Montgomery County has reprinted its 2001 “Places from the Past: The Tradition of Gardez Bien in Montgomery County, Maryland” on more than 400 historic sites in the county, plus added a new electronic version. We speak with the author, Kelly, a county historic preservation planner.
How did “gardez bien” become the county motto? Montgomery County is named for Richard Montgomery, who is the first American who was killed in the Revolutionary War. His family motto was gardez bien, which means to take good care.
With new development, sometimes parts of our past disappear. In the 10 years since your book was published, have any of the historic parts of Montgomery County been lost? Well, yes. There’s always growth that’s occurring and the intent of the preservation program is to help manage change … One example of some compromises that have had to be made is with the Falkland Apartments in Silver Spring, where there were three blocks of historic garden apartments that were built in the New Deal era and their location is now right next to the Metro. So we have a balance of designating historic buildings but also wanting to have transit-oriented development. In this case, we were able to have two of the three blocks designated as historic sites.
Do you have a favorite historic site? The thing that really strikes me is the diversity that we have with art deco and streamlined buildings in Silver Spring, but yet we have within a 20-minute drive beautiful stone farmhouses in the Poolesville area. I think that a lot of times, we’re busy driving on the interstate to get to and from our jobs and don’t realize the wealth of resources that we have just off the beaten path. Certainly the Monocacy Aqueduct off the C&O canal is a real treasure.
