BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Rockville -- Rockville Town Square

MD -- Rockville -- Rockville Town Square:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] ROCKTS_121225_01_STITCH.JPG

[2] ROCKTS_121225_02_STITCH.JPG

[3] ROCKTS_121225_03.JPG	[4] ROCKTS_121225_10.JPG	[5] ROCKTS_121225_23.JPG	[6] ROCKTS_121225_32.JPG	[7] ROCKTS_121225_35.JPG	[8] ROCKTS_121225_39.JPG	[9] ROCKTS_121225_45.JPG	[10] ROCKTS_121225_48.JPG
[11] ROCKTS_121225_52.JPG	[12] ROCKTS_121225_56.JPG	[13] ROCKTS_121225_59.JPG	[14] ROCKTS_121225_67.JPG	[15] ROCKTS_121225_73.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. ROCKTS_121225_48.JPG: In 1784, William Prather Williams divided part of his farm into 85 building lots, making "Williamsburgh" the first subdivision in Rockville. More than 15 cemeteries can be found within Rockville's borders. The oldest known burial -- that of John Harding -- is fated 1752. As early as 1830, Martin's Lane served as the entrance to Samuel Martin's farm. Glenview, farmed by the Bowie family starting in the 1830s, was purchased by the City in 1957 for use as a civic center. From 1848 to 1932, the Richard Montgomery High School property was the site of the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair.
2. ROCKTS_121225_56.JPG: Between 1865 and 1967, black and white residents lived in separate neighborhoods. The block bounded to day by Middle Lane, Beall Avenue, Washington Street and Hungerford Drive was for nearly a century the location of a thriving black community. Large areas were annexed to Rockville in the 1820s, 1880s, 1890s, 1949, 1950s, 1960s, and 1990s to develop new residential neighborhoods. The subdivision of West End Park, Hungerford, Fallsgrove, King Farm, Montrose, Twinbrook, Janeta, North Farm, Rockcrest, Woodmont Park, and others were once productive farmland.
3. ROCKTS_121225_59.JPG: Lincoln Park was developed in the 1890s as a development for black residents. By 1920, most Rockville homes had electricity and running water, but no telephone service. Rockville built a modern system of water and sewer facilities to accommodate the rapid residential growth of the 1950s. Lincoln Terrace, the first public housing project in Montgomery County, opened in 1959. From 1950 to 1980, 16 new public schools and two new public libraries opened in Rockville. In the early 1960s, Woodley Gardens became Rockville's first planned community with the developer using an innovative multi-use zoning technique.
4. ROCKTS_121225_67.JPG: New Mark Commons opened in 1967 as a distinctive contemporary planned community. In 1971, the Americana Centre apartments opened its part of the redevelopment of Rockville's Town Center. The first historic districts in Montgomery County were designated by the Mayor and Council of Rockville in 1971. By the year 2000, Rockville claimed more than 60 distinct neighborhoods. In 2006, Rockville can boast that 13 percent of its land is in public parks and open space.
5. ROCKTS_121225_73.JPG: Rockville's African American Heritage Walking Tour Site #16 Father Divine Birthplace Middle Lane Father Divine was an influential and charismatic religious leader and founder of the International Peace Mission Movement. Father Divine was born in 1879 on Middle Lane as George Baker, Jr. and attended the Rockville and Jerusalem M.E. Church. He later relocated to New York, calling himself Reverend Major Jealous Divine or Father Divine. He believed he was God manifest and preached in churches, houses and on street corners. While Father Divine's religious views were radical, his efforts at supporting the needy and challenging racial barriers were successful. He was an early proponent of racial equality, pushing for anti-discrimination legislation in Congress in the 1940s. The Peace Mission Movement is still in existence and strives to help people in need. They operated a number of model farms and hotels throughout the country, some of which still exist. The Peace Mission's headquarters are at the Woodmont Estate (see photo above) in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.
Wikipedia Description: Rockville Town Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rockville Town Center is a town centre in Rockville, Maryland. Opened in 1995, it replaced the recently demolished Rockville Mall..

History

In 1962, Rockville became the first small city in Maryland to undertake a federal urban renewal program. Forty-six acres in the town center were bought; old and new buildings were demolished, and street patterns were changed. In their place rose the residential Americana Centre, more county buildings, high-rise offices, and a large shopping mall with 1,560 spaces of underground parking. A decade after the project began, the 500,000-square-foot (46,000 m2), 40 shop Rockville Mall opened in 1972, on 13 acres (53,000 m2).

Although designed originally to have Sears and JC Penney as the two anchors, no second lease was ever signed. The sole anchor at opening was a branch of the Washington, D.C.-based Lansburgh's department store chain. Within a year, Lansburgh's closed and was replaced briefly with a branch of Lit Brothers, followed by a W. & J. Sloane furniture clearance center and Franklin Simon & Co. store. Those stores closed with the bankruptcy of City Stores in 1979.

The mall was renamed in 1978 as the Commons at Courthouse Square and by 1981, 35 of the 55 store fronts were vacant. That year, despite the opening of the adjacent Montgomery County Executive Office Building, tenancy eventually dwindled to a handful, the property's New York-based owner, Rockville Development Associates, went bankrupt, and the mall was closed.

In 1983, Eisinger-Kilbane of Gaithersburg, Maryland, spent $50 million attempting to redevelop it as a more entertainment-oriented facility. It was reopened as Rockville Metro Center, reflecting the connection at its east end to the newly opened Rockville Metro station across Maryland Route 355. This renovation brought in the late 1980s a large United Artists theater complex and "Breakers," a billiards parlor. Though these businesses, at the east end of the mall closest to the Metro station, attracted some traffic, the remainder of the mall lacked attractive tenants and therefore remained largely vacant.

Rockville Mayor and later Montgomery County executive Doug Duncan launched a massive campaign against the mall, known locally as the "Berlin Wall", in 1993, arguing that the large, scarcely occupied facility was a millstone holding back downtown development and limiting the city's property tax intake. His argument struck a chord with the majority in Rockville, and the west end of the mall was finally torn down in 1995 (the portion connected to the Metro station still exists as an office/health care/fitness center complex that is not recognizable as having once been part of a mall). By 1996, a park was constructed on the site around the old courthouse building and the movie complex. New York-based Essex Capital Partners purchased the mall from Marine Midland Bank in 1998. Later that year, they opened the first phase of the $300 million Rockville Center project, which included renovated and expanded theaters and a "restaurant row."

Starting in 2004, redevelopment continued with the 60-acre (240,000 m2) Rockville Town Center project. The $370 million mixed use center, is a public / private venture and includes the Rockville Branch of the Montgomery County Library; Rockville Arts and Innovation Center; ground-level retail, restaurants, shops, food stores; public parking garages; and about 680 units of residential housing in a pedestrian friendly setting.

On July 17, 2007, the 12-acre (49,000 m2) Rockville Town Square (Phase I of the Rockville Town Center project) opened with 27 shops and restaurants, including a Gordon Biersch brewery, Gifford's Ice Cream (now closed) and an Aveda day spa. In September 2007, the 28,000 square feet (2,600 m2) nonprofit Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts (VisArts), a former Rockville Mall tenant, opened its doors as a center for classes, galleries and programs.
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