Little reminders of Route 1’s history remain, like the Blue Bird Cab Co. sign on Baltimore Avenue in Hyattsville’s Arts District across from Busboys and Poets and hidden beneath overgrown trees. You could easily miss it driving past.
The sign is from a company based in Hyattsville which served area residents for decades, eventually becoming the biggest cab service in Prince George’s County with 175 taxis.
Blue Bird was started in 1949 by Arabia Pasha Cayton, Joseph O. Hansen and James E. Bell, three World War II veterans who had little education past sixth grade, as a 1983 profile in the Washington Post recounts.
Blue Bird operates out of a couple of white buildings at 5334 Baltimore Ave. in Hyattsville, five miles across the District line. It’s been there as long as anyone in the town of 15,000 can remember; a blue-collar fixture that has survived the decline of the Rte. 1 corridor from a once-engaging thoroughfare of mom-and-pop stores and summer inns to its present state of used-car lots, storefront churches and fast-food restaurants.
The company survived off making inexpensive short trips around the Route 1 area — to school and work, hotels and hospitals.
Dispatchers who worked at the number on the sign chatted amiably with customers over the phone before sending over a taxi. The story describes regulars who include an elderly physician who commuted to work and an older woman who “invariably pulls out a brown envelope containing a crisp $5 bill and hands it to the hack as ‘a little something extra.'”
The company was sold in 1987 to a new owner and later faced a strike from its drivers.
The lot where the Blue Bird sign sits is likely to be developed in the next few years. The property owners, Urban Investment Partners, have drawn up plans for apartments and retail on the site and worked with the Fight the Blight initiative to paint over the empty white buildings where the taxi company operated.
Luckily, a number of area landmarks have already been preserved: The saucer at the Hyattsville public library, the Lustine Center auto showroom in the Arts District, and the old ‘liquor, beer, wine’ sign at the new Vigilante in College Park, to name a few.
Whatever happens on the old Blue Bird Cab Co. lot, it would be great if some way could be found to preserve the sign to serve as a reminder of the area’s past. If we lose these landmarks, then Route 1 will lose a part of its history.
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Such an interesting story! And the 1983 Post article says, if I’m not reading it wrong, that Gov. Larry Hogan once drove cabs for them.
If I recall, the Lustine “window” was actually replaced. The saucer could have been replaced with an exact replica and we would have had a new library already – instead it’s been empty for well over a year with no signs of construction.
I remember when the cab company was still operating out of there – it definitely survived into the late ’90s if not the 2000s. I’ve always loved that sign and am glad it’s still hanging on – hope it gets preserved whenever this property is redeveloped!
And to the previous commenter, I think the Lawrence Hogan mentioned in the article is the governor’s father, who was a former Prince George’s county executive. The governor (Lawrence Jr.) was executive of Anne Arundel.
That makes sense; thank you for clarifying!