Howard University's Jewel of a Neighbor

It started out in the 1870s as an exclusive whites-only community, but LeDroit Park has always been linked to Howard University, the historically black college that borders the neighborhood.

Amzi Barber, a Howard University founder and faculty member, developed LeDroit Park, naming it for his father-in-law, LeDroit Langdon. The neighborhood's original 64 homes -- a series of Italian villa and Gothic-styled country mansions and cottages -- were designed by James McGill, a prominent architect of the time. Eventually, the neighborhood came to include brick and frame rowhouses that were built in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

One of the first suburban "streetcar" neighborhoods of Washington -- it was outside the District of Columbia's original boundaries -- LeDroit Park was designed to attract the well-to-do. Marketed as a "romantic" enclave, the neighborhood was known not only for its scalloped rooftops, ornate cornices, turrets and towers, but also for the extensive landscaping that remains a hallmark today, and was a factor in LeDroit Park being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

"If you look up, the grandeur is still there. You see . . . a lot of carpentry work and little frilly stuff," said David Corry, 59, a professional portrait photographer, retired schoolteacher and former president of the LeDroit Civic Association. He has lived in LeDroit Park for 35 years.

Long gone is the fence that surrounded LeDroit Park in its early years and the accompanying sentries who stood guard at its wrought-iron gates.

"At night, LeDroit Park would be closed off, and people [African Americans] would have to walk around it. This was the 1800s, but then the residents of Howard Town [a nearby African American community] tore it down," said Myla Moss, another former president of the civic association and now a member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission.

The fence went back up, only to be dismantled once more. The whites-only barrier in LeDroit Park was broken for good in 1893 when a barber named Octavius Williams became the first African American to move in. His arrival triggered an exodus of LeDroit Park's white residents. They sold their homes to affluent and prominent African American doctors, lawyers, educators and artists. In a few years, a neighborhood designed to appeal to high-brow white professionals became a magnet for influential African Americans.

"This is the birthplace of black intelligentsia," Moss said.

Robert Terrell, a lawyer with a degree from Harvard who became Washington's first African American municipal court judge, and his wife, Mary, a teacher, writer and civil rights activist, followed Octavius Williams to LeDroit Park, arriving in 1894.

Mary Church Terrell became the first African American woman in the United States to be appointed to a school board when she was selected to be a member of the D.C. Board of Education. In 1950, at age 87, after decades as a civil rights leader, she spearheaded the effort to integrate Washington's restaurants. Today, the Terrell house at 326 T St. NW is a National Historic Landmark.

Other prominent African Americans who lived in LeDroit Park include Sgt. Maj. Christian Fleetwood, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his feats during the battle at Chaffin's Farm, which was part of the Siege of Petersburg in 1864; Gen. Benjamin Davis, the first African American general; poet Paul Laurence Dunbar; and jazz great Duke Ellington.

More recently, Walter Washington, the first mayor of the District to be elected under home rule, and activist Jesse Jackson have lived in LeDroit Park.