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. 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. In 1867, Samuel Taylor Suit moved to Maryland and purchased more than 800 acres (320 ha) near Washington, D.C. 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 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. Property owned by James West and Joseph Friday, located near the current intersection of Swann and Silver Hill Roads, was used as an airfield from 1938 to 1941. 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 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 the Carry Ice Cream Co. The 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.
The Suitland station on the Washington Metro’s Green Line opened to the public January 13, 2001. 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.
[Source: Wikipedia]
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