Forest Hills Connection || News and Life in Our DC Neighborhood
Covering Forest Hills, Van Ness, North Cleveland Park and Wakefield
DC’s Woodrow Wilson High School stands on the edge of what was a thriving black middle class neighborhood until it was systematically dismantled by the actions of white supremacists including… President Woodrow Wilson. (Neil Flanagan details the history in his unflinching and deeply researched 2017 Washington City Paper article, “The Battle of Fort Reno.”) The […]
by Ann Kessler In the 1950s, before Washingtonians started traveling to the newly built malls in the suburbs, people shopped locally. Near Forest Hills, for instance, on the east side of the 4400 block of Connecticut Avenue, there were stores where you could buy shoes and women’s casual and dressy clothing. One could walk to […]
by Ann Kessler December 5, 1981 was an historic day in the Forest Hills neighborhood. It marked the opening of the Van Ness-UDC Metro station as well as the Woodley Park and Cleveland Park stations, the first Metro stops to open west of Rock Creek Park. Although the day had started out dreary – and […]
This Veterans Day is the 100th anniversary of the first Armistice Day, the day in 1918 when the Allies and Germany signed the armistice that ended World War I. The District is holding its own commemoration this Sunday, “at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” Barbara Bates, Forest Hills resident […]
by Marlene Berlin Some of DC’s history is moving to Van Ness. Part of the DC Public Library’s Washingtoniana Collection will be stored at 4340 Connecticut Avenue, in the space that housed the Interim Cleveland Park Library until last May. DCPL holds a lease on the space through July 2019. We say part, but the […]
When UDC was a vineyard: Remnants of farms remain scattered throughout the District, including a spring house that belonged to John Adlum, a contemporary of George Washington and a vintner whose lands included today’s UDC and North Cleveland Park. (Read more about Adlum here.) The Washington Post’s John Kelly spoke to the author of the […]
“Three African-American activists hurried to the Capitol on the morning of March 28th, 1926. They had heard Congress was considering a bill that would wipe out a community of 370 families in the growing suburbs west of Rock Creek Park. In the small neighborhood known as Reno, black and white residents mixed like a checkerboard.” […]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Not in our neighborhood. Longtime residents can mark time not only by the calendar – but also by the businesses that have come and gone. Have you been here long enough to remember Hot Shoppes? The Ice Palace? Clover Market and Marvelous Market? The shopping center at Van Ness Center? […]
If mid-century traffic planners had their way, DC would have been the land of the freeway. One 1950 plan envisioned parts of Connecticut Avenue as an express highway. It also would have placed a “dominant thoroughfare” to the east of Connecticut through Forest Hills, and an “express parkway” connecting Nebraska Avenue and Military Road. The […]
Until Ann Kessler wrote about then-Congressman and Senator Lyndon Johnson’s home on 30th Place, we had no idea his family had lived here. And they truly lived here. The image of Lady Bird Johnson as a carpooling Murch parent delights us to no end. It got us thinking about other notable neighbors from our past, […]
