Landover, Maryland

• 1. Introduction

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  Landover, Maryland, took its name from a town in Wales called Llandovery. It sits in Prince George's County, an unincorporated community where roughly 25,998 people lived as of the 2020 census. The borders are drawn by roads and rails. Sheriff Road and Central Avenue mark the south. The Capital Beltway runs along the east. The Orange Line tracks and John Hanson Highway hem it in on other sides. Inside those lines is a place that is not really one place at all. Landover is a patchwork of small subdivisions stitched together by census mapmakers. It is a community where you can live your whole life and have a mailing address for a city you do not live in. How did a Welsh name end up on a Maryland map? Why does a stadium with a Landover address sit in a different community entirely? And what happened to the gleaming shopping mall that once anchored it all? Those questions thread through everything that follows.

• 2. A Place Assembled From Pieces

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  The Greater Landover census-designated place did not exist until the 2000 U.S. census. Before that, the U.S. Census Bureau counted four separate CDPs here in the 1990 count: Landover, Dodge Park, Kentland, and Palmer Park. The bureau folded them into one larger unit, then renamed that unit simply the Landover CDP as of the 2010 census. The subdivisions still carry their own names today. Ardwick Park, Kenmoor, Brightseat, Columbia Park, Village Green, White House Heights, and Summerfield all sit under the single Landover label. Because Landover is unincorporated, it has no postal zip code of its own to match its identity. Residents carry Hyattsville postal addresses even though they live in Landover and not in Hyattsville. The shared zip code is 20785. Just across the Orange Line tracks and John Hanson Highway sits Landover Hills, a separate and incorporated community that is easy to confuse with its neighbor.

• 3. Who Lives Here

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  The median age in Landover was 33.5 years at the 2020 census, a relatively young community. More than a quarter of residents, 27.3%, were under the age of 18. Just over ten percent were 65 or older. For every 100 females there were 89.3 males. The racial composition tells a longer story of change. In 2000, residents who were Black or African American alone and non-Hispanic made up 91.56% of the population. By the 2020 census, the Black or African American share had moved to 64.8%. Over the same stretch, the Hispanic or Latino population grew sharply, reaching 27.4% by 2020 after sitting at just 2.90% in 2000. Households here skew toward families. Of the 8,769 households counted in 2020-39.1% had children under 18 living in them. About 41.1% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present.

• 4. Stadiums And Arenas

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  Northwest Stadium opened in 1997, and the NFL's Washington Commanders have played there ever since. The stadium technically sits in the neighboring Summerfield CDP, yet it carries a Landover postal address, one of the quirks of this unincorporated geography. Nearby is the Prince George's Sports & Learning Complex, set on roughly 80 acres adjacent to FedExField. Before the football era, Landover was a basketball and hockey town. The Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals once played at the Capital Centre, an arena later renamed the US Airways Arena. Both teams eventually left for the Capital One Arena inside Washington, D.C. itself. The old Capital Centre was demolished in 2002. Access to the modern sports complex runs through transit. The Morgan Boulevard Metro station, built in 2004, serves as the main rail terminus reaching the home of the Commanders.

• 5. The Mall That Came And Went

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  Landover Mall opened in 1972, built and operated by Lerner Enterprises. It was the first enclosed mall in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to house four high-end anchor stores at once: Garfinkel's, Hecht's, Woodward and Lothrop known popularly as Woodies, and Sears. A multiplex movie theater sat in the basement of the northeast corridor. The decline came store by store. Garfinkel's closed in 1990. Woodies closed in 1995, replaced by a J.C. Penney that lasted only from 1996 to 2001. Hecht's closed in 2002 as the Bowie Town Center opened. The entire mall officially closed in 2003 and was demolished in 2006, with the exception of Sears. That last anchor held on until 2014 before it too was demolished. After FedExField arrived in 1997, the mall's parking lot found a second life as overflow parking. By 2007, county officials were drawing up plans to replace the site with luxury townhouses, stores, and office buildings.

• 6. Industry And Institutions

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  Eight O'Clock Coffee runs a coffee production plant in Landover. Giant Food keeps its corporate headquarters in the Ardwick Industrial Park area nearby, next to the New Carrollton Metro Station, alongside its corporate plant. Landover also hosts WMATA's Landover Metrobus Division and the Carmen E. Turner Maintenance Facility, the working backbone of regional transit. The National Harmony Memorial Park Cemetery sits within the community as well. Transit access here is unusually rich. Landover is one of the few areas in the Washington region served directly by multiple separate Metro rail lines, with the Orange, Blue, and Silver lines all reaching it. Many D.C. suburbs are not served directly by Metrorail at all. The Landover Metro station on the Orange Line serves the northern portion of the community. Beneath all of it, Amtrak trains pass through Landover on their way from Washington's Union Station to New York's Penn Station via Wilmington and Philadelphia.

• 7. Schools And The Weight Of History

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  Desegregation busing began in Prince George's County in 1972. School officials bused many Black children in Landover to schools with large numbers of white students elsewhere in the county. David Nakamura of The Washington Post reported that many Landover residents believed the busing contributed to the area's socioeconomic decline. The program was finally abolished in 1998 after a settlement in federal court. Many schools in the Landover area had closed over those years. Matthew Henson Elementary School, once in the CDP, was scheduled to close in 2009. In 2012, EXCEL Academy agreed to open a charter school in the former Henson space, moving from its previous campus in Riverdale. The community has produced notable figures. Landover is the birthplace of the late Len Bias. From 1960 to 1972, it was home to the jazz guitarist, composer, and educator Steve Rochinski. Just beside the old mall, Palmer Park was the hometown of Olympic boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard.

• 8. Culture And Memory

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  Beall's Pleasure and Ridgley Methodist Episcopal Church are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places, anchoring Landover's connection to an older past. Every year in May, a Harlem Renaissance Festival takes place at the Kentland-Columbia Park Community Center. In 2014, the National Archives for Black Women's History was controversially relocated from Washington, D.C., to 3300 Hubbard Road in Landover. The community's public spaces are run by the Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation, which operates the Kentland Community Center and the Palmer Park Community Center. Government services keep a footprint here too. The Prince George's County Police Department headquarters, which doubles as District 3 Station, sits in the Palmer Park area. From a Welsh place-name to a relocated archive of Black women's history, Landover keeps gathering layers that the single line on a census map can never quite contain.