History

Mentions of Brightwood in the Evening Star, October 31 – November 6, 1926. Searched for "Brightwood", "Brightwood Park", "Fort Stevens".

No clips matched this week.

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.

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  Fort Stevens · 1864Fort Stevens north of Washington, D.C., 1864
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  Fort Stevens · 1865 August[District of Columbia. Detachment of Company K, 3d Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, by guns of Fort Stevens]
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  Near Fort Stevens · [1864]Washington, District of Columbia. House near Fort Stevens showing effect of shot during Early's attack on Washington
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  Brightwood · 1864 July[Washington, D.C. Maj. Gen Alexander M. McCook (center) and staff on porch of quarters, Brightwood (7th Street Road near present Sheridan St.]
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  Camp Brightwood · [between 1861 and 1865]Camp Brightwood, D.C.--Contrabands in 2nd R.I. Camp
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  Brightwood · [1894 May]Coxey at the Capitol. The Commonweal Army leaving Brightwood Camp
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  Church of the Nativity, Brightwood · [between 1909 and 1919]Church of Nativity, Brightwood, D.C.
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  Brightwood · 1919 November 21Cornerstone laying, Stansbury Lodge No. 24, Brightwood, D.C., Nov. 21, 1919

Photographs from the Library of Congress (National Photo Company Collection; Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints; Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs; Prints & Photographs Division; Panoramic Photographs), 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.

16th Street NWextension authorized 1899

Congress authorized extending 16th Street to the Maryland line in 1899, and the Piney Branch bridge finished the job in 1909. The Brightwood Trotting Park closed that same year, which Wikipedia says was to make way for the street.

Sources: 16th Street NW - Wikipedia · Brightwood (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia

Brightwood1840s

The land was patented as White Mill Seat in 1756 and became Peter's Mill Seat in 1800. Farmers later called it Crystal Spring, for its fresh springs. It was then Brighton, until residents chose Brightwood in the 1840s because mail kept getting confused with Brighton, Maryland. Archibald White and Louis Brunett usually get the credit.

Earlier: White Mill Seat, Peter's Mill Seat, Crystal Spring, BrightonSources: Brightwood (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia · Racing at Brightwood, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb)

Brightwood Park

A heritage trail marker calls it the first development here after Washington City and County merged in 1871: 82 acres just south of today's Emery park, from an estate granted to James White in 1772. Its edges are disputed, and sources run its southern line anywhere from Kennedy Street to Emerson Street.

Sources: Crossroads Create Community, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb) · Brightwood Park - Wikipedia

Brightwood Trotting Parkclosed 1909

A half-mile horse track that opened in 1859 as the Crystal Spring Racetrack and was also called Piney Branch Park. Laborers and congressmen alike came out by stagecoach. By the end it was mostly racing mules, and it closed in 1909. Coxey's Army paraded from Brightwood to the Capitol.

Earlier: Crystal Spring Racetrack, Crystal Springs Park, Piney Branch ParkSources: Racing at Brightwood, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb) · Brightwood (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia

Emery Recreation Center1959

Honors: Matthew Gault Emery, mayor of Washington City

This was Emery Place, the summer estate of the builder who was Washington's last elected mayor before home rule ended in 1874. His hilltop was a Civil War signal station and Camp Brightwood. Heirs sold the rundown estate to the city in 1946, and the recreation center opened in 1959.

Earlier: Emery Place, Camp BrightwoodSource: Mayor Emery and the Union Army, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb)

Emory United Methodist Church1832

Honors: Bishop John Emory of Maryland

The congregation dates from 1832 and seated Black worshippers in a separate gallery. Union troops tore down its brick church in 1861 for Fort Massachusetts, and Congress later paid $412 for use of the grounds. Note the spelling: the church is Emory, the park nearby is Emery.

Sources: The Rock on Brightwood Avenue, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb) · Brightwood (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia

Fort Stevens (Fort Stevens Drive NW)after 1862

Honors: Brig. Gen. Isaac Ingalls Stevens

Massachusetts soldiers built it in 1861 as Fort Massachusetts, on land taken from a free Black family, Elizabeth Proctor Thomas and her siblings. It was renamed for Stevens after he was killed at Chantilly in 1862. Lincoln came under fire here in July 1864 as Jubal Early's Confederates probed the city's defenses.

Earlier: Fort MassachusettsSources: Fort Stevens (National Park Service) · Fort Stevens (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia · Battleground National Cemetery (National Park Service)

Georgia Avenue NW1908 or 1909 (sources differ)

Honors: State of Georgia

Finished in 1822 as the Seventh Street Turnpike, it became Seventh Street Road in 1871 and Brightwood Avenue in the late 1880s. Georgia Senator Augustus Bacon pushed from 1906 to move his state's name here from a neglected Southeast street, over protests from Brightwood and Park View. An appropriations bill finally made the swap.

Earlier: Seventh Street Turnpike, Seventh Street Road, Brightwood AvenueSources: The Seventh Street Turnpike, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb) · Georgia Avenue: The Politics Behind the Name Change (Ghosts of DC) · Georgia Avenue - Wikipedia

Illinois Avenue NW

Honors: State of Illinois

Ends at Georgia Avenue and Longfellow Street. Like the other diagonals under DC's Highway Plan, it carries a state name.

Sources: Highway Plan: Street Names of Washington, DC (DC Office of Planning) · List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - Wikipedia

Kansas Avenue NW

Honors: State of Kansas

A diagonal that crosses Georgia Avenue on its way south to Spring Road. DC's Highway Plan gave broad diagonal avenues the names of states and territories.

Sources: Highway Plan: Street Names of Washington, DC (DC Office of Planning) · List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - Wikipedia

Military Road School1912

Opened in 1912 as the area's third public elementary school for Black children, and for decades the only one serving Upper Northwest and nearby Maryland. It closed after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Listed on the National Register in 2003, it reopened in 2007 as a charter school.

Source: School Days, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb)

Missouri Avenue NW1937

Honors: State of Missouri

Wikipedia says this was Concord Avenue until 1937, and an HMdb caption on the Lightfoot house also uses Concord. The heritage marker calls the older road Military Road instead. Both agree it was widened and straightened in the early 1930s, which forced that house to be moved.

Earlier: Concord AvenueSources: List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - Wikipedia · School Days, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb) · Highway Plan: Street Names of Washington, DC (DC Office of Planning)

Piney Branch Road NW

The private owners of the Seventh Street Turnpike put a toll booth just north of Emory Church, so Brightwood residents made a free way around it, essentially today's Piney Branch Road. No source we opened explains the name itself.

Source: The Seventh Street Turnpike, Brightwood Heritage Trail marker (HMdb)

Still looking for a reliable source on Beach Drive NW, Hamilton Street NW, Ingraham Street NW, Jefferson Street NW, Kennedy Street NW, Longfellow Street NW, Luzon Avenue NW, Madison Street NW, Nicholson Street NW, Oglethorpe Street NW, Peabody Street NW, Quackenbos Street NW, Rittenhouse Street NW, Rock Creek Ford Road NW, Sheridan Street NW, Somerset Place NW, Tewkesbury Place NW, Tuckerman Street NW, Underwood Street NW, Van Buren Street NW, Whittier Street NW. We don't publish a name's story until we can cite one. Know it? Tell us.

• Bobbie Coles interview, 2017-04-22Bobbie Coles · 2017 · audio · remembers the 1950s, 1960s

  Coles's family moved to Van Buren Street in 1957 and faced harassment and threats as one of the first Black households in the neighborhood. At Paul Junior High, then mostly white, she was tracked for non-college-bound students; at Coolidge High she was tracked for college prep.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (Mapping Segregation in Washington DC) · desegregation, Paul Junior High, Coolidge High School, harassment
• Phylicia Fauntleroy Bowman interview, 2017-07-12Phylicia Fauntleroy Bowman · 2017 · audio · remembers the 1950s

  Bowman's family moved to Brightwood when she was about six, the second Black family on the block. She talks about growing up on Ingraham Street, DC public schools before and after desegregation, how the neighborhood changed, and her career as an economist.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (Mapping Segregation in Washington DC) · desegregation, Ingraham Street, Public Service Commission
• Joe Hairston interview, 2016-11-15Joe Hairston · 2016 · audio · remembers the 1950s

  The Army's first Black helicopter pilot bought a house on Kennedy Street NW in 1954, in what had been an exclusively white neighborhood. He discusses integrating the block and his daughters' experiences in newly integrated schools, before the family moved to Shepherd Park.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (Mapping Segregation in Washington DC) · housing integration, Kennedy Street, school integration
• Herbert Freeman interview, 2018-01-04Herbert Freeman · 2018 · remembers the 1960s, 1970s

  A barber who came from North Carolina in 1962 and opened Freeman's House of Styles in Brightwood Park in 1976. He discusses segregation in the South, violence against Black people then and now, the 1968 riots, and his long career.

  At Dig DC, DC Public Library (Real World History Oral History Project) · barbering, Freeman's House of Styles, Great Migration, 1968 riots

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 3.