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Village in the City
Mount Pleasant Heritage Trail
6 Village Life
This was the western edge of Samuel P. Brown's Mount Pleasant Village. Across the street and a few steps ahead at 3423 Oakwood Terrace is "Oakwood," an original village house built in 1871 for city politician J.W. Buker. Brown reserved the land to your left for his family, and sold lots to your right, from 17th Street to today's 14th Street. You can recognize Brown's earliest streets on the trail map on the other side of this sign by the way they angle off 17th Street.
Brown's settlement attracted Civil War veterans and government employees, mostly New Englanders. They found these breezy hills healthier than the congested lowlands of the City of Washington (bounded on the north by Florida Avenue). Villagers organized the Mount Pleasant Assembly, which ran a horse-drawn coach from 14th Street and Park Road to the Treasury Department downtown. It also built Union Hall for meetings and worship services, and a school on Hiatt Place.
In 1883 Samuel Brown's son Chapin began subdividing the family estate. You'll see the subdivision's first house -- 1701 Newton Street -- as you walk to Sign 7.
Even before Rock Creek Park was set aside in 1890, the wild woodlands bordering the village were a happy part of daily life. The young sons of developer Luther Fristoe and his wife Caroline, who moved here in 1887, often played at the creek and the zoo. Others came from farther away: Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, rode horseback, hiked, and even skinny-dipped in Rock Creek Park. He arrived so often via 17th Street, one street over, that Washingtonians dubbed it the Roosevelt Entrance. |