Tea at Trianon: A Drive Through “the Ugliest Place in Maryland”: Part 1

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, November 7, 2021

A Drive Through “the Ugliest Place in Maryland”: Part 1

Why we moved to Frederick County fifty years ago. Glad they are fixing it up. By the way, Rockville in the fifties was the setting of the film and novel Lilith. From Strong Towns:

It’s always interesting to find old write-ups of commercial strips like this, especially from the 1970s, when they had become old enough to be studied with some sense of time and perspective, but young enough that they were still mostly intact in their original form. For example, check out this piece in the Washington Post from 1979, simply titled “The Rockville Pike.” It identifies Rockville Pike as “the Main Street of the suburbs,” and notes that in 1964, a Montgomery County council member dubbed it “the ugliest place in Maryland.” (He must not have been familiar with Maryland’s portion of U.S. 1.)
The Post article also profiles a produce vendor, who opened up back in 1946 when there were dozens of such vendors. By 1979, he was the last one. It’s remarkable how recently you could still find such semi-regulated, small-scale commerce along a major thoroughfare. On many country roads, you still can. It’s heartening, in a way. The stroad form these thoroughfares take today is really quite recent in the big picture.
One last note from the Post article: There’s an interesting paragraph about a 1970 sign ordinance that prohibited flashing lights along Rockville Pike. I wrote about this phenomenon here, arguing that the highway beautification movement basically got it wrong: the problem was not aesthetics but land use. Yet instead of reforming the land use, we settled on things like banning neon and regulating how many times a sign could blink. And what’s worse, we went full-bore into “urban renewal.” Rockville embodies all of this history. But it also suggests what can come next. (Read more.)