North Brentwood Creates Pocket Park to Honor Black Entrepreneur

[This story was updated on 12-01-25]

North Brentwood created a new pocket park to honor a notable Black entrepreneur whose family was among the first residents of the historic African American incorporated town.

Located at 4506 Rhode Island Ave., Henry and Isabella Randall Entrepreneur Park is on the site of the former home of one of the town’s founders.

Henry Randall and his extended family first moved to the area — then called Randallstown (which became North Brentwood in 1924)  — in the late 1800s after buying land from Capt. Wallace Bartlett, a White Army commander who led a regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War.

He built a house on the site in 1892, which was bought by the town’s doctor, who saw patients there. Randall, meantime, started his own company delivering coal and ice.

The house was demolished after a fire in 1994, but the town worked with the University of Maryland’s Preservation Program to excavate it and catalog the findings in 2022.

A joint project of the town and the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area, which contributed $30,000, the new park includes a sculpture by artists Wesley Clark and Nehemiah Dixon that says “We Endure,” the motto of the town’s 100th anniversary. The two were also behind the sculpture at the new Windom Road Historic Barrier Park.

Colorful posts in the park also tell the story of the town’s business owners, featuring QR codes that link to an audio on the North Brentwood historical landing page. The North Brentwood Historical Society selected over 75 businesses to be listed on the site, along with a book, “Minding Our Own Business,” an oral history of the town’s entrepreneurs.

“This park stands on the shoulders of entrepreneurs with limited means but unlimited vision,” said Perry Paylor, executive director of Prince George’s Redevelopment Authority, at a ribbon-cutting Monday. “It honors those who served their community when others denied them service. It reminds us that progress is strongest when it honors the past and invests in the future.”

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