Lost Farms and Estates of Washington, D.C.

by Kim Prothro Williams

Overview

Washington has a rural history of agrarian landscapes and country estates. John Adlum, the Father of American Viticulture, experimented with American grape cultivation at The Vineyard, just north of today's Cleveland Park.

Slave laborers rolled hogsheads - wooden casks filled with tobacco - down present-day Wisconsin Avenue from farms to the port at Georgetown. The growing merchant class built suburban villas on the edges of the District and became the city's first commuters. In 1791, the area was selected as the capital of a new nation, and change from rural to urban was both dramatic and progressive. Author Kim Prothro Williams reveals the rural remnants of Washington, D.C.'s past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625858306
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	04/09/2018
Series:	Lost
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Kim Prothro Williams is an architectural historian with the D.C. Historic Preservation Office. For more than twenty-five years, she has been researching and writing about historic buildings and communities in D.C., Virginia and Maryland, with her primary focus being to evaluate buildings for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Kim is a published author of books, articles and heritage trail brochures dealing with the built environment. Two of her books, Chevy Chase: A Home Suburb for the Nation's Capital and Pride of Place: Rural Residences of Fauquier County, Virginia, address the transformation of the agricultural landscape.

Table of Contents

Foreword David Maloney 9

Preface 11

Acknowledgements 15

1 From Farms to Federal District 19

2 City Proprietors and Their Houses 27

Notley Young's Plantation 31

David Burnes's Cottage 34

Duddington Manor I and II 37

Cool Spring 42

3 Beyond the Original City Boundaries: Washington County 45

Giesboro 46

Friendship 50

Berleith 52

Gheivy Chace 53

Holmead Manor 55

Roscdale Cottage 56

4 Country Houses and Gentlemen Farms 59

Analostan 65

Whitehaven 72

The Vineyard 75

Linnaean Hill 78

5 Farms and Farmsteads 81

Pre-Civil War Farmhouses 82

Free Black Farms 91

Agricultural and Domestic Outbuildings 91

6 Shifting Landscapes 105

Institutional Farming 106

Recreational and Suburban Villas 113

7 The Civil War 119

The Necessities of War: Military Takings 119

Headquarters and Hospitals 126

Wartime Farming Opportunities 129

Post-Civil War Settlements: Meridian Hill and Reno City 131

8 The Permanent Highway Plan 137

The City's First Suburbs 137

Razing Farmhouses 145

Moving Farmhouses 150

The Persistence of Agriculture 154

Epilogue 163

Appendix: Extant Resources of the District's Rural Past 165

Notes 185

Bibliography 191

Index 199

About the Author 205