Kings Contrivance, Columbia, Maryland

Kings Contrivance is a village in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland, and is home to about 11,000 residents. The eighth of Columbia's ten villages to be developed, Kings Contrivance is Columbia's southernmost village. It consists of the neighborhoods of Macgill's Common, Huntington and Dickinson, and includes single-family homes, townhouses, apartments and a Village Center (open-air shopping center).Name originThe village takes its name from a local restaurant that was opened in 1962 by Kingdon Gould, Jr. in an old county home that previously belonged to the Macgill family. Gould named his restaurant "The King's Contrivance" to incorporate both his name and the historical feel of the old Colonial land grants, many of which included the word "contrivance". Gould sold the restaurant to the Rouse related developer of Columbia, the Howard Research and Development Corp., in 1967. In 1973, Kings Contrivance was selected as the name of the new village "because of its familiarity and identification with the area of the village."HistoryOver a period of time, developer James W. Rouse became interested in building a new model city, and in the early 1960s, his company, The Rouse Company, with funding provided by Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, acquired over 14,000 acres in Howard County, Maryland for that purpose. Together, the Rouse Company and Connecticut General formed The Howard Research and Development Corporation (HRD) to develop the new town of Columbia. In October 1963, the plans for the new city were made public. In 1965 the Howard County government approved the HRD's requested master plan for Columbia which included a new zoning classification, New Town zoning, that applied to the HRD's development of Columbia and which allowed for considerable flexibility in that development.