Reisterstown grew from a modest roadside way station into a town center for the farms and estates of northwest Baltimore County and Carroll County. By 1900, it was home to about 1,000 people, and descendants of early residents, especially the Reister extended family, shaped town life as owners of businesses, property, and undeveloped land. Main Street changed as traditional feed stores, blacksmithing, and saddle makers were joined by ice cream parlors, theatres, and antiques stores. By 1915, Reisterstown was a jumble of frame and brick homes and businesses, and an electric street railway up Main Street dramatically shortened travel time to and from Baltimore. In the early automobile age, places such as Gies Service Station stood at the juncture of Reisterstown Road and Westminster and Hanover pikes, even as few people could foresee the car's impact on everyday life. Rebecca Jane Stocksdale ran a boarding house at 234 Main Street with the help of Minnie Baker; the property had been in Stocksdale's family for generations, and Baker, like many African American women denied opportunities opened to white residents, worked as a servant before later purchasing a home on Bond Avenue. Gothic Revival houses were rare in Reisterstown, and 230 Main Street was built between 1865 and 1875 for Ann Whalen, a descendant of John Reister, and her niece Rebecca Jane Stocksdale; they later donated it to Grace M.E. Church South for use as a parsonage. Reisterstown became an antiques mecca beginning in the late 1960s, though its roots stretched back to the early 1900s, with Eve Stephens opening an antiques business at 234 Main Street in 1936 and Virginia "Ginny" Isaacs' White Horse Antiques, operating from 1956 to 1985, helping attract other businesses so that by the early 1980s the 200 block of Main Street had 11 shops.