2013 Flashback: Looking WAY Back

Forest Hills is young by DC standards, but the neighborhood has a fascinating history nonetheless. And we were been fortunate to receive so many wonderful articles about this history in 2013.

Ann Kessler wrote about the first school in Forest Hills. A few years after this school closed, a “country” retreat for poor city kids opened nearby. And, Ann says our neighborhood could have been known by a far different and unique name: Azadia.

From Rock Creek Park’s Simone Monteleone, we learned that many of the trails we now use for recreation had another purpose 150 or so years ago.

Anne Rollins told us about the streetcars that drove the development of this part of “Washington County” more than a century ago. The streetcars attracted the National Bureau of Standards to a 70-acre campus in Forest Hills. Few traces of that history remain.

A pair of Murch’s fifth grade reporters wrote about their school’s namesake.

Neighbors reminisced about the businesses that once stood at Connecticut and Nebraska.

Before Park Van Ness there was Van Ness Square. And before Van Ness Square there was the Chevy Chase Park and Shop/Ice Palace. Barbara D. Bates gives us a last look at the history of the building now being demolished.

And the DC Office of Planning’s Chris Shaheen gave us a history lesson about the city parks directly outside your front door.