The Takoma Park Historic District is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

Takoma Park Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, and part of the Washington metropolitan area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City", is a Tree ...

Montgomery County Montgomery County may refer to: Australia * The former name of Montgomery Land District, Tasmania United Kingdom * The historic county of Montgomeryshire, Wales, also called County of Montgomery United States * Montgomery County, Alabama * Montg ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

. The district area was platted in 1883 by developer

Benjamin Franklin Gilbert Benjamin Franklin Gilbert (1841–1907), an American real estate developer, was the founder of Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and the city's first mayor. Gilbert was born in De Ruyter, Madison County, New York. Life Gil ...

, and promoted for its natural environment and healthy setting. An early railroad suburb, the opening of streetcar lines led to the expansion of the district in the early 20th century. Takoma Park houses built between 1883 and 1900 are fanciful, turreted, multi-gabled affairs of

Queen Anne architecture The Queen Anne style of British architecture refers to either the English Baroque architecture of the time of Queen Anne (who reigned from 1702 to 1714) or the British Queen Anne Revival form that became popular during the last quarter of th ...

with

Stick Style The Stick style was a late-19th-century American architectural style, transitional between the Carpenter Gothic style of the mid-19th century, and the Queen Anne style that it had evolved into by the 1890s. It is named after its use of linear " ...

and

Shingle Style The shingle style is an American architectural style made popular by the rise of the New England school of architecture, which eschewed the highly ornamented patterns of the Eastlake style in Queen Anne architecture. In the shingle style, Engli ...

influence. Buildings developed after the turn of the 20th century tend to be one- and two-story brick structures with simple ornamentation, although a few display characteristics of such styles as

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

and

Tudor Revival Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in rea ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1976.

References

External links

*, including photo in 2003, at Maryland Historical Trust website
Boundary Map of the Takoma Park Historic District, Montgomery County
at Maryland Historical Trust Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Maryland Historic districts in Montgomery County, Maryland Takoma Park, Maryland National Register of Historic Places in Montgomery County, Maryland {{MontgomeryCountyMD-NRHP-stub