The Anacostia Historic District is a historic district in the city of Washington, D.C. in the United States, comprising approximately 20 squares"Anacostia Historic District." National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. No date. Accessed 2009-12-26."A New Historic District." Washington Post. March 5, 1978. and about 550 buildings built between 1854 and 1930.Donovan, Carrie. "9 Sites On List Of Places In Peril." Washington Post. June 16, 2005.Wheeler, Linda. "Anacostia Hopes Lifeline Is Colored Green." Washington Post. December 24, 1991. The Anacostia Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. "The architectural character of the Anacostia area is unique in Washington. Nowhere else in the District of Columbia does there exist such a collection of late-19th and early-20th century small-scale frame and brick working-class housing."
The historic district is roughly bounded by:Anacostia Historic District. D.C. Historic Preservation Office. Office of Planning, District of Columbia. Washington, D.C.: March 2007. Accessed 2009-12-26."Boundaries: Anacostia Historic District." Washington Post. November 29, 2003. Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE between Marion Barry Ave SE and Morris Road SE; Marion Barry Ave SE from Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE to Fendall Street SE; Fendall Street SE from Marion Barry Ave SE to V Street SE; V Street SE between Fendall Street SE and 15th Street SE; 15th Street SE from V Street SE, along the eastern and southern sides of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site to High Street SE; High Street SE from 14th Street SE to Maple View Place SE; and Maple View Place SE between High Street SE and Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE.
Buildings within the Anacostia Historic District are generally two-story brick and wood-frame structures. The houses are primarily wood-frame construction, mostly in the Italianate, Cottage, and Washington Row House architectural styles (although there are some homes in the Queen Anne style). Cottage-style buildings tend to have been built earlier, with Italianate structures more popular after 1870. Queen Anne–style homes tend to be clustered in Griswold's subdivision.Griswold's subdivision, built in three stages between 1881 and 1894, is bounded by Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE, W Street SE, Fort Stanton Park, Hunter Place SE, Howard Road SE, Talbert Terrace SE, and Talbert Street SE. See: Gilmore, and Harrison, "A Catalog of Suburban Subdivisions of the District of Columbia, 1854-1902," Washington History, Fall/Winter 2002/2003. Many of the homes feature large lawns and wrap-around porches.
History of the district
The Nacotchtank Native Americans were the first settlers to inhabit the area now known as Anacostia, living and fishing along the Anacostia River.Humphrey, Robert L. and Chambers, Mary Elizabeth. "Ancient Washington: American Indian Cultures of the Potomac Valley." G.W. Studies. 1977. Captain John Smith was the first European to visit the region in 1612, naming the river the "Nacotchtank".Rountree, Helen C.; Clark, Wayne E.; and Mountford, Kent. John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages, 1607-1609. Charlotte, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2007. Burr, Charles R. "A Brief History of Anacostia, Its Name, Origin, and Progress." Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 1920.There is some evidence that Smith was not the first European to visit the area. A Spanish vessel may have brought European explorers to the Anacostia River around 1550. See: Bryan, A History of the National Capital..., 1914, p. 47. Henry Fleet (an English explorer kidnapped for five years by the Nacotchtank beginning in 1621) and Leonard Calvert (later Governor of the Province of Maryland) gave the area its more etymologically correct name, "Anacostine," from which the modern name of Anacostia is derived. The name means "trading village." The Nacochtank villages which dotted the south side of the Anacostia River were busy trading sites for Native Americans in the region. War and disease decimated the Nacochtank. During the last 25 years of the 17th century, the tribe ceased to exist as a functional unit, and its few remaining members merged with other local Piscataway tribes.Williams, Brett. "A River Runs Through Us." American Anthropologist. 103:2 (June 2001).Cantwell, Thomas J. "Anacostia: Strength in Adversity." Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 1973/1974.
European settlement first occurred in the area in 1662 at Blue Plains (now the site of the city's sewage treatment plant just to the west of the modern neighborhood of Bellevue), and at St. Elizabeth (now the site of St. Elizabeths Hospital psychiatric hospital) and Giesborough (now called Barry Farm) in 1663.Bryan, Wilhelmus Bogart. A History of the National Capital from Its Foundation Through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914. In 1663, Lord Baltimore granted ownership of the majority of the area on the south bank of the Anacostia River to George Thompson. Slightly inland, Lord Baltimore granted another large tract (known as Chichester) to John Meeks in 1664. "Anacostia Fort" was built on the heights at the present-day neighborhood of Skyland sometime in the 18th century.
The area became part of the District of Columbia in 1791. Congress passed the Residence Act of 1790 to establish a federally-owned district in which would be built the new national capital, and George Washington picked the current site in 1791 (a choice ratified by Congress later that year).Crew, Harvey W.; Webb, William Bensing; and Wooldridge, John. Centennial History of the City of Washington, D.C. Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1892. In 1795, real estate speculator James Greenleaf purchased most of what is now the Anacostia Historic District from the federal government. Although Greenleaf was bankrupted in the Panic of 1796–1797,Mann, Bruce H. Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. a few homes dotted the shores of the eastern bank of Anacostia River in what is now the historic district. William Marbury, a wealthy Georgetown merchant who later was a party in the landmark Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court case, purchased much of the land that is now the Anacostia Historic District some time in the late 18th century or early 19th century.
The first permanent modern settlement of size in the Anacostia Historic District came in 1820. The growth of the Washington Navy Yard created the need to provide housing for the many new employees working there. Still, little land was available for new construction in the area, and housing prices were high. Consequently, in 1818, the privately owned "Upper Navy Yard Bridge" was built over the Anacostia River at 11th Street SE.Croggon, James. "Old 'Burnt Bridge'". Evening Star. July 7, 1907. A toll bridge, this bridge was designed to permit easy access to Anacostia so that housing could be constructed on the eastern shore of the Anacostia River. Before the construction of this bridge and others upstream, there were no mudflats along the banks of the Anacostia. The bridges shifted currents and slowed the river's flow, and within a decade, extensive flats had built up along the shore.Kober, George M. "The Health of the City of Washington." Charities and the Commons. March 3, 1906. In 1820, the town of Good Hope, D.C., was founded around a tavern located near the current intersection of Good Hope Road SE and Alabama Avenue SE (forming the current neighborhood of Good Hope).Pippenger, Wesley E. District of Columbia Interments, January 1, 1855, to July 31, 1874. Westminster, Md.: Heritage Books, 2007. Businesses began to construct buildings along Upper Marlborough Road (called Good Hope Road SE today) toward the village of Good Hope, forming the Anacostia Business District. In the late 1820s or early 1830s, Marbury sold his land to Enoch Tucker, who rented out part of the land to tenant farmers and built his home near the intersection of Upper Marlborough Road and Piscataway Road (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE). A post office was established in the area and named Good Hope Station. In 1849, the post office's name was changed to Anacostia.
Uniontown Developers John Dobler, John Fox, and John W. Van Hook purchased the 240-acre (97.2-hectare) area known as Anacostia from Enoch Tucker on June 5, 1854, for $19,000 and immediately subdivided the property into lots for houses.Gillette, Howard. Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Fox had built a mansion on Jefferson Street (now W Street SE) some years before, and Fox and Van Hook were business partners in the Union Land Association. Naming the area Uniontown, the development became Washington's first "suburban" community.Evelyn, Douglas E.; Dickson, Paul; and Ackerman, S.J. On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C. 3rd rev. ed. Sterling, Va.: Capital Books, 2008. Thompson, John and Nowitz, Richard. National Geographic Traveler Washington. 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Books, 2008. Van Hook (the lead developer) renamed streets in the area after former presidents: Upper Marlborough Road was now called "Harrison Street," and Piscataway Road, now known as "Monroe Street". The area between Monroe Street and the Anacostia River was known as the Duvall subdivision, and Duvall's Tavern (a well-known bar) stood there.Senkevitch, Anatole. Old Anacostia, Washington, D.C.: A Study of Community Preservation Resources. School of Architecture, University of Maryland. 1975. Half the lots sold within two months of the first sale. Restrictive covenants prohibited the sale or lease of property to anyone of African descent, Mulattoes, or Irish. The main street in the 17-block subdivision (bordered by Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE, Good Hope Road SE, 16th Street SE, and W Street SE) was 14th Street SE, which had a central market and a 40-foot (12.2 meter) wide boulevard running down the center of it.
The first house erected in the new subdivision was a two-story brick building on Harrison Street (on the southwest corner of Harrison and Monroe Streets), and next to it on Monroe Street (on the site of the former Enoch Tucker farmhouse) rose a brick structure which held George F. Pyle's grocery store. In 1855, Van Hook himself built "Cedar Hill", a lavish mansion on Jefferson Street near the Fox Mansion.Benedetto, Robert; Donovan, Jane; and Du Vall, Kathleen. Historical Dictionary of Washington. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Dr. Arthur Christie, a wealthy Englishman, purchased 50 acres (20.25 hectares) of land on the north side of Harrison Street and named his estate Fairlawn. Lewin Talburtt built a spectacular 21-room mansion, "Mont View," on what is now Mount View Place SE; his son, George Washington Talburtt, lived there for many years (although it is an apocryphal story that John Howard Payne composed the song Home! Sweet Home! there). The first church in the area, the Episcopalian "Ryan's Chapel," opened in 1862.