Cleveland Park - History

History

The first American settler was General Uriah Forrest, an aide-de-camp of George Washington who built an estate called Rosedale (now at 3501 Newark Street) in 1793, when he began serving as a Congressman from Maryland. Later, it housed Youth For Understanding, an international student exchange organization. In 2002, the Rosedale grounds were placed in a public conservancy, and the farmhouse, said to be the oldest house in Washington, returned to residential use. Other estates followed. Gardiner Greene Hubbard, first president of the National Geographic Society, built the colonial Georgian revival Twin Oaks on 50 acres (200,000 m²) in 1888. It was used as a summer home by the Hubbard family, including Alexander Graham Bell and is today home of the diplomatic mission of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Tregaron, present-day home of the Washington International School, is a Georgian house built in 1912.

The neighborhood acquired its name after 1886, when President Grover Cleveland purchased a stone farmhouse directly opposite Rosedale and remodeled it into a Queen Anne style summer estate called Oak View or Oak Hill (by other accounts, Red Top). When Cleveland lost his bid for re-election in 1888, the property was sold, and the Oak View subdivision was platted in 1890. The Cleveland Heights subdivision was platted around the same time,, and the Cleveland Park subdivision soon thereafter.

Early large-scale development was spurred by the neighborhood's upland topography, which provided a breezy relief from the hot, fetid air in the lowlands that were then the built-up area of Washington, D.C. Most of the houses built during this period show their intended use as summer houses in the era before air conditioning, having such architectural features as wide porches, large windows, and overhanging eaves.

While the first subdivisions were made in response to the extension of the Georgetown and Tennallytown electric streetcar line along Wisconsin Avenue, the success of the neighborhood was the result of the Rock Creek Railway, built on Connecticut Avenue in 1892. Once Cleveland Park was connected to downtown Washington, the neighborhood's second phase of development, as a "streetcar suburb" began. The Cleveland Park Company oversaw construction on numerous plots starting in 1894. Most houses were designed by individual architects and builders, including Waddy B. Wood, resulting in an eclectic mix of the popular architectural styles of the time, notably the Queen Anne style (including the Shingle style), Georgian Revival, and the Mission Revival. In later years, simpler schools such as the Prairie style and Tudor Revival came to dominate.

Development proceeded in fits and starts, punctuated by such events as the bankruptcy of the Cleveland Park Company in 1905 and the Great Depression in the 1930s. As a result, houses of very different sizes, natures, and styles can often be seen next to one another. In the later 20th century, Winthrop Faulkner and I. M. Pei designed houses in the neighborhood as well.