Greenbelt Historic District

The Greenbelt Police Department (GPD) is the primary law enforcement agency servicing a population of 21,972 within 6.5 square miles (17 km2) of the city of Greenbelt.

The Toaping Castle was a house in present-day Greenbelt, Maryland, built c. 1750 by Charles, Isaac and Nathan Walker, three brothers who fled to America from Scotland. The Walker brothers constructed the house on a 188-acre (0.76 km2) land grant in an area that eventually became Greenbelt. Samuel Hamilton Walker was born at Toaping Castle in 1817 and later served as a Texas Ranger and U.S. Army officer who died in the Mexican–American War.The historical marker, located in front of a TGI Friday's restaurant at the corner of Greenbelt Road and Walker Drive, states that only the family cemetery remains of Toaping Castle. The cemetery is located at the end of Walker Drive in the woods behind a large parking structure, and contains the graves of Isaac and Nathan Walker.

Greenbelt is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and a suburb of Washington, D.C. At the 2020 census, the population was 24,921.Greenbelt is the first and the largest of the three experimental and controversial New Deal Greenbelt Towns, the others being Greenhills, Ohio, and Greendale, Wisconsin. Greenbelt was planned and built by the Federal government as an all-white town. The cooperative community was conceived in 1935 by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell, whose perceived collectivist ideology attracted opposition to the Greenbelt Towns project throughout its short duration. The project came into legal existence on April 8, 1935, when Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. Under the authority granted to him by this legislation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, on May 1, 1935, establishing the United States Resettlement Administration (RA/RRA).First called Maryland Special Project No. 1, the project was officially named Greenbelt when the Division of Suburban Resettlement of the Resettlement Administration began construction, on January 13, 1936, about eight miles north of Washington. The complete Greenbelt plans were reviewed at the White House by President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on April 30, 1936. The first tenants, after selection in a stringent application process, moved in to the town on September 30, 1937. The construction consisted of structures built in the Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and Bauhaus architectural styles.Greenbelt is credited as a historic milestone in urban development because it was the initial model for the privately constructed suburban Washington, D.C., planned cities of Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland.The original federally built core of the city, known locally as Old Greenbelt, was recognized as the Greenbelt Historic District by the Maryland Historical Trust, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark District. Greenbelt's population, which includes residents of privately built dwellings dating from after the end of the federal government's ownership of the city, was recorded as 23,068 at the 2010 U.S. Census and 24,921 at the 2020 census.

Washington's Birthday Marathon is an annual marathon in the United States that has been held nearly every February since 1962. It is held each year on the Sunday of Washington's Birthday Weekend and is conducted by the DC Road Runners Club. The race was originally held in Arlington, Virginia, but after a few years, it was moved to Beltsville, Maryland. Finally, it was relocated to Greenbelt, Maryland. The Greenbelt course started and finished at the recreation center of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and consisted of three loops around the Beltsville Agricultural Research Farm. When NASA permanently closed access between the rec center and Good Hope Road, the race start was moved to Duvall High School, and finally to the Greenbelt Youth Center. The race continues to consist of three loops on the farm.A three-person relay is also held at the same time.

The New Deal Cafe is a restaurant, music venue and community coffee house in the historic Roosevelt Center of Greenbelt, Maryland. It is a rare example of a restaurant operated as a consumers' cooperative, as it is owned by over 200 member patrons.The cafe, which has a small beer/wine bar in the back room, features nightly and some daytime performances by regional musicians, and sponsors several outdoor music festivals each year, including the Crazy Quilt Festival and the Greenbelt Blues Festival. The cafe walls are decorated with art by local artists, which is changed bi-monthly. The arts and entertainment activities are supported by the Friends of New Deal Café Arts (FONDCA), a separate tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. The New Deal Cafe won WTOP's Top-10 2012 best music venue in the DC region.The cafe's menu offers breakfast, lunch, and, dinner options as well as a variety of smoothies and coffee beverages. New Deal Cafe is currently under management by the Greenbelt Consumers Co-op grocery store. There is beer on tap and a selection of wines and bottled beer. The cafe is commonly referred to by customers as "Greenbelt's community living room" or "third place", part of the third place movement. Its name comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, which was responsible for the founding of Greenbelt.

The Greenbelt Arts Center is a theater located in the Roosevelt Center within the Greenbelt Historic District of Greenbelt, Maryland. It is normally configured as a three-quarter thrust, and seats approximately 90 people. The theater shows regular plays and musicals, and hosts special events during the year; including free Labor Day plays, and a yearly winter youth musical. It also hosts music concerts, dance and music companies, and displays art.The theater company of the Arts Center started in 1980, but then performed at the now-closed Utopia Theatre.

Greenbelt Cinema (formerly Old Greenbelt Theatre) is a historic two-screen cinema built between 1937 and 1938 in Roosevelt Center within the Greenbelt Historic District of Greenbelt, Maryland. It was built in the Art Deco style of architecture - or more specifically, the Streamline Moderne variant that Art Deco had largely evolved into in the 1930s. The theater opened to the public on September 21, 1938, with the first film shown at the theater Little Miss Broadway starring Shirley Temple.In 2002, the owner of the property threatened to close it down and replace it with a dollar store or other retail establishment. The City of Greenbelt stepped in to purchase it and ensure it remained a movie theatre. The theatre's age meant that modernization and renovation were required; in 2012, it was estimated the Greenbelt Theatre required around $1.5 million in repairs and upgrades. The City eventually did gather the funds to perform major renovations from 2014–2015. The renovation includes new digital projection equipment, a new 35MM projector for archival screenings, a restored lobby and ticket booth, restroom improvements, and an enhanced concession area. The city also assigned management and operation of the reopened theatre to The Friends of Greenbelt Theatre, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to the building's preservation and use. Seating 368 patrons in its Main Auditorium and 40 in its auxiliary auditorium (The Screening Room), the theater is one of the only nonprofit and two-screen movie theaters located in the state of Maryland.

The Beltway Plaza mall is located in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was developed by Sidney J. Brown and First National Realty, opening on October 17, 1963. It was originally composed of a massive S. Klein department store separated by a large parking lot from an A&P Supermarket located in a strip shopping center along with a barbershop, single screen movie theater, and Drug Fair store. By 1972-73, a small indoor mall was created, situated between the strip shopping center and the S. Klein store, that included a 6-screen theater, steakhouse (Emerson's Steakhouse), a branch of George's appliance store chain, an ice cream shop, and in-house catalog store. Within a few years of the S. Klein closing in 1975, the mall underwent major renovations. In the course of renovations, the space occupied by S. Klein was split up to create new spaces for different stores. Small fountains were added. The renovations included an additional 8 screen cinema and a Giant supermarket that was added to one wing of the former shopping strip. The renovation also enclosed the area from the original mall to the supermarket. The mall has 115 stores and restaurants and anchors include a Giant supermarket, Burlington Coat Factory, Marshalls, JoAnn Fabrics, Target, Shoppers World, and TJ Maxx (opened May 2014). (Shoppers World and the former Big Lots replaced a space formerly occupied by Value City until 2010.) The Target cannot be reached from the mall without going outdoors, though it shares a common roof.

Greenbelt Park is a park in Greenbelt, Maryland, that is managed by the National Park Service. The forested park lies approximately 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Washington, D.C., and is situated just within the Capital Beltway (which bounds the park to the northeast). The park land was originally intended to form part of the green belt surrounding the city of Greenbelt. The southern portion was assigned to the National Park Service, thus forming the park, while another section became part of the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). Recreational facilities include a 5.3 mile (8.5 km) mile hiking and equestrian trail, several shorter nature trails, numerous campsites, and three picnic areas. The park received its National Park designation in 1950, and was acquired along with the land that would form the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which divides the park in a roughly north–south direction. Nearly all of the park's facilities are located within the larger western portion (the eastern portion has one fire road).

Greenbelt Homes, Incorporated (GHI) is the housing cooperative in Greenbelt, Maryland, comprising the original houses built by the U.S. Federal Government in 1936 during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the New Deal, as well as additional defense housing built in 1941 by the Farm Security Administration, and smaller numbers of homes built later. With 1,600 homes, GHI forms the core of Old Greenbelt, and a large portion of the Greenbelt Historic District.

Greenbelt station is a Washington Metro and MARC station in Prince George's County, Maryland. The station is the northeastern terminus of the Green Line of the Washington Metro. MARC commuter rail trains on the Camden Line also stop at Greenbelt on a set of tracks parallel to the Metro tracks. The station is located in the city of Greenbelt, at its northwestern border (near Berwyn Heights, Beltsville, and the northern part of College Park), off of Cherrywood Lane, near the Capital Beltway. It has a parking lot that contains more than 3,300 spaces, with convenient access both to the outer loop of the Beltway (Interstate 95 North) and from the inner loop of the Beltway (Interstate 95 South). It serves as a commuter station for both local residents and commuters who arrive from elsewhere — such as those who travel on the inner loop of the Beltway or south on I-95 from Baltimore. Also available at the station is a weekday express Metrobus service, the B30 route to Baltimore–Washington International Airport (BWI), allowing for connections to Baltimore's regional transit services. The Greenbelt Metro is the most accessible station for employees and visitors of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who can connect to TheBus's route 15X.In-between Metro's Greenbelt and College Park stations, trains pass Lake Artemesia, which was created as part of the construction of the two stations. The Greenbelt Rail Yard is also nearby, the largest storage yard in the Metrorail network.

The drug raid at the residence of Cheye Calvo, then-mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, was a controversial action taken by the Prince George's County Sheriff's Office and Police Department on July 29, 2008. The raid was the culmination of an investigation that began in Arizona, where a package containing 32 pounds (15 kg) of marijuana was intercepted in a warehouse, addressed to the mayor's residence. Instead of confiscating the package, police allowed it to be delivered. Upon arrival, a SWAT team raided the house and held Calvo and his mother-in-law at gunpoint, and shot and killed his two dogs, one as it attempted to run away. The event gained national and international media attention. While the Calvos were cleared of wrongdoing, the police were accused by the Calvo family and civil rights groups of lacking a proper search warrant, using excessive force, and failure to conduct a proper background investigation of the home being raided—the investigation was so cursory that the sheriff's office was unaware that Calvo was the mayor. Despite the criticisms, no action has been taken against the officers or their respective police departments. In August 2010, Sheriff Michael A. Jackson stated that: "We've apologized for the incident, but we will never apologize for taking drugs off our streets. Quite frankly, we'd do it again. Tonight."