Gaithersburg B&O Railroad Station

Introduction

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This historic Gaithersburg rail station opened in 1884 and served the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. Along with Kensington Station, Rockville Station, and others, Gaithersburg Station was designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin, an architect who built numerous stations for the B&O. The 1884 station replaced an earlier 1873 station, and was originally five bays wide, with an additional east bay added later. A freight shed 90 feet to the east of the station now serves as the home of the Gaithersburg Community Museum. These buildings are the oldest commercial buildings in Gaithersburg and are today served by MARC commuter trains on the Penn Line.

Images

Gaithersburg station and the adjacent freight shed

Gaithersburg Station

Backstory and Context

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Originally, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built a railroad line from Baltimore due West to Frederick and the Ohio River, bypassing Washington and heading through northern Maryland. However, in 1837, the Washington branch opened a small section of track from Baltimore to Washington. After the Civil War and Washington's transformation from a sleepy town to the bustling federal capital, the B&O decided to connect up the Washington branch to the rest of the mainline. This became the B&O Metropolitan line, which ran through Montgomery County to reconnect with the B&O mainline at Point of Rocks station. The Washington Branch and Metropolitian eventually became the new mainline, with the old mainline downgraded to secondary use.

Gaithersburg was first served by the Metropolitan in 1873, with a station on the west side of Summit Avenue, across from the current one. The current station was built in 1884, the same year of the Laurel and Oakland B&O stations. Although it is known, it is assumed E. Francis Baldwin was the architect of Gaithersburg, as he was the B&O's architect at the time. Due to the stylistic similarities between Gaithersburg and other stations on the line like Rockville and Laurel.

The Metropolitan Line revolutionized transportation in and out of Washington and inside Montgomery County, bringing early urbanization to the rural county. In addition, Gaithersburg Station was the site of the first telephone switchboard in the county. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Sources

Clare Lise Kelly, Places from the Past: The Tradition of Gardez Bien in Montgomery County, Maryland (Silver Spring, Md.: Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 2001), 200, accessed April 2, 2021, https://montgomeryplanning.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Places-from-the-Past-web_with_cover.pdf.

Memorandum, "Maryland Historical Trust State Historic Trusts Form, M: 21-151," n.d., accessed April 2, 2021, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/Montgomery/M;%2021-151.pdf.

Rowlands, DW. How the Metropolitan Branch and the Brunswick Line shaped the region’s suburbs, Greater Greater Washington. August 23rd 2018. Accessed April 2nd 2021. https://ggwash.org/view/68755/how-the-metropolitan-branch-and-the-brunswick-line-shaped-the-regions-suburbs