Does This House Deserve a Historic Designation?

A Rockville congregation may have to change its expansion plans at Great Falls Road, after the Rockville City Council took an initial step in determining that the plot deserves a historic designation.

The Council voted 4-1 to authorize the filing of an amendment to the city’s land use rules for the property at 628 Great Falls Road, which more recent research suggests may have had ties to an antebellum community of freed African Americans.

“I think what we're doing to this poor house is what we're in danger of doing in a lot of our neighborhoods, which is bastardizing what we have,” Councilwoman Bridgett Donnell Newton said prior to the vote.

The Council’s vote Monday returns the issue to the city’s planning board. The Council would still have to a give a final vote in order to impose the designation.

Councilman Tom Moore was the sole opponent.

“It seems that there is less interest in the historical character of this house than blocking the church's plans to expand,” Moore said.

Why this is an issue

Chinese Jehovah’s Witness Congregation owns the two parcels of land across the street from Julius West Middle School and had planned to expand its house of worship and build a parking lot. The project meets the city’s current land use requirements, according to records filed with the planning commission in January 2012. 

They did not want the historic designation.

But concerned residents said the expansion would have a negative effect on the neighborhood, making it feel “institutionalized” and less like a community. They want the city to limit how much the site can be altered by imposing a historic designation. 

A resident asked city planners for an evaluation on Feb. 6, 2013, city records show.

A new look into Rockville's past

In April 2013, city planners determined the property was historically and architecturally significant “because it illustrated the development of suburban residential property at the edge of the city in the late 19th and 20th centuries.”

The city report described it as a “gateway property into the city’s historic core.”

State tax records show that the structure, a former residence, was built in 1923, but residents say it has ties to an even older narrative.

Since the city’s report was issued, further research found that the parcel in question have had ties to an antebellum community of free African Americans. 

Citing property records and documents from the Maryland Historical trust, Noreen Bryan and Jim Coyle offered written testimony that a woman named Ann Wilson, a free African American woman, purchased an acre of land along Great Falls Road in 1845 and that that acreage grew as the family grew—to include the 628 site. 

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Speak out: Do you think this plot should be designated as historic? Or do you think that such a designation would do more harm than good, blocking the congregation from expanding?