 The earliest image of
541 Beall Avenue appears in Peerless Rockville: What
it Offers to Homeseekers and Investors. Henry Copp was a D.C.
educator who turned to real estate after the B&O Railroad came
through Montgomery County. Copp and Reuben Deitrick laid out the new
subdivision west of Rockville in 1889, and included in the
promotional brochure photos of homes that a prospective buyer would
live near if he or she purchased a lot in West End Park.
The developers
offered "health, wealth, and comfort" to middle-class
white collar workers who commuted to Washington on the railroad.
"A location in cool Rockville, 500 feet above Washington,
promotes sound sleep at night during the summer. Mind and body are
so refreshed next day as to enable a man to think and work fast, and
make more money than he otherwise would."
More than 200
building lots sold at a price of $300 to $400 in the first few
years, but only a handful of buyers paid $2,000 to $6,000 to erect
new homes. A series of depressions in the 1890s, combined with law
suits and saturation of the market, led to the downfall of West End
Park. Copp defaulted on his mortgage payments, and all but 220 lots
were auctioned at the Courthouse door on November 10, 1900.
Henry Copp and his
family may have summered at 541 Beall Avenue for a few years,
although they maintained a Washington residence.
Water came from a
windmill-driven pump located in what is now Mannakee Circle. The
house was advertised in 1900 as "a large and handsome,
well-built, modern frame dwelling house." It was described as
having "two stories and attic, with metal roof, verandas, and
containing ten commodious rooms, a handsome hall, two bay windows,
double parlors, dining and sitting rooms on the first floor, with
the chambers above. It has a speaking tube from second story to
kitchen, and is wired for electric lighting. There is a stable,
carriage house, and granary, with other necessary outbuildings on
the property and the grounds are enclosed with a very neat paling
fence."
Henry C. Allnutt –
Register of Wills for Montgomery County from 1897 to 1923 -- bought
the house and 10 lots for $3,200 in 1903. The Allnutt family lived
at 541 Beall Avenue for more than 40 years, but it is rumored that
Henry’s ghost never left. During that time, indoor plumbing came
to Rockville, the windmill was razed, and other houses were built
around the large Victorian. In 1964, Peg and Pete Sante, who
had moved to Rockville 11 years earlier, purchased 541 Beall Avenue.
Raising their children here, they welcomed visitors of all ages.
They decorated and maintained the house in the manner of the
comfortable Victorian residence that Henry Copp envisioned in West
End Park. West End Park grew slowly in the 20th century. The
Woodlawn Hotel closed, similar subdivisions east and west of the
railroad tracks also ceased to attract the desired legions of new
buyers, and Rockville settled into daily small town life. Each
succeeding decade brought new design to West End homes –
Victorians, transitional styles, revivals, bungalows, Arts and
Crafts cottages, ramblers and split levels, contemporaries, and then
back to neo-Victorians. The mixture gives West End Park a pleasing
mix of home styles and choices, trees and gardens, and people.
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