Kensington

The Neighborhood:

Garrett Park is a town in Montgomery County, Maryland. It is primarily a residential town, with a post office, and very few small businesses. The town is known for its independent spirit within a close-knit community. It is also one of the few rare towns where residents prefer picking up their mail at the post office in person, rather than having home mail delivery. As residents can testify, going to the post office produces much communication and conversion between the community people as the post office becomes a source of social interaction – strengthening the traditional community-oriented spirit of the town. There is also a restaurant on top of the post office named “Black Market Bistro” which also serves as a spot for healthy interaction along with modern American Cuisine.

Location:

Garrett Park is just west of Kensington, due north of Bethesda, northwest of Silver Spring, and southeast of Rockville. It is approximately halfway between Rockville and Silver Spring. Rock Creek Park is located along the town’s southeast borders. Its land area is 0.2 square miles (0.52 km²). According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.26 square miles (0.67 km²), all of it land.

A Little History:

Garrett Park was incorporated as a town in 1898, with sponsorship by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The town lies along the former B&O railway corridor (now used by CSX,Amtrak, MARC) and was named for Robert W. Garrett, a former President of the B&O. It was a planned community from the beginning – when the land it was built on was purchased by a businessman named Henry W. Copp in 1886, he intended to build a suburban development reminiscent of an English village. Copp even went so far as to name the streets after locations in the novels of the English author Walter Scott, such as Kenilworth and Strathmore. He also limited commercial development, and even today there is only one store in the town. Builders were given reduced rates to transport workers and materials to the town site, and new residents were given free trips to move in. Rail suburbs did not catch on in the area, however, and the community stagnated somewhat as automobiles replaced trains and streetcars as the primary means of commuting. In the 1920s, another company built approximately 50 more houses, these with garages. Much of the town is included in the Garrett Park Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

In May 1982 the townspeople of Garrett Park voted 245 to 46 to ban the production, transportation, storage, processing, disposal, or use of nuclear weapons within the town. This made Garrett Park the first nuclear-weapons free zone in the United States

Transportation:

• Maryland State Highway 547 (Strathmore Avenue) (The main road open to automotive traffic into or out of Garrett Park)
• MARC train Brunswick line.