Columbia Heights

Welcome to Columbia Heights

Cleveland Park is a residential neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. Its main commercial corridor lies along Connecticut Avenue, NW, where the eponymous Cleveland Park station of the Washington Metro's Red Line can be found; another commercial corridor lies along Wisconsin Avenue. The neighborhood is known for its many late 19th-century homes and the historic Art Deco Uptown Theater. It is also home to the William L. Slayton House and the Park and Shop, built in 1930 and one of the earliest strip malls. 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.

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 long, overhanging eaves. 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.

[Source: Wikipedia]