The site of the Ridge Road School––later known as the Tunlaw Road School––can be seen near the intersection of 44th and Milwaukee (now Macomb) Street, just east of Tunlaw Road (now New Mexico Avenue), on the one-acre diagonal lot marked “D.C.” It corresponds to the hill just south of what is now the Horace Mann School soccer field.
(1903 Baist Real Estate Atlas of Washington)
The founding of the county schools was later described in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society. “Congress then levied a special tax to procure funds to erect a number of one-room and two-room frame school buildings on the roads leading out into the county… the surveyor carved out of these farm lands one-acre and half-acre lots on Tunlaw Road, Grant Road, Bates Road, Queens Chapel Road, Chain Bridge Road, Good Hope Road, Blair Road, Military Road, Anacostia Road, Brentwood Road, Benning Road, and Bunker Hill Road.”
School No. 1 of the Washington County public schools of the District of Columbia was the Ridge Road School, erected in 1865. A 1903 obituary gives credit for its founding to Philip L. Brooke: “He was ever a stanch advocate of the public school system, and early in its history in the District, if not in its very incipiency, he served on the board of trustees. In this capacity he was active in procuring the erection of the first county public school, on land near the present home of C. C. Glover, and contributed in large measure to the erection and furnishing of a domicile for the teacher.”
The school burned down in 1874. “A public school house in the first district near Ridge Road was destroyed by fire last Monday morning.”
After 1882, the prominent blackened chimney that marked the ruin was much closer to the newly-built Tunlaw Road (now New Mexico Avenue) than to Ridge Road (Foxhall Road).
By the time that the Horace Mann School opened on the site in 1931, the ruin of the 1865 structure “was known as the Tunlaw Road School.”
In 1940, the D.C.Commissioners began to contemplate the site of the “Tunlaw Road School, Forty-fourth and Macomb streets N.W.” While most of it was retained for the athletic field and the park south of it (where the 1865 school once stood), a trace of the part that was sold can be seen in a diagonal property line between 4406 and 4410 Macomb Street.
(Georgetown Courier, March 14, 1874; “Philip L. Brooke Died Honored Alike By All,” Washington Times, May 17, 1903, p.4; “Horace Mann School Site First Used 6 Decades Ago––Citizens of Wesley Heights Celebrate End of Long Battle Over Portables on Site of Civil War Frame Structure,” Washington Post, November 15, 1931, p. M8; “D.C. Land Sale Order Admits Purchase Error 13 Years Ago,” Evening Star, May 29, 1940, p. 19; Robert L. Haycock, “Sixty Years of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia: 1885 to 1945,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., Vol. 48/49 (1946/1947), p. 44.)
“The Annual Examinations. The examinations of the county schools will commence today … June 24, morning, Mr. Peck’s school, No. 1, First District …”
“The public school house in the first school district, in the county, 1 ½ miles north of this city, was totally destroyed by fire about 8 ½ o’clock this morning. The fire caught from a defective flue, and the entire contents, except a few maps, were burned. The school was conducted by Mr. C. T. Peck, who is a member elect of the District legislature. The loss is about $1,800, and was insured.”
Clement Augustus Peck (1823-1885) taught at the old school on Ridge Road, and at the new school on Conduit Road (MacArthur Boulevard) that was built to replace it in 1874.
“…there is a necessity for the erection of a school building in the county near Drovers’ Rest, on the Conduit road, midway between the two reservoirs, in the place of the one burned last spring, and requesting that application be made to the proper authority for permission to erect said school building on a portion of the ground owned by the United States not used for any other purpose. The site of the building burned contains one acre of land, and is located on the Ridge road, between Drovers’ Rest and Tenallytown, at a point which does not accommodate the present school population, and they recommend that it be sold and the proceeds be applied to the erection of a new building at the site named.”
(“Our County Schools, ”Washington Chronicle, June 23, 1873, p. 8; “The County Schools,” Washington Chronicle, September 17, 1874, p. 8; “School House Burned,” Evening Star, March 9, 1874, p. 4. With thanks to Catherine N. Ball.)
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Carlton Fletcher
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