After 1873, when the B&O Railroad Co. opened a depot near Saint Mary's church, speculators and developers rushed to purchase farmland near the rail line. They subdivided the land into building lots and applied for annexation into the newly incorporated town of Rockville. In 1884, wealthy lumber and coal merchant William Reading, who lived in Washington, purchased 28 acres east of the B&O tracks from Dr. E. E. Stonestreet for $4,293. Reading laid out 56 large building lots on streets named for family members in a subdivision he called "Readington."

Attractive suburban building lots with easy access to Washington, D.C. sold quickly. Within a few years, there were seven new homes facing Baltimore Road, Reading and Grandin Avenues. In 1890, Washington Danenhower, another speculator from D.C., purchased Reading's unsold lots for $10,000 and platted them as "Rockville Park." He sold lots for $300 to local merchants and commuters, who built stylish homes on Baltimore Road and Grandin Avenue. Often families bought adjacent parcels on which to plant gardens and trees.

Although construction slowed after 1900, homes continued to be built in this close-in subdivision. The area drew national attention in 1913, when Rockville's typhoid epidemic began with a contagious visitor and resulted in a new sewer system. By the 1920s, Baltimore Road was a two-lane concrete street flanked by storm drain ditches. On the south side of the road was a brick sidewalk; the north side blended into fields and small streams.

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