3905 Reservoir Road
1834: Clement Smith to the Reverends McSherry and Mulledy, part of Alliance, 70 acres, willed to John McElroy. (WB? (1834) f. 351/3; McSherry was President, Georgetown College, and died 1839.)
1884, marked Georgetown College, 75 acres, undeveloped.
“The Fine Property Known As “Alliance,” containing 75 42/100 acres, on the New Cut road, just west of Fayette st. and opposite the Georgetown University ground; can be subdivided to good advantage.” (“For Sale,” Evening Star, November 4, 1886, p. 3)
In 1894, marked Huidekoper and Warder.
Hillandale was built 1922-1925
Italian villa designed by Josephine Wright Chapman, built by Dorsey Nichol
Property of Mrs. Anna Saunderson [i.e. Anne Archbold], 70 acres (Post, March 25, 1923)
1924 Anne Archbold gave 23 acres to be added to a gift by Charles Carroll Glover, to form Glover-Archbold Parkway (Park Offered Capital As Gift By Mrs. Archbold, Star, October 23, 1924, p.19)
1954, 35 acres.
Anne Archbold died at Nassau, 1968 (“Park Donor Anne Archbold, 94, Dies”, Washington Post, March 28, 1968, C14)
1973, French Chancery purchased 8 acres.
1978 John Archbold leased 42 acres to Texas developer CW Murchison. Hillandale Development Corp., 42 acres: 230 clustered town houses, 45 single dwellings, keeping existing gatehouse and mansion. Intended as a private community with mansion as clubhouse, private trash collection, internal road system; about 30% to be left open or wooded. (NW Current, March, 1979?)
National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 1994:
http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/94001595.pdf
(“Hillandale mansion offers opportunity to own local landmark”, Northwest Current, May 29, 1996)
1998, application to divide Mansion into a two-family house.
The Archbold Wetzel Homestead and Colony Hill
Lazarus Wetzel lived at what is now 4437 Reservoir Road NW, where his house––thought to be the earliest example of a vernacular log cabin dwelling in the District of Columbia––has survived to the present.
Colony Hill was developed by Boss and Phelps circa 1930.
“It is likely that Wetzell built some of the structures shown on the Boschke map of 1859 shortly after acquiring the property, although it is very possible that the log house pre-dated 1843.”
“Wetzells’s log house was the nucleus of a small farm, which according to the Boschke map of 1859 and the 1893 U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey map, included orchard trees. Tax records of the 1859 period listed horses and a cow on the property, and in the 1880 census the occupation of Lazarus Wetzell was listed as gardening.”
“The log house complex and immediate grounds were occupied by Wetzell’s descendants until 1931, when they were sold as a separate 3-acre parcel to Anne Archbold. By this time, Wetzell property immediately to the west of the house parcel had been sold and subdivided as part of the Colony Hills development.”
“Archbold immediately reduced its size to 1 acre. In 1925, Archbold bought 28 acres of land to the north and east of the house property, eventually donating this adjacent land as part of Glover-Archbold Park. In 1947 Anne Archbold deeded the house and surrounding 1-acre parcel to her daughter, Moira, who lived in the house until her death in 1988.”
(All quotations are from the National Register of Historic Places Registration, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service:http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/91000395.pdf)
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Carlton Fletcher
The citation and acknowledgement of my research is greatly appreciated.
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