Forest Hills Connection || News and Life in Our DC Neighborhood
Covering Forest Hills, Van Ness, North Cleveland Park and Wakefield
by Ann Kessler The Forest Hills Citizens Association was founded 90 years ago this year by some extraordinary people. One such early resident of Forest Hills was Joseph Sanders, an inventor, businessman, banker, civic leader and philanthropist. Sanders was already quite wealthy by the time he built his home at 2612 Tilden Street NW (now […]
Who was Fred Rhodes? A federal worker whose long and varied resumé included the Manhattan Project and the Nixon administration, and later in life, a Baptist minister. But a century ago, he was just a kid in Forest Hills, and the Soapstone Valley was his playground. Thanks to the Historical Society of Washington and Ann Kessler, […]
by Ann Kessler Some of Fred Burnett Rhodes’ descriptions of springtime in DC sound familiar – the brilliance of the azalea blooms, the minnows in Soapstone Creek. But he’s describing a childhood that began in 1913 on Albemarle Street. And his recollections include his father’s encounter with Prohibition agents, and bringing home a pony he’d […]
Ninety years ago in June, a group of neighbors founded the Forest Hills Citizens Association. What we know about a few of them offers glimpses of life in the neighborhood when it was new: the physicist who founded the annual Forest Hills Halloween parade, two colleagues and neighbors who had moon craters named for them, […]
by Ann Kessler Forest Hills has seen its share of celebrities, but two of the biggest icons of all time – Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe – passed this way in the 1950s and left lasting impressions. The TV interview that got Elvis Presley all shook up Elvis Presley visited WMAL-TV on Friday, March 23, […]
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 […]
