Georgetown Heights in 1861

The earliest known photographs of what is now Glover Park were taken in the first year of the Civil War, when the Army Signal Corps was founded on the heights overlooking Georgetown.

 

 

 

The photographer appears to have been standing north and west of the present intersection of Tunlaw Road and Calvert Street. Beyond the encampment, the landmarks that can most readily be distinguished include Trinity Church Upper Burial Ground, Back Street, The Cedars, Burleith, and Georgetown College (corresponding to the present Holy Rood Cemetery, Tunlaw Road, Duke Ellington High School, Washington International School, and Georgetown University).

 

 

Acknowledgments

 

This website has been generously supported by District of Columbia Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B; my thanks to Commissioners Brian Cohen and Mary C. Young.

I have benefitted from the generosity of historians so often that I concluded that it had to be a defining characteristic of their calling. I am also indebted to the resourcefulness of countless reference librarians, and in particular, to those of the Washingtoniana Division of Martin Luther King Library.

This work is dedicated to the memory of Robert W. Lyle (1922-1996) of the Peabody Room of the Georgetown Branch Library, who first guided me to the records of the part of Georgetown that is now in Glover Park.