Rockville [Paperback]

As a suburb of the nations capital in the late 1800s, Rockville was proclaimed a peerless place to live; its subsequent transformation into a city all its own is equally remarkable.

Starting out as a tiny colonial crossroads village, it gained stature as the county seat and evolved into a town.Construction of a train line to Washington spurred suburbanizationeven resort hotels. Then the automobile and postWorld War II boom rapidly turned it into a full-fledged city, with much of its identity tied to the bustling Rockville Pike, a region-wide commercial mecca.As its downtown faltered, Rockville undertook a massive urban renewal makeoverbut with mixed results.Along the way, luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thurgood Marshall figured in Rockvilles story, as did an escaped slave whose autobiography inspired the influential novel Uncle Toms Cabin. Rockville even once had an airport and a renowned mental hospital memorialized inI Never Promised You a Rose Garden. A four-time All-America City awardee, Rockville is evolving still as one of the nations most ethnically diverse cities.

Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation, Ltd., is a vibrant nonprofit organization working since 1974 to protect and enhance awareness of Rockvilles rich cultural and architectural heritage. Most of this volumes photographs come from its extensive archives.