WQMR with WGAY-FM - circa 1965 - KEMP MILL ROAD studio in the white art-deco building (top of the page), that brought the Washington area the Quality Music Radio sound - Tom DeBray at the controls, Tom designed the studios and equipment that were to bring the station into a new stereo era in the spring of 1966, the World Building, shown below. This picture is the first time I've seen the "insides" of WQMR on Kemp Mill Road, and I'm most grateful to Tom for letting us all see it. Yes, the quarter hour clusters, not back-titled then, and the WQMR themed harp played between EVERY selection which provided continuity and continual station identification. In the SOUNDS section of this site you can hear a few of the "original" circa 1960 harps. I'm not sure if the "new" harps, tape-delayed for a stereo effect, were introduced prior to the move to the World Building or if they may have been used for a time in the 1964-65 time frame.
Drive down Arcola Avenue in Wheaton and you will not know where the station was in the 60's; thanks to the excellent research of Detective Bob Bell, here is the location detail!
Starting in 1965, the station began the move to larger, modern (beautiful studio with the finest equipment) quarters at 8121 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, as seen on the right. I believe the "WGAY 99.5 STEREO" was a revision, somewhere in the dusty recesses of my brain I recall something like "WGAY 50,000 WATTS STEREO" but don't have a picture. Below, another shot looking northward from the DC direction, and a couple shots looking southward from the Silver Spring direction. Originally, the southbound traffic saw "WQMR 1050" on the side of the building. It was changed, late as I recall, to WGAY 1050 when the 'QMR calls were dropped for AM 1050, and eventually to just "WGAY 99.5" as the AM side was sold.
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