What ended with a 1950s- and 1960s-themed party for an entire neighborhood began with a simple desire to upgrade a tired kitchen.
When Silver Spring, Md. residents Amy Dibner and husband Bruce Marshall expanded their small Cape Cod house to accommodate a larger kitchen and dining area, a sunroom and a patio with a landscaped backyard, they thanked their neighbors for living through the six-month construction period by throwing a midcentury modern party in keeping with their home’s aesthetic.
Dibner and Marshall moved to the Washington region from Cleveland a decade ago, attracted to what they considered the perfect neighborhood: a cluster of small single-family homes nestled along tree-lined streets within walking distance of downtown Silver Spring.
“We love it that we can walk to restaurants and shops and the Metro, but at the same time, we live in a quaint neighborhood,” says Marshall, a Unitarian chaplain who works at Riderwood Village, a retirement community in Silver Spring, and who is the author of “Meaning and Spirit in Aging.”