Peerless Presents: Women – Real and Fictional – Who Lived in Frieda’s Cottage, and a Closer Look at the C&O Canal

May is Preservation Month and Peerless Rockville’s online presentations are taking a closer look at Rockville’s National Historic Landmark, the remarkable woman who lived there and the novel she inspired. June finds the Glenview Mansion and Peerless Rockville Speaker Series exploring the C&O Canal.

Restoring Frieda’s Cottage: Preserving a Landmark Building, at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 6, will explore the home and office for more than 20 years of Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, a pioneering psychiatrist in the treatment of schizophrenia at Rockville’s Chestnut Lodge sanitarium. The presentation will examine how Peerless preserved the home’s integrity while promoting Fromm-Reichmann’s place in history, culminating in the cottage’s designation as Rockville’s first National Historic Landmark.

Unreal Estate: A Novelist Moves Into Frieda Fromm-Reichmann’s Cottage, at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 2, presents author Ellen Prentiss Campbell and her new novel “Frieda’s Song,” inspired by the life and work Fromm-Reichmann. In the novel, Eliza, a struggling psychotherapist and single mother, lives in the cottage 52 years after Frieda’s death and finds surprising ways Frieda still inhabits the cottage.

The Glenview Mansion and Peerless Rockville Speaker Series presents History and Preservation at the C&O Canal, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 10. Robin Zanotti, president of the C&O Canal Trust, will present a brief history of the canal, which is celebrating its 50th year as part of the National Park Service system, and the stories its lockhouses tell about westward expansion.

Programs will be via Zoom with links provided upon registration at peerlessrockville.org.