12500 Swirl Lane (House), Bowie, Prince George's County, MD

Significance: The house at 12500 Swirl Lane is a representative example of the four-bedroom variation of The Colonial model constructed at Belair. It occupies a high-profile corner lot in the Somerset section and is virtually unchanged on its exterior from the time of construction in 1960-61. The three- and four-bedroom options for The Colonial model at Belair, each with a distinctive façade, were carryovers from Levittown, New Jersey, although Levitt and Sons did redesign parts of the floor plans and elevations when devising the 1961 model line. The Colonials shared an identical first-floor plan that featured the increasingly popular family room. This feature was bigger and more centrally accessible than the one in the comparable two-story model built in the first sections of Levittown, New Jersey, which, notably, was the first "true" family room offered by Levitt and Sons in any of its models. To gain additional space for a fourth bedroom in The Colonial, Levitt architects created an overhang by cantilevering the second floor out over the first on the street elevation. Known in period literature as a "garrison" front, such an arrangement was believed to recall a supposed defensive strategy used in construction of seventeenth-century houses of New England. This nod to the colonial past was one of a number of architectural elements that comprised an overarching traditional theme guiding the design of most of the Belair house façades.
Survey number: HABS MD-1260
Building/structure dates: 1960-1961 Initial Construction