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Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Cottage
Inventory No.:
M: 26-57
Other Name(s):
Frieda's Cottage; Fromm-Reichmann Cottage
Date Listed:
1/13/2021
Location:
19 Thomas Street, Rockville, Montgomery County
Category:
Structure
Period/Date of Construction:
1936-1957
Architect/Builder:
Walter G. Peter, Architect
Franklin H. Karn, Builder
Boundary Description:
The boundary includes the entire lot encompassing the cottage and preserves the original open area immediately surrounding the building to the north and west, its location on Thomas Street to the east, and conveys its relationship to the Lodge that stood to the northwest. Vegetation on the south lot line separates the cottage from later residential development. (A conservation easement exists beyond the lot lines to the north and west.)
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Description:
The Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Cottage was constructed in 1936 in the Colonial Revival style. It sits substantially back from a primary road in a park-like setting in the midst of single-family residences. The 2,050 square-foot modest, two-story, wood-frame building has a basement, a slate side-gabled roof, double-hung multi-pane windows, a rear screened porch, and a carport. The symmetrical front (north) façade has four 6/6 double hung windows with louvered wood shutters featuring decorative urn-shaped cutouts on the first floor, along with three 6/6 gabled dormer windows on the second floor. The wide weatherboard siding has a shallow dentil course. Along the main façade a wavy design extends below the eave. An integral shed-roof porch extends over the façade’s center bay and is accented with a slightly curved underside supported by paired square columns and segmental arches. The porch shelters two entries: a centered primary door with 4-light sidelights and a secondary door to the left (east side). The cottage’s west elevation has a brick chimney, wooden steps with a railing leading to a door in the kitchen, and a basement access. Windows flanking the chimney on the first floor are six-pane casements and there is a 6/6 double-hung window on the second floor to the left (north side) of the chimney. The nonsymmetrical rear (south) elevation has a screened porch with two windows to the left (west side) of the porch and one window to the right (east side). Unlike the front second floor gabled dormer windows, the three rear second floor dormer windows have shed roof. All of the windows are 6/6. The center window is a wall dormer that extends as part of the shed roof over the screened porch where Frieda occasionally met with patients sent over from the Lodge building. Within the porch, the rear door is decorated with a fan light. A screen door on the porch’s south side leads out to the lawn. A concrete terrace extends through and beyond the porch. The east elevation facing Thomas Street is dominated by four windows and a carport. Two of the windows are 6/6 sash, one on the first level to the left (south side) of the carport and the other on the second floor centered in the gable. The carport, located on the elevation’s northern end, is made up of a gable roof with the same alignment as the gable of the house. The roof is supported by eight wooden posts and a small extension of the house’s east wall. Of note are the building’s only square-shaped windows, located under the carport, which appear to be the top half of the original double-door entrance for the garage, once housed within the cottage’s principal mass.
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Significance:
The Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Cottage has exceptional national significance for its historic association with Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1889-1957), a psychiatrist internationally renowned for her pioneering contribution to the treatment of schizophrenia, a serious mental illness that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions, and relate to others. She made history as the paramount figure of the unique and legendary mental hospital in Rockville, Maryland, Chestnut Lodge, the premier center for the psychoanalytically oriented treatment of schizophrenia. She served as its director of psychotherapy and lived on the grounds of the institution in a cottage the Lodge built for h er. The cottage housed her office where she saw the majority of her patients. The Lodge itself was destroyed by fire in June 2009. The period of significance begins in 1936, when Fromm-Reichmann moved into the cottage and ends in 1956 when she left for California on a year-long sabbatical. Eight months after returning to the Lodge, she passed away in the cottage. Her residency in the cottage for two decades coincided with the “golden age” in interpersonal psychoanalysis, a distinctive period in the history of psychiatry in which a profound reworking of basic psychoanalytic ideas radically transformed what it meant to be a patient and redefined the posture of the therapist. During this era, Fromm-Reichmann crafter her technique for treating schizophrenia and set the standard for treating severe mental illness through the methods of interpersonal psychiatry. The cottage retains a high degree of integrity in location, workmanship, feeling and association. Most importantly, Frieda’s office remains intact on the southeast side of the cottage facing Thomas Street and the rear yard. Otherwise, the aspects of setting, design, and material have experienced some alteration. The original setting was characterized by two physical aspects. First was the monumental Lodge hospital building located just northwest of the cottage at the front of the property facing the main road. The loss of the Lodge building has impacted the historical setting of the cottage. However, the Lodge’s open surroundings are undisturbed, thus preserving the route Frieda and her patients traveled between the cottage and the Lodge building. Second was the overall campus-like setting south of the Lodge where several buildings, originally constructed out of public view, housed Lodge staff and ancillary services. Three of these buildings are extant west of the cottage. The setting is now dominated by a single-family development south of the cottage. Large two-story homes in this subdivision are oriented in an east/west direction. The cottage’s orientation to the north, along with its modest size, uniquely sets it apart from any perceived association with the later residential construction.
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