BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Bowie -- Visitor Center

MD -- Bowie -- Visitor Center:

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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] BOWIEV_141024_04.JPG	[2] BOWIEV_141024_08.JPG	[3] BOWIEV_141024_13.JPG
[4] BOWIEV_141024_20.JPG	[5] BOWIEV_141024_26.JPG	[6] BOWIEV_141024_29.JPG
[7] BOWIEV_141024_33.JPG	[8] BOWIEV_141024_42.JPG	[9] BOWIEV_141024_45.JPG
[10] BOWIEV_141024_48.JPG	[11] BOWIEV_141024_54.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. BOWIEV_141024_08.JPG: The Bowie Caboose A caboose was the accustomed conclusion to any freight train and served many roles. It allowed crewmen to keep a lookout for how the freight cars were functioning as the train moved along. It provided a place for the crew working on a freight train to rest and eat. Also, lanterns call "marker lights" indicated the end of a passing train and served as a warning to approaching trains that came up the track. The crew could sit and view the length of a freight train through the windows in the cupola, the raised viewing area on the roof. The interior of the caboose provided a toilet and washbasin, a coal stove for heat and cooking, two oil lamps for light, an ice box, and two sets of upper and lower bunks. This is the former Norfolk and Western Railroad's CF Class Caboose #518-303. It was built at the N&W East End Shops in Roanoke, Virginia, in April 1922. The N&W did not serve Bowie but did enter Maryland at Hagerstown. After nearly fifty years of service she was retired to a scrap yard, but rescued, and given to the city of Bowie in 1972. She sat in Allen Pond Park, suffered a fire in the late70s, and was relocated to this museum in 2000, then restored on the exterior. This photograph appeared in Trains and Travel magazine, March 1953, and shows a Norfolk & Western caboose just south of Bowie on track located off of the Pope's Creek line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It would appear that our caboose has a historic connection to the Bowie area and the Pope's Creek Railroad line running from Bowie to Southern Maryland. While not conclusive, it is interesting that this is the same class caboose as the Bowie Railroad Station Museum's piece, and is very likely the Bowie Caboose after it saw active service on the N&W. By this era, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company controlled the Norfolk and Western.
2. BOWIEV_141024_13.JPG: The Founding of Bowie In 1853, Col. Wm D, Bowie convinced the Maryland legislature to charter the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Company. Oden Bowie served as president of the company. The effort to floundered initially, and the coming of the Civil War delayed all further plans. After the war, the fledgling Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Company gained a powerful ally from the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was looking for a profitable route to establish into Washington DC. The US Congress had denied the Pennsylvania Railroad direct access to the nation's capital, already serviced by the Baltimore and Ohio. However, the Baltimore and Potomac charter allowed for spur lines of up to twenty miles to be constructed. The alliance of the Pennsy with the B and P allowed the B and P to build its long-sought line into Southern Maryland and the Pennsylvania Railroad to extend a spur to Washington, which inaugurated train service on July 2, 1872. The station at Sixth and Pennsylvania Ave, NW, was the location of where President Garfield was shot. The "spur" line today serves as an integral part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, and the original mainline to Southern Maryland, which opened January 1, 1873, remains known as the Pope's Creek line. The junction of the two lines formed a core around which the early town of Bowie grew. Ben Plumb, a developer, purchased three hundred acres at the junction and had it surveyed for town lots, selling for $25.00 a piece with plans for houses ranging from four to eight rooms, and with verandahs surrounding them. Shops, a hotel, railroad buildings, churches and houses began to spring up in the little settlement which was known as Huntington City, thought the rail depot itself was always known as Bowie Station. The Maryland Legislature passed an Act of Incorporation for Huntington on March 3, 1874. The preeminence of the railroad station clearly had more impact, because by May 3, 1880, the Legislature passed another act to change the name of the town to Bowie, a tribute to Governor Oden Bowie whose influence had assisted in the formation of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad. Later, on April 18, 1916, the railroad community would incorporate the Town of Bowie. The massive William Levitt and Son's development of Belair At Bowie was annexed on February 18, 1959, and today is a city of over 50,000 residents.
3. BOWIEV_141024_20.JPG: Schools: In the town's earliest days, Bowie's white children in the 1870s attended the Cedar Grove School about a mile north of the [sic] Bowie, while the local black children attended the Horsepen Hill School a little to the east of town. As the population of the town grew and the needs of the students changed, the county built new schools. These included the school on Chestnut Avenue (1881) and the school on 8th Street for white children, and Duckettsville School (1914), the school on 10th Street (1927) and the Model School at Bowie State Teachers College for black children. The school of 8th Street, a four room school building originally used for elementary students, added high school classes in 19223. Over the years, additions such as additional classrooms and an auditorium were made to the high school section. The high school section closed in 1945, and the elementary scool section closed in 1962. Today, the building is used for the Huntington Community Center, and is one of the few four room school buildings left in the state. The school at Bowie State Teacher's College (later Bowie State University) was operated as a model school where men and women who were studying to become teachers could get experience in the classroom. The African American children of Bowie who wished to attend received bus transportation.
4. BOWIEV_141024_29.JPG: Business in Bowie: The railroad company was the number one employer in Bowie, but the railroad also made many other jobs and businesses viable in the community. The town quickly filled with all sorts of companies, shops, and services. The railroad was directly responsible for such businesses as the Railway Express office, the telegraph office, and Seitz's Railroad Hotel. Within roughly ten years of Bowie's founding, the town boasted in addition to the hotel, a number of general stores as well as grocers, shoemakers, carpenters, stonemasons, blacksmiths, physicians, lawyers, millers, barbers, and even barrooms. Because of the advent of a single force, the railroad, an entire town full of people had come into being. The railroad remained central to the town's economy for a hundred years. By the 1920s, Bowie boasted a number of institutions including the Bank of Bowie, the Bowie Building and Loan, Berlin & Edlavitch's Department Store, Luers' General Merchandise, and the Bowie Motor Company, which sold Ford automobiles. The Bowie Register newspaper began publication in 1927, the same year that motion pictures were first shown at the school, and later at the Knights of St. John's Hall.
5. BOWIEV_141024_33.JPG: Religious Institutions: Religious life in the Bowie area long predates the founding of the town. The Church of England established a parish here in 1704, with a chapel built in 1737 which continues at Holy Trinity Church. The Roman Catholic Jesuits created Sacred Heart, Whitemarsh Parish, in 1741. Since neither of these was in the immediate vicinity of the town of Bowie, various churches soon sprang up. The first Methodist residents of Old Bowie held services in various homes and in an old store near the Popes Creek Railroad Line. In 1880, JB Ridgeway deeded land to the Methodist Society on 13th Street adjoining the tracks, and the First Methodist Church was built in 1884. IN 1893, the Jesuit Fathers received permission to build the Catholic Church of the Ascension in west Bowie. The church was dedicated on September 9, 1894. In 1977, a fire destroyed the Church of the Ascension. A new building was completed on the same site in 1986, with the bell from the old building being incorporated into the new. St. James Chapel was built by the Episcopalians. The cornerstone was laid on September 2, 1906 and was formally dedicated in December 1906. In 1912, the Chapel purchased a strip of land between 8th St and 9th St to build a direct route to the church. The land was ceded to Bowie in 1929, and has since been maintained at Chapel Avenue. In addition, the Lutheran Mission Society of Baltimore began work in Bowie in 1907, opening the First Lutheran Church of Bowie in 1913. A number of Jewish families such as the Joffes and the Edlavitches cooperated with each other for their needs. Around 1915, Rebecca Joffe hired a private Hebrew teacher, the Rev. Myer Lurie, to come from Philadelphia to teach her five sons, and she shared the costs with Max and Tillie Kotzin of Seabrook, who had two boys. The first synagogue, Nevey Shalom, formed in 1962, followed by Temple Solel in 1964.
6. BOWIEV_141024_42.JPG: Social Organizations -- The Glue of a Community: In addition to the religious life of the churches, structured social venues provided excitement for a small town such as Bowie. Various membership organizations provided a wide array of socializing, often with a view towards personal and civic development. Fire company parades and baseball were some of the ways that people found amusement. From the late 19th century, Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization focused on moral standards and charitable work, to the Disney-Bell Post of the American Legion, organized in 1932, the strength of early Bowie groups was what they gave back to the community. The Harding Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, another fraternal organization, constructed their lodge hall on Chestnut Avenue in 1932. By 1960, the Collington Lodge #230, of Freemasons, was meeting in the nearby community of Collington down the Popes Creek Line. And since the 1920s at least, the African-American Community enjoyed a lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
7. BOWIEV_141024_48.JPG: Housing a Community Bowie encompasses a wide architectural history within its small boundaries. From colonial structures in the surrounding countryside, such as the 1745 Belair Mansions, to the Victorian houses of the 1870s and 1880s, and on into the earliest twentieth century's craftsmen bungalows and four squares, Bowie enjoyed a diverse architectural heritage. Land speculator and real estate developer Ben M. Plumb & Co. of Washington, DC, began advertizing [sic] in 1870 for house lots for $25.00 for 2500 square feet. He offered plans for houses with four, six or eight rooms, complete with verandas. Plumb advertized [sic] this country town's healthful climate, as well as the refining influences on child rearing far from city temptations in Bowie's "rural beauty and social culture." The railroad company built some of the first houses for employees, such as the two remaining "Twin Houses" which are narrow frame structures. Meanwhile, more affluent townspeople such as John Straining enjoyed more elaborate structures such as his circa 1872 brick Italianate house. Merchant Frank B. Luers built an impressive Victorian structure with a turret in 1895, and his brother William constructed an artistic craftsman style home in 1907. As the twentieth century progressed, new innovations made home life easier. The telephone exchange office opened in Bowie in 1906, and the town received electric service in 1923. Water mains replaced wells when the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission laids [sic] the mains [in] 1940.
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