Existing comment:
Where are you?
What is now the neighborhood of Edgewood was originally outside the boundaries of the District of Columbia. Part of a 30-acre farmland estate called Metropolis View, Edgewood was purchased in 1863 by Salmon Chase, who built Edgewood Manor, naming it for its location on the edge of the woods.
Salmon Portland Chase (1808-1873) was an American politician, jurist, supporter of women's rights and public education, and abolitionist who worked defending escaped slaves, arguing the constitutionality of fugitive slave laws before the U.S. Supreme Court. He came to Washington in 1861 as the US Treasury Secretary under Abraham Lincoln and remained as Chief Justice from 1864 until his death in 1873, at which time his daughter, Kate, moved into the estate. Known as an intelligent beauty and nicknamed "the Belle of the North," she earned high praise from The Washington Post, which called her the "most brilliant woman of her day None outshone her."
By the 1890s the Metropolitan Branch Line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had been built east of the estate and was being used by commuters accessing weekend and summer homes. As the frequency of the trains increased, city residents considered residing full-time in what had been considered "the country." At this time, much of the Edgewood estate was platted for residential purposes. The streets were named in the District's alphabetical fashion, though the streets of Bryant, Channing, Douglas and Evarts were named after cities and were called Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Emporia and Frankfort.
In the mid-1900s, the manor made way for the St. Vincent Orphanage Asylum and Catholic School to the south, and later to the Edgewood Terrace Apartments to the north. |