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Village in the City
Mount Pleasant Heritage Trail
1 Fashionable 16th Street
Today's 16th Street from the White House to Silver Spring, Maryland is one of the city's key gateways. But through the 1890s it jogged left where Mt. Pleasant Street runs today and then dead-ended at the edge of today's Rock Creek Park.
After decades on the city's wish list, in 1903, 16th Street was straightened and extended to Spring Road, several blocks north of here. This improvement, coupled with the arrival of the electric streetcar, made airy Mount Pleasant an attractive location for residential building. Suddenly, it was easy to commute downtown and back.
Two decades earlier, Mary Foote Hamilton, socialite developer and wife of Senator John Henderson, had begun working to make 16th Street the city's most fashionable. The couple lived in Henderson Castle (now demolished) at 16th and Florida Avenue. She lured embassies from France, Spain, Mexico Cuba, Lithuania, Italy, and Poland to 16th Street. Henderson also had the street re-named Avenue of the Presidents, but that lasted only one year.
When the Kenesaw Apartment House across the park opened in 1906, it led a wave of luxury apartment building here. The Kenesaw housed members of Congress and other prominent Washingtonians. Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson and his family lived there in 1915 while their house at 1843 Irving Street was under construction.
In 1913 the Kenesaw owners donated today's park land to the city. President Coolidge dedicated this sculpture of Francis Asbury, the first bishop in America in 1924. |