Chevy Chase Village was recorded in 1892 as Section 2 of the Chevy Chase Land Company subdivision and opened for sale in 1893, making it the oldest platted ground in the cluster.
Chevy Chase Village is the original piece. Recorded in 1892 as Section 2 of the Chevy Chase Land Company's subdivision and opened the following year, it is the first ground the company put on the market north of Western Avenue, and the section numbering that survives in the municipal names around it starts here. That numbering is also the reason to be precise: the Village is not Chevy Chase Section Three, not Chevy Chase Section Five, and not the Town of Chevy Chase, which was Section 4 — those are separate municipalities with separate councils and separate rules. As of August 2026 the Village describes itself as 720 homes on 254.56 acres, with its own police and public works departments.
The streets carrying the earliest houses — Grafton Street, Hesketh Street, East and West Kirke Streets, Cedar Parkway — were laid out to face a Connecticut Avenue the Land Company was still building. The period of significance for the Village's oldest fabric runs from 1892 into the 1920s, and the names attached to it include Leon Dessez and Lindley Johnson, the company's supervising architects, along with Waddy B. Wood and Arthur B. Heaton. What that produced is a stock of large detached houses on comparatively deep lots, behind brick sidewalks and a canopy with more than a century of growth. Later infill and substantial additions sit among them, so construction era is a question to ask house by house rather than street by street.
The Village looks the way it does because the deeds said so before the zoning code existed. Buyers fronting Connecticut Avenue were required to build a house costing at least $5,000 and to hold a 35-foot setback; on the side streets the minimum was $3,000. No lot could be narrower than 60 feet, and rowhouses, apartment buildings and commercial buildings were barred outright from the residential sections. Design was reviewed by the company's own architects. A century on, those private terms are why the street wall is so consistent and why the Village has almost no attached or multifamily housing inside its boundary, even with the high-rise Village of Friendship Heights nearby on Wisconsin Avenue.
The Chevy Chase Village Historic District is on Montgomery County's Master Plan for Historic Preservation, and in April 1998 it was expanded from 11 properties to 327 — roughly half the Village, which means the answer to whether a specific house is inside it is genuinely address-specific. Where it applies, exterior work is reviewed under Chapter 24A of the county code and the Secretary of the Interior's Standards, through a Historic Area Work Permit issued by the county Historic Preservation Commission, with the Village's own Local Advisory Panel advising the Commission. As of August 2026 that review sits ahead of construction on the calendar, not alongside it. Confirm a parcel's status with the county before pricing an addition or a demolition.
The Village received state sanction as a special taxing area in 1914 and incorporated in 1951. That means a municipal property tax on top of Montgomery County's, set by the Board of Managers at the annual meeting each April after a public hearing, and a second permit desk. A Village Building Officer issues the Village's own building permits, and as of August 2026 the Village will not issue one until the Montgomery County permit has been issued — and where a Historic Area Work Permit is required, not until that HAWP is issued either. Zoning itself remains the county's. Budget real time for the sequence if you are buying to renovate.
Village addresses are served by Montgomery County Public Schools through the paired Rosemary Hills Elementary (pre-K through 2) and Chevy Chase Elementary (3 through 5), then Silver Creek Middle School and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Those are the published assignments for the 2026-2027 school year; attendance boundaries are periodically restudied and do not follow municipal lines, so verify a specific address with MCPS. One further item belongs in a title review here: the Land Company later inserted covenants barring sale to Black and Jewish buyers, language that has been judicially unenforceable since Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948 and is void under federal fair housing law. Maryland Real Property Article Section 3-112 lets an owner record a covenant modification, reviewed by the county attorney, that re-records the document with the offending language struck.
Chevy Chase Village sits within Chevy Chase — that guide covers the zoning, permitting and site constraints that apply across the wider area.
Artur can confirm what applies to a specific address here — lot, zoning, association documents and school assignment — before you write an offer.
