In early spring, it’s the crocuses blanketing the front lawn that catch your attention at 203 West Montgomery Avenue.  But at any time of the year,  the charm and history of this handsome residence as well as its role in the development of Peerless Rockville make it a Peerless Place.

The 2 ½ story frame house shows features of the Queen Anne style:  gables, stained glass windows, bay and elongated windows, novelty siding, an attic lunette, front porch with large chamfered posts, and a three-story square tower.

Its story begins with two prominent Rockville women.  In 1883 Rebecca T. Veirs, notable for her business ventures in an era when entrepreneurial women were a rarity, bought two lots from Margaret Beall, owner of what we know as the Beall-Dawson house and surrounding land.  The railroad had recently reached Rockville, bringing commuters and summer visitors, all requiring housing.   Rebecca Veirs set about meeting those needs by building the Victorian cottage at 203 West Montgomery Avenue around 1884  to rent to a single family.  She also constructed a boarding house next door and went on to other real estate ventures in the West End, which she financed by mortgaging her early ones.  During a late-century depression, she lost 203 West Montgomery Avenue to Mary Tyler, the mortgagee, at public auction.

The house had several owners over the next seven decades including a daughter of Rebecca Veirs, Jane Bradley, and Jane’s son, Stephen Cromwell.  In 1972, Arthur and Lynn Wagman bought it.

The Wagmans immediately became involved in a grass roots movement to protect and research properties in what became the West Montgomery Avenue Historic District.  In the spring of 1974, they hosted a small group of like-minded individuals at a meeting that resulted in the birth of an organization dedicated to historic preservation in Rockville.  The group—a mix of relative newcomers, life-long residents, and others who arrived in town in the early 1950s—then bantered for hours about a name for the nonprofit.  Finally, Jayne Greene suggested “Peerless Rockville,” the title of a real estate brochure written in 1890 to attract buyers to West End Park and Rockville.

The name, the organization, and the Wagman family stuck.  Arthur Wagman, an attorney, shepherded Peerless Rockville through its first 30 years.  In addition to presenting several crises that required his guidance, Peerless provided Arthur with an outlet for his creativity.  Odd arrangements devised to rescue the Dawson farmhouse and fund preparation of the B&O Station’s relocation are attributable to Mr. Wagman’s fertile mind.  A mediator by temperament, he was not afraid to take Peerless to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and by winning save the interior of Wire Hardware.  

Meanwhile, the Wagmans expanded their home, adding a deck, family room and master bedroom suite to the rear.  Always active in Peerless Rockville, their home was featured on the 1999 Progressive Dinner Tour.  Incidentally, Rebecca Veirs (with help from Alisa, one of the Wagmans’ daughters) made an appearance that night, brandishing her mortgage document and begging help to pay it off.

Hats off to the Wagman family, who have made 203 West Montgomery Avenue a Peerless Place.