For nearly 125 years, Old Town College Park has stood its ground.
As generations of students traverse its well-trodden roads and dozens of city businesses open and shutter, the 125-acre neighborhood situated between the College Park Metro Station and the downtown bars has maintained its authentic charm — and city and county officials said they want to keep it that way. The Prince George’s County Planning Department has nominated the area to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Services’ archive of sites that should be preserved.
While an official designation into the National Register next year would bring federal tax credits for rehabilitation projects, District 3 Councilwoman Stephanie Stullich said its main purpose is to serve as a badge of honor for a community proud of its historic roots — and its humble beginnings.
“People are proud of that history,” said Stullich, who has lived in Old Town for 17 years.
In the late 1880s, a developer named John Oliver Johnson purchased the 125 acres and named it College Park.
“This was the neighborhood that was College Park before it was the City of College Park,” Stullich said.
The neighborhood had an abundance of street cars that connected Old Town residents to Washington, according to Howard Berger, who works in the historic preservation section of the county planning department. This provided a prime location for middle-class families looking to live a suburban lifestyle, he noted.
While the site encompasses a diverse set of architectural styles, Old Town saw a majority of its residential development in the pre-World War II era, including the “Taliaferro House” on Columbia Avenue, the “Cory House” on College Avenue and the “McDonnell House” on Dartmouth Avenue.
Old Town College Park’s development closely followed this university’s, and Greek life saw its greatest period of residential development between the 1930s and 1960s. The fraternity and sorority houses were modeled after architectural styles of other neighborhood houses, contributing to its historic context, according to Berger.
Lifelong Old Town resident Kathy Bryant said she remembered the impact the university had on the community when she was a young girl. Residents would identify houses by the professors who lived there, including her great-uncle by marriage Warner Taliaferro, who resided on the 7400 block of Columbia Avenue.
Bryant said a house on Calvert Road caught her eye every day as she walked to and from College Park Elementary School, but she has since seen the house demolished and an apartment complex rise in its place.
“I remembered the pain in my heart watching this house come down,” said Bryant, the great-granddaughter of the city’s founder. “There’s beautiful houses in the neighborhood. The sad thing is where I grew up there were so many more and a lot of them got torn down. … We wanted to preserve what was left.”
In 2008, Prince George’s County listed the neighborhood as a local historic district. This status imposed stricter guidelines and processes for new construction and additions to houses to preserve the historic appeal of the area’s architecture.
Yet the prospect of having their home written down in county history books didn’t appease all residents, such as Sigma Chi President Jesse Warren, whose old fraternity house is located on the 4600 block of Norwich Road.
“It’s broken down, and it’s not livable at all,” said Warren, a senior history major. “The city won’t let us knock it down and rebuild it.”
But for others, that’s a prime example of why Old Town should be preserved.
“These houses have a quality of construction that you just don’t see today,” Stullich said.
bach@umdbk.com
