Posts by DW Rowlands — Contributor
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The 1970s tax reform initiative that debilitated Prince George’s County libraries
A 1970s referendum limiting county taxes brought the growth of Prince George County’s library system to a grinding halt, marking an era of austerity that lasted a generation. Keep reading…
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How Prince George’s County pioneered libraries as social outreach centers
In the late 1960s, the town of Fairmount Heights in Prince George’s County was the site of an important but controversial experimental library, one of the first to tie libraries to services for low-income communities. Keep reading…
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A look back at Prince George’s County’s library building spree
Although the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System is more than 70 years old, more than half of its branches were built in a span of just 16 years. Keep reading…
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Here’s how the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System got its start
Today, Prince George’s County — like all Maryland counties — has a county-run public library system. But it didn’t have to be that way. Keep reading…
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Prince George’s County’s belt of high-income majority Black Census tracts really is unique
I’ve previously discussed Prince George’s County’s exceptional diversity, but that article didn’t discuss just how unique one aspect of Prince George’s County is: the county contains more than half of the majority Black high-income Census tracts in the United States. Keep reading…
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Why DC and Baltimore are different colors from space
Last week (July 15), the crew of the International Space Station posted a nightime photo of our region from space on Twitter, likening Washington, DC and Baltimore to “two galaxies swirling near each other.” This photo gives us the opportunity to make a number of observations about the region. Keep reading…
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This 1944 proposal for a DC streetcar subway would have been the largest in the US
A swelling population in the District between the late 1930s and the early 1940s resulted in a lot of traffic congestion — as well as calls to fix it. Many officials and companies were excited in particular about the prospect of building a subway system. Keep reading…
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Advocates have pushed for a subway in DC since FDR and WWII
Between 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, and 1941, when the US entered the war, the District’s population rose by nearly 50%. This spike in population led to overloaded buses and streetcars, as well as severe automobile congestion. The city was in desparate need of transportation alternatives. Keep reading…
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The saga of Waldo Schmitt, the crustacean biologist obsessed with building a commuter rail subway in DC
Prior to World War II, there were even more commuter rail lines leading into DC than there are now. Most of them ended at Union Station, just like they do today. But in the 1940s a man named Waldo Schmitt proposed a commuter rail subway to bring workers closer to the center of downtown, and to connect rail lines from the east and west. Keep reading…
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A streetcar used to run down Rhode Island Avenue, connecting College Park and downtown DC
Most of Washington’s original “streetcar suburbs” were built within the District’s boundaries. However, one important corridor of streetcar suburbs went up in Prince George’s County, in the communities along Route 1 south of the Beltway. Keep reading…