A Cottage City woman who lived just off Route 1, neighboring Brentwood and Mount Rainier, invented the game that eventually was marketed as Monopoly, but her contribution was covered up for decades.
In 1904, a typist named Elizabeth Magie received a patent for something she called the Landlord’s Game, in which players took turns earning wages, paying rent and trying to avoid going to jail.
The patent described a game played on a square board, with a jail in one corner and a public park (predecessor to “Free Parking”) in another; nine spaces on each side with a railroad in the middle; and one space with the iconic phrase “go to jail.”
The game also had some features that were later dropped, such as squares where players had to buy bread or other necessities.
The goal was to help spread the theories of Henry George, a political economist who criticized monopolies and promoted a radical land-value tax that was briefly tried in Hyattsville in 1892 and is still debated today.
“It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” Magie wrote in a description of the game.
Magie worked as a stenographer and typist in the Dead Letter Office in D.C., saving up enough money to buy a Second Empire-style house at 4203 Bunker Hill Rd. in Cottage City which she shared with an actor who paid rent and a servant.
Her game became something of an underground hit, with ersatz versions circulating for decades, including one in which the properties had been renamed for streets in Atlantic City, N.J.
That version was later basically stolen by a Philadelphia resident named Charles Darrow, who sold it to Parker Brothers and long claimed credit.
Magie’s role in developing the game came out in bits and pieces, as she gave interviews drawing attention to it and a man who was sued for making an Anti-Monopoly game documented in extensive court records.
In 2015, author Mary Pilon covered the game’s tortured past in her book “The Monopolists,” which helped draw more attention to Magie’s role.
Built in 1887, Magie’s historic home on Bunker Hill Road is the oldest building in the town of Cottage City still standing, according to a county report, and has been noted for its Second Empire-style architecture.
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