A Lumberyard in North Brentwood

Just across Rhode Island Avenue from the Henry Randall house is a tight strip of land bounded by the railroad to the east. A place at present-day filled with businesses of all sizes and descriptions (including, until quite recently, Pan Masters, a delightful place to acquire, and play steel drums), as well as the Prince Georges County African American Museum and Culture Center, this portion of this strip of North Brentwood was undeveloped until sometime in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Two aerial views make this clear. One from 1965 shows undeveloped but cleared land, and the other from 1977 shows that by this time the building that would become PGAAMCC had been built, along with a long building in which several small businesses could rent space, such as Pan Masters.

Likely at this same time, the space bounded in yellow in the 1965 aerial view, which contained many structures, was replaced by the one quite large building/warehouse visible in the 1977 aerial view. This construction likely eliminated all remaining physical traces of what had for some time been a flourishing lumber yard.

From the 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map of this area, we get a clue about these structures and their function–they were part of the W.A. Middleton Lumber Company. Taking advantage of proximity to the railroad for delivery of supplies, this lumberyard probably was a successful business and would have been a prime source of materials for all homebuilding taking place in North Brentwood in the years of its greatest growth, through the 1940s and into the 1950s.

William A. Middleton lived across the railroad tracks in Cottage City. After retiring from a government position as a lumber inspector in Washington D.C., he opened his business around 1920 and ran it until 1939. His name appears on a Sanborn fire map of that same year. A list of entrepreneurs at the back of Minding Our Own Business lists Frank Ewing as the owner of a lumber yard on Rhode Island Avenue. It almost certainly would be this same one, and he likely was Mr. Middleton’s successor as proprietor.

Sources

Sanborn Fire Map for Brentwood and North Brentwood (1922)

Aerial maps derived from PGAtlas

Biographical information on W. A. Middleton derived from Ancestry.com