Francis Junior High School, which opened in 1928, was the District's first purpose-built junior high for African American students. The original building, dating to 1927-29, was designed by DC Municipal Architect Albert L. Harris in a Renaissance Revival style. Many public buildings are attributed to Harris, who is known for his Renaissance Revival and Colonial Revival designs. The school is named for Dr. John R. Francis (1856-1913), who was an African American physician, DC Board of Education member, and Howard University Trustee.
In response to population growth and overcrowded classrooms, new school construction in the District accelerated during the interwar period. This construction was spurred by the Five-Year School Building Program Act of 1925. Just prior to the passage of this federal legislation, in 1920, the DC Board of Education established the junior high school concept, taking two grades from elementary school and one grade from high school.
Following the establishment of junior high schools in the District, Shaw Junior High School — which first occupied the former M Street High School building, followed by the former McKinley Manual Traing School building — opened in 1919-20. Shaw was the first junior high school for DC's African American students. Francis Junior High School, which was completed in 1927 and dedicated the following year, was the District's first purpose-built junior high for African Americans. Two years later, in 1929, Garnet-Patterson Junior High School was completed and became the second purpose-built junior high for African Americans. The DC school system would continue to be racially segregated until the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954).
Since 2024, the school has been known as the John Francis Educational Campus. This followed school consolidations in the early 21st century, including the closure of Thaddeus Stevens School.
The oldest part of the John Francis Educational Campus, was designed by Harris and dates to 1927-29. It consists of four, three-story wings surrounding a two-story auditorium — all clad in brick masonry. The primary elevation and main entrance, located on the south wing, face N Street NW. The first floor of this elevation is clad in limestone.
The south wing, at three-stories tall; east and west wings, both originally at two-stories in height; and auditorium were completed in 1927. Two years later, an additional floor was added to the east and west wings, and the north wing, at three-stories tall, was completed, enclosing the auditorium on all sides. In addition to its modern auditorium, the school featured vocational classrooms.
School buildings constructed in phases, referred to as "extensible," were common in DC at the time. This approach, which came in three styles/layouts, allowed for additions as needed, due to student population increases, and as funding permitted.
A compatible, two-story addition, connecting to the east elevation of the original building, was designed by DC Municipal Architect Merrell Coe and completed in 1953. Over 70 years later, in 2024, a three-story addition was completed just to the west of the 1927-29 building, and the 1953 addition was expanded. The expansion of the 1953 addition resulted in a new, enclosed courtyard ("outdoor classroom"). At the time, the entire complex was rehabilitated and modernized, and rebranded as the John Francis Educational Campus.
DC Inventory: December 18, 2025
National Register: February 23, 2026
]]>Eastern High School, located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on the 1700 block of East Capitol Street NE, was constructed between 1921 and 1923 and designed by Municipal Architect Snowden Ashford in the Collegiate Gothic style. Albert Harris, Ashford's successor, supervised the high school's final design and construction.
Eastern High School has a five-part plan and is four-stories tall. It is clad in red brick and limestone. Its most distinctive features are found at its main entrance on East Capitol Street, which includes a two-story porte-cochère, composed of red brick, limestone trim and quoining, lancet arched windows (with limestone tracery and a lattice design), and an entryway through a Gothic arch. Above the main entrance is a sundial, which is flanked by two crenellated towers. There are crenellated parapets above the main entrance and the two bay windows at the west and east ends of the school. These bay windows are also clad in limestone. The school has paired and grouped, three-sash windows (in a nine-by-nine design) with limestone trim and quoining. The horizontality of the building is emphasized through the series of windows and two limestone belt courses.
The original Eastern High School was established in 1890 near Eastern Market. The DC Schoolhouse Commission, established by Congress in 1906, recommended, through its 1908 report, that a new Eastern High School be constructed in accordance with various design principles popular at the time. In the following years, the site on East Capitol Street was chosen for the new high school. In addition to Eastern High School, the report eventaully led to the construction of Central High School (Cardozo Senior High School) (1916), Dunbar High School (1916, demolished in 1977) — with Dunbar constructed for African American students — and McKinley Technical High School (1929).
Snowden Ashford was DC's first Municipal Architect (1909 - 1921). Ashford designed many public school buildings in addition to Eastern, including Dunbar. Ashford often designed in the Collegiate Gothic and Tudor Revival styles, in opposition to the Commission of Fine Arts, which desired Colonial Revival style building designs. Although not designed by Ashford, Central is Elizabethan in design.
Central High School was designed by William B. Ittner, a St. Louis architect hired by Ashford. Ittner's St. Louis high school designs had been well-liked by DC's Schoolhouse Commission — one of these designs being a Collegiate Gothic style high school. This style and its E-shaped floorplan, with single-loaded corridors and dedicated classroom space for specific coursework, were used in the design of Central. Ittner's designs would certainly shape Ashford's designs for Dunbar and Eastern high schools in the coming years.
With its E-shaped floorplan, courtyards, and single-loaded corridors, Eastern High School, constructed between 1921 and 1923, provided plenty of natural light and air circulation — not unlike Central, which had opened in the previous decade.
Courses offered at Eastern included Latin, English, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Botany, Math, Freehand Drawing, Music, Physical Education, Journalism, Drama, Sewing, Food Preparation, and Home Care, in addition to other courses. These courses and subjects corresponded with 100 individual classroom, laboratory, and wood/metal/automobile repair shop spaces. Certain coursework and activities were only available to male students (e.g., Cadets), while other courses were meant for female students (e.g., Home Economics).
In addition to the classroom space for up to 1,800 students, Eastern included a modern auditorium for 1,400, a library, two gyms, handball and tennis courts, a lunchroom, greenhouse, rifle range and armory, printing plant, laundry, and bank, as well as a state-of-the-art steam heating system, an elevator, and more than 3,000 lockers. A stadium and field were completed in 1925, and an addition to the school's rear, housing a gym and classroom space, was completed in 1938.
Following Eastern High School's design and construction, no other public school building in the District would be designed in the Collegiate Gothic style.
After opening in the early 1920s, the neighborhood around Eastern High School continued to grow and, despite a capacity of 1,800 students, Eastern had 3,000 students by 1934. To deal with the overcrowding, students east of the Anacostia River were moved to Anacostia High School.
In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that public schools be desegregated. Bolling, a case specific to DC, ruled that racial segregation in the DC public school system was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. This led to new school boundaries. In the fall of 1954, 1.4% of the student population at Eastern High School was African American. African American students were transferred to Eastern from Cardozo (Central) and Spingarn high schools, and within a decade Eastern was 99% African American.
The school underwent renovations in both the 1980s and 2010s. The most recent "modernization" also preserved remaining, historic interior elements — including original marble, wood, and terra cotta — and restored the exterior to its original grandeur. The two rear courtyards were also enclosed.
Eastern was famous for its choir, which travelled internationally, and The Blue and White Marching Machine, a marching band that has played at major events, including presidential inaugurations.
Eastern alumni include Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam; musicians Gayle Adams, Y'Anna Crawley, and Kevin LeVar; journalist George D. Beveridge; Four-Star General George S. Blanchard; NBA players Jerry Chambers and Jamorko Pickett; Senator Bennett Champ Clark; NFL linebackers Al Chesley, Frank Chesley, and Mike Wilcher; MLB pitcher Vince Colbert; White House Press Secretary Stephen Early; US Army Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, one of the "Four Chaplains," who gave his life when the SS Dorchester was torpedoed in February 1943; nuclear physicist Alvin C. Graves; Admiral Cecil D. Haney; Congressman George Huddleston, Jr.; NFL wide receiver Mike Martin; General Anthony McAuliffe; civil rights activist Franklin McCain; boxer and olympian Charles Mooney (who also taught at Eastern); Judge Edna G. Parker; reporter Eugene Scott; scholar Ibrahim K. Sundiata; DC Councilmember Brandon Todd; and General Earle Wheeler. Actor and comedian Dave Chappelle also attended Eastern High School. DC Councilmember Linda W. Cropp and musician Patrick Lundy taught at Eastern.
The school was first identified as historically and architecturally significant in Public School Buildings of Washington, DC, 1862-1960, a multiple property document.
DC Inventory: August 3, 2023
National Register: October 30, 2023
]]>As DC’s urban landscape grew to accommodate its growing population, so did its young population of school-aged children. While schoolhouses existed throughout the city for these children, they were majorly insufficient for the sharp increase in student populations that occurred in the late 19th century. The Smothers School helped alleviate classroom overcrowding, especially in the midst of another population spike after World War I. Originally completed in 1923, with additions completed in 1927 and 1938, the Smothers School opened its doors to African American students. The original Smothers School was started by Henry Smothers, who founded the school after attending the Billings School and wanted to continue educating African American students in DC. The original school moved locations twice before settling on Benning Road NE, after which it changed its name to the Benning Road School. Once the new Smothers School began construction and received its name in the 1920s, the older school closed its doors. The 1923 building was constructed by Albert Harris, who was the Municipal Architect of DC during this time. It was designed in the then popular Georgian Revival style. Harris also designed the first addition to the school in 1927; later, succeeding Municipal Architect Nathan Wyeth adhered to Harris’s original style in the 1938 additions. The school’s original floor plans accounted for future expansions, as architects saw the continued growth in DC’s school system. The building’s original T-shape layout was expanded vertically, with a third floor added in the decades that followed. Older school buildings in the city were often small, outdated, and insufficient for expansion, and, oftentimes, African American students were housed in informal spaces like churches or homes. While local residents and organizations privately funded schools for African American children (such as the Billings School in Georgetown, one of the first in the city), government efforts in providing education to African American students were not consolidated with white schools until 1874. From 2019 to 2022, the school underwent major renovations to improve its technological and circulation capabilities. While much of the interior and layout of the school changed, the building’s exterior was preserved and not significantly altered – other than two wings added to its northeast and western ends. The building still functions as an elementary school today.
DC Inventory: March 23, 2023
National Register: June 23, 2023
]]>Constructed in the 1920s, the 12th Precinct Station House is architecturally significant as a prominent example of the Colonial Revival style in the District. Additionally, the station house is historically emblematic of DC’s expanding police force in the 20th century. As Washington’s population increased at the turn of the 20th century, the District police force expanded to meet the growing need for law enforcement through the construction of new precinct stations. The 12th precinct was established in 1922 to provide services to neighborhoods in the city’s northeastern quadrant. Designs for the building were finalized in 1923, and the station officially opened on New Year’s Day in 1924. Designed by municipal architect Albert L. Harris, the two-story brick building is a significant example of Colonial Revival style in the District—it is characterized by a front-gable roof, parapet-style belfry, and a projecting entrance portico. Today, the original building is connected to a six-story residential tower (constructed in 2019) for short-term family housing.
DC Inventory: May 27, 2021
]]>Virginia-born Miss Rose Lees Hardy (1869-1932) was the Assistant Superintendent of DC Public Schools from 1925 until her death in 1932. As a specialist in primary education and piano, Miss Hardy left an impact on the surrounding community through her civic works and dedication to young children. A few months after her death in October of 1932, the Washington Board of Education decided to rename the Foxhall Village School (a building project in motion since 1930) after Miss Hardy. In 1934, a triple memorial composed of a commemorative tablet, a rose garden, and a fund for visiting educational lecturers.
The Rose Lees Hardy School (Hardy School) – then called Foxhall Village School – opened in September 1933 as a public elementary school serving children in the neighborhood and the surrounding areas. Designed by Albert L. Harris in the Colonial Revival Style, the red brick building with limestone and wood trim complements surrounding buildings in the neighborhood. Upon the school’s opening, students who had previously been made to travel over a mile to the nearest schools transitioned to the Hardy School, which continued to undergo construction to expand its facilities. Issues of school overcrowding and a lack of funding were eventually resolved in 1936 with monetary support from the New Deal’s Public Works Administration.
The Hardy School diligently served elementary age children until 1973, when demographic shifts in the area resulted in the school’s transition into DC’s innovative Six School Complex. As part of this interconnected educational system, Hardy School served grades 5-8. DC’s Six School Complex was notable as a pioneering method for its individualized student care, smaller student populations, and special language/arts programs.
In 1996, the Hardy School moved to a different location, prompting community concerns about the sale or destruction of the building. Resistance to the local government selling the property resulted in a 1998 shift in educational hands to the Rock Creek International School, and then again in 2006 to the Lab School, which currently remains in the building.
DC Inventory: March 28, 2019
National Register: June 3, 2019
]]>Before 1930, some DC parks contained sheds to store equipment. The extant facilities from that era, however, include only buildings that were later repurposed for recreation use. But park administrators now needed facilities that could accommodate offices for playground directors, storage rooms, restrooms, and general-purpose spaces to facilitate year-round activities.
Municipal Architect Albert L. Harris (1869-1934) designed a prototype fieldhouse for Mitchell Park in 1930, and the building was completed in 1931. Of frame construction, a story and a half tall with a full-width front porch, it was based on the eighteenth-century Tidewater hall-and-parlor house. Six such structures would eventually be erected, five of which are extant, and Mitchell Park being the first. As public works, the designs had to be reviewed by the US Commission of Fine Arts, which favored the Colonial Revival style as suitably domestic in character for government facilities situated in residential neighborhoods. These were clearly influenced by the very topical Colonial Williamsburg restoration project and its new archaeological interest in even modest and vernacular colonial buildings of that region.
Mitchell Park’s fieldhouse is a modest three-bay building with a single main room upstairs and down, with a small restroom and an enclosed stair at the north end. The first floor is now mainly a playroom for young children. A central front door is supplemented by a second entrance centered in the south end. The original porch and exterior end chimney remain.
DC Inventory: October 31, 2019
National Register: February 24, 2014
]]>In 1921, a United Citizens Playground Committee completed a study and recommended that the District Commissioners adopt a system of equitable distribution of playgrounds around the city, urging the immediate provision of three facilities for white children, at least two more for African Americans—and preferably a third in Southeast. The federal government became more active in the provision of parks with the 1924 establishment of the National Capital Park Commission. NCPC gained access to federal funds for land acquisition and construction with the passage of the 1930 Capper-Crampton Act, and so began the realization of a plan for recreation and community centers. Following the 1921 study by the United Citizens Playground Committee and its recommendations for park acquisition, a Chevy Chase Recreation Club approached the Chevy Chase Land Company about obtaining a parcel for the first playground northwest of the Taft Bridge. In March 1923, the Land Company agreed to lease the present site for three years for token consideration, with the intention that the Recreation Club would purchase the land or have the city do so at the expiration of that time. The club immediately laid out a baseball diamond, a football/soccer field, tennis and basketball courts, and a running track. The Recreation Club was unsuccessful in reaching its target to fund the purchase and improvement of the parcel and of another directly across the Maryland line. Having sunk a considerable investment into the facilities, however, residents prevailed upon the new National Capital Park Commission to acquire the park for the public (white residents, that is), at a cost of $70,000. In 1927, the District Commissioners closed the northern stub of Forty-Second Street that had separated the property from the tiny Square 1745, expanding the park. A symmetrical plan for the triangular park was proposed, but it was realized as a more informal layout in which an axis from the rear of the field house divided the softball field from the tennis courts. A 1944 plan indicates that a path meandered from Forty-First Street to Western northeast of the tennis courts, separating them from volleyball and basketball courts, swings and climbing equipment, and a picnic area at the northern apex of the park. Shortly after World War II, the site was reordered, with the baseball diamond and tennis and basketball courts in their present locations, divided by a north-south walk. One of the improvements of the early 1930s was a wading pool, reconfigured (now a spray park), but remaining in some version since.
DC Inventory: October 31, 2019
]]>Roosevelt High School was founded in 1890 as Business High School, then DC’s only institution devoted to instruction in business. The co-educational and segregated school had an itinerant early history until it moved into its first purpose-built home on the 800 block of Rhode Island Avenue NW in 1906. Like the city’s manual training schools, the business program proved a successful model. With increased development and population growth after World War I, the school became crowded and remained so for many years. In 1920, the Board of Education petitioned the District Commissioners to purchase a site on which to build a new and expanded business school. Congress appropriated the necessary funds for the new Business High School in 1926, but the school change from a business to a general high school in an effort by the Board of Education to adopt a more well-rounded, college preparatory curriculum.
Designed by Albert L. Harris, Roosevelt High School is an impressive example of the Colonial Revival style, with a five-part plan consisting of a central pavilion and two side wings connected by single-story arcades. The building is sited facing 13th Street as the street rises in elevation between Upshur and Alison Streets. The central pavilion is a long rectangle with a central projecting gable and a low hipped roof, capped by a wood steeple. The side pavilions, which houses the gymnasium and auditorium, feature projecting two-story porticos.
Between 1977 and 1980, Roosevelt High School was expanded and renovated. In 2016, it was again renovated and enlarged as part of a school modernization program. This 2016 work included the enclosure of the central courtyard to create an atrium, and the construction of an entry foyer on the east side of the gymnasium wing. It also included the restoration of the cupola, and the hyphens.
DC Inventory: September 27, 2018
National Register: December 3, 2018
]]>The rapid development of Petworth in the three decades after 1900 meant that it needed new schools. Until the early 1920s, there was only a single elementary school in the neighborhood. Addressing what has been characterized as a crisis in school overcrowding would become the principal mission of a new superintendent of schools, Dr. Frank Ballou, and the Office of the Municipal Architect. DC introduced an experimental junior high school to the former Central High building in early 1919 and soon adopted the practice generally. The original McKinley Manual Training School was converted to Shaw Junior High in 1922, and Petworth and Eckington received their own junior highs in 1923. With the Five-Year School Building Program Act in 1925, DC emulated dozens of other cities that established several hundred junior highs in the first half of the 1910s. The impetus was as much overcrowding as pedagogical. The junior high school relieved congestion in neighborhood schools by skimming off the higher grades from several, and putting the pupils into a centralized, thoroughly modern facility without having to disrupt and expand each of the elementary schools. Doing so also constituted a Progressive-era reform of the system, recognizing the particular challenges of teaching children that had reached puberty and holding back the ninth-graders from immersion among older students. The junior highs also incorporated shops for vocational training, giving them the ability to set students on academic or vocational tracks early—often useful, but also a fraught proposition. Funded, designed and constructed simultaneously, DC's first purpose-built junior high schools—Eckington's Langley Junior High and Petworth's MacFarland Junior High—are nearly identical, especially in their facades. Relatively flat with the exception of the towers, a cornice and pilasters, their design suggests both cost-consciousness and a deference to the high schools as the most elaborate edifices in the system. Architect Albert L. Harris (1869-1934) designed the new schools, which resembled each other in plan, even if the same sections might have different uses. MacFarland's permanent gymnasium was to be in a separate wing, mirrored by a classroom wing, but the latter was not erected until 1925, and the gym finished only in 1932. These wings completed Harris’s initial vision, observing the same strict symmetry as the main block. This design anticipated Harris' "extensible school" model of the 1930s, programmed for expansion into side wings as the need arose or funds became available. The same lack of funds that delayed construction of the wings slowed efforts generally to keep up with the growth of the school-age population in Petworth and surrounding neighborhoods; after MacFarland opened, elementary students were still in portable classrooms in Petworth, Park View, and Brightwood Park.
DC Inventory: September 27, 2018
National Register: December 3, 2018
]]>Built in 1931, Lafayette Elementary School accommodated the rapid growth of the suburban community, Chevy Chase. One of several schools of the 1925 five-year plan, this major building campaign intended to relieve overcrowding, but additional population growth projects outpaced the school's construction; it took a decade before sufficient funds were available to build out the entire school by 1942. By virtue of its size, function, and placement, Lafayette became a visual landmark of its neighborhood, as well as a community center. Lafayette Elementary is one of the most fully realized examples of a model "extensible" school. Extensible schools responded to demographic changes, fiscal constraints, and architectural challenges of expansion. Developed in the late 1920s by Municipal Architect Albert L. Harris (1869-1934), the idea was to design buildings that would be built out incrementally as the need demanded and funds allowed. Extensible schools were typically built in the Colonial Revival style. Adopted in the 1920s, Colonial Revival reflected the nationwide interest in the country’s early years. Named in honor of the Revolutionary military officer, Marquis de Lafayette, Lafayette Elementary School is a complete example and the largest of the extensible elementary schools.
DC Inventory: May 25, 2017
National Register: March 30, 2018
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