Introduction

Home to countless historic sites, Germantown also has the pleasure of being home to Center in the Park, a community-minded organization serving the local older population. Originally the “Center for Older Adults Northwest,” the award-winning senior center, whose motto and practice is “aging positively,” was born in 1968 inside the Germantown YWCA building at 5820 Germantown Avenue. Although the Center departed from the building in 1986, meaning the organization’s tenure in the YWCA building marked only a brief snippet of the YWCA’s extensive history, this partnership has made and continues to make a significant impact on Germantown history.

The elements that defined the intertwined histories of the YWCA and the Center range from prominent local figures to progressive ideology and even to parking lots. As with all close-knit families, the organizations’ relationship had its ups and downs. The following story shares a snapshot of this fascinating relationship through the voices of the many women involved in creating this history.

Rethinking Aging

As a community that has always been progressive for its time and revolutionary in its ideals and goals, 1960s Germantown was an ideal place to reimagine aging in America. As the needs of aging community members (some long connected to the YWCA) grew, so did the conversations around community, independence, and dignity for older adults.

Renée Cunningham, the Center’s current executive director, recounted the culmination of these conversations in the founding of the Center: “56 years ago, we were founded by two older Germantown activists, Marguerite Riegel and Laura Drake Nichols,” she explained. “They felt there was no place in the neighborhood focused on the concerns of elders.” In 1968, Riegel and Nichols went before the Germantown Community Council (GCC) and requested the establishment of a senior center in Germantown. The request was granted and the Center for Older Adults, Northwest was born.

Riegel, the General Secretary of the Germantown YWCA from 1942 to 1946, played an instrumental role in fostering a strong partnership between the Center and the YWCA. “Riegel stayed very involved for decades—she lived into her 90s, served on the Center’s board, and remained connected to the work all those years,” recalled Rennie Cohen, Executive Director of the Center from 1974 to 2003.

Another prominent Germantown resident and elder rights advocate was Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Grey Panthers. It is often overlooked that Kuhn began her professional career working at the Germantown YWCA from 1930 to 1941. Kuhn was concerned with a multitude of challenges facing aging populations, including isolation and mental health, often referencing inadequacies of nursing homes and, indeed, senior centers. Yet, Kuhn was won over by the Center’s mission, observing how the organization enriched the lives of elders by engaging them with the arts, community service, trips, and much more: “Why do we have old people making baskets? Let’s have them gardening, getting fresh vegetables.”

Support to and from the YWCA

The legacy of support from women connected to the YWCA was foundational to the Center’s early development. From the beginning, the potential for communal spaces for those aging was made a reality within the YWCA building. As Cunningham explained, “There were parts of the building that the Y didn’t even use that, as we were growing, they then all of a sudden could use.” Within a year of their founding, the Center had established two art classes, a sewing class, Bible study, and two lunch programs all within the YWCA building.

On the other side of this relationship, the YWCA provided fitness programs to the Center’s members, and many took advantage of the pool, showing how this partnership was mutually beneficial in nature. On November 10, 1978, the Center’s 10th Anniversary Party was held at the YWCA, bringing together many of the prominent figures that built this relationship.

Funding for the Center’s programming steadily increased over the years, providing important financial support to the YWCA building’s physical needs along the way: “We [the Center] were getting money left and right to be able to renovate,” recalled Cunningham. “Build a new elevator, put in a kiln. All these different things that we did, we brought a lot to the Y. We tried very hard in those years when we were in the Y to give the Y as much as we could because their finances were tough.”

The Move

The Center’s growth marked a time when state and federal funding for aging programs was rapidly increasing, while the YWCA’s income was declining and its expenses rising. According to Lynn Thompson Giles, Associate Executive Director of the YWCA in the mid-1990s while these funding challenges existed for decades, they worsened in the later part of the century: “We had an elevator that people would get stuck in all the time. Everything about that building was old, old.” With a building whose infrastructure could no longer support the needs of the Center’s growing membership, the Center officially moved out of the YWCA building on January 10th, 1986, and into the Vernon Park Library building, embracing its new name of “Center in the Park.”

Although physically separated, the Center’s and the YWCA’s intertwined history was not over. Of particular significance was the Center’s need for accessible parking, and within a year of the move, the two organizations reached an agreement on a ten-year easement on the YWCA’s parking lot granted to the Center. Much of this ongoing diplomacy can be attributed to Clarice Gamble Herbert’s past position at the helm of the YWCA, serving as the organization’s Executive Director until 1979, and later becoming the board president of Center in the Park.

Herbert was extremely supportive of the Center’s programing after the move, and she in many ways served as a bridge connecting the ideologies of the Center and the YWCA. When Lynn Fields Harris became the Center’s Executive Director in 2003, she made it a point to seek out Herbert’s perspective and knowledge: “The first thing I did was that I went to meet with Clarice Herbert. She was the first African American woman to direct a Y in the entire Y system,” recalled Harris, who was the Center’s first and only black executive director to date.

Into the Future

While the Center’s tenure has persisted long past the demise of the Germantown YWCA, the storyline connecting the two organizations continues to be written. In particular, figures like Harris remain actively involved in advocacy efforts around the Germantown YWCA building, and members of the Center’s administration are consistently securing their voices in the redevelopment plans of the long-vacant building.

One such group is the Friends for the Restoration of the Germantown YWCA Building, of which Renee Cunningham is an active member. Founded jointly by attorney Yvonne Haskins and Ann Marie Doley, the group is committed preserving the YWCA building and seeing it repurposed into affordable housing to honor the YWCA’s proud legacy of combining service with being a movement for social change.

While these advocacy efforts fight the good fight, the future of the YWCA building is unknown. Whatever the future may hold for the YWCA building, the intertwined histories of the Center and the YWCA are a powerful force in determining the building’s fate. To learn more about how the Center’s history is shaping the future of this building, read about the parking lot.

Postscript from the Authors

We wish to thank all the people who provided oral histories, comments and background information for our story. We appreciate the women we wrote about who have passed on. We wish all those who care about the YWCA Building past and future a positive outcome that honors the YWCA’s illustrious history and protects the Center’s position within this history.

Questions? Contact Ann Marie Doley of the Friends for the Restoration of the Germantown YWCA Building at adthyme@aol.com.