50. WTOP Seal/Stamp

This black and gold molded-metal seal press is fitted with die halves to impress on paper the stamp reading “AM-FM WTOP TV.” The press itself may pre-date the 1960s die for local media company WTOP radio and television stations. Although it was more likely used at WTOP’s 1953 Broadcast House at Tenleytown in Washington than at its 1939 Art Deco transmitter in Wheaton in Montgomery County, it was actually found in 2001 under the stage at the old Bethesda Theater.

The AM radio station that took on call sign WTOP (1500 AM) came to the D.C. area in the late 1920s and was purchased by CBS in 1932. The Washington Post bought a controlling interest in the station in 1949. The newspaper acquired a local CBS television station in 1950, changing the call sign to match its sister radio station. The TV call sign was changed to WDVM in 1979 and to WUSA in 1986. FM radio came last, when the Post purchased the frequency of Rockville’s WINX-FM in the 1960s making it WTOP-FM. The Post sold its WTOP holdings in 1972, but re-acquired the old 1500 AM frequency in 2006 for an AM-FM simulcast of “Washington Post Radio.”

The Bethesda Theatre, built in the Streamline Moderne style, opened at 7719 Wisconsin Avenue in 1938. Like many 1930s-era movie houses, it included a stage for performances and celebrity appearances; perhaps the WTOP seal was used at the theater during one such event. In 2001, construction began on an apartment building on top of the theater, which had morphed into the Bethesda Cinema and Drafthouse (1983) and then into Bethesda Theatre Café (1999). Renovation of the theater uncovered decades worth of debris, including the WTOP seal which was donated by theater owner Pete Carney.

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