What are the origins of Agnew Drive in Rockville? Is the road named after Spiro Agnew, the former vice president whose career ended in scandal when he was forced to resign? Agnew was from Maryland, so I wondered if the road was named after him to honor his years of service in our state.
Maryland
Perspective | What’s in a name: Is Rockville’s Agnew Drive named after Spiro?
— Nancy Traver, Silver Spring
Answer Man can say with some certainty that Agnew Road was not named after Spiro Agnew. But he cannot say for whom it was named.
Agnew Road first shows up on Montgomery County documents in 1940, said Sarah Hedlund, archivist/librarian at Montgomery History. At that time, Spiro Agnew had yet to enter public life. The Baltimore restaurateur’s son was working at an insurance agency during the day and going to law school at night, a schedule that would be interrupted by Army service in World War II.
Agnew Drive was — and is — part of a subdivision called Rockcrest that is nestled in the wedge between Veirs Mill Road and Rockville Pike. The street is on the first plat for the development, along with Crawford Drive, Paul Drive, De Beck Drive, Wade Avenue and Lewis Avenue. The development would later include Gail Avenue, too.
Street names do not burble up out of the ground like oil or reveal themselves like petroglyphs when the ground above is scraped away. They are bestowed by humans. The streets of Rockcrest memorialize some of those humans. Hedlund said she suspected Rockcrest’s streets would have been named after the developer’s family members or friends, “typical of real estate speculators of the time.”
The developer behind Rockcrest was Thomas O. de Beck. Born in Denmark in 1897, de Beck — also rendered in print as De Beck and DeBeck — immigrated with his family to the United States in 1912. By the early 1920s he was in Washington working in real estate. He advertised properties around the District, in such neighborhoods as Mount Pleasant, Cleveland Park and Petworth.
De Beck sold both single-family homes and small apartment buildings. Some of the homes he handled were advertised under a “Colored” heading, signaling that African Americans were allowed to buy them. Such were the practices of the day.
In 1935, de Beck married Gail Wade. The Wades were farmers in Barnesville, Md. Gail’s siblings included Crawford Wade. Critically, Crawford Wade was a partner with de Beck in the Rockcrest development.
So there are four of the street names: De Beck, Wade, Crawford and Gail. Another Wade sibling was J. Paul Wade. There’s another street name: Paul.
We’re left with Lewis Avenue and Agnew Drive. Answer Man poked around in Census records but could find no obvious inspirations for those names, no children or other family members. There was a tavern in Gaithersburg called Agnew’s Inn. Perhaps de Beck drove past it on the way to the Crawford farm. Or perhaps he and Wade Crawford hammered out Rockcrest details there.
In December 1940, de Beck’s Rockcrest Realty Corp. advertised a “big value in low cost homes.” The small, tidy homes were priced from $4,125 to $4,575. That included hardwood floors, venetian blinds, a Johns Manville roof and a sodded yard.
De Beck advertised another feature: Rockcrest was “an outstanding restricted community.”
Racial covenants prohibiting the sale of houses in some neighborhoods to anyone other than Whites were common in Montgomery County then. Before launching Rockcrest, de Beck had worked for the Federal Housing Administration as a “valuator.” In this role, he would have followed FHA guidance that urged mortgage underwriters to ensure neighborhood homogeneity.
A 1936 FHA underwriting manual explained that “adverse influences” could harm neighborhoods. The best way to guard against this was to prevent “the infiltration of … lower class occupancy, and inharmonious racial groups.”
Thomas de Beck died in 1944. In 1960, Rockville celebrated its centennial. The Washington Evening Star noted that the town’s explosive growth had been spurred by the development of Rockcrest and its 184 homes.
“They said it couldn’t be done, but we never were in doubt a minute,” Crawford Wade told the Star.
An aside: Montgomery History’s Hedlund pointed out that Spiro Agnew did live in Montgomery County for a while. From 1972 to 1973, Richard M. Nixon’s then-vice president lived in Bethesda’s Kenwood neighborhood.
Do you live in a development with interesting street names? Are you a developer who memorialized family members, pets or childhood hobbies? Send the details — with “Street Names” in the subject line — to me at john.kelly@washpost.com.
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Maryland
Student shot in Joppatowne, Maryland high school
![Student shot in Joppatowne, Maryland high school Student shot in Joppatowne, Maryland high school](https://media.nbcwashington.com/2024/09/image-50-1.png?resize=1200%2C675&quality=85&strip=all)
One teen shot another during a dispute in a Maryland high school bathroom Friday in what authorities called an isolated incident.
The victim, a 15-year-old student at Joppatowne High School, was in serious condition after being airlifted to a hospital, the Harford County Public Schools said in a news release, citing information it received from the county sheriff’s department.
A 16-year-old student whom police identified as the shooter fled shortly afterward but was caught minutes later nearby, according to the news release. Officials said no information would be released immediately about the weapon, which had not been recovered.
The state’s attorney has said the suspect will be charged, the release said, citing Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler.
Shortly after the shooting, the sheriff’s office asked people to avoid the area, but emphasized that the confrontation was an “isolated incident, not an active shooter.” A parent-student reunification center was established at a nearby church. More than 100 personnel responded to the high school about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Baltimore, Gahler said.
The fight happened two days after a shooter whom authorities identified as a 14-year-old student killed four people at a high school outside Atlanta. Wednesday’s attack renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and had parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.
Maryland
How to watch, listen and stream Michigan State football at Maryland on Saturday
![How to watch, listen and stream Michigan State football at Maryland on Saturday How to watch, listen and stream Michigan State football at Maryland on Saturday](https://spartanswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2024/08/USATSI_24116620.jpg?w=1024&h=576&crop=1)
Michigan State football heads out east looking to open Big Ten play with a big-time victory.
The Spartans will play at Maryland on Saturday afternoon in their first conference game of the year. Michigan State enters this matchup with a 1-0 record on the year following last week’s win over Florida Atlantic. Maryland is also 1-0 thus far on the season, picking up a blowout non-conference win over UConn last week.
Maryland enters this game as a more than touchdown favorite depending on the sports book. The Terps have won the last two meetings between these two schools.
Below are the details for Saturday’s matchup between the Spartans and Terps:
Game time: 3:30 p.m. ET on September 7
Location: SECU Stadium (College Park, Md.)
TV: Big Ten Network
Live Stream: fuboTV (try it free)
Listen: Spartan Media Network or MSUSpartans.com
Contact/Follow us @The SpartansWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Michigan state news, notes, and opinion. You can also follow Robert Bondy on Twitter @RobertBondy5.
Maryland
Partial victory in effort to preserve historic Black cemetery in Maryland
![Partial victory in effort to preserve historic Black cemetery in Maryland Partial victory in effort to preserve historic Black cemetery in Maryland](https://media.nbcwashington.com/2024/09/34199981402-1080pnbcstations.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&resize=1200%2C675)
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