History

Mentions of Columbia Heights in the Evening Star, October 31 – November 6, 1926. Searched for "Columbia Heights", "Tivoli".

Clips are machine-read text (OCR) from scanned Evening Star pages on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America, lightly cleaned (line-break hyphens rejoined, stray symbols removed); misspellings are the scanner's. Newspapers this old are public domain. Each clip links to its page at loc.gov. Clips that mention race, covenants, deed restrictions or slurs are skipped automatically (keyword list: race, races, racial, colored, coloured, negro, negroes, white only, whites only, for whites, white people, white persons, white residents, caucasian, segregation, segregated, covenant, covenants, restricted, restriction, restrictions, plus a list of slurs), because they need an editor's context; legal notices and lists of private individuals are skipped too.

• 
  14th St & Park Rd NW · [between 1920 and 1921]Peoples Drug Store, 14th & Park Rd., [Washington, D.C.]
• 
  Central High School stadium · [1925]High school track meet at Central Stadium
• 
  Central High School · 1920 June 18Pageant, Central High, 6/18/20

Photographs from the Library of Congress (National Photo Company Collection), each with no known restrictions on publication or in the public domain, per the Library. Titles are the Library's, written when the photos were catalogued; some use the language of their time. Each links to its record.

Columbia Heights1881 (plat)

Honors: Columbian College (now George Washington University)

Senator John Sherman of Ohio and asphalt magnate Amzi Barber bought the 120-acre Stone farm in 1880; on November 1, 1881, Sherman recorded the Plat of Columbia Heights, named for Columbian College, whose campus sat at the heart of the tract. The college later moved downtown and became GWU.

Sources: Old Columbia Heights Street Names: Kenesaw, Yale, and the 1905 Rename (Ghosts of DC) · Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia

Columbia Road NW1905 (as Columbia Road)

Honors: Columbian College (now George Washington University)

Like the neighborhood, the road is named not for the District but for Columbian College. The college's first building went up in 1822 on a campus bounded by Columbia Road, 14th Street, Boundary Street and 13th Street. In the 1905 renaming, Columbia Street became Columbia Road.

Earlier: Columbia StreetSources: Columbia Road - Wikipedia · Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia · Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Georgia Avenue NW1908-1909 (appropriations bill)

Honors: State of Georgia

Once Brightwood Avenue, or 7th Street Extended. Georgia's Senator Augustus Bacon, unhappy with the run-down Georgia Avenue in Southeast, pushed from 1906 to move the name here; the Park View Citizens' Association protested in 1908. A later appropriations bill made the swap, and the old Georgia Avenue became Potomac Avenue.

Earlier: Brightwood Avenue, 7th Street ExtendedSource: Georgia Avenue: The Politics Behind the Name Change (Ghosts of DC)

Harvard Street NW1881 (plat)

Honors: Harvard, one of the Eastern-college names chosen by the developers

Sherman's 1881 plat gave streets college names, Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Dartmouth, to signal the suburb's cultural aspirations. In the 1905 renaming Harvard, Kenyon and Meridian were among the few original names to survive unchanged.

Source: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Hobart Place NW1905

In the Howard University subdivision, Morris Street became Hobart Place under the Commissioners' 1905 renaming schedule.

Earlier: Morris StreetSource: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Holmead Place NW1905 (as Holmead Place)

Honors: The Holmead family, whose estate covered the area

The land was once Pleasant Plains, the Holmead family estate stretching from Spring Road to Columbia Road and from Georgia Avenue to Rock Creek. In the 1905 renaming, Holmead Avenue in the Holmead Manor subdivision became Holmead Place.

Earlier: Holmead AvenueSources: Pleasant Plains (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia · Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Irving Street NW1905

Columbia Heights' grandest early address was Kenesaw Avenue, named for the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in William T. Sherman's Atlanta campaign. Residents fought the change, but the District Commissioners' 1905 schedule, fitting the suburb into the citywide alphabetical system, renamed it Irving Street.

Earlier: Kenesaw AvenueSource: Old Columbia Heights Street Names: Kenesaw, Yale, and the 1905 Rename (Ghosts of DC)

Lamont Street NW1905

This was Dartmouth Street, one of the original college names. The August 1905 schedule renamed it Lawrence Street; three months later the October revision changed it again to Lamont Street.

Earlier: Dartmouth StreetSource: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Monroe Street NW1905

Two older names were folded into Monroe Street: Sheridan, honoring Gen. Phil Sheridan, shown on an 1885 map of the northern section, and Lydecker Avenue in the Holmead Manor subdivision, honoring Col. Garrett Lydecker, DC's Engineer Commissioner from 1882 to 1886.

Earlier: Sheridan Street, Lydecker AvenueSources: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC) · Columbia Heights in 1885: A Map With Old Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Newton Place NW1905

Scott Avenue in the Gass subdivision became Newton Place in 1905. Nearby, the 1885 map shows a Howard Street, which Ghosts of DC says honored Howard University founder Oliver O. Howard, later renamed Newton.

Earlier: Scott AvenueSources: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC) · Columbia Heights in 1885: A Map With Old Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Otis Place NW1905

In the Holmead Manor subdivision, Lamar Place became Otis Place in the October 1905 schedule; the same list turned Eslin and Morgan avenues into 11th and 10th streets.

Earlier: Lamar PlaceSource: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Park Road NW1905

Originally Whitney Avenue. The Commissioners' August 1905 schedule would have made it Marshall Road; the October 1905 revision settled on Park Road instead. A 1929 letter to the Post complained that Park Road, Park Place and Parkwood Place all ended up in one neighborhood.

Earlier: Whitney AvenueSource: Old Columbia Heights Street Names (Ghosts of DC)

Sherman Avenue NW

Honors: Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the neighborhood's developer

Wikipedia says the neighborhood's eastern traffic artery is named for its early developer, Senator John Sherman, author of the Sherman Antitrust Act, who bought the land between 16th and 10th streets north of Boundary Street in 1881-82 and subdivided it as Columbia Heights.

Source: Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia

Still looking for a reliable source on Spring Road NW, Warder Street NW, Kenyon Street NW, Quebec Place NW, Morton Street NW, Ogden Street NW, Luray Place NW, Keefer Place NW, Hiatt Place NW, Princeton Place NW. We don't publish a name's story until we can cite one. Know it? Tell us.

• Apolonia Lopez interview, 2022-10-02Apolonia Lopez · 2022 · video · remembers the 2020s

  A second-generation resident of Urban Village, an affordable complex on Newton Street, and vice president of its tenant association recalls growing up there and the residents' recent sale to a new developer under DC's tenant purchase law, including the building's roots in St. Stephen's Church's reparations to the Black community.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (DC Oral History Collaborative: Newton Street/The Cooperative at 1477 and Black Women Warriors) · affordable housing, tenant organizing, TOPA, Newton Street
• Bill MacKaye interview, 2022-07-12Bill MacKaye · 2022 · video · remembers the 1960s

  A St. Stephen's Church leader since 1962 recalls how the congregation, recruited as one of DC's first integrated Episcopal churches, became an affordable housing developer on Newton Street in response to the Black Power movement's call for reparations, and his decades working with Black and Latino housing activists, many of them women.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (DC Oral History Collaborative: Newton Street/The Cooperative at 1477 and Black Women Warriors) · St. Stephen's Church, affordable housing, reparations, Newton Street
• Renee Flood Wright interview, 2022-07-11Renee Flood Wright · 2022 · video

  A DC-born artist and teacher who moved from a house in Mount Pleasant to an apartment on Newton Street describes twenty years as a leader at Urban Village and the unusual partnership that will let longtime residents share in the building's ownership and cash-flow profits.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (DC Oral History Collaborative: Newton Street/The Cooperative at 1477 and Black Women Warriors) · affordable housing, tenant leadership, generational wealth, Newton Street
• Marlene Manzo interview, 2022-07-25Marlene Manzo · 2022 · video · remembers the 2020s

  The first board president of The Cooperative at 1477, a limited-equity cooperative converted from a tax-credit rental on Newton Street, connects her childhood among Mexican migrant farmworkers in Washington state to the work of turning a diverse building of renters into co-owners.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (DC Oral History Collaborative: Newton Street/The Cooperative at 1477 and Black Women Warriors) · housing cooperatives, immigrant families, Newton Street
• Teresa Edmondson interview part 1, 2022-05-23Teresa Edmondson · 2022 · video

  A community activist recounts three decades of work that ended with her rental building converted into a limited-equity housing cooperative, honoring its purpose as a home for people recovering from substance abuse, and the family lessons about homeownership that shaped her.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (DC Oral History Collaborative: Newton Street/The Cooperative at 1477 and Black Women Warriors) · housing cooperatives, tenant organizing, Newton Street
• Columbia Heights Day 20232023 · collection

  Archive collection of oral history recordings and transcripts the Humanities Truck gathered at Columbia Heights Day on June 24, 2023, along with photographs of the event.

  At Humanities Truck Community Archive, American University Archives · festivals, community memory
• Marita Golden interview, 2014Marita Golden · 2014 · audio · remembers the 1960s

  The novelist recalls a childhood in Columbia Heights and Foggy Bottom, covering the riot-damaged U Street corridor as a freshman reporter for American University's paper, and becoming a community activist afterward, volunteering for Marion Barry's Pride Inc. and the Freedom School.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (U Street Oral History Project) · childhood, 1968 riots, Pride Inc., writers

Search the archives yourself: The People's Archive, DC Public Library · Historic Chevy Chase DC Oral History Archive · Humanities Truck Community Archive, American University · Tenleytown Historical Society · Boundary Stones (WETA) · Glover Park History: Oral History and Reminiscences · Cleveland Park Historical Society Oral Histories · Rainbow History Project Digital Collections · hometown DC (DC History Center) · Hola Cultura: Adams Morgan History · Citizens Association of Georgetown · Peabody Room, Georgetown Neighborhood Library (DC Public Library) · Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum Archives: A Right to the City Exhibition Records · Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project · Mosaic Theater H Street Oral History Project · Library of Congress, Manuscript Division · Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Smithsonian) · Naval History and Heritage Command, Navy Department Library · The Catholic University of America Archives · Bygone Brookland · Dig DC, DC Public Library · hometown DC (HumanitiesDC / Historical Society of Washington, D.C.) · Dig DC, DC Public Library's digital repository · A Right to the City exhibition records, Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Smithsonian) · Rainbow History Project Digital Collections · Palisades Community Association · Forest Hills Connection (neighborhood history series) · Foggy Bottom Association History Project: Oral Histories · George Washington University Special Collections Research Center · Woodley Park Community: A Sketch of Our Past · Empower DC: Ivy City · Power of Preserving the Black Deaf Experience (Dig DC) · Gallaudet University Archives. Summaries are ours; the recordings and their rights stay with each archive.

• DC Historic Preservation Office, Historic Data on DC Buildings (HistoryQuest), CC BY 4.0
• Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), Chronicling America, Library of Congress; public domain

History data refreshed Nov 4.