Town Center, Columbia, Maryland
Encyclopedia
Town Center is one of the ten villages in Columbia
Columbia, Maryland
Columbia is a planned community that consists of ten self-contained villages, located in Howard County, Maryland, United States. It began with the idea that a city could enhance its residents' quality of life. Creator and developer James W. Rouse saw the new community in terms of human values, not...

, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, first occupied in 1974. It is a non-contiguous, diverse area, and the most urban-like, ranging from multi-level high density apartments homes and office buildings, to single family homes.

The six residential neighborhoods in the village include Amesbury Hill, Banneker, Creighton’s Run, Lakefront, Vantage Point, and Warfield Triangle.

Names and history

Vantage Point is in the tract patented by John Dorsey as Dorsey's Adventure in 1688. The name comes from a poem by Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...

, and the street names are from Frost and William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...

. It contains a house, Historic Oakland, built in 1811 by Charles Sterrett Ridgely. The Town Center village offices are in Historic Oakland. Oliver's Carriage House, a stable built by Robert Oliver, is on the grounds and is currently home to Kittamaqundi Community, a non-denominational religious congregation.

Amesbury Hill was originally set aside as an estate area for Rouse Company executives and was part of the Mercer Tract. Mercer Tract was owned by the parents of Lucy Mercer, the personal secretary to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Creighton's Run, developed in 1979, was named for the boss of the construction company.

Banneker was first occupied in 1992, named for Banneker Road. The road was named for Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker was a free African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author and farmer.-Family history and early life:It is difficult to verify much of Benjamin Banneker's family history...

.

In 1998 the first apartments were occupied in Warfield Triangle, named for Governor Warfield Parkway, in turn named for Governor Edwin Warfield
Edwin Warfield
Edwin Warfield , a member of the United States Democratic Party, was the 45th Governor of Maryland in the United States from 1904 to 1908.-Early life:...

.

Vantage House is a Life Care Retirement Community and opened in October 1990.

Services and entertainment

The lakefront of 27 acres (109,265.2 m²) Lake Kittamaqundi
Lake Kittamaqundi
Lake Kittamaqundi is a reservoir located in Columbia, Maryland in the vicinity of the Mall in Columbia. It is also adjacent to the Rouse Company's offices and visible from US-29.The lake was given its name after the first Indian settlement in Howard County...

 with the Columbia Association's office and the iconic People Tree sculpture, is the heart of the village, and the whole town. The lake's name is a Piscataway Indian
Piscataway Indian Nation
The Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory is an unrecognized Native American tribe in Maryland that is related to the historic Piscataway tribe. At the time of European encounter, the Piscataway was one of the most populous and powerful Native polities of the Chesapeake Bay region, with a...

 word meaning meeting place. In the summer, the Columbia Association offers live entertainment and/or movies daily at the Kittamaqundi lakefront.

The Mall in Columbia, a large shopping and entertainment mall, is located within Town Center.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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