Kings Contrivance, Columbia, Maryland

Kings Contrivance
Village
Country	United States
State	Maryland
City	Columbia
Established	1977
Named for	The King's Contrivance restaurant

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).

The 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."

Over 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.

In November 1973, the HRD announced plans for its newest village, Kings Contrivance. Development of Kings Contrivance, however, was subsequently delayed due to the effects of the 1973–75 Recession. The first neighborhood of Kings Contrivance, Magill's Common, opened in 1977.

Macgill's Common and the vast majority of the Dickinson neighborhood are located on land that was sold to HRD in September 1963 by Overlook, Inc., a company owned by Kingdon Gould. Overlook, Inc. had acquired the land in several purchases in 1960 and 1961. The Macgill's Common and Dickinson areas were included in the original 1965 New Town zoning district, and in 1966 was subjected to the Columbia Association lien that generally delineates the boundaries of Columbia. Most of the land in the Huntington neighborhood was not acquired by HRD until 1971, and was added to the New Town zoning district in December 1976.

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