VACUUM SHOP GETS NEW LIFE AS GALLERY SPACE, RESTAURANT
by Bradford Pearson
October 29, 2008
For 80 years, the building at the corner of Wilson Lane and Old Georgetown and Arlington roads in Bethesda has served as a USO headquarters during World War II, a grocery store, and until two years ago, a vacuum shop.
The plain one-story building notched in the triangle of those three streets served as a ho-hum gateway to Bethesda's downtown, neither adding nor subtracting anything from the landscape of similar one-story shops and restaurants.
Consider those days over.
The new Peripoint building on the same site is set to open in upcoming weeks, bringing with its modern industrial design an art gallery, office space, a first-floor restaurant and a rooftop bar.
The original 1927 building is still in place, but with two added floors.
"It would've been a lot cheaper to level this site and start over, but we really favored the industrial design of the building," said owner Elyse Harrison. "We're highly motivated to work in a sustainable way, too, so we decided to keep the building."
County tax records indicate that the property was purchased for $760,000 in August 2007.
At the renovated building, vaulted ceilings hover above the downstairs restaurant space, while a luminescent light green covers the exterior walls, replacing the Electrolux vacuum signs from the previous owner. From the third-story rooftop deck one can explore the skyline of downtown Bethesda, or examine the hustle and bustle of one of Bethesda's busiest intersections.
"We're real trailblazers in terms of creativity, I feel," Harrison said. "We don't feel like we have to follow the herd."
The second story will be home to Harrison's art gallery, Neptune, which will have its grand opening in the new space on Saturday. Previously, the gallery was located in Bethesda's Woodmont Triangle neighborhood, on Auburn Avenue for nine years and then on Cordell Avenue for 18 months.
The first floor will be a restaurant with accompanying rooftop deck featuring a bar and more tables, while the third floor will be rented as offices for an information technology firm. Harrison said she is still looking for a tenant for the restaurant space, but hopes to find one within a few months.
As for the rest of the block, fellow tenants and shop owners are thankful for the new building and the possible new clientele it could bring to an often-forgotten side of Bethesda.
"I think it's an improvement in that it's modern, but it kept with the feel of the old building," said Tim Albrecht, owner of Consider It Done, a posh crystal and porcelain shop next door to Peripoint. "This could bring more and more higher-end customers to the area, which would of course help us."
Bary Maddox, owner of Graffiti Audio-Video, said the new design brings light to an area not known for its architecture.