Map of Riverdale Park town, Maryland

Riverdale Park, formerly known and often referred to as Riverdale, is a semi-urban town in Prince George’s County, Maryland, United States, a suburb in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The population was 6,955 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. The population as of 2019 is approximately 7,304, according to the US Census Bureau and other entities.

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History

Riverdale Park and the neighboring community of West Riverdale developed in the late 19th century as streetcar suburbs in central Prince George’s County. The town is located approximately seven miles northeast of downtown Washington, D.C. The area is also bisected by the heavily traveled Baltimore Avenue (U.S. Route 1). The city of College Park is located to the north, the town of University Park to the west across Baltimore Avenue, the town of Edmonston to the east and southeast, and Hyattsville is located to the south and southwest.

Founding

The area was first developed in 1801 when a Belgian aristocrat, Henri Joseph Stier, purchased 800 acres situated between two tributaries of the Anacostia River, known as the Paint and Northwest branches. Stier and his family moved to the United States several years earlier to escape the French Revolution (1788–1789). Upon purchase, he named his holdings Riversdale, and began constructing his residence that same year. The mansion was modeled after the Stier family’s Belgian home, Chateau du Mick, and when completed in 1807, the building stood as a two-story stuccoed-brick dwelling in the style of late Georgian architecture.

Just two years after purchasing the property, in 1803, the political tension that had caused Stier to flee his native country subsided, and he and his wife, Marie Louise, returned to Belgium. Riversdale was given to their daughter, Rosalie, who had married George Calvert, the grandson of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, in 1799. After Rosalie Stier Calvert died in 1821 and George Calvert in 1838, their son, Charles Benedict Calvert, took over the plantation. Charles Calvert was a renowned agriculturist and helped establish the Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland at College Park. In May 1853, Calvert announced he would donate land for an agricultural college. In 1861, Calvert was elected to the United States Congress and fought for the establishment of the United States Department of Agriculture. During his life, Charles Calvert conducted a variety of agricultural experiments at Riversdale, and expanded his family’s original holdings to 2,200 acres. Calvert died in 1864; however, the property remained in the ownership of the Calvert family for another twenty years.

The 1861 Martenet map depicts the rural setting of Riversdale and identifies Charles B. Calvert as its owner. The old Baltimore Turnpike, now known as US Route 1, is located to the west of the mansion house. To the east of the house is the Washington Branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which opened in 1833. The railway is located inside the boundaries of Riverdale Park, just west of the Paint Branch tributary. The 1878 Hopkins map depicts little development having had happened since 1861.

Post-Calverts

In 1887, the heirs of Charles Benedict Calvert sold 474 acres of land to New York City businessmen John Fox and Alexander Lutz in two separate transactions. The first deed involved the sale of 300 acres, which included the Riversdale mansion. The remaining 174 acres were transferred to Fox and Lutz shortly thereafter. The cost of the sales to Fox and Lutz totaled $47,000. On March 23, 1889, Fox and Lutz formed the Riverdale Park Company, which was named in honor of the grand Federal style mansion at the center of the proposed community. The company planned on creating an upper-middle-class residential suburb for people working in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

The land was platted in 1889 by surveyor D.J. Howell and the new development was named Riverdale Park. In an attempt to differentiate the historic plantation known as Riversdale from the subdivision, the “s” was dropped. The new roads were named in honor of United States presidents and were arranged in a grid pattern that surrounded a central ellipse, which served as the site of the commuter train station. The first of the stations was constructed in 1890. Laid out as a “villa park”, the community featured traffic circles and green space, with the mansion being used as its central amenity. The three original sections of the suburb utilized relatively uniform lot dimensions and building setbacks, thereby creating a cohesive development of middle- and upper-middle-class housing. The residential housing lots surrounded the high-style Riversdale mansion.

Growth

The construction of dwellings in Riverdale Park began in 1890. The buildings reflected popular architectural trends of the time and were of wood-frame construction. Some structures were pyramidal-roof Foursquares, while others had front-gable or cross-gable roofs. Many houses from this period have projecting bays, corner towers, and wrap-around porches. By the turn of the twentieth century, Riverdale Park comprised 60 dwellings, a Presbyterian church, a schoolhouse, and a railroad station. The new community straddled the Washington line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which provided residents an easy commute to Washington, D.C.

Recognizing the financial potential of the new suburb, builders purchased groups of lots that were soon improved by high-style single-family dwellings. Joseph A. Blundon (ca. 1847–1909) was one such late-nineteenth-century builder. Born in Georgetown, Blundon worked as a general contractor in Washington, D.C., before moving to Riverdale Park in 1889. He was instrumental in forming the Riverdale Park Company and served as its first manager. Blundon also, independent of the development company, purchased several lots each year for the purpose of overseeing the construction of single-family dwellings. Between 1891 and 1909, he was responsible for the erection of roughly 90 buildings in Riverdale Park. Accordingly, he became known as the “Father of Riverdale”.

In 1920, a handful of owners in both Riverdale Park and the nearby West Riverdale petitioned the Maryland General Assembly requesting authority to incorporate the two neighborhoods as a municipality. On June 14, 1920, the two communities were incorporated as the Town of Riverdale. As a result of the transfer of power from the Riverdale Park Company to the municipal government, the importance of the real estate company began to diminish, prompting a financial strain. Within ten years of the town’s incorporation, the Riverdale Park Company went bankrupt.

Numerous annexations in the mid-twentieth century increased Riverdale’s overall size. The municipal government continued to grow and change during this period. In 1941, the town changed the name of its roads to conform to the standards of the United States Postal Service, carrying a similar pattern as those of Washington, D.C., and nearby College Park. The increasing population and commercial and governmental growth of metropolitan Washington, D.C., most notably during the last twenty years of the twentieth century, has resulted in further development of the town of Riverdale. This late-twentieth-century growth was predominantly commercial and centered along Baltimore Avenue, thereby physically and visually separating West Riverdale from Riverdale Park.

Post-1940s

Since the 1940s, the area has been a largely blue-collar town predominated by small red brick or wooden homes with porches. The area has always had a large presence of University of Maryland students, faculty, and staff residents. It also has a large and growing, professional, middle-class African American population.

The area originally had its own small town Maryland identity, but was eventually engulfed by post-World War II urban expansion, related to the growth of the University of Maryland and Washington D.C. The area is now much more of a neighborhood than an actual town. Although many of the original residents have left, there are still a significant number of original residents living in the area. Many of the original residents speak with classic Maryland accents, which has some similarities to a Baltimore accent. Washington D.C. and its close northern and northwestern suburbs once had large blue-collar Irish populations some of this influence is still evident in the remnants of the older community.

In 1998, the town was officially renamed Riverdale Park. Today, the town is made up of a mix of housing styles, including 1960s apartment buildings, pre- and post-World War II era buildings, and dwellings from the turn of the twentieth century. The Riversdale mansion, now surrounded by eight acres, is owned by the M-NCPPC, which purchased it in 1949. The Riversdale property is bounded roughly by 48th Avenue to the west, Riverdale Road to the north, Taylor Street to the east, and Oglethorpe Street to the south.

In 2015, construction began on the Cafritz Property, the largest piece of undeveloped property in Prince George’s County. In April 2017, it opened as Riverdale Park Station, a mixed-use development located at the odd side of the 6600 to 6700 blocks on Baltimore Avenue. A major tenant of the development is the Whole Foods Market, the first to open in Prince George’s County.

Riverdale Park Road Map

Riverdale Park city Satellite Map

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.68 square miles (4.35 km), of which, 1.65 square miles (4.27 km) is land and 0.03 square miles (0.08 km) is water.

See also