The Hillcrest Neighborhood touches the District of Columbia border, beginning at a point near the intersection of Suitland Parkway and Naylor Road and extending southeastward to Wheeler Road. With new Branch Avenue (Rt 5) as its eastern boundary and Wheeler Road as its western boundary, the neighborhood is terminated on the south by the Capitol Beltway.
The development of the Hillcrest Neighborbood represents the type of swift transition of open country land to subdivision use that took place in the county after World War II. Initial development produced several types of housing units -- single-family attached, two-family detached, and units in two-story garden apartment structures.
These were supplemented in more recent years by the introduction of large-scale apartment construction and extensive commercial land use along principal paths of travel. Another change in land use has been a trend toward industrial sites in locales near the Capital Beltway.
HILLCREST POPULATION CHARACTERISTICS Population 24,356 Under 18 Years of Age 34.4% Over 64 Years of Age 5.4% Nonwhite Residents 12.6% Households 7,830 Headed by Husband-Wife Teams 70.2% Female Family Head without Spouse 9.7% Senior Citizen Households 675 Percent of Total Households 8.6%
A century and more ago, the Hillcrest Neighborhood's broad expanse was characterized by a number of farms and wooded areas, separated from the District of Columbia by the stream valley of Oxon Run. Road connections to the nation's capital were via an old path that still winds to the west and east of Branch Avenue but was known at that time as Naylor or Walker Road (the names of farm families along its route). A connecting road was St. Barnabas Road which trended southwestward to a church of that name and to Barnaby Mansion, a colonial estate located on Barnaby Run. In addition to its westward slope to Oxon Run, the neighborhood also had a downward inclination to the east, toward Henson Creek, and thus its interior sections are formed of hilly terrain along a ridge line marked by Silver Hill Road.
Very few nonagricultural activities were present in the neighborhood in the 1800's. They were limited to a few enterprises found at the nodal points of crossroads, primarily at the point where St. Barnabas Road branched to the southwest (now the site of the Marlow Heights Shopping Plaza and once known as Gordons Corner).
The slow pace of change over the decades is indicated by the existence of only 50 to 60 homes in the entire neighborhood in the 1920's. These homes were located on farm parcels or along the main arteries of travel -- along Naylor Road, St. Barnabas Road, and Temple Road. The latter path trended southward from St. Barnabas Road and is now known as Temple Hills Road. Very few homes were located in the more western section of the neighborhood in proximity to Wheeler Road. Although little more than a rural unpaved lane, Wheeler Road also provided a route into the District of Columbia; it led to the settlements in that jurisdiction known as Congress Heights and Anacostia and connected with the Navy Yard Bridge crossing of the Anacostia River.
The neighborhood's common border with the nation's capital was instrumental in some early attempts to subdivide along that border in the same way that several other subdivisions had been laid out a few miles to the north (at Bradbury Park and Capitol Heights). The land in the Hillcrest Neighborhood which was involved in the subdivision planning in the early 1900's was known as the Knox Farm, abutting both the District of Columbia and Naylor Road. In the fashion popular at that time, around 200 small lots were planned, each with about 25 feet of street frontage compensated by considerable depth. Actual development never took place, and much of the tract was utilized in the 1940's by the construction of Suitland Parkway. The southern portion of the tract was developed as Good Hope Hills in the 1950's.
Some interest in the subdivision of small parcels of land along St. Barnabas Road was evidenced in the late 1930's and early 1940's, but most improvements upon the land did not occur until the end of World War II.
The large-scale residential development that appeared in the neighborhood after World War II had its roots in the substantial acquisition of land and the long-range plans of a man who was already experienced in subdivision development in the southeastern section of the District of Columbia. The parcels of land gathered together by Mr. Anthony Carozza in the early 1940's totaled almost 800 acres in the form of vacant and wooded tracts that lay to the west of old Naylor/Walker Road. During the 1940's, this road was redesignated as Branch Avenue, and connected to Branch Avenue in the District of Columbia, but the feasibility of the avenue as a corridor of residential development was more directly related to its intersection with Suitland Parkway, constructed during World War II.
For some years, Colebrooke Drive remained the access road from Branch Avenue into the Hillcrest Heights subdivision initiated by Mr. Carozza after World War II restrictions upon new construction were relaxed. Single-family homes were built in a section to the north of Colebrooke Drive, and, in accordance with an agreement with the County not to use septic systems on lots of less than 10,000 square feet, the Carozza Company defrayed much of the cost of bringing in sewer lines to a section of the County devoid of such facilities. The lines at that time had connections with trunk sewers in the Oxon Run Basin in the District of Columbia.
A second phase in the development of the Hillcrest Heights subdivision began around 1950 and was in the form of relatively low cost housing. It included groupings of two-story garden apartments and substantial tract development of attached homes (duplexes). Construction of housing of this type was related to conditions during the Korean War, a period in which a priority for building materials could be secured if construction met the need for inexpensive housing by veterans and would help to offset an acute shortage of such housing in the District of Columbia and its suburban jurisdictions. That veterans did make their home in this locality is shown in the Census information of 1960; 56 percent of the adult civilian males in the Hillcrest Heights section were veterans of World War II and the Korean War. Iverson Street was established at this time to provide the access road to the garden apartments and duplexes, connected to Colebrooke Drive. Its outlet to Branch Avenue did not materialize until the avenue was reconstructed on a new alignment in the late 1950's.
The pattern set in motion by the development of the Hillcrest Heights subdivision was followed by others in the housing construction industry who owned or acquired land to the west of Branch Avenue. Their production of dwelling units brought in a population of over 10,000 in ten years (1948-1958). Factors involved in this growth of housing included establishment of sewer lines along Branch Avenue and ease of commuting to the District of Columbia. The latter was facilitated by the opening of the South Capitol Street Bridge over the Anacostia River in the District of Columbia in 1950. This new bridge had a ramp leading into the Suitland Parkway, which in turn made connections with Branch Avenue and provided residents in the Hillcrest Neighborhood with a direct transportation route into the downtown section of the nation's capital. The Census of 1960 indicated that over 70 percent of employed persons in the Hillcrest Heights locality worked outside of Prince George's County.
Mixed housing types continued as a feature of the neighborhood during the 1950's. The Oxon Run Hills and Good Hope Hills subdivisions supplied duplexes or attached homes, while new structures in the Hillcrest Heights, Hillcrest Estates, and Hillcrest Gardens subdivisions were primarily of the single-family detached type.
The Marlow Heights subdivision, near the intersection of Branch Avenue and St. Barnabas Road, began development in 1953 on land acquired from the Marlow family and supplied both detached and attached homes. The Deer Park subdivision on St. Barnabas Road had been initiated with detached homes, but an addition to this subdivision brought in a substantial number of duplexes. Smaller groupings along this route were generally characterized by the unattached one-family house, as in the case of Gordons Corner and North Barnaby.
Apart from the early development of a group of garden apartments in the Hillcrest Heights subdivision, the only other apartment construction in the neighborhood as of 1950 comprised two groupings on Southern Avenue on the District of Columbia border. The building of the Oxon Park and Oxon Terrace Apartments, however, was more related to the growth of multi-family units just across the border and utilized the sanitary sewer systems in that section of the District of Columbia.
With the reconstruction of Branch Avenue (Rt. 5) in the late 1950's, vacant parcels in the neighborhood with close proximity to the avenue were developed with multi-family units, either in the form of large garden apartment complexes or in taller elevator structures. Multi-family housing construction included two projects near the interchange of Branch Avenue with Suitland Parkway (Lynnhill Gardens and Top of the Hill Apartments), and five in the Marlow Heights section (Gateway Square, Marlow Overlook, Marlow Heights Apartments, Marlow Heights Gardens, and Marlow Plaza). Five more complexes were built in an interior section near the juncture of Iverson Street and 23rd Parkway (Chestnut Hill, Iverson Towers, Barnaby Run, Fountain Square, and Maplewood Park), and another was established on Southern Avenue at the District of Columbia border (Forest Hills). The Forest Hills site now includes an apartment structure built by a non-profit organization for the use of senior citizens; this seven story structure was formerly known as Meridian Hill Apartments when it was owned by the District of Columbia Church Homes, Inc. It was recently acquired by the Prince George's County Housing Authority and renamed McGuire House in honor of Marie C. McGuire, a retired Federal housing official.
According to a 1970 CRP field survey, over 5,000 housing units in apartment structures were present in the neighborhood, in contrast to 3,800 units in detached and attached homes. Extensive commercial development has followed the introduction of multi-family units, and the 1964 opening of the Capital Beltway has been a factor in the redevelopment of parcels of land near the Beltway in industrial land use.
The 1970 count of population in the Hillcrest Neighborhood exceeded 24,000, and approximately one-third of that number are in the under-18 age group. Five percent are in the senior citizen age bracket. Large-scale apartment construction has effected changes in the former patterns of age distribution. In 1960, for example, the proportion of young people was estimated at around 43 percent in the Hillcrest locality and that of senior citizens around three percent. Correspondingly, there has been a decrease in the proportion of households headed by husband-wife teams; this type of household now accounts for only 70 percent of the neighborhood's 7,830 total households, and those headed by a senior citizen comprise almost nine percent of all households.
Another population change has been the movement of nonwhites into the neighborhood; they now comprise over 12 percent of the total residency, contrasted to less than two percent in 1960.