Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Chillum, MD

Chillum is an unincorporated census-designated place in Prince George's County, Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County.

As defined for the 2010 census, the Chillum CDP also takes in the adjacent unincorporated communities of Avondale, Carole Highlands, Green Meadows, and Lewisdale.

Its name comes from Chillum Castle Manor, a 4,443-acre land patent established in 1763 by William Dudley Digges and named after Chilham Castle in Kent, England, the old home of his ancestor Sir Dudley Digges.

Pierre L'Enfant, the designer of Washington, D.C., died in poverty in 1825 at Green Hill in present-day Chillum and was buried there until he was reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery in 1909; George Washington Riggs later bought the plantation and built the present Green Hill house in 1868.

Chillum stayed rural into the 1930s because no streetcar line reached it; its first platted subdivisions, including Chillum Gardens and Oakdale Terrace, appeared in the late 1930s, and the 1,147-unit Chillum Heights Apartments were built in 1949.

The 2020 census counted 36,039 people in Chillum, up from 33,513 in 2010, living in 11,469 households.

Chillum covers about 3.4 square miles, giving it a population density of roughly 10,688 people per square mile in 2020, and Hispanic or Latino residents made up 52.07% of its population that year.

Chillum has no ZIP code of its own: most of its addresses use the Hyattsville ZIP codes 20782 and 20783, while its far western edge near Takoma Park uses 20912.

Public elementary schools in the CDP include Chillum Elementary, César Chávez Elementary — renamed from Parkway Elementary in 2000 — Lewisdale, Rosa L. Parks, and Ridgecrest, and sections of Chillum are zoned to Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and High Point High School in Beltsville.

Its parks include Chillum Community Park, Michigan Park Hills Neighborhood Park, and Parklawn Community Park, which connects to the Sligo Creek Trail, along with the Rollingcrest Community Center and Splash Pool on Sargent Road.