Some of the two-syllable street names in use today originated in an 1872 report of the Board of Public Works, which proposed a list of notable Americans to replace all the lettered streets in L’Enfant’s grid. That plan was shelved, but some of the proposed names survived for later use.
The 1872 list began with Adams, but since the deliberations of the Board went unrecorded, no one knows which Adams was intended for the honor, and the same uncertainty applies to some of the other street names of Glover Park.
Benton Street
Beecher Street
Calvert Street
Davis Place
Edmunds Street
Fulton Street
Hall Place
Huidekoper Place
Manor Place
Observatory Place
Observatory Lane
Tunlaw Road
U Street
V Street
W Street
W Place
Whitehaven Parkway
Benton Street
Why the system starts with Benton in Glover Park, and skips Adams, is unknown. the most likely candidate is Thomas Hart Benton (1782–1858). History records that during the course of a street brawl in 1813, Benton shot Andrew Jackson, who recovered, and went on to be elected President, with Senator Benton his political ally. But it was probably Benton’s support of westward expansion, and opposition to the westward expansion of slavery, that endeared him to the party in power in the capital after the Civil War.
Beecher Street
Probably Henry Ward Beecher, who was once the best-known clergyman in the nation, whose church in Brooklyn was the “Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad”, and whose wealthy congregation made a practice of buying slaves their freedom. In 1848 two District of Columbia slaves, Mary and Emily Edmonson, were condemned to be sold south after attempting to escape on the schooner Pearl: Beecher’s church raised the money to free them, and sent them to Oberlin College instead. The Beecher monument in Brooklyn honors the “Great Apostle of the Brotherhood of Man”, and shows children, black and white, laying a wreath at Beecher’s feet.
Calvert Street
There is no reason to doubt that Calvert Street commemorates the founding family of Maryland, “Absolute Lords and Proprietaries of the Provinces of Maryland and Avalon, Lords Baron of Baltimore, & cetera”. But it is impossible to say which particular Calvert was being honored: Cecil Calvert, the first Lord Proprietor of Maryland––who never set foot in Maryland)––or Leonard Calvert, the first Governor––who did.
Davis Place
No satisfactory candidate has been found. For some, the president of the Confederate States of America might spring to mind, but the political climate that prevailed for more than half a century after the Civil War makes this highly unlikely.
Edmunds Street
Best bet: Senator George Franklin Edmunds (1828-1919). A Radical Republican, Edmunds voted for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, was the author of the Edmunds Act suppressing Mormon polygamy, and was one of the authors of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In the disputed presidential election of 1877, Edmunds proposed the compromise that averted bloodshed.
Fulton Street
It seems safe to assume that the street at the northern border of Glover Park honors Robert Fulton, inventor, engineer, and artist.
Hall Place
A two-story frame house on west side of what is now Wisconsin Avenue, near W Place belonged to Henry Weaver. Weaver was a key figure in the founding of the Mount Pleasant Chapel at 35th and Wisconsin, whose first pastor was Phillip T. Hall. Hall married Weaver’s daughter. In 1903 the property became Phillip and Mary Ann Hall’s Subdivision, and Phillip T. Hall built his house on it. (“Philip T. Hall Dies”, Star, February 14, 1925. See The Hall Tract.)
Huidekoper Place
In 1770 Georgetown was enlarged by the sale of two hundred acres out of George Gordon’s Knave’s Disappointment, laid out in three hundred lots, and known as Beatty and Hawkins’ Addition to Georgetown. Until 1871 the boundary of the northern extension of the city of Georgetown was at the edge of the alley west of Huidekoper Place.
Frederic Wolters Huidekoper was a railroad baron from Pennsylvania who owned more than a million acres in Florida, and less than one hundred in the District of Columbia. Between 1886 and 1908 he laid the groundwork for the later development of Burleith, and of southern Glover Park.
Huidekoper Place, south of W Street, is a remnant of his subdivision called Northwest Highlands, most of which was later condemned for the extension of Whitehaven Parkway, and is now Whitehaven Park.
Manor Place
The decision to “open Minor street, between lots 290 and 291, B. and H. addition to Georgetown, square 1301,” dates to 1906. The 1911 Baist map shows Manor Street, but 1917-1918 assessments still list it as Minor Street.
But there is no manor. The permit for the prominent house at the top of the hill was issued in 1931. “M. B. Inscoe, two-story brick dwelling at 3730 W Street northwest, cost $13,000.” Inscoe had secured a permit to build on Manor Street in 1925. “M. B. Inscoe, to build, 3715 Manor street; $10,000.”
(“Extension of Streets,” Evening Star, August 22, 1906, p. 3; “Building Permits Total $1,042,676,” Evening Star, October 10, 1925, p. 19; “Building Permits,” Washington Post, May 17, 1931, p.R1)
In the 1940s Manor Street became Manor Place––despite the fact that an older Manor Place, near Howard University and Soldiers Home, has been there since 1906 (District of Columbia Engineer Files). There is no satisfactory explanation for the duplication, as one is not an extension or continuation of the other.
Observatory Place
The name Observatory Place was first given to what is now the east-west leg of Hall Place; when the name Hall Place was extended to include the the east-west leg––which appears to have happened between 1912 and 1916––the name was transferred.
Its new location was in the heart of Observatory Heights, a long-forgotten subdivision by the International Realty and Development Company.
This rationale is suggested by a 1912 transaction, west of Tunlaw Road: “Realty transfers: Observatory Place, Northwest; International Realty and Development Company, to Harry B. and Laura V. Matchett, lot 407, square 1301.” (Washington Times, October 26, 1912 p.7)
Observatory Lane
In the days of coach and horse, the road from Wisconsin Avenue to western gate of the Naval Observatory––the alley between Sushi-ko and Glover Park Hardware––saw better days as the driveway to the Barber family’s North View, that preceded the Observatory. Cornelius Barber secured a right of way through Weaver property circa 1852. It was possibly also an access to the Barnard family’s Normanstone, because, in August, 1868, when Joseph and Robert Weaver deeded land to Michael Weaver, the future Observatory Lane is shown as “Barnard’s Road”. (Carbery’s Book of Surveys, p.18; County Surveys Levy Court I, DC Surveyor’s Office)
Tunlaw Road
New Mexico Avenue was formerly part of Tunlaw Road, and Wesley Heights was formerly Tunlaw Farm. Who named the farm? “A delightful spot on the Heights, the property of one of our well-known merchants, has been rendered famous by the versatile genius…who christened it Tunlaw.” The versatile genius was Thomas L. Hume. “Tunlaw Farm is the country home of Mr. Pickerell, of Georgetown, and Mr. Thomas L. Hume, of Washington.” (Georgetown Courier, August 8, 1868; Washington Star, July 5, 1873)
(See The Origins of Tunlaw Road.)
U Street
The short segment in Glover Park has residential parking, but no residents. It was apparently considered by its planners to be a continuation of the old Madison Street, which was U Street before it became Whitehaven Parkway.
V Street
L’Enfant’s design for Washington City––east of Rock Creek, and south of Florida Avenue––envisioned a grid of numbered and lettered streets, running in the cardinal directions, overlaid by diagonal avenues honoring the states of the Union.
When it was extended west of Rock Creek the system required adaptation to pre-existing streets and smaller blocks. The reason there is no V Street in Glover Park is that it didn’t fit.
W Street
Pierre L’Enfant’s alphabet ends with W Street because that is where the alphabet reached the northern boundary of Washington City, which ended at Boundary Road (now Florida Avenue).
W Place
(See The Hall Tract.)
Whitehaven Parkway
That so short street should be a parkway is because the original intention had been for it to be much longer. In fact, the idea had been for it to go all the way to Whitehaven, in what is now Palisades.
Whitehaven is a 759 acre land tract that lies along the north shore of the Potomac, west of Foxhall Road. It bears the name of a port city in northern England with a significant role in Maryland’s colonial commerce. Customs records of the years 1735 to 1740 show that the Potomac valley was dominated by the merchants of Whitehaven and Glasgow. (Richardson, D., and Schofield, M.M., “Whitehaven and the eighteenth-century British Slave Trade” in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, xcii, 1992, pp.183-204; MacMaster, Richard K. “Georgetown and the Tobacco Trade, 1751-1783.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 66/68, 1966, pp. 1–33)
The part of the present Whitehaven Parkway between Wisconsin Avenue and the former intersection with Tunlaw Road was previously called Madison Street (see Old Streets of Upper Georgetown). In 1925 the houses on the north side were condemned, the street was extended to 37th Street, and the connection to Tunlaw Road was abandoned.
The project to connect Conduit Road (now MacArthur Boulevard) with Massachusetts Avenue at Rock Creek, was shelved during the Depression, but dusted off in 1950. Its most immediate local effect was to persuade the Weaver family––whose houses had been at 2019, 2029, and 2101 Wisconsin Avenue since 1880, and who had been living on that land since 1820––to move away. This was also why Saint Luke’s Church moved, from its original location at 35th and Wisconsin, to its present home on Calvert Street. (Washington Present And Future: A General Summary Of The Comprehensive Plan For The National Capital And Its Environs, April, 1950)
A 1970 injunction––upheld in 1972––killed the Three Sisters Bridge across the Potomac, whose northern approach would in all likelihood have been Glover-Archbold Park and Whitehaven Parkway. Transportation Secretary Volpe conceded that the time for such projects had passed, and the rights-of-way of Whitehaven Parkway were transferred to the Park Service, creating Whitehaven Park. The parkway never came, and all that is left is its name.
The proposed highway and bridge system. (Washington Post, April 30, 1959, research by Ghosts of DC)
Students protest plans to build a freeway through Glover-Archbold Park. (The American University Talon, 1971)
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Carlton Fletcher
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