The 1938 Silver Theatre and Silver Spring Shopping Center complex became a landmark of early 20th-century commercial architecture that profoundly affected the development of suburban Silver Spring, helped shape regional growth, and stood as an early example of a trend that changed how Americans experienced entertainment and shopping. Its origins followed the success of Washington's Cleveland Park Park-and-Shop, an early modern shopping center that combined a street-front parking lot with a planned mix of commercial tenants and inspired similar projects across the region. In 1936, local realtors C.H. Hillegeist, Albert Small, and S.E. Godden optioned land at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road for a new theater and shopping center, and in 1937 William Alexander Julian, a wealthy manufacturer and Treasurer of the United States, developed the site and recruited his friend John Eberson of New York to design it. Eberson, known as the Dean of American Theater Architects, had designed over 40 movie theaters as well as many other buildings after studying architecture in Vienna and moving from Romania to the United States, and this was one of only a few theaters he designed in association with a shopping center. Construction began in March 1938 and was completed by September, and at the formal opening on October 27 The Washington Post promoted the project as designed to serve the needs of 50,000 and as part of the future of Washington's urbanization. Six thousand people attended the opening, including Walter Johnson, who said the scene reminded him of Broadway. By the 1970s, however, downtown Silver Spring had begun to fall behind as newer shopping and entertainment areas developed farther out. Preservation efforts began in 1984 with the Art Deco Society of Washington, supported by the Allied Civic Group, Montgomery Civic Federation, Silver Spring Historical Society, and many local neighborhood and civic organizations, and a decade later the Montgomery County Council voted unanimously to place the Silver Theatre-Silver Spring Shopping Center on the county's historic preservation master plan. In 1966 Montgomery County acquired the theater and shopping center, and in April 1998 PFA Silver Spring LLC agreed to develop the shopping center as part of a broader project that included a multiplex cinema, shops, offices, and a hotel, while the county also entered into an agreement with the Maryland Historical Trust to protect the shopping center's façade. The Silver Spring Shopping Center reopened in May 2004, and Silver Spring's new downtown center reflected a strong public and private effort to preserve the past while again setting a trend in how Americans experience entertainment and shopping.