Roland Park is a community located in Baltimore, Maryland. It was developed between 1890 and 1920 as an upper-class streetcar suburb. The early phases of the neighborhood were designed by Edward Bouton and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
Roland Park plan
Roland Park Shopping Center 1907 or shortly thereafter
Baltimore Country Club, in Roland Park
A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when the introduction of the electric trolley or streetcar allowed the nation’s burgeoning middle class to move beyond the central city’s borders. Early suburbs were served by horsecars, but by the late 19th century cable cars and electric streetcars, or trams, were used, allowing residences to be built farther away from the urban core of a city. Streetcar suburbs, usually called additions or extensions at the time, were the forerunner of today's suburbs in the United States and Canada. San Francisco's Western Addition is one of the best examples of streetcar suburbs before westward and southward expansion occurred.
Advertisement for a subdivision in Cincinnati, Ohio, touting the short walk to nearby rail stations
A Toronto streetcar on Queen Street East in 1923 serving streetcar suburbs such as Riverdale and The Beaches.
A Toronto streetcar in 2007 serving the exact same areas.
1920s tract houses in Mt Lebanon, on narrow lots backing onto the streetcar line