Historical Markers

Brightwood

Matthew Gault Emery: A prominent builder, Emery was Washington City's last elected mayor during the period of home rule.

Eastern Market

Marion Park: The Marion Park neigborhood, home to the Dorothy Owens family, James Carbery, Robert Alexander, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and Mt. Jezreel Baptist Church.

Edge of the Row: This is the northern edge of a Capitol Hill community shaped by the presence of the U.S. military.

Bloomingdale

Neighborhood: Ledroit Park and its younger sibling Bloomingdale share a rich history here.

Neighborhood residents: Edward Brooke, Dr. Ernest Y. Williams, Jackie Mabley, Professor James V. Herring, Mattie P. Simons, Alberta Randolph

Rhode Island Avenue: This busy stretch of Rhode Island Avenue was a racial dividing line even as DC became majority African American in 1957...

Judiciary Square / Chinatown

Ending Slavery: The City Hall/Courthouse witnessed key events in abolition history.

Civil War to Civil Rights: "It is known to you that events have transpired within the last few days, deeply affecting the peace and character of our community." With these words, city officials tried to calm the angry mobs gathering on this corner in April 1848.

Ceremony at the Crossroads: This had been the ceremonial and commercial crossroads of the city since the federal government moved to the banks of the Potomac River in 1800.

Daniel Webster: Senator Daniel Webster, eloquent advocate for the preservation of the Union and a political giant in pre-Civil War America, lived and worked here.

Clara Barton: "I have paid the rent of a room in Washington... retaining it merely as a shelter to which I might return, when my strength should fail me under exposure and labor at the field."

Second Baptist Church: Second Baptist Church was organized in 1848 by seven members of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church.

Mary Surratt, Conspirators: During the Civil War this modest brick house was occupied by Mary Surratt, a Maryland-born widow who took in boarders...

Shaw

Northern Liberty Market: This neighborhood has been "A Place Between Places," where races and classes bumped and mingled as they got a foothold in the city.

Blanche Bruce, John Wesley Powell: A post-Civil War building boom brought grand new houses to this convenient area.

Downtown

Willard Hotel: This hotel, in fact, may be much more justly called the center of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department....

Woodward & Lothrop: "Alvin, Washington, D.C., is the place for us." So wrote Samuel Walter Woodward to his business partner, Alvin Lothrop

Southwest

Wharf, Southwest Waterfront: Historical Markers on the pier at the district wharf, southwest Washington, DC