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Kensington, Maryland
The area around the Rock Creek basin where Kensington is now found was primarily agricultural until 1873, when the B&O Railroad completed a branch which traversed Montgomery County. A community arose where the new railroad line intersected the old Rockville to Bladensburg road. This early settlement was first known as Knowles Station. In the early 1890s, Washington, D. C. developer Brainard Warner began purchasing land parcels to build a planned Victorian community, complete with church, library, and a local newspaper. Fascinated by a recent trip to London, Warner first named his town Kensington Park. Upon incorporation in 1894, the town was renamed Kensington.
Initially Kensington was a summer refuge for Washington, D.C., residents wishing to escape the capital's humid summers. As years passed and its residents increasingly remained year round, Kensington evolved into a commuter suburb. The large southernmost section originally mapped out by Warner remains largely unchanged since inception, and is a historically preserved zone. Indeed the only major changes in the town's basic layout have been the bridging over of the original railroad crossing in 1937, and the extension and widening of Connecticut Avenue, the town's main thoroughfare, in 1957. |