The iconic neon sign that has been on the Flower Theater for over 70 years has been removed to get refabricated, as the facade is being repaired to look the way it did when it opened in 1950
MoCo History
Per the City of Rockville: “Explore the architecture of the Montgomery County Detention Center this month as the Glenview Mansion and Peerless Rockville Speaker Series presents “The Montgomery County Detention Center: Modernizing the Carceral State.” Architectural historian Teresa Lachin will present a history of the facility at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9 at Glenview Mansion at Rockville Civic Center Park, 603 Edmonston Drive.
Built in 1961, the detention center is situated historically between the outmoded and segregated Montgomery County Courthouse jail in Rockville and the 2003 sustainably designed Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Clarksburg. It was subsequently enlarged and modernized during three successive decades and now awaits partial demolition for redevelopment by the county. The detention center occupies a key transitional period, documenting modernist transformations in prison design, standards and practices, the realities of public funding and support, and the experiences of prison life, such as chronic overcrowding, mental illness and alcoholism, juvenile detention and inmate violence.
Below you will see a list of 16 Montgomery County Public Schools that were closed by the school system at one point in time, but have since reopened. Schools on this list were either reopened or built new on the site of a former school. In some cases the school was renamed. Full list below, with some additional information about/from the schools:
Arcola Elementary School (1820 Franwall Avenue, Silver Spring): Arcola Elementary School opened its doors again in August 2007. The original Arcola Elementary was opened in the 1950’s and closed in the 1980’s. Even though the “new” Arcola is twice the size of the original building with state-of-the-art technology and a diverse student population of over 600 students, the neighborhood is very happy to have the beloved school open again.
From the Montgomery County Sentinel in 1876: “As the story goes, during the Civil War a soldier was decapitated by a saber in a skirmish around what is now Game Preserve Road. After the fight, his fellow soldiers hastily buried him in an unmarked grave, even though they couldn’t find his head to bury with his body.”
The story has been passed down for many generations and many have told tales about the supposed unmarked grave of the headless man. Some have recalled strange noises and apparitions with glowing eyes. Others have seen the figure of a headless soldier (sometimes on a horse and sometimes without it), while many have driven down the Gaithersburg, Maryland road several times and have stated they’ve never noticed anything out of the ordinary. NBC Washington’s Melissa Mollet highlighted the 150-year-old road in a video last year (available below).
In 1906, a crew of miners at the present-day intersection of Falls Road and MacArthur Boulevard (Potomac) were preparing to set off an explosion in a mine’s tunnel in a search for gold. Gold was previously discovered in a nearby stream in the 1860’s and local businessmen were looking to strike it rich. As the story goes, one of the miners tossed their helmet, which was outfitted with a lit candle, during a break. It landed near dynamite and caused a massive explosion that collapsed a building and killed a hoist operator named Charles Eglin. Then, strange things started to happen…
According to Visit Montgomery, “horses would be afraid to go near the mine. Tools and food would go missing, and someone knocking on the walls would reverberate through the tunnels. One of the most chilling incidents happened to a night watchman who said he came across a demon with fiery eyes and 10-foot-long tail. The mine closed soon after and today most of it is now on restricted and private property.”
Glen Echo Park was first developed in 1891 as a National Chautauqua Assembly, which taught the sciences, arts, languages, and literature. The Chautauqua lasted for just one season, and by the early 1900s, the site had become Glen Echo Amusement Park — the premier amusement park serving the Washington area until 1968, when it closed (learn more about the civil rights story here). Below we will share with you a tragic tale that has become somewhat of a local ghost story. A video of what Glen Echo Park looks like today can be seen below.
Glen Echo Park was home to the “Coaster Dips” roller coaster. The popular attraction opened in May 1921 and remained until the park closed in 1968. Coaster Dips was nearly 70 feet tall, and the Potomac River could be seen in the distance before plummeting to the bottom of the rickety wooden coaster. Tragically, William J. Lawrence, a 21-year-old Washington drug clerk, fell from the coaster in 1929. According to local legend, screams from the coaster echo into the late evening hours on clear nights. Per the Washington Post in 1929:
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MHP, a Montgomery County-based nonprofit affordable housing developer and community development organization in Silver Spring, will undertake a reconstruction of the historic façade of the former Flower Theater in the Long Branch neighborhood of Silver Spring, returning it to its original condition when the theater opened in 1950.
The scope of work includes replacing the iconic Flower neon sign that adorns the top of the theater, relighting the marquee, restoring the ticket booth, and other associated repairs. The project, which has been more than three years in the making, recently began construction and is expected to take approximately 9 weeks to complete.
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While some places have had the same name for hundreds of years, many of the areas we know and love in Montgomery County weren’t always known by the names they have now. Many had similar names, others had very different names, and plenty were part of a different area before they became their own place. Let’s look at a few below in part 1 of this series:
Now: Kensington Then: Kensington Park: In the early 1890s, Washington, D.C. developer Brainard Warner began purchasing land parcels to build a planned Victorian community– he named his subdivision Kensington Park. The 10th and largest subdivision in the area became the Town of Kensington and incorporated in 1894.
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The playground consisting of figure-like slides, swings, and monkey bars that was located behind the Londonderry Apartment complex in Gaithersburg has been entirely removed. The playground, which stood at the location for at least forty years, was visible to drivers going northbound on I-270 between exits 9 and 10. Half of the equipment was removed a couple years back– we were told it was due to deteriorating condition. A representative from the leasing office told us that they were advised to have the remaining equipment removed following an inspection in August and that the playground was removed entirely last month.
In 2019, our own Mr. MoCo made the trek to the site. “I had to take a visit to the playground located behind the Londonderry complex in Gaithersburg. Now I can say I’ve been there.” (scroll down to see the East MoCo version of the figures). The post received over 1,000 likes and hundreds of comments. Some of the best included:
Per Montgomery County: The 18th Montgomery County History Conference will return as an in-person event for the first time since 2020, with the full day of activities on Saturday, Nov. 4, at Montgomery College in Rockville including a keynote address on “Black Chevy Chase” and breakout sessions “The Du-Drop Inn of Emory Grove” and the “Historic Homes and Barns of the Agricultural Reserve.”
In addition to breakout sessions on the Du-Drop Inn and the historic homes and barns of the Ag Reserve, breakout sessions will focus on the families of the Agricultural History Farm Park, Sentinel publisher Rebecca Fields, a history of enslavement in Kensington, the County’s Poor Farm, the seven enslavers who have public schools named for them and new techniques for indigenous archaeological research.