick house and the one acre to Ernie Cook, who then resold it to Weiner, the psychiatrist.

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He left me with one and a quarter acres of original Bannockburn land, and I built a deckhouse on it, which is where this interview is taking place. Very beautiful house.

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Yes, thank you. Steve? Did I like the people and were there advantages to the community? Basically, the neighborhood was like any other neighborhood except that there was a bond of kinship

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because of the unique circumstances that brought us together. And here was this clubhouse, which served as a way, as a sense, as a physical, cohesive symbol.

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And the kids went to nursery school there and we had the spring show there. I was in the spring show right from the beginning and little things like that gave us a

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cohesiveness which made you feel good in the neighborhood. Most of my friends actually lived, they were off Bannockburn folks, But we had a warm neighborly feeling with the people in the neighborhood.

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And I remember we had a gourmet club which we would cook and get drunk at and sing in Rolic and you know. There were things like that, that

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I'm sure go on in other neighborhoods, but I just had this feeling that this was a very strong, there was a strong bond that pulled people together in Bannockburn. And it is, it continues to this day.

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And I had a great sense of nostalgia and warmth and affection at our 40th anniversary where we got together on April 6th just to have a little toast. That's the way people really felt

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about each other and about the neighborhood. Like that if they, This is one of the few things, if somebody said, would you like, how would you do your life? Would you do this over? Yeah, you say, yeah, I think I

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would do it all over, just this way. I'd live in this kind of place and do that. That's. That's very nice.

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Were you involved in the negotiations for building any of the other houses or did you stop it after you built one? No. You see, I pointed out I was fundamentally not a cooperator and I didn't get any big kicks out of the action, the meetings and the

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stuff. And so when I got my own house, and of course the other folks who got whatever good came out of Jack Turns activity and my own, I dropped out of that.

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The only other things I did, apart from working in the show every spring, was that I worked in the, I was active in the swimming pool, in building, and you know, in arranging to do a swimming pool. And I hate swimming pools, but I thought it was a good idea, so I

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did that. If there was anything altruistic, it was that. And then I worked in trying to get

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the tennis court built. And that was my greatest failure. Stan Talpers and I ponchoed this effort to form a tennis group and restore the old tennis court.

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And of course, it's history now, but some of the landowners immediately adjoining, after initially acquiescing in the plan, changed their mind after we were in operation and we abandoned it.

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But that was a, that was a very, that was an unhappy moment in my life because it would have been a very nice thing to have. There were two good clay courts.

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The kids could all have played there. The adults could have played there. But there are plenty of tennis courts around and people play elsewhere.

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But other than that, I have not been active on the, on BCI, nor have I been active in the Civic Association. You have or you haven't?

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I have not. Uh-huh. I really hate meetings. I'm a lawyer, and I'm in meetings

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because of my work, and I am just bored to tears with meetings because there's people get into them and they just like to talk and talk and talk because they must have jobs where they don't talk a lot.

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And I have to listen to them, it drives me nuts. Uh-huh. Now, the people who move into Bannockburn at the present time,

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how do you think, why do you think most of them move in? Because they pass and they see a nice house or because they hear about the community and they want to move into the community? You know, I don't know.

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I just purely by chance learned from someone in the Spring Show this year in 1986, who had invited some friends from off Bannockburn to see the show, and the friends were so turned on by the whole process and the feeling that they

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said, you know, we want to move here too, we want to move here too. And I can see people who live in neighborhoods where you, it's sort of luck of the draw that you're

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better off moving into a neighborhood where there is a known configuration of values and sentiments and feelings. You know, individuals are unpredictable. I mean, I live where I live now.

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It was purely by luck that a guy moved in next to me named a Weiner who's a nice guy and there's one or two other families that I know on the block who are nice. But I have one or two other real stinkers.

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Mm-hmm. How did your children like living here? My kids really enjoyed it because kids like to live in the same place.

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They don't like to move around. I remember I was born in Manhattan on the east side.