Rockville grew from a convenient crossroads meeting place in the 1750s to become the county’s legal and market center. The tiny village was chosen as the seat of local government in 1776 because of its central location and the presence of taverns and inns for people with court business, and it was incorporated in 1860. Businesses were not separated from residential areas, and craftspeople and merchants often lived on the second floor or beside their shops. Because of the nearby Court House, many hotels, inns, and businesses clustered along Montgomery Avenue, Commerce Lane, now West Montgomery Avenue, and Washington Street. The area included brick institutional buildings, small frame residences, nineteenth-century hotels, and small businesses, and North Washington Street just north of Middle Lane was the site of the town’s earliest Black settlement. In the 1950s, increased traffic, limited parking, and economic problems led city officials to redevelop the forty-six-acre area, demolishing most of the old buildings and replacing them with an enclosed mall, the Rockville Mall, which was razed in 1995 as part of an effort to revitalize the Town Center.