Suitland is named after 19th century landowner and businessman Senator
Samuel Taylor Suit, whose estate, "Suitland,” was located near the present-day intersection of Suitland and Silver Hill Roads.
17th and 18th centuries In the 1600s, the
Piscataway tribe inhabited the lands in southern Maryland. European settlers first visited Saint Clement's Island on the
Potomac River and then established their first Maryland colony downriver at Saint Mary's City in 1634, and by the 1660s through the 1680s, settlers had moved into what is now known as Prince George's County. Faced with this encroachment, the Piscataways left the area in 1697, and moved north to present-day
Coney Island, New York. They eventually moved further north into
Pennsylvania and
Michigan. The sole export of the European settlers was
tobacco, and
slaves were first brought to the county in the 1700s.
19th century Prior to the
Civil War, tobacco production had made Prince George's County one of the wealthiest counties in Maryland, and half of the county's population was enslaved. In the 1870s and 1880s, such prominent guests as U.S. Presidents
Ulysses S. Grant and
Rutherford B. Hayes visited the Suitland estate. It was the 1871 site of negotiations preliminary to the international tribunal in
Geneva that arbitrated the
Alabama Claims. After Suit's death in 1888, portions of the estate were sold (
circa 1892 to 1903) to William A. Harrison, and the land was subsequently subdivided and sold over the years. Suit's son, Arthur B. Suit, retained three acres (1.2 ha) of land near the corner of Suitland and Silver Hill Roads, where he maintained a general store, a bar, a bowling alley, and the community's one-room jailhouse.
20th century By the turn of the century, the village of Suitland had added a post office, churches, and several houses. There are two historic cemeteries in Suitland: Cedar Hill and Lincoln Memorial. Prior to 1913, it was known as Forest Lake Cemetery and was likely renamed after the cedar trees that lined both sides of Suitland Road from the D.C. line to Silver Hill Road. Early churches performed baptisms at this location and it is also the burial site for victims of the 1906
Terra Cotta Railroad wreck. Lincoln Memorial Cemetery was founded in 1927 on the former Landon dairy farm and is the site where many prominent African-Americans are buried. Individuals include
Dr. Charles Richard Drew, who established improved techniques for blood storage and developed large scale blood banks early in World War II, and
Nannie Helen Burroughs, educator and civil rights activist. The first one-room schoolhouse was built in 1891 on land purchased by the community. A two-room schoolhouse was later built in 1915 on Silver Hill Road, expanded to four rooms in 1922, and saw additions to the building in 1928, 1941, and 1957. Named "Skyhaven" by a local student who won the naming contest sponsored by West and Friday, Skyhaven Airfield hosted a flying club that served 20 small planes, including
Wacos,
Great Lakes, and
Pipers. Suitland remained a rural farming community until the onset of
World War II. To meet the need for additional office space to support the war effort, in September 1941, the Public Buildings Administration awarded a $2,749,000 contract to
McCloskey and Co. of Philadelphia to develop a new federal office building in Prince George's County, Maryland. Later that year, 437 acres (177 ha) of farm and dairy land were purchased in Suitland to build the Suitland Federal Center. The 12 existing residences on this property included the former dairy and summer home of Albert Carry, the German-American founder of the National Capital Brewing Company and Carry Ice Cream Co. Suitland House, built by Lowell O. Minear, a pioneer designer of memorial parks, is the sole remaining residence on the Federal Center property. A colonial-revival style home, it now serves as office space for the
U.S. Census Bureau and is included in the Prince George's County Planning Department's 2010
Approved Historic Sites and Districts Plan. In 1942, the Suitland Manor apartments were built in anticipation of new federal workers. Parkway Terrace, Whitehall Square, and Marlborough House developments soon followed to accommodate the influx of Census Bureau and other federal employees. In 1943, the Census Bureau turned 14 acres (5.7 ha) of land at the Federal Center site into the largest Victory Garden in the Washington metropolitan area. The building was dedicated on November 15, 1951, to the high ideal of freedom of education, with John W. McNamara presiding as master-of-ceremonies and principal Thomas Warthen accepting the dedication on behalf of the students and faculty. Nearby was also LaReine High School, offering a Roman Catholic education for girls. LaReine was eventually closed, and its students transferred to nearby Bishop McNamara High School which became co-educational. The 1950s and 1960s were a period of major growth for Suitland, as new middle and working-class families settled into the newly built residential communities. However, this population boom came to an end around 1970 due to several converging factors. These included the availability of cheaper land and lower taxes in neighboring county jurisdictions; the ending of the postwar baby boom; the slowdown in the rate of federal government growth; and migration patterns spurred by school busing mandates leading to regional demographic shifts. The demographic changes caused by desegregation busing changed the county, transforming a great number of neighborhoods that were formerly white and middle-class to majority black and middle-class, and these shifts are reflected in the current population demographic of the Suitland CDP. In 1975, local historian Darlie Norton was elected to draft a local history of the township in preparation for Suitland's centennial celebration. In the 1980s, crime associated with vandalism, property violations, landlord absenteeism, and drugs were seen as a threat to the federal workers who were now commuting into Suitland from outside the community, and in 1983, a razor wired fence was erected around the Federal Center complex. Through most of this decade, neighborhoods near the Federal Center remained distressed and in need of a plan for positive change and growth. In the mid-1990s, county executive Wayne Curry conceived a plan to revitalize Suitland as part of a greater county-wide effort to improve townships located inside the Beltway. The defense departments Base Realignment Commission initiatives resulted in major changes at Andrews Air Force Base with hundreds of new employment positions anticipated over the coming decades. In 2006, multi-million-dollar federal renovations of the U.S. Census Building and National Oceanic and Atmospheric headquarters were completed. On October 1, 2009, Andrews Air Force Base, along with Naval Air Facility Washington, became a joint base known as Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility Washington, or Joint Base Andrews. Renovations were completed at the Spauldings Branch Library in 2012, which while located in District Heights, MD also serves Suitland and surrounding communities. Recent developments in Suitland include a double-digit fall in crime rates and increased development in the surrounding county. These include National Harbor to the south, Konterra to the north, Joint Base Andrews to the east of town, and the continuing development and/or gentrification of southeast Washington D.C. to the west. Several currently under-utilized Metro Stations in or around Suitland promise further development, as does recent legislation permitting gaming/casinos to be located in National Harbor. Two more revitalization projects were announced to the public in 2012: the "Buy Suitland" initiative and the Green Suitland Neighborhood Stabilization Project. The "Buy Suitland" initiative offers up to 5% purchase price to first time home buyers, up to 7% purchase price to local civic workers, or 35% of purchase price or $40,000 to debt-to-income candidates for properties located in 11 census tracts. Green Suitland NSP is allocating over $2 million for the purchase of foreclosed and abandoned homes to be rehabilitated with enviro-friendly, cost-saving upgrades before they are resold. ==Geography==