Peerless Rockville's 22nd annual Progressive Dinner House Tour provided participants with a closer look at a distinctive neighborhood that reflects 160 years of building and community change South Van Buren Street. The street has been home to individuals and families who have played important roles to develop and shape the community, including selling off adjacent land for subdivision, and establishing and maintaining enduring institutions and businesses.

In 1841-42, Captain Zachariah and Anne Johnston built their house just outside Rockville's southwest boundary, across from the Baptist Church and cemetery. The house, at 104 West Jefferson Street, was remodeled to appear much as it does today by their grown daughter, Lydia and her husband, Clerk of the Court E. Barrett Prettyman. The Prettyman's stable lane ambled south, and eventually became South Van Buren Street. At the turn of the century, only two other houses were built on Van Buren, #105 by the Prettyman's daughter Miriam and her husband A. J. Almoney, editor, postmaster, and active Democrat, and #101, for Sophia Higgins and her three unmarried daughters.

During Rockville's building boom of the late 19th and early 20thcenturies, the southern portion of South Van Buren and Argyle Streets was included in the new Rockville Heights subdivision. The intention was to transform the 260 acre Carter Farm into a total planned community to include large lots, parks, circles, lakes, boulevards, and a hotel. The land was enmeshed in litigation for several years, overall sales were slow, and no homes were built before 1900. Some prominent Rockvillians did, however, erect large new homes on multi-acre parcels of the subdivision.

The 1920s marked the first time more Americans lived in cities than on farms. In Rockville, the Prettyman's stable lane was extended through oak and chestnut woods to lengthen Van Buren Street, and the land was subdivided. Among the first to be developed was #117, in 1923. Numbers 118 and 122 were both constructed in 1927. Van Buren Street became a fasionable address. Through the 1940s, other lots on the street were sold. The southernmost part of the street was annexed into Rockville in 1937, but what is now lower South Van Buren and Argyle Streets remained broad fields and meadows, a favorite bird and squirrel hunting area through the 1950s.

By that time post-World-War II ramblers and split levels and an early example of renowned modernist Chloethiel Woodard Smith's architecture (built at #135) mixed comfortably with earlier colonial revival and Victorian homes. South Van Buren Street's character derives from its rich architectural blend, spacious lots, proximity to downtown Rockville, and homeowners who continue to care lovingly for their properties and their community.