HISTORIC PRESERVATION FAQs - What is historically significant in Prince George's County?

The history of Prince George's County is found in its older buildings, in its nineteenth-century crossroad communities, in its early twentieth-century streetcar suburbs, and in its rural areas that recall the county's agricultural heritage of tobacco raising and horse breeding. The eighteenth-century George Washington House in Bladensburg is a link to Colonial-era trade and industry. The Belair Stables in Bowie, built early in the twentieth century, attests to the county's early association with the nation's horse breeding and racing. A picturesque 1890s Victorian house in Hyattsville reflects the county's emerging suburbs, and the City of Greenbelt is internationally known as the first "greenbelt town" of the Roosevelt administration from the 1930s.

A countywide inventory in 1974 identified some 550 properties as historically significant; they are linked to people, places, and events that helped shape the development and character of the county through its architectural style or in its method of construction. Since 1974, several hundred more individual buildings and a total of 60 communities have been documented. In 2011, the County’s Sites and Districts Plan Inventory of Historic Resources includes 411 Historic Sites, 132 Historic Resources, 3 locally designated Historic Districts, more than 70 individual listings in the National Register of Historic Places, 10 National Register Historic Districts, and 6 National Historic Landmarks. Whether historically or architecturally significant, these places are part of the county's cultural legacy and deserve special care to represent our proud history for years to come.