Forest Hills Connection || News and Life in Our DC Neighborhood
Covering Forest Hills, Van Ness, North Cleveland Park and Wakefield
by Ann Kessler A 1913 real estate map of Washington makes it look easy to drive into Rock Creek Park from Connecticut Avenue. Just turn onto Albemarle Street and continue straight into the park. The publisher of this map obviously took liberties, perhaps taking to heart this description of Albemarle in The Washington Post in […]
In 2019, we published a series of recollections by Fred Rhodes (1913-2001), a federal worker whose long and varied resumé included the Manhattan Project and the Nixon administration. But a century ago, he was just a kid in Forest Hills, and the Soapstone Valley was his playground. His memoir Four Seasons in the Soapstone Valley, shared […]
Rock Creek Conservancy has been co-hosting a series of fascinating virtual panels on the history and people of the park. The latest, on July 27th, featured three women who have served as the park’s superintendents over the decades. Says the Conservancy: “Georgia Ellard became the first Black woman to serve in this highest position of […]
by Ann Kessler I miss the Van Ness Centre Mall. Granted, it only existed for 16 years, but from 1967 on through 1983 it was part of the community and a major convenience for shoppers in the neighborhood. Now, only the original ground floor tenants of the mall remain: Giant Food, CVS (formerly Peoples Drug […]
by Ann Kessler The history of DC real estate is marred by restrictive covenants that prohibited the sale of property to Jews, Black people, and other frequent targets of discrimination. Forest Hills was, by comparison, more welcoming. At one point the neighborhood even earned the nickname “Hanukkah Heights,” so it’s long been assumed that Forest […]
More than a few of us took up walking the neighborhood last year to get some exercise and pass the time under shutdown orders. Mark Fitzpatrick did more than that. He turned up a number of hidden historical treasures on his walks around Tenleytown, AU Park, Forest Hills, Van Ness and North Cleveland Park. He […]
by Ann Kessler A 1907 Baist real estate atlas shows very little development in what would become Forest Hills. Sure, there were land owners with acres of land, and some roads and streets had been cut through or were marked to be built, but few actual buildings or houses were shown. One prominent building that […]
by Ann Kessler In one newspaper article marking his passing in 1941 at the age of 73, Melvin C. Hazen was called “The Boss,” “First Citizen of Washington,” and “one of the city’s most beloved characters.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s particular name for Hazen was “Grand Old Man of the District.” FDR also said that […]
by Ann Kessler President Harry S. Truman loved to walk. He did so almost every morning of his adult life. “I go every morning at 6:30 to 7:00 for a half hour’s real walk usually doing two miles,” Truman once wrote to his mother. And for a few years, his starting point was 4701 Connecticut […]
The DC Public Library’s Washingtoniana collection needed a temporary home during the renovation of Martin Luther King Library. And for a little more than a year, Van Ness provided one. Washingtoniana moved out of its UDC Law School digs at 4340 Connecticut Avenue when DCPL’s lease expired early this year. And in a recent newsletter, […]
