Embedded Files
This sheet music, “In the Land Where the Sun Never Sets/Dedicated to Bradley Hills,” was published in 1913 to promote suburban development west of Bethesda. With words and music by C.W. Long, publication was apparently paid for by “The Real Estate Trust Company of Washington, D.C. . . . Exclusive agents for Washington’s most beautiful suburb, ‘BRADLEY HILLS.’
Bradley Boulevard was built as a westward extension from Bradley Lane. A colonial road linking what had become Chevy Chase and Bethesda, Bradley Lane was named for Abraham Bradley, who had purchased a portion of the original Chevy Chase grant during the War of 1812.
The boulevard was also the bed for the new Washington and Great Falls Railway (trolley service that would be discontinued in 1921). Streetcar service to attractive destinations was often a tool in suburban land development in the 1890s. After electrification extended commuting distances, street railway lines branched out of Washington into Montgomery County. On the east was the 1892 line to Chevy Chase Lake; on the west along the Potomac palisades ran a line to Glen Echo in 1895. In between, the Tennallytown and Rockville Railway opened beyond Bethesda in 1892 (on to Rockville in 1900); from it would branch the Great Falls line along Bradley Boulevard in 1913.
The cover shows two large white porticoed houses across a streambed with the sun low on the horizon. On the back cover is a photo of the Real Estate Trust Company’s new office building at 1343 F Street, NW, in Washington, occupied in 1914. The company had been organized in 1912 by men associated with the Chevy Chase to Great Falls Land Co. and the United States Trust Co. H. Bradley Davidson, a D.C. land broker and Bethesda landowner, was selected as president.
The lyrics:
I had a dream about a land,
A land where the sun never sets,
A land of health and happiness,
A land that one never forgets,
A land where no sorrows no worries are there
In the land where the sun never sets.
In the land where the sun never sets,
And the birds are singing all the while,
Brooks are babbling a wond’rous refrain,
All your sorrows banished not a care nor a pain,
Flowers blooming on your ev’ry side,
And sweet fragrance fills the air,
There’s where I’ll stay, ne’er go away
from the land where the sun never sets.
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