When the Metropolitan Branch of the B&O Railroad was completed in 1873, houses quickly began to gather around the small Germantown station, creating a rural railroad village that served local farmers rather than commuters to Washington, D.C. Germantown Station provided shelters for milk cans along the tracks and a warehouse for crates of fruit and bags of flour to be transferred to trains. Businesses around the station included a carriage shop, two general stores, a harness maker, and a livery stable serving tinkers and vacationers, followed by a steam-powered flour mill in 1888 and a Presbyterian chapel in 1896. Homes near the station, including villa-style houses such as the Madeline Waters House built by Lloyd Dorsey in 1902, generally stood on larger lots than those in railroad suburbs and were simpler in design, housing carpenters, mill workers, livery stable workers, railroad telegraph operators, and also the mill manager, minister, and general store owner, while larger estates like those of the Waters family and banker Andrew Baker stood on the town's outskirts within walking distance of the stores and station.