Legend has it that Clara May Downey discovered the site of the Olney Inn when she got a flat tire near the 1875 Montgomery County farmhouse. It was the mid-1920s and Downey was considering following many women into the business of operating a tearoom.
Instead of a dainty tearoom catered towards women, Downey’s restaurant (it never operated as a true inn) would become a local institution that operated for 50 years. It is still fondly remembered today.
Baltimore certainly didn’t have a monopoly on the grandiose “Welcome to the South” style of dining that was fashionable in the early 20th century. Montgomery County, though once home to many abolitionist Quakers, also had many citizens who “did not forget their Southern Bonds.*” Downey’s restaurant offered up Southern-style hospitality – complete with house-cured hams and produce grown on the Inn’s sprawling grounds.
